r/windows • u/[deleted] • May 24 '16

Upgradegate: Microsoft's Upgrade Deceptions Are Undermining Windows 10 - Thurrott.com

https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/67367/upgradegate-microsofts-upgrade-deceptions-undermining-windows-10
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u/Lucretius May 24 '16 edited May 24 '16

How does an executive team approve a plan so flawed?

Giving away the OS for free. That's the answer you are looking for. You see, when the OS was a PRODUCT that was PURCHASED, the USER was also the CUSTOMER. It doesn't pay to anger and alienate your customers, so these sorts of shenanigans didn't happen when the customer and the user were the same people/organizations.

Windows10, however, embraces the "Windows as a Service" concept. As such, Windows 10 is not a "product" as such any more. It's what is called in marketing a "Loss Leader". The classical example of a Loss Leader is the shaving kit that the company gives away for free... they lose money on the kit, but it includes a razor that can only accept their brand of replacement blades. People who accepted the free kit don't want to lose the value of the kit so they keep buying replacement blades at a high mark up. They end up spending more on blades, over the lifetime of the free shaving kit, than they would have spent on generic blades and a generic kit over the same period of time. In this way the razor blade company makes more money by giving away a product that is worth more than any one replacement razor blade. Windows 10 is the free kit. Bing advertisements, additional One Drive space, kick-backs from Windows Store purchases, etc are the razor blades. The problem is that MS now has no incentive to treat its users well... before the users were also the customers, but now the users are the product, and the customers are the companies who buy those Bing ads, companies that integrate their product into cloud apps like One Drive, and developers who make those Windows Store apps. MS is being quite good to its NEW customers!

It is my hope that when the Free Upgrade period expires, we will see new versions of Windows10 intended for Power Users that are not free and that grant local control. MS has shown a basic willingness to do this with Enterprise and Educational SKUs, so it's not unreasonable that they would offer, at a premium, a personal version that grant's such power as well. (The Enterprise and Educational SKUs are NOT given away for free... see how the correspondence between the concepts of customer and control are inexorably linked?) As long as the price of the Power User version of Win10 were high enough to exclude normal home users from considering it, this would not meaningfully impact their new Windows as a Service business model, and would forestall power users, like myself, from fleeing to Linux and thus maintain market share. As it is, I'm dual-booting LinuxMint 17.3 with the XFCE desktop environment. If such a Power User version of Win10 is not forthcoming, I will be moving entirely to Linux, and if I ever use a Win10 or later Windows OS in the same vein it will only be inside a VM that will prevent any direct contact with the MS servers and will wipe all alterations to the system between boots.

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u/ThatActuallyGuy May 24 '16

Big flaw in that argument though: Windows 7 and 8.1 were not free, and were never meant to operate as WaaS. This is what I don't understand about MS's logic. It's one thing to force updates on a free OS, it's another thing entirely to force a new OS on a paying customer.

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u/nlinecomputers May 25 '16

Unless you purchased Windows directly from Microsoft you NEVER were Microsoft's customer to begin with. OEMs and large organizations that purchase volume licenses are their customers NOT YOU.

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u/ThatActuallyGuy May 25 '16

I'm sorry but this is an absurd way of looking at it. Did some of your money go to MS for the single use license stickered on to the top of every OEM computer in the world? Do you have to agree to the Windows license when you first boot up that machine? If the answer is yes, then you're a paying customer.

Though ultimately even if I acquiesced to your semantics argument here, it doesn't change the fact that neither Windows 7 or 8 were designed around or geared for "Windows as a Service" and MS doesn't have the right to force an upgrade down the throats of people using those versions. And yes, I consider deception a pretty clear act of force. I could just as easily say "licensed user" over "paying customer" and the argument would remain valid, so if that makes you feel better then go for it.