9 ms·

They're absolutely garbage at this. When I was _forced_ into the windows 10 update, it went through the process and appeared to finish but didn't put my deskto

They're absolutely garbage at this. When I was _forced_ into the windows 10 update, it went through the process and appeared to finish but didn't put my desktop back. No problem I figured, they put it somewhere. So I did a file search, found the desktop in a folder, moved it back to the desktop. A day later it self-restarted and _completed the update_, replacing the desktop with the now empty desktop folder. I went to the Microsoft store to get them to do a file recovery and they had the _gall_ to tell me it would be $250 plus 7 days and they wouldn't guarantee recovery. I moved to Mac this year after being exclusively on Windows since '98. I hope Microsoft dies andisgraceful death.

mehrdadn 8y ago
I don't hope Microsoft dies, I just hope they realize how unreasonably stubborn they are being in forcefully shoving every new update of Windows down users' throats, and and that they then stop doing it.
- Spearchucker 8y ago
  And thereby leaving millions of unpatched machines vulnerable. We just went through that with Android. No thanks. I think a more reasonable answer lies in Microsoft taking a better/different approach to Q/A.
  - josteink 8y ago
    And it’s easier to do better Q/A when you don’t have to support 200 earlier versions and patch-revisions.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - barking 8y ago
    They need to give you the choice on whether to update or not. If you choose not to they should just maybe give you a warning on every launch and leave it at that.
    - derefr 8y ago
      We're talking about herd immunity from viruses here. Imagine that there were a new deadly pandemic every few days. Should a human being, at that point, be allowed (by the social norms of their society, by law, whatever) to refuse to receive once-daily "vaccination updates"?
      - cortic 8y ago
        Yes. And its a bit creepy you think the answer should be no.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        derefr 8y ago
        Here’s maybe a less-fraught analogy: say you have an autonomous car. Assume that the car’s autonomous-driving algorithms prevent it from hitting a person or another car no matter who’s driving, but don’t prevent it from, say, knocking down a telephone pole, or colliding with one of the support posts holding up a bridge. Now, do you have the right to own and drive this autonomous car around on public roads, if you’ve modified the car to be an “open server” where anyone can anonymously connect to it from anywhere on the Internet and drive it around? And, if not, then what’s the difference between that modification, and knowingly driving the car when it has an unpatched vulnerability allowing people to do the same? And if you find that there is no difference, then what’s the difference between a vulnerable car that can DDoS physical infrastructure, and a vulnerable PC that can DDoS virtual infrastructure?
        tolien 8y ago
        The missing part of your analogy is that in a safety-critical scenario like that, there's no way that the update to the car would be delivered alongside a change to make the UI go dark at night or a completely-rewritten version of the entertainment system. The second something went wrong with such a bundled update, the manufacturer would be annihilated by regulators around the world and/or by a collapse in consumer confidence. MS could deliver security updates separately to feature changes but chooses not to. The Tragedy of the Commons is that well-publicised incidents like this (and the trend of updates to consumer software, supposedly under the guise of enhancing security, to bring about significant changes in appearance and behaviour) make people less, not more, inclined to defer updates to all software with the result that developers feel the urge to strong-arm users into updating.
  - r00fus 8y ago
    I think iOS is better. I only get asked to bypass the OS update every month or so and it takes less than three seconds to bypass. They mover force an update but make you aware you're on an older version.
    - kbenson 8y ago
      I was alive and working in the dark ages where the majority of the world did not patch their OS, and we should not be clamoring to go back just because occassionally the the light hurts our eyes. I'm much happier in a world where only those that put in the effort to research how to block updates and then go through the steps can do so. They are much more likely to encounter info on how they should really think about what they are doing, and whether there are alternatives or partial solutions that achieve most their needs without being as extreme. Please don't ruin the little bit of herd immunity we've built up.
    - shawnz 8y ago
      How does that solve the issue described in the comment you're replying to? Are you comfortable leaving potentially critical remote vulnerabilities exposed for a whole month?
