Mark Pickavance looks at Microsoft’s foray into making friends and influencing people
Afew months ago, Microsoft drew some flak for installing an app onto Windows 7 and 8 users systems that was intent on pushing Windows 10 on them.
What was rather odd about this was that it offered to reserve a copy for you, despite there being absolutely no chance whatsoever that Microsoft would run out of them, as they weren’t boxed items.
A few well-placed questions revealed that what it was really doing was downloading files to the PC ready to do the installation. This seemed entirely logical, even to those outside Redmond. As usual, Microsoft failed to communicate and managed to make it seem worse than it was.
Yet in a single surgical strike, getting the user to sign off on the ‘reservation’, Microsoft was able to spread the transfer of large install files over a much longer time frame and make the system ready for when the user asked for that installation.
A few people moaned at this, in particular those with limited disk space, saying they didn’t realise the implications, but most accepted that by reserving they’d given tacit approval.
And then the files for Windows 10 installation started turning up on machines that hadn’t made any such request, and lots of people began to give Microsoft the sort of grief such inconsiderate actions probably deserve.
Updategate
I’ve stated many times online and in this magazine that a portion of my writing career has been subsidised by Microsoft’s seemingly incomprehensible inability to communicate. And we’re not just taking about product and service changes; this company has a comprehensive problem relaying the simplest information to its customers and partners, even if a change it’s made has significant consequences for those people. But some things it does are actually beyond explanation, even for 30-odd year veterans of interpreting its mystical runes.
Now labelled ‘updategate’ (by those who can’t help adding the word ‘gate’ to anything they perceive as scandalous), this fiasco materialised around the middle of September.
However, I realised that something was wrong a few days before it become public knowledge, when my daughter dropped me a line to say that she’d already used her mobile data budget for the month, just two days after it had been reset.
She’s a university student in her second year and changing her rented accommodation. So temporarily without broadband, she’s used her mobile phone to provide access for her laptop to the internet. And in the blink of an eye, her 1GB monthly allowance vaporised.
The culprit I suspect was Windows 10, or rather the installation files for that OS, which magically arrived on her machine, even though she’d never clicked to ask they be downloaded or ‘reserved’ anything.
There are two ways to find out if you’ve been splatted in this fashion, and the first is the update KB3035583. The other is a couple of hidden folders usually in the root of the C: drive. One is called C:\$WINDOWS.~BT and the other C:\$Windows.~WS, and if you’re on broadband, you might find the second folder has more than 10GB of Windows installation files in it.
When this story first broke, a number of high-profile technology websites entirely ignored it, and a few even went as far as to describe those that did cover it as engaging in “tinfoil hattism”.
Not long after this, rather too many people confirmed the story to ignore, and a few tech pundits even took to their own talk-backs to eat humble pie. The wellrespected Woody Leonhard on InfoWorld admitted, “Man, was I hornswaggled by this one.”
Later on, when he’d simmered down a little, he wrote this: ”Microsoft has already proved conclusively it can install any program it wants on your Win7 or Win8.1 PC and have it do whatever it wants. Now the folks at Microsoft are now demonstrating they can push massive amounts of crapware to hundreds of millions of PCs – using customers’ bandwidth and taking up real estate on customers’ main drives – without a wink, nod or notification, much less a request for permission.”
Some others weren’t as controlled in their assessment, and lots of people got very angry indeed. Probably justifiably so.
At the time of going to press, Microsoft hasn’t responded to any requests for explanation as to why it thinks it can dump 10.3GB of Windows 10 on any PC it likes, regardless of the impact it might have on the user and their computer, and the cost implications for many.
Is there a line these company won’t cross? The answer to that is apparently no, and once it’s crossed that line it’ll dump files there just so you know it’s been to visit.
If I were CEO Satya Nadella, I’d brace myself now, because the backlash on this choice is going to be brutal.
A Course Of Action
The problem with any information I might provide to avoid you being kicked in the data package are already too late. Because if you’ve used the automatic updates to Windows, like all good computer owners should, then you’ve probably already got this potentially unwanted gift on your system.
If you’re a Windows 8 user, it’s possible to tell the system that you’re on a metered connection, and hopefully it will excise more control. For Windows 7 users, other than disabling updates, which isn’t a great plan, I’m not sure what’s best to do.
In terms of the really bad things that Microsoft has done to its customers, this is right up there, and in some jurisdictions there could be legal implications to it putting a whole OS on your computer without asking first.
We’ve all become rather too blasé about updates, possibly because of Android, and this is a wake-up call we probably all needed.
Microsoft is clearly of the opinion that while you might have bought the PC in your home, it’s actually really Microsoft’s, and it will do what it likes with it, even if that directly contradicts your wishes.
What more than blows my mind about this one was that it had seen how sensitive people were about this in July, but it entirely ignored that when moving to this new aggressive deployment of Windows 10. What next? Will Windows 10 install over your Windows 7 or 8 beyond the user’s control?
That might have seemed ridiculous a few months ago, but appears significantly less incredible now.
That Microsoft can’t actually communicate why it’s done this (possibly because it has no idea why it did it either) is one of the worst aspects.
It’s like the scorpion in the old Aesop’s fable, which stings the frog knowing they’ll both die in the river. Why did you eat my data allowance, abuse my trust and put 10GB of files on my PC without asking? “Its my nature...” said Microsoft.
However, in this instance, it’s not even leaving its frogs with anything that existential to ponder.