Windows Isn’t a Service; It’s an Operating System

[Karlston]

 

“Windows as a Service” is failing. It’s obvious: Windows is not a service, and never was. It’s a desktop operating system, and it doesn’t need updates every six months. Even iOS and Android only get significant updates once per year.

“Updating All These PCs Sure Is Hard!”

Microsoft just put out a blog post about Windows 10’s quality, and it’s very defensive. Microsoft doesn’t explain what happened with the October 2018 Update at all, nor does it promise to change the development process in the future. The only real commitment is to more transparency and improved communication going forward.

 

To put all the recent bugs into perspective, Microsoft asks that we consider “the sheer scale of the Windows ecosystem”:

With Windows 10 alone we work to deliver quality to over 700 million monthly active Windows 10 devices, over 35 million application titles with greater than 175 million application versions, and 16 million unique hardware/driver combinations.

That’s right—Windows is a very complex beast that has to support a large number of hardware devices and software applications. That’s a reason Microsoft should slow down and stop updating Windows so frequently, not an excuse for constant bugs.

 

Windows 7 supported a lot of hardware devices and software applications, too. But Windows 7 wasn’t constantly breaking things. Microsoft provided a stable base of software for hardware manufacturers and software developers to work on.

 

We still agree security updates are important, of course. But Microsoft managed to deliver security updates to Windows 7 and older versions of Windows before “Windows as a Service,” and those security updates rarely caused problems.

No One Asked for Windows as a Service

 

No PC users asked Microsoft for Windows as a service. It was all Microsoft’s idea.

 

“Software as a service” is trendy. But these types of services are generally hosted on a remote platform, like Amazon Web Services or even Microsoft Azure. Web applications like Gmail and Facebook are services. That all makes sense—the company maintains the software, and you access it remotely.

 

An operating system that runs on millions of different hardware configurations is not a service. It can’t be updated as easily, and you’ll run into issues with hardware, drivers, and software when you change things. The upgrade process isn’t instant and transparent—it’s a big download and can take a while to install.

 

Very little software will break if Google changes something in Gmail. In the worst case scenario, Gmail will go down. On the other hand, millions of applications (or computers!) could break if Microsoft makes a mistake with Windows.

What Does Windows as a Service Get Us?

 

What has Windows as a service even gotten us? How much has Windows 10 improved since its release?

 

Sure, Microsoft keeps adding new features like the Timeline and Paint 3D, but how many Windows users care about those? Many of these new features, like Paint 3D and updates to Microsoft Edge, could be delivered without major operating system upgrades.

 

Just take a look at the many features in Windows 10’s October 2018 Update and ask whether they were worth all the deleted files and drama. Texting from your PC is great, but Microsoft could release an app that does that—in fact, this was once supposed to be a Skype feature. Clipboard history is cool, and a dark theme for File Explorer is cute.

 

But couldn’t we have waited another six months for Microsoft to properly polish and test this stuff?

 

“Windows as a Service” does get us a few things. It gets us applications like Candy Crush installed on our PCs. It gets us an ever-increasing number of built-in advertisements. And it gets us activation problems when Windows phones home once a day and discovers that Microsoft has a server problem.

Windows Doesn’t Need Big Updates Every Six Months

Please Microsoft, slow down. How about releasing a new version of Windows once per year instead?

 

That’s what Apple does, and Apple doesn’t need “macOS as a Service” to do it. Just create a new version of Windows every year, give it a new name, and spend a lot of time polishing it and fixing bugs. Wait until it’s stable to release it, even if you have to delay it.

 

Offer every version of Windows as an optional free upgrade. Don’t force people to upgrade immediately. Don’t trick people into installing the new operating system just because they clicked “Check for Updates.” If it’s good, people will install it.

 

If someone’s hardware or software doesn’t work correctly with the new release, let them stick with their old operating system.