    - vbezhenar 8y ago
      And if you need to restore device, you'll be updated no matter what.
      - giobox 8y ago
        While you can argue it might be nice to have the option to keep the older backup, it’s also kind of a handy feature that I can restore to latest OS and not have to spend time installing updates myself, my data conveniently seeded into the latest software. At any rate, iCloud is not “backup” in the traditional sense, it’s really “cloud sync” for user data. In that context it’s not really surprising that connecting a new device to iCloud and restoring pulls the newer OS version, given you never really backed up the OS data at any point.
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    It used to work fine pre-Win-10 where they gave you the updates and let you install them when the time was right for you. This stubborn obsession with the idea that no sane user could possibly have anything more critical in their life than installing whatever code comes out of your hands instantly is just nuts.
    - ip26 8y ago
      pre-Win-10, Windows was also considered the most bug-infested zombie-farm around. idea that no sane user could possibly have anything more critical in their life than installing whatever code comes out The problem is when you examine user behavior, they inexplicably seem to have something more critical than installing updates, 24/7/365. Which is how bot farms begin.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - xeeeeeeeeeeenu 8y ago
    There's a difference between security updates and feature updates.
  - CamperBob2 8y ago
    That excuse almost made sense until they turned Windows Update into a marketing channel.
  - throwaway2048 8y ago
    Windows feature updates are pushed down the same pipeline, and installed automatically.
- SteveGerencser 8y ago
  We have 4 windows 10 machines here and a metered satellite internet connection for internet service. Didn't really think about it much until they pushed an update to all 4 machines the week after our monthly meter tripped on our service. Next thing I knew I was on throttled internet for 3 weeks. Setting all the machines so that they don't update turned out to not be too hard, but was FAR harder than it needed to be. I'll decide when my equipment updates.
  - m-p-3 8y ago
    Isn't there an option to distribute updates to computers on the same network to reduce WAN data usage? Delivery Optimization: https://www.howtogeek.com/224981/how-to-stop-windows-10-from-uploading-updates-to-other-pcs-over-the-internet/ https://www.howtogeek.com/224981/how-to-stop-windows-10-from... And there's ways to set the Ethernet connection as metered if you search a little bit online.
    - mehrdadn 8y ago
      So, at best, that would have cut his data usage to 25%. I don't see how you assume this would've solved the issue when we're taking about such a massive update of an OS.
    - giobox 8y ago
      While I’m not familiar with the equivalent features in Windows I believe MacOS can do this, you can have one machine share the updates to the others on your network. The feature is now even in the non-server version of the OS too. You can cache iOS device updates with this mechanism as well. I’ve never bothered as I’m fortunate not to worry about metered bandwidth, but it seems like a nice feature if it works as advertised. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204675 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204675
    - SteveGerencser 8y ago
      I did set everything to metered. That's how I finally stopped the updates. My point though was that MS doesn't consider very many non-mainstream cases. One study says nearly 7% of all internet users in the US use a satellite connection. These are slow, and almost always metered. That is a lot of people getting surprise hammering of their connection.
creato 8y ago
> I moved to Mac this year after being exclusively on Windows since '98. Funny, I use a Macbook pro at work, and windows at home. I'm not the kind of person that has strong preferences on tech, I use stuff until it stops working well and then I switch. My several (over time) work macbooks have been really bad. OSX has so many bugs, many of them seem really serious potential security issues (graphical corruption across processes, login screen flickering to the desktop upon waking from sleep, ...). Lots of other bugs are just annoying and make things janky to use. It also does weird things that make me fear it is a fire hazard (e.g. battery draining within 24 hours while the lid is closed in my laptop bag). On the other hand, a windows small form factor connected to my TV, and a surface pro have been basically hassle free. Obviously windows has bugs too, but none of the ones I've seen make me question security the way I do on OSX.
- Angostura 8y ago
  I have to say those screen issues sounds as if you have a dodgy GPU there, and the battery drain also sounds like a hardware fault. Have you had it checked out?
  - creato 8y ago
    In 2 years I've had 5 macbook pros. This is the least faulty of them all, I'm not risking this one.
