Live data from Hacker News

Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

blogs.windows.com

281–290 of 550 posts

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#281
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always the MBAs. The organizational structure incentivises them on the wrong metrics. So they adapt and optimize for that. In real life, after a while, you hit a plateau with features and market demand. What these MBA clowns love to do is take what's already perfectly fine and mess it up and create a road map for it to fix something to being it the way it was, so they can justify to their higher ups they are "ad…

They want to be Apple. Apple sells hardware, services, and takes a huge cut being a software store. Microsoft sells software. They turned office into a service but it's still software. Nobody really wants to use their store. Their hardware is a cute little side hustle. Microsoft's strategy for turning into Apple is kneecapping their own software.

> Nobody really wants to use their store. Their hardware is a cute little side hustle.

*XBox and Microsoft gaming's $23.5b revenue (~10% of MS's total) enter the chat*

You were saying something about not letting facts get in the way of a preferred narrative, I believe?

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#282

> We’ve also made changes to the Power menu so you’ll always see the standard Restart and Shut down options without having to install a pending update first. You decide when updates happen, not the other way around. Great! We've progressed back to Windows XP of 22 years ago.

Great, this is actual progress. Now it would be amazing if "Update and Shut Down" would actually update and shut down, instead of doing so like 50% of the time with the other 50% just updating and restarting with an actual shut down. (This is on various very diverse machines so I'm rather sure is common, and not just an interaction with a particular machine). It's baffling that a company like MS can leave this kind o…

They recently acknowledged and fixed this issue. I can personally confirm it hasn't happened to me since the update.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-fixes-update-and-shut-d...

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#283

Executive management at MS must be seeing interesting (migration) numbers on their dashboards, so they've gotten involved in white-washing their reputation without changing business strategy, hence the executive-level manifestos and platitudes coming out as of late. I'm sure they see the EU/Worldwide decoupling from US companies as definitely-going-to-happen and they have no control over that, so retaining US consume…

They went all in on pretending to care about quality since the MacBook Neo. The numbers they're seeing must be terrifying.

> They went all in on pretending to care about quality since the MacBook Neo. The numbers they're seeing must be terrifying.

Yeah. Worldwide Neo sales at 5 million units + production raise to 10 million? [1] Even if only 50% of those are US consumers, add to that the number of folks switching over to linux [4]; and suddenly that's not small potatoes, considering there are only about 162 million working folks in the US.

There are only about 50 million folks at 100+ employees, and 16 million at 1000+ employees in private firms. [2]

All these folks switching over? Once they get comfy with non-Windows OSes, they'll ask for those at work. And at the smaller employers - 100 or less employees or even 1000 or less employees, that won't be hard to support, especially if one or two management types make the switch and drive the change.

You have to read a bit between the lines, but an estimate is that 35-50 million have access to Google Workspace at work, and 25-40 million paid Google Workspace users. [3]

And Azure? same number problems, and there seems to be a general discontent with the way things are going with cloud.

Combined with the EU/Worldwide decoupling, suddenly that MS moat isn't looking so deep. It's easy to imagine an inflection point at which MS becomes the minority OS provider, even in the US. The Kodak-ization of Microsoft.

On Nadella's watch, no less. Should we expect a change in leadership soon? Either Nadella deciding to do something different with his time or the Board pushing for a change? They've both got to be seeing the same numbers we are, plus additional insight based on internal metrics.

A Perfect Storm, if you will.

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/macbook-ne...

[2] https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/susb.html

[3] https://expertinsights.com/saas-app-security/google-workspac...

[4] updated to reflect that [1] has global sales numbers based on feedback from responses below.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck with that. I have a Windows computer I sometimes have to run stuff on overnight, like renders or what not. I've disabled everything I can related to Windows Update, plus setting "Active hours" or what not, so the computer doesn't reboot because of updates in the middle of the night. Today I woke up, went to check the progress and wouldn't you know, Windows Update updated the computer and rebooted, and what…

I've seen people resorting to disconnecting machines from the internet to prevent this. They load up the software they need, then it never goes online again, so updates can never bother them or otherwise get in the way. The software thus stays exactly as they want it to be. It's an appliance at that point. It's annoying to have to shuffle files over to it, if that's needed for its job, but I think it's still a worthw…

Hm, yeah, can't really disconnect it, I'm using it for (local) CI purposes as well. I could disconnect it from the internet though, keep the local connection, but maybe actually explicitly blocking anything windows/microsoft for the period I want it to stay online, might work sufficiently.

Regardless, thanks for the ideas!

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#285

> We’ve also made changes to the Power menu so you’ll always see the standard Restart and Shut down options without having to install a pending update first. You decide when updates happen, not the other way around. Great! We've progressed back to Windows XP of 22 years ago.

Microsoft doesn't allow its users even to reboot the computer without permission?

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#286
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck with that. I have a Windows computer I sometimes have to run stuff on overnight, like renders or what not. I've disabled everything I can related to Windows Update, plus setting "Active hours" or what not, so the computer doesn't reboot because of updates in the middle of the night. Today I woke up, went to check the progress and wouldn't you know, Windows Update updated the computer and rebooted, and what…

Have you tried using a program that regularly simulates keypresses or mouse movements so the computer thinks the user is still active? The `SCROLL` key for instance can be pressed without causing unwanted side effects, but it stops my Windoze VM from going to sleep.

I have not, interesting idea and I'll definitively try it out. Thanks!

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#287
post #224

People complain about telemetry but that’s how you get improved features. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/the-new-run-dialo...

Yet somehow PEAK Windows versions ( whether it was 2000, XP or 7 depending on person) all predates introduction of forced or opt-out telemetry.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#288

I recently got locked out of my machine because logging in with the mandatory Microsoft account-backed primary user of my machine didn't work anymore. It said I was offline and I had to use the "previous password" even though I didn't have a previous password for that account. Hacking around in the recovery console to add another administrator user worked, but then I couldn't reset the original user's password becaus…

> I recently got locked out of my machine because logging in with the mandatory Microsoft account-backed primary user of my machine didn't work anymore. It said I was offline and I had to use the "previous password" even though I didn't have a previous password for that account

Not sure what's so confusing here... When Windows is online, it checks your password against the cloud and updates the local store. When Windows is offline, it checks your password against a local store. By previous password, Windows just means the password you used on the last successful login for the user on that machine.

Re: Windows quality update: Progress we've made since March

#289
post #169

valve is on the brink of replacing windows with steam for many people it's probably not a big dent in market share, but it's probably a good tipping point

Not everyone is a gamer.

I did not say everyone is a gamer, but it's still a big market share
Post reply on HN