[swang]

Surely you're joking? "Click here to change your upgrade schedule" is in such tiny font of course no one will see it.

If Microsoft cared about its users, that option would be way bigger than it is.

Edit: They purposely put in all that information because they know people won't want to read through all that. That dialog is purposely designed to trick users because they've been taught that if they want to cancel, hit the "X" button, not find the tiny link to change the scheduling of this thing you don't understand.

[ams6110]

Charitably, Microsoft learned from Windows 95 and Windows NT that if you expect users to upgrade on their own they won't do it. So now they are forcing the issue, albeit with bad execution.

[CamperBob2]

Really? I don't see a lot of people running Windows 95 or Windows NT.

The lesson Microsoft should have learned is that if they come out with a genuinely-improved version of Windows, the user base will adopt it in good time without being herded like sheep.

[5ilv3r]

My father told me a computer that I built for one of his customers running windows 95 almost 20 years ago is still running and being used daily.

I don't think they would like windows 10. :p

[CamperBob2]

That computer is probably pretty secure, too, because sometimes security by obscurity really does work.

[5ilv3r]

That doesn't apply here. Obscurity and obsolescence are different. It's a totally normal 486. Nothing weird about it.

[Mithaldu]

It is in the normal font size for that system, compare it with the window title. The "this is recommended" and the date are the only enlarged bits in that window.

> all that

I don't know about you, but to me and most anyone i know the amount of text in that window is miniscule. Difference in perspective i guess.

As for what users are taught to: What i and everyone else i know have been taught to is "Read everything the computer prints on the screen unless you know exactly what it is."

[swang]

if you were designing that dialog box to actually let users control whether or not they could upgrade to win 10 and made sure they made the right choice, is that how you would have designed the dialog box? again the dialog box microsoft designed was not to help out the users. it was to trick them into upgrading win 10.

the dialog is purposely built to trick users into clicking on the X, something users have been taught to do and what has always by default been, "cancel, don't do whatever this dialog box tried asking you to do."

also, when is the last time you saw a dialog box with that much text? which dialog boxes have you been reading exactly? even so, it's not as though the amount of text telling the user absolves them from their dark design patterns to trick users. microsoft did the bare minimum to let users know and changed the way the ui works by having the close button _agree_ to the changes rather than canceling them.

[Mithaldu]

You have a good point.

And to be fair, the misreporting and misrepresentation of the reality in the discourse about windows upgrades caused my pendulum to swing too far in the other direction.

MS is engaging in dark patterns, and that is what needs to be stated clearly, and directly, not the sensationalist, and wrong "windows updated automatically and there was nothing i could do".

> having the close button _agree_ to the changes rather than canceling them.

See that kind of thing is wrong. No such thing happens, period. The window tells you that at the date a change was scheduled, and gives you the options of "change", "cancel", "do now" or "dismiss the information". Closing it does not agree to anything, the agreement was taken implicitly before the window even opened. You're opted in, and given an option to opt out. And that is the dark pattern here.

[sundvor]

> You're opted in, and given an option to opt out. And that is the dark pattern here.

Bingo, nailed it.

[sundvor]

Just came across how you get "signed up" for the upgrade - see the main screenshot here:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3078663/windows/microsoft-den...

That's definitely a textbook case of a dark pattern.

[Mithaldu]

I believe the screenshot is what you get when you did not cancel the scheduled upgrade and the process starts in earnest.

Note the very nice video in there.