    - x0 8y ago
      Sounds like you're the least lucky person on earth. I've had my MacBook Air for 5 years now, I've dropped it on concrete/tiles multiple times, it's dented as hell and the battery's wearing a bit, but it works just fine
- dimgl 8y ago
  Completely anecdotal. While we're sharing anecdotal evidence, I have not once experienced anything you're talking about.
tinza123 8y ago
not to defend them, but my experience with that particular issue is normally they put all your old desktop folder / document folder stuff in c:/windows.old
- stepik777 8y ago
  In this particular case files are outright removed, not moved anywhere
arthurfm 8y ago
Ironically, if you had switched to a Mac sooner you may have been affected by Apple's data loss/corruption bugs. [1] [2] Regardless of OS it's always a good idea to have backups of your important data. [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2018/02/19/apfs-bug-macos-data-loss-disk-images/ https://www.macrumors.com/2018/02/19/apfs-bug-macos-data-los... [2] https://www.iezzi.ch/leopard-1051-massive-data-loss-bug/ https://www.iezzi.ch/leopard-1051-massive-data-loss-bug/
- StreamBright 8y ago
  Unironically, I am in control of when and if any update happens on my Mac. Also unironically, the described bug has not happened as a result of an upgrade, it was not forced on any user and definitely was not affecting the whole desktop. From the articles you linked: "The images get corrupted on copies to the USB attached external drive. " "However, as Bombich notes, ordinary APFS volumes like SSD startup disks are not affected by the problem described above, so the vast majority of users won't be affected by it – the flaw is most applicable when making backups to network volumes. " I am not sure you have read the original article and the two articles you linked, otherwise it would have been obvious that these are not the same by volume and severity.
  - arthurfm 8y ago
    > it would have been obvious that these are not the same by volume and severity. If users don't have backups, any unintended data loss caused by an operating system bug is bad because it can be difficult or impossible to recover the affected data. Would you not agree? You may not have been affected by the two bugs I described above, but some people would have been (more so with the image corruption bug). > the described bug has not happened as a result of an upgrade, it was not forced on any user and definitely was not affecting the whole desktop. If you go back further in time, there actually was a bug that resulted in data loss during an OS X upgrade. https://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac/exclusive-oxford-semi-firewire-bug-7197/ https://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac/exclusive-oxford-semi-fi... Oxford Semiconductor has issued a statement with regard to the emerging Panther and FireWire data-loss debacle. The company says: "Oxford Semiconductor has been investigating reports that some FireWire 800 drives have lost data after an upgrade to the Mac OS X 10.3 Panther operating system is installed (released late October). "Currently we believe this issue relates to a change in the way Panther uses FireWire that affected version 1.02 of the OXUF922 driver software. A new version, 1.05 was issued by Oxford Semiconductor to the manufacturers of external drive products in early September." As Macworld UK first reported yesterday, users installing Panther while having an external FireWire drive connected to their Mac have seen data loss; similarly, users with FireWire drives connected to their systems have seen data loss once they reboot Panther. At this stage, it appears that the problem is confined to FireWire 800 drives. In 2001 there was also a bug in iTunes 2 that caused an entire hard drive partition to be deleted if the volume label was prefixed with a space. https://www.wired.com/2001/11/glitch-in-itunes-deletes-drives/ https://www.wired.com/2001/11/glitch-in-itunes-deletes-drive... Some Macintosh users who rushed to download the latest version of iTunes – Apple's popular digital-music player – were singing a song of woe on Friday. A bug in the installation procedure caused the application to completely delete their computers' hard drives. The bug seems to have affected computers with a very specific configuration: people running Mac OS X who had "partitioned" big hard drives into several smaller ones, and who'd typed a space at the beginning of the drive name. For example, if a Mac had a drive named " music" instead of "music," it might have been deleted by iTunes. Tom Fisher, a computer repair technician who lost about 100 gigabytes of information during the installation, said that people often include a space in the drive name to ensure it shows up at the top of the list when they examine their drives. According to Mac experts who examined the code of the buggy iTunes installer, the problem arose from a very tiny programming mistake – a forgotten quote mark.

