[Retra]

Microsoft is getting heat for trying everything they can because they're supposed to be "trying everything they should," instead of violating their user's expectations.

It's great the MS wants everyone on their latest OS. But "latest" doesn't mean "best." Taking away user choice subverts the economic principles that encourage improvement -- that "best" is decided by the consumer, not the producer.

It would be ideal for developers if we all just used one OS. That doesn't mean it's the right thing to do for the customers, the economy, or society.

[johnward]

Can't users opt out by disabling automatic updates? Microsoft is basically doing what every other modern software company does but taking heat for it.

[wang_li]

Arguably all software vendors who sell a product should be prepared to do two things:

1. continue fixing bugs in their prior products. 2. create new features in new products.

People who buy something, e.g. an original iPad, no longer get OS updates even though the item was advertised as being safe to use to access content on the internet. This is provably false and while EULA shenanigans provide a fig leaf of propriety, the reality is what was sold was defective and if it's possible to fix it they should.

Opting out of updates means that you don't get fixes. The argument that you agree to these kinds of changes in fundamental behavior because you are receiving new features is B.S. The company sold me a defective product and certain documented behaviors. I'm ok with those behaviors but I want the product to work for the features advertised. I should have to tolerate excessive data collection simply to get a functional product.

[johnward]

Just for the record the iPad2 still updates. Though the hardware can barely handle iOS8. It's almost unusable. It seems crazy to think there would not be an end of support for something that old. Maybe Apple doesn't allow updates because they don't want the original iPad to become completely unusable?

[wang_li]

The old devices become effectively unusable as new bugs are discovered and patches are not created, tested and distributed.

It should be possible to fix bugs without having to add in new features. E.g. I shouldn't need to upgrade to floating icons with a parallax background to get a fix for PDF parsing problems.

[johnward]

You can also still manually install fixes if you don't allow automatic updates. I can't understand why these people with such low datacaps would allow automatic updates anyway.

[tim333]

Microsoft seems a bit more opaque about it than Apple - I've got pcs, a macbook and an iPhone and with Apple it's always a straight forward so and so is available, do you want to download it? Windows not quite so much.

[johnward]

I use OSX most of the time. It usually prompts me to install things. That doesn't seem like "automatic updates" though.

[Retra]

Chrome auto-updates, but if it auto-updated itself into a completely different program, then I would have a problem with it. A lot of people enabled auto-updates in Windows without being under the expectation that their whole OS would upgrade.

It's like how putting "this EULA can change at any time" doesn't allow you to change the EULA to do subversive things. People agree to them under reasonable expectations. Using the terms and settings as a Trojan Horse is not respectful of those expectations.