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Comment by curiousgal | Hacker News Reader

As per the post[0], the upgrade did not crash the computer BUT it did download 6Gb of data over satellite-internet which can be quite expensive.

OP is having an AMA[1].

0.https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4mcdon/i_live_i...

1.https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4mirin/i_am_the_accid...

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i wish some trial lawyers found an opportunity here for a class action against MS. Couple weeks ago one of our laptops became Win 10. May be it is better than Win 8.1, yet i still would have wanted to be a part of that decision :)

https://www.grc.com/never10.htm

exactly - either forced upgrade or downloading and running some utility from a site/company i see for the first time and have never heard about :)

Steve Gibson is a little strange, but he's trustworthy.

Yep, I have to say the second I heard about GRC and discovered the software he made such as SpinRIte for HDD"s I was hooked

You can check the technical details https://www.grc.com/never10/details.htm

It basically does what Microsoft would do in order to keep Windows from upgrading.

Steve Gibson is one of the most trusted developers of the past few decades. His SpinRite software is a life saver.

Please read about him before dismissing him out of hand because you've not heard of him. There's more to the world than what's inside your box.

>Never10 does NOT prevent the installation of Windows updates, including the infamous Get Windows 10 (GWX) update KB3035583. Never10 simply employs Microsoft's documented and sanctioned configuration settings to instruct it NOT to change the installed version of Windows.

That would not have helped in this situation OP stated what hurt them was the huge amount bandwidth (6GB) used on an account where they pay per MB.

What it actually does [0] is set group policy according to the Microsoft specified methods [1]. It would have helped in this situation as not only would Windows not have downloaded the update in the first place, it would have deleted it had it already been somehow downloaded.

[0]: https://www.grc.com/never10/details.htm

[1]: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351

I'd personally see people just stop using Windows. The more people using Linux, the more money in the market for Wine to get better and better replace all the Windows APIs for everyones "I cannot use Linux because X program is Windows only" software.

I mean, I'm already playing Skyrim natively on an AMD GPU thanks to Gallium Nine. And that is only because there has been a lot of internal pressure in the community to have the best Windows only games running here. The more people we get to switch, the more market for businesses to make the process of switching easier.

Of course, we still need Ubuntu (or SteamOS) computers in stores. That would be a nice start. It is hard to get people to switch when they need someone with technical know-how to violate their warranties and give them no commercial support unless you have a small business IT shop like what I run in the evenings that will do it.

Ever since I could run 1Password using Wine with full browser integration, I've completely turned my back to Windows.

Oh it does? I am trying it today! I wouldn't believe browser integration until I try it...

At least now they have windows 10 they can mark the connection as metered.

While MS is clearly using dark patterns here IMO the user is at mostly fault for the internet bill. If you have an expensive metered internet connection and you don't do all the necessary steps to prohibit autoupdates it's only a matter of time until this repeats itself with any other software installed. The Win10 update never circumvented a disabled auto-update-download setting, correct?

I think it's weird that so many people want to demonize Microsoft for snapping to a model that Apple has been using for a decade. I'm currently in one of those weeks where every time I wake up my iPad I have to click through two separate dialogs to tell it that, no, I don't want to install the updated version of iOS it downloaded without asking. Yet everyone is fine with this. I mean, except the Linux guys, I guess.

I don't know about iOS but I have never had a forced upgrade with a mac laptop.

The difference is, iOS asks. You can say no.

There are plenty of people being force-upgraded to 10 who never consented.

As far as I understand it, the auto upgrade happens when you have "give me recommended updates the same way I get important updates" checked in Windows Update. That isn't a default setting - you need to consent to it. Sure, maybe it was a year ago that you clicked it, and they never said a full OS version update was something that would land in that category, but it's not like they're pushing mandatory installs to everyone.

They just flash a dialogue up with an opt out button. Closing the dialogue is consent to go ahead with the update. Most people close those kind of annoying pop ups without reading the message. So technically MS aren't push a mandatory update - de-facto to millions of people they are though.

They pop up an information dlg telling you it will be upgraded. clicking x like close does nothing as it should. The lesson to learn is to not enable os auto updates, anywhere.

>The difference is, iOS asks. You can say no.

Yeah, and then it asks again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again.. and again....

I finally got around to updating my iPhone and iPad and I also found those endless nags very, very off-putting. But what MS has done is much worse, with their upgrade-by-deception tactics. I've lost all interest in Windows 10, not that I had much to begin with.