mehrdadn 8y ago

I don't hope Microsoft dies, I just hope they realize how unreasonably stubborn they are being in forcefully shoving every new update of Windows down users' throats, and and that they then stop doing it.

Spearchucker 8y ago
And thereby leaving millions of unpatched machines vulnerable. We just went through that with Android. No thanks. I think a more reasonable answer lies in Microsoft taking a better/different approach to Q/A.
- josteink 8y ago
  And it’s easier to do better Q/A when you don’t have to support 200 earlier versions and patch-revisions.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- barking 8y ago
  They need to give you the choice on whether to update or not. If you choose not to they should just maybe give you a warning on every launch and leave it at that.
  - derefr 8y ago
    We're talking about herd immunity from viruses here. Imagine that there were a new deadly pandemic every few days. Should a human being, at that point, be allowed (by the social norms of their society, by law, whatever) to refuse to receive once-daily "vaccination updates"?
    - cortic 8y ago
      Yes. And its a bit creepy you think the answer should be no.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - derefr 8y ago
        Here’s maybe a less-fraught analogy: say you have an autonomous car. Assume that the car’s autonomous-driving algorithms prevent it from hitting a person or another car no matter who’s driving, but don’t prevent it from, say, knocking down a telephone pole, or colliding with one of the support posts holding up a bridge. Now, do you have the right to own and drive this autonomous car around on public roads, if you’ve modified the car to be an “open server” where anyone can anonymously connect to it from anywhere on the Internet and drive it around? And, if not, then what’s the difference between that modification, and knowingly driving the car when it has an unpatched vulnerability allowing people to do the same? And if you find that there is no difference, then what’s the difference between a vulnerable car that can DDoS physical infrastructure, and a vulnerable PC that can DDoS virtual infrastructure?
        tolien 8y ago
        The missing part of your analogy is that in a safety-critical scenario like that, there's no way that the update to the car would be delivered alongside a change to make the UI go dark at night or a completely-rewritten version of the entertainment system. The second something went wrong with such a bundled update, the manufacturer would be annihilated by regulators around the world and/or by a collapse in consumer confidence. MS could deliver security updates separately to feature changes but chooses not to. The Tragedy of the Commons is that well-publicised incidents like this (and the trend of updates to consumer software, supposedly under the guise of enhancing security, to bring about significant changes in appearance and behaviour) make people less, not more, inclined to defer updates to all software with the result that developers feel the urge to strong-arm users into updating.
- r00fus 8y ago
  I think iOS is better. I only get asked to bypass the OS update every month or so and it takes less than three seconds to bypass. They mover force an update but make you aware you're on an older version.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    I was alive and working in the dark ages where the majority of the world did not patch their OS, and we should not be clamoring to go back just because occassionally the the light hurts our eyes. I'm much happier in a world where only those that put in the effort to research how to block updates and then go through the steps can do so. They are much more likely to encounter info on how they should really think about what they are doing, and whether there are alternatives or partial solutions that achieve most their needs without being as extreme. Please don't ruin the little bit of herd immunity we've built up.
  - shawnz 8y ago