 

It wouldn’t even be much more work for Microsoft to keep multiple versions of Windows updated with security patches. For Enterprise users, every September feature update is patched for 30 months. Just make these September feature updates the normal version of Windows and let all Windows users get them—done.

Windows 7 Users Are Watching

Microsoft will stop supporting Windows 7 a bit over a year from now, on January 14, 2020. After that, Windows 7 users will have to upgrade to a newer version of Windows or stick with a Windows 7 that won’t get any security patches.

 

How many Windows 7 users are looking at the Windows 10 update drama and dreading the upgrade? How many will stick with that vulnerable version of Windows when it comes time to choose?

 

The sad thing is that Microsoft does offer a more stable version of Windows! If you use Windows 10 Professional, you can at least delay updates for a while. And, if you use Windows 10 Enterprise, you can use a Windows release for up to 30 months, receiving security updates the whole time. But, although Microsoft is patching and supporting these versions of Windows, Microsoft won’t let home users get them.

 

We have to be the beta testers for Microsoft’s real customers—the businesses that pay for the good, stable software.

 

Source: Windows Isn’t a Service; It’s an Operating System (How-To Geek)

[sefton22]

i'm wondering if Micr0soft will attempt and go down the subscription route, now they define their OS as a service, just like the have with MSO365??

 

i rarely use any of Micr0soft's own applications, only notepad, paint and WMP as i've used them since Win95+, the rest of their additions are not needed as i've either paid for specific software or i'm still comfortable using other programs

 

i read their perspective as "...we work quickly and forcefully deliver an untested OS to unsuspecting HOME users of Windows 10, we can't be expected to have 16 million unique hardware/ driver combinations without a few catastrophic side effects to the end user. if you don't like it there's not really much else you can do."

[steven36]

If there wasn't Windows as a service then they would  make Windows 11 ,  They stuck it to businesses long before Windows 10  when they charged them all to upgrade to Windows 7 from XP .. The reason for Windows as service  they claimed it  would be the last version of Windows  and  Microsoft  uses  the consumer  who uses Insiders and Windows 10 home users  as a lab rat   by the time it gets to Enterprise its  pretty  stable . Really for home users Windows  is not a service  it's Windows as  beta .. They never offered the home user any benefits  they offer Enterprise.  It's all about money  there old business model   only earned them a  huge profit but only  a year or 2 before the OS business used  expired . If there selling subscriptions they  earn a profit all the time .

 

If they cant make a profit  on Windows  they have enough services  that they could port to other OSes and already are that  it would not be feasible to keep making Windows and losing money on it  so they have to find there nich  to earn a good profit or quit making it. It's just like Windows Phones  after they lost  so much money on it and  they killed it and laid off a bunch of employees .  There cloud is powered by Linux  and they are  porting all there apps to IOS and Android . 

 

The pita of it is the consumer were they use to be treated as equals as businesses are no longer treated as such PCs for consumer come with crappy beta versions installed  that auto upgrade them every 6 months . If you don't like it you can pirate enterprise  or use some other OS .  But Microsoft  are just getting worse and worse ,  they didn't even say they was sorry for putting out a buggy Windows 10 OCT 2018  release and it's best they don't say they sorry, because it would be just another lie. they are not sorry because that's what they use you for is to find bugs in there software. . Like they said the other week they was not going to use peoples data to monetize Windows 10  witch was a lie because they been doing that since 2015 and with every version they increase the ads and things.  That was pure PR  there is no way to opt out of all its data harvesting  .