I have realized that these people are incompetent and can't be trusted with updates. I've neutered the update on my iphone 6s and my W10 desktop and couldn't be happier. Like I had a 4 month uptime on my W10 install till I had to install a driver for my oculus and reboot.

That's when you upgrade. There's no reason to stay on an older iOS.

>There's no reason to stay on an older iOS.

Yeah, sure buddy.. I learnt my lesson when my 4S turned into a laggy POS after updating the OS. I was forced to sell it off because it became super slow. Never going to trust Apple again.

Except when the upgrades come with more nagging for Apple services.

Tell my iPad 2 that.

My iPad 2 should talk to yours. It's happy with iOS 9, if a bit slow compared to my Air 2.

No, it doesn't. I'm running iOS 9.0 on my iPhone, because that's the last jailbroken version. My phone NEVER nags me to upgrade. NEVER.

Now if I plug it into my computer and run iTunes, iTunes does ask. But I don't do that very often, as there's no reason to plug your phone into a computer these days.

My iPad 3 nags me to install the latest iOS update every single time I unlock it.

I don't believe a single word you said, and neither does anyone else.

[These links are for others viewing this thread, who don't have iPhones and haven't seen it]

http://osxdaily.com/2016/01/04/stop-ios-software-update-noti...

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/209498/is-there-a-w...

You can't say no. It's like Windows 10 upgrade. Do you want to upgrade now or do you want to upgrade today. I don't call that leaving the option to say no.

I get asked once to update iOS. The second time, the default action is to upgrade at midnight.

Yes, but now they're resorting to (IMO, at least) some dark patterns to essentially force or deceive users into an upgrade, which is not something Apple has done (yet, at least).

It's not weird, and succinctly explained in one phrase: "If I wanted the Apple way, I'd buy a Mac." People do not want Microsoft to turn into another Google nor Apple. They want MS to be different from the others, so they can actually choose what they want and not get a product that differs from other offerings by nothing more than who made it.

"Think Different"

And in my case there is the added frustration that I will have to switch to another platform which has its own problems (linux). I guess for IT professionals learning linux is a good thing anyway. But I am not an IT professional and I have little appetite to dedicate some time to relearn the basics.

https://www.tekrevue.com/tip/disable-automatic-app-updates-m...

Note that that's for OS X. iOS, for what it's worth, will always check for and download OS updates when certain conditions apply (connected to Wi-Fi and power), with no way to disable it short of DNS hacks - which is obnoxious. All you can do is delete already downloaded updates. And if you ever go through with the update, it's impossible to downgrade: the bootloader forbids it. Both of these are far worse than Windows.

But for all of that, it won't actually start the update without getting consent. I guess that makes a big difference.

I was comparing a desktop OS (Win 10) to a desktop OS (OS X).

Fair enough, few would buy an iPhone instead of a PC. But I consider anti-consumer behavior partially a question of ethics, not just a factor in practical buying choices; and I don't think there is a good reason to have different ethical standards for, or generally to separate in such considerations, desktop and mobile OSes, and in particular reject the idea held by some (maybe not you) that the latter are less important as general computing devices because they're for "content consumption" or whatnot. So when comparing Microsoft's behavior to Apple's, to me all their devices are relevant.

> I think it's weird that so many people want to demonize Microsoft for snapping to a model that Apple has been using for a decade.

PATENTLY false. Yes they shove the upgrade down your throat metaphorically pretty hard, it's going to appear on top of the App Store on OS X and all over the iOS one, and it will put a notification on your Settings app, but to my knowledge there is no way for iOS or OS X to initiate a system update on it's own. And we've looked into having our monitor box at work do that so we have one less thing to maintain, it isn't easy.

Previously we could make the choice between stable or evergreen. That choice is disappearing...

I agree that Apple is becoming hostile to its users. iOS has now a level of nagging for Apple services which is similar to the cheapest PCs full of crapware. Please us Apple music. Please use Apple Pay. Please use iCloud. etc. You have to click and confirm you don't want any of that shit pretty much at every OS update. And their "do you want to update now or do you want to update today" is also unacceptable.

I just don't see how that makes it OK for microsoft to do the same.

I disagree with your premise. Plenty of people demonize(d) Apple for it, too. I generally hear what Microsoft is doing with Windows 10 described as "moving to the Apple model."

> except the Linux guys

And the BSD guys, and the GNU/Hurd guys, and the ReactOS guys, and the Haiku guys, etc, etc ;) More things in heaven and earth and all that...

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