    How does that solve the issue described in the comment you're replying to? Are you comfortable leaving potentially critical remote vulnerabilities exposed for a whole month?
  - vbezhenar 8y ago
    And if you need to restore device, you'll be updated no matter what.
    - giobox 8y ago
      While you can argue it might be nice to have the option to keep the older backup, it’s also kind of a handy feature that I can restore to latest OS and not have to spend time installing updates myself, my data conveniently seeded into the latest software. At any rate, iCloud is not “backup” in the traditional sense, it’s really “cloud sync” for user data. In that context it’s not really surprising that connecting a new device to iCloud and restoring pulls the newer OS version, given you never really backed up the OS data at any point.
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  It used to work fine pre-Win-10 where they gave you the updates and let you install them when the time was right for you. This stubborn obsession with the idea that no sane user could possibly have anything more critical in their life than installing whatever code comes out of your hands instantly is just nuts.
  - ip26 8y ago
    pre-Win-10, Windows was also considered the most bug-infested zombie-farm around. idea that no sane user could possibly have anything more critical in their life than installing whatever code comes out The problem is when you examine user behavior, they inexplicably seem to have something more critical than installing updates, 24/7/365. Which is how bot farms begin.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 8y ago
  There's a difference between security updates and feature updates.
- CamperBob2 8y ago
  That excuse almost made sense until they turned Windows Update into a marketing channel.
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  Windows feature updates are pushed down the same pipeline, and installed automatically.
SteveGerencser 8y ago
We have 4 windows 10 machines here and a metered satellite internet connection for internet service. Didn't really think about it much until they pushed an update to all 4 machines the week after our monthly meter tripped on our service. Next thing I knew I was on throttled internet for 3 weeks. Setting all the machines so that they don't update turned out to not be too hard, but was FAR harder than it needed to be. I'll decide when my equipment updates.
- m-p-3 8y ago
  Isn't there an option to distribute updates to computers on the same network to reduce WAN data usage? Delivery Optimization: https://www.howtogeek.com/224981/how-to-stop-windows-10-from-uploading-updates-to-other-pcs-over-the-internet/ https://www.howtogeek.com/224981/how-to-stop-windows-10-from... And there's ways to set the Ethernet connection as metered if you search a little bit online.
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    So, at best, that would have cut his data usage to 25%. I don't see how you assume this would've solved the issue when we're taking about such a massive update of an OS.
  - giobox 8y ago
    While I’m not familiar with the equivalent features in Windows I believe MacOS can do this, you can have one machine share the updates to the others on your network. The feature is now even in the non-server version of the OS too. You can cache iOS device updates with this mechanism as well. I’ve never bothered as I’m fortunate not to worry about metered bandwidth, but it seems like a nice feature if it works as advertised. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204675 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204675
  - SteveGerencser 8y ago
    I did set everything to metered. That's how I finally stopped the updates. My point though was that MS doesn't consider very many non-mainstream cases. One study says nearly 7% of all internet users in the US use a satellite connection. These are slow, and almost always metered. That is a lot of people getting surprise hammering of their connection.