[Shalsh95]

Service or Not, it is very hard to make a small piece of a software compatible to every single pc out there with the variants in drivers, and user backgrounds. Imagine an OS like windows is supposed to work ""Perfectly" with this huge amount of users and on every single PC. It is getting difficult and I personally find most of windows issues are user related. For example the last data deletion issue is a user problem in my opinion cause who in earth save important data on win installation directory 😅

[steven36]

1 hour ago, Shalsh95 said:

Service or Not, it is very hard to make a small piece of a software compatible to every single pc out there with the variants in drivers, and user backgrounds. Imagine an OS like windows is supposed to work ""Perfectly" with this huge amount of users and on every single PC. It is getting difficult and I personally find most of windows issues are user related. For example the last data deletion issue is a user problem in my opinion cause who in earth save important data on win installation directory 😅

It use to not be much of a problem tell they made Windows 10 , Most people bought a PC with whatever  windows came on it and ran them tell they bought the next PC .. Most Windows users needs to take there PC to a specialist to even put new versions of Windows on there computer so how was making Windows 10 a good idea for consumers ?  People paid me to do this  for them  they don't have a clue even how to  reinstall the version  that came on it much less windows 10. That has been the biggest downfall of Linux all  along was not many PCs  came pre installed  with Linux.. Finally  this year we got open PCs on the market made by System 76  but still kind of expensive compared to buying one that comes with Windows. 

 

Windows came  with 10 years support  and you can always find drivers  that came with your PC at the vendors home page  for the version of Windows  that came  with your PC  but after you install Windows 10  it started getting tricky  on some old hardware  even when TH1  the 1st version came out  it had bad driver support  from day 1. But  with some know how you can most the time get around it but most Windows users  don't know how. That's why you have all these do it yourself sites  .  On my AMD PC i had to use  beta drivers  because Microsoft  installed  the wrong drivers  because they was not out yet for my PC for Windows 10 .. You cant  tell me that a normal user  would know  how to find beta drivers on AMD website  download them  then  disable driver updates for Windows 10 then use DDU  to remove the botched ones in safe mode then install  the latest drivers . Why you think why so many people  stayed  on XP for  12 years  it was because many old XP boxes were never compatible  with newer OS.  Installing Windows 10  on Windows 7 and 8.1 PCs is a walk in the park compared to trying to upgrade some old XP boxes.

 

I learn how to  work on PCs from watching a specialist  that subcontracted  for Dell  work on mine at my home  in the early 2000s.They made house calls , after my warranty ran out i put more memory in it , DVD Burner  , new power supply  and  a extra hard drive and reinstalled my Windows myself. I fooled with fixing electronics since i was a kid, but  that's when I started working on PCs.   

[Karlston]

1 hour ago, Shalsh95 said:

For example the last data deletion issue is a user problem in my opinion cause who in earth save important data on win installation directory

 

The files deleted were in the very folders that Microsoft themselves create for user documents, videos, pictures, etc.

 

Should we blame the users for actually using these folders in the way Microsoft designed them to be used, or blame the Microsoft dickheads for not bothering to check for files BEFORE deleting user folders?

 

And, let's not forget that the Insiders actually reported this file-deletion bug, and the Microsoft f*ckwits ignored it.

 

1 hour ago, Shalsh95 said:

it is very hard to make a small piece of a software compatible to every single pc out there with the variants in drivers, and user backgrounds.

 

Yep, after every disaster this is the trotted out well-worn response.

 

But still, they've "fixed" it now by adding a severity level to the reports and are handing out badges to keen Insider build downloaders. That'll fix it, absolutely for sure, 100% guaranteed... until the next time anyway.

 

Microsoft will stick to their failed strategies with a death-grip, regardless of how obvious their failures are to world+dog.

[Shalsh95]

13 hours ago, steven36 said:

It use to not be much of a problem tell they made Windows 10 , Most people bought a PC with whatever  windows came on it and ran them tell they bought the next PC .. Most Windows users needs to take there PC to a specialist to even put new versions of Windows on there computer so how was making Windows 10 a good idea for consumers ?  People paid me to do this  for them  they don't have a clue even how to  reinstall the version  that came on it much less windows 10. That has been the biggest downfall of Linux all  along was not many PCs  came pre installed  with Linux.. Finally  this year we got open PCs on the market made by System 76  but still kind of expensive compared to buying one that comes with Windows. 

