Hi guys, I'm Koroush Ghazi and Ive been referred to this thread to defend my honour. So in that spirit, I challenge the poster who called me an idiot to a duel
Seriously though, the OP is correct that I've essentially lost all respect for Microsoft based on the way they've handled Windows 10. But I provide a
link on my TweakGuides Tweaking Companion download page which explains my reasons (reproduced below):
Let's talk about Windows 10, my least favorite subject right now. At the end of last year I announced that for personal and professional reasons, I would not be doing a TweakGuides Tweaking Companion for Windows 10, but that I would try to compile a brief Windows 10 tweak guide. Well I've tried, and I'm just not finding it possible to write a decent but brief guide. Windows 10 is an ever-changing, non-transparent, disjointed mess of an OS. Many of its annoyances can't be successfully tweaked away, and those that can require pages and pages of explanation. Furthermore, any such guide would require constant editing over time as Microsoft alters Windows 10 on almost a monthly basis now.
But perhaps the single biggest reason I'm not motivated to write a Windows 10 guide is that I've rapidly lost all respect for Microsoft, and consequently have lost a great deal of interest in anything to do with their products. Microsoft's clumsy, desperate, visionless push to get PC users to adopt dumbed-down mobile-oriented apps purely for their own commercial benefit; the unrelentingly persistent, unethical, and highly deceptive way they're trying to trick less tech-savvy Windows 7 and 8.1 users into "upgrading" to Windows 10; and their insistence on reducing user choice and control over Windows have all left a very bad taste in my mouth. This is an inept company struggling for relevance in the mobile era by shamelessly abusing its monopoly on desktop operating systems, and I don't want to play any part in helping them do that.
That was my opinion from early last year, and I still feel much the same about Windows 10. To be fair, Microsoft has added back some user control over forced updates, but that's about all I can praise them for. Ultratech's
great post echoes many of my complaints, especially the point that you can't fully turn off the telemetry, at least not without breaking some functionality, and even then you need to use third party utilities and/or Group Policy and/or Registry edits - which is both risky and tricky for non tech-savvy users.
Note that I'm not worried about the telemetry because I think MS is spying on me, I dislike it because (a) I'm old school in that I want to keep full control over what data I broadcast via the Internet; and (b) I don't trust MS' competence in safeguarding my data, which they hold on their servers, from malicious third parties.
But I think Unknown Soldier's
post really nails it when he says:
Windows 10 is an example of an operating system which is focused entirely upon the needs and desires of the company (Microsoft) and not about the consumers who use it.
Of course with the movement of Windows to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and becoming freeware for the first year, the changeover from Windows being a product to the consumer being a product was going to be jarring. And it is.
Windows 10 treats the consumer like shit, because Windows isn't the product anymore. The consumer is the product and the operating system exists to gather data about the consumer and push advertising on them, like Google Search or something.
To add to that, this whole "Windows as a service" approach, with its forced incessant updates, causes a lot of technical issues as many of you have noted here. That's because the Cumulative Updates are like Service Packs, and the 6-monthly feature updates are like a full OS install - and in the past it was always best practice to clean install any major updates to Windows. Now, they're heaped on top of each other on the same install. Add to that the way MS has basically outsourced beta testing to non-professionals, and the end result is conflicts and bugs.
I don't see a bright future for Windows 10, as Microsoft gets more and more desperate and brazen in trying to make money from users who have so far resisted being herded onto the Windows app store and who ignore the OS-level ads, sorry,
suggestions. It's not that it's a terrible OS, in and of itself, it's more that I despise the way MS tricked so many people into installing it, reduced user control and choice, and is basically trying their hardest in making a buck off the user, with little regard for our privacy, convenience, or choice.