creato 8y ago

> I moved to Mac this year after being exclusively on Windows since '98. Funny, I use a Macbook pro at work, and windows at home. I'm not the kind of person that has strong preferences on tech, I use stuff until it stops working well and then I switch. My several (over time) work macbooks have been really bad. OSX has so many bugs, many of them seem really serious potential security issues (graphical corruption across processes, login screen flickering to the desktop upon waking from sleep, ...). Lots of other bugs are just annoying and make things janky to use. It also does weird things that make me fear it is a fire hazard (e.g. battery draining within 24 hours while the lid is closed in my laptop bag). On the other hand, a windows small form factor connected to my TV, and a surface pro have been basically hassle free. Obviously windows has bugs too, but none of the ones I've seen make me question security the way I do on OSX.

Angostura 8y ago
I have to say those screen issues sounds as if you have a dodgy GPU there, and the battery drain also sounds like a hardware fault. Have you had it checked out?
- creato 8y ago
  In 2 years I've had 5 macbook pros. This is the least faulty of them all, I'm not risking this one.
  - x0 8y ago
    Sounds like you're the least lucky person on earth. I've had my MacBook Air for 5 years now, I've dropped it on concrete/tiles multiple times, it's dented as hell and the battery's wearing a bit, but it works just fine
dimgl 8y ago
Completely anecdotal. While we're sharing anecdotal evidence, I have not once experienced anything you're talking about.

tinza123 8y ago

not to defend them, but my experience with that particular issue is normally they put all your old desktop folder / document folder stuff in c:/windows.old

stepik777 8y ago
In this particular case files are outright removed, not moved anywhere

arthurfm 8y ago

Ironically, if you had switched to a Mac sooner you may have been affected by Apple's data loss/corruption bugs. [1] [2] Regardless of OS it's always a good idea to have backups of your important data. [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2018/02/19/apfs-bug-macos-data-loss-disk-images/ https://www.macrumors.com/2018/02/19/apfs-bug-macos-data-los... [2] https://www.iezzi.ch/leopard-1051-massive-data-loss-bug/ https://www.iezzi.ch/leopard-1051-massive-data-loss-bug/

StreamBright 8y ago
Unironically, I am in control of when and if any update happens on my Mac. Also unironically, the described bug has not happened as a result of an upgrade, it was not forced on any user and definitely was not affecting the whole desktop. From the articles you linked: "The images get corrupted on copies to the USB attached external drive. " "However, as Bombich notes, ordinary APFS volumes like SSD startup disks are not affected by the problem described above, so the vast majority of users won't be affected by it – the flaw is most applicable when making backups to network volumes. " I am not sure you have read the original article and the two articles you linked, otherwise it would have been obvious that these are not the same by volume and severity.
- arthurfm 8y ago
  > it would have been obvious that these are not the same by volume and severity. If users don't have backups, any unintended data loss caused by an operating system bug is bad because it can be difficult or impossible to recover the affected data. Would you not agree? You may not have been affected by the two bugs I described above, but some people would have been (more so with the image corruption bug). > the described bug has not happened as a result of an upgrade, it was not forced on any user and definitely was not affecting the whole desktop. If you go back further in time, there actually was a bug that resulted in data loss during an OS X upgrade. https://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac/exclusive-oxford-semi-firewire-bug-7197/ https://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac/exclusive-oxford-semi-fi... Oxford Semiconductor has issued a statement with regard to the emerging Panther and FireWire data-loss debacle. The company says: "Oxford Semiconductor has been investigating reports that some FireWire 800 drives have lost data after an upgrade to the Mac OS X 10.3 Panther operating system is installed (released late October). "Currently we believe this issue relates to a change in the way Panther uses FireWire that affected version 1.02 of the OXUF922 driver software. A new version, 1.05 was issued by Oxford Semiconductor to the manufacturers of external drive products in early September." As Macworld UK first reported yesterday, users installing Panther while having an external FireWire drive connected to their Mac have seen data loss; similarly, users with FireWire drives connected to their systems have seen data loss once they reboot Panther. At this stage, it appears that the problem is confined to FireWire 800 drives. In 2001 there was also a bug in iTunes 2 that caused an entire hard drive partition to be deleted if the volume label was prefixed with a space. https://www.wired.com/2001/11/glitch-in-itunes-deletes-drives/ https://www.wired.com/2001/11/glitch-in-itunes-deletes-drive... Some Macintosh users who rushed to download the latest version of iTunes – Apple's popular digital-music player – were singing a song of woe on Friday. A bug in the installation procedure caused the application to completely delete their computers' hard drives. The bug seems to have affected computers with a very specific configuration: people running Mac OS X who had "partitioned" big hard drives into several smaller ones, and who'd typed a space at the beginning of the drive name. For example, if a Mac had a drive named " music" instead of "music," it might have been deleted by iTunes. Tom Fisher, a computer repair technician who lost about 100 gigabytes of information during the installation, said that people often include a space in the drive name to ensure it shows up at the top of the list when they examine their drives. According to Mac experts who examined the code of the buggy iTunes installer, the problem arose from a very tiny programming mistake – a forgotten quote mark.