 

Windows came  with 10 years support  and you can always find drivers  that came with your PC at the vendors home page  for the version of Windows  that came  with your PC  but after you install Windows 10  it started getting tricky  on some old hardware  even when TH1  the 1st version came out  it had bad driver support  from day 1. But  with some know how you can most the time get around it but most Windows users  don't know how. That's why you have all these do it yourself sites  .  On my AMD PC i had to use  beta drivers  because Microsoft  installed  the wrong drivers  because they was not out yet for my PC for Windows 10 .. You cant  tell me that a normal user  would know  how to find beta drivers on AMD website  download them  then  disable driver updates for Windows 10 then use DDU  to remove the botched ones in safe mode then install  the latest drivers . Why you think why so many people  stayed  on XP for  12 years  it was because many old XP boxes were never compatible  with newer OS.  Installing Windows 10  on Windows 7 and 8.1 PCs is a walk in the park compared to trying to upgrade some old XP boxes.

 

I learn how to  work on PCs from watching a specialist  that subcontracted  for Dell  work on mine at my home  in the early 2000s.They made house calls , after my warranty ran out i put more memory in it , DVD Burner  , new power supply  and  a extra hard drive and reinstalled my Windows myself. I fooled with fixing electronics since i was a kid, but  that's when I started working on PCs.   

This kind of a user (you) is comfortable for any developer cause they can identity the problem and fix it and even report problem, and may be its solution as well. Users like "I have a problem" kind are very tiring since the developer has to go through the whole software and try to simulate the user conditions so as to spot the bug. 

BTW those who don't know how to install an OS they are repeatedly using don't deserve a "perfect" service. 

[Shalsh95]

12 hours ago, Karlston said:

 

The files deleted were in the very folders that Microsoft themselves create for user documents, videos, pictures, etc.

 

Should we blame the users for actually using these folders in the way Microsoft designed them to be used, or blame the Microsoft dickheads for not bothering to check for files BEFORE deleting user folders?

 

And, let's not forget that the Insiders actually reported this file-deletion bug, and the Microsoft f*ckwits ignored it.

 

 

Yep, after every disaster this is the trotted out well-worn response.

 

But still, they've "fixed" it now by adding a severity level to the reports and are handing out badges to keen Insider build downloaders. That'll fix it, absolutely for sure, 100% guaranteed... until the next time anyway.

 

Microsoft will stick to their failed strategies with a death-grip, regardless of how obvious their failures are to world+dog.

I don't see it that way 😃

I think that Microsoft didn't ignore insiders reports, I guess they just didn't find the bug back then. When you have two kind of feedbacks one saying everything went well and other complaining and that the minority are those who are complaining you assume that these users did something wrong. 

Please put in mind that the insiders are those who are looking for new software upgrades and this kind of people are not like average users and the probability that someone of them used win installation directory to save files is very very low and thats why Microsoft revised the issue when the veraion was released to normal users where the bug probability noticeably increased. 

But you are somewhat right, Microsoft of course deserves to be blamed itis their OS after all. 

[Karlston]

7 hours ago, Shalsh95 said:

I think that Microsoft didn't ignore insiders reports, I guess they just didn't find the bug back then.

 

Whether they missed it or ignored it, just as damning to release a data-deleting bug. And, the developers still didn't bother to check for folder contents before deleting folders. That's a cardinal sin for any developer.

 

7 hours ago, Shalsh95 said:

Please put in mind that the insiders are those who are looking for new software upgrades and this kind of people are not like average users and the probability that someone of them used win installation directory to save files is very very low and thats why Microsoft revised the issue when the veraion was released to normal users where the bug probability noticeably increased.

 

Agreed. Been saying all along that the Windows Insiders testing experiment is a failure for the very reasons that (1) they're unskilled and unprofessional testers, and (2) they don't use their systems for real-world tasks, so won't pick up real-world-use bugs.

 

3+ years since the Windows Insiders testing "strategy" rolled out, oodles of accumulated proof that it's flawed, but Microsoft just sticks its fingers in its ears and chants nah-nah-nah-nah-....