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Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8

Update: Microsoft quietly seeds consumer PCs with Windows 10 upgrade ‘nag’ campaign

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Automatic update delivered to most Windows 7 and 8.1 consumer devices illustrates aggressive marketing intent
Microsoft has seeded most consumer Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 PCs with an automatic update that will pitch the free Windows 10 upgrade to customers.

According to Myce.com, a March 27 non-security update aimed at Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows 8.1 Update — the latter, the April 2014 refresh — lays the foundation for a Windows 10 marketing and upgrade campaign. The update, identified by Microsoft as KB3035583, has been offered as “Recommended,” meaning that it will be automatically downloaded and installed on PCs where Windows Update has been left with its default settings intact.

Microsoft was typically terse in the accompanying documentation for KB3035583, saying only that it introduced “additional capabilities for Windows Update notifications when new updates are available to the user.”

Myce.com, however, rooted through the folder that the update added to Windows’ SYSTEM32 folder and found files that spelled out a multi-step process that will alert users at several milestones that Microsoft triggers.

Computerworld confirmed that the update deposited the folder and associated files onto a Windows 7 SP1 system.

One of the files Myce.com called out, “config.xml,” hinted at how the Redmond, Wash. company will offer Windows 10’s free upgrade.

The first phrase, marked as “None,” disables all features of the update. But the second, tagged as “AnticipationUX,” switches on a tray icon — one of the ways Windows provides notifications to users — and what was listed as “Advertisement.” Myce.com interpreted the latter as some kind of display pitching the upcoming Windows 10, perhaps a stand-alone banner in Windows 7 and a special tile on the Windows 8.1 Start screen.

A third phrase, “Reservation,” turns on what the .xml code identified as “ReservationPage,” likely another banner or tile that lets the user “reserve” a copy of the upgrade as part of Microsoft’s marketing push.

Later steps labeled “RTM” and “GA” referred to Microsoft-speak for important development milestones, including Release to Manufacturing (RTM) and General Availability (GA). The former pegs code ready to ship to computer and device makers, while the latter signals a finished product suitable for distribution to users.

The upgrade won’t be triggered until GA, according to the .xml file’s contents.

Presumably, the messages shown in the tray icon — and when displayed, the ad banner or tile — will change at each phase, with the contents drawn from a URL specified by Microsoft in the .xml file.

Not surprisingly, the Enterprise editions of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 — those are sold only to large customers with volume licensing agreements — will not display the Windows 10 upgrade pitches. That’s consistent with what Microsoft has said previously, that the Windows Enterprise SKUs will not be eligible for the free upgrade. By refusing to show the alerts and ads to Windows Enterprise users, Microsoft avoids ticking off IT administrators, who will, by all accounts, stick with Windows 7 for the next several years before migrating to Windows 10 as the former nears its January 2020 retirement.

Although Microsoft has often prepped existing versions of Windows for upcoming updates with behind-the-scenes code, the extent of the messaging generated by the .xml file issued on March 27 would be a change from past practices. That fits with Microsoft’s professed goal of getting as many as possible onto Windows 10, a position best illustrated by the unprecedented free upgrade.

Users will face a long line of nagging messages that will be impossible to ignore. Add to that the fact Microsoft set KB3035583 as Recommended — by default Windows Update treats those the same as critical security fixes tagged “Important” — and it’s clear Microsoft will be aggressive in pushing Windows 10.

Those who don’t want to see the Windows 10 marketing push on their machines can uninstall KB3035583 from the Windows Update panel. But because the .xml file was pegged as “version 1.0,” there’s a good chance more such updates will follow.

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Windows 10

Windows 10 revealed: Microsoft’s next OS fuses Windows 7 and 8

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At a press event on Tuesday, Microsoft launched the next version of Windows: Not Windows One, not Windows 9, but Windows 10, which combines the reborn Start menu with Windows 8’s colorful live tiles and adjusts its behavior depending on how you’re using your device.

Windows 10 will officially launch in the middle of next year, but you’ll have a chance to try it out before that via a new Windows Insider program, launching Wednesday. The platform’s most vocal fans will have a chance to download the technical preview before it launches next year.

Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore showing off Windows 10’s reborn, revamped Start Menu.

Microsoft executives unveiled the new OS at a small press event in San Francisco, where the company tried to position the Windows 10 OS as a “natural step forward” for both Windows and Windows Phone, which will also be renamed Windows 10.

Windows 10 will be designed for the enterprise, Terry Myerson executive vice president of Microsoft’s OS group, said. It will have a “familiar” interface, whether it be for Windows 7 or Windows 8. “They will find all the tools they’re used to finding, with all the apps and tools they’re used to today,” he said.

Windows 10 will be compatible with all the familiar management systems, including mobile device management. MDM tools will manage not just mobile devices, but PCs, phones, tablets, and even embedded devices inpart of the Internet of Things, Myerson said. Enterprise customers will be able to manage their own app stores, so that ther employees get the right apps for them. As Windows 8 did, data security will be a priority, he said.

“Windows 10 will be our greatest enterprise platform ever,” Myerson said.
Windows 10 revealed

Joe Belfiore, who runs part of the OS team focused on the PC experience, showed off the new OS, which he called a “very early build.” Yes, the new build has the Stat menu, combining the icon-driven menu from Windows 7, plus the added Live Tiles to the right.

Belfiore used the analogy of a Tesla to describe how Windows 7 users would feel when they upgraded—something that Microsoft desperately wants them to do: a supercharged OS, but one that will feel familiar.

One of the things that Microsoft wants to ensure is that Windows 10 is personalized results, including search results, Belfiore said.

Windows 8 had a universal app platform, with a common Windows Store that handle updates independently. Belfiore said that Microsoft wanted all those Windows 7 uses to get all the benefits of Windows 8 apps. Apps will be shown in the Live Tiles, with no real indication whether they are “classic” apps or modern, Windows 8 apps. Apps can be “snapped,” like Windows 8. Users will also not have to leave the Windows desktop to use modern apps, as expected.

Multitasking will also be a priority, with a stated goal being able to “empower” novice users, Belfiore said. On the taskbar there will be a “task view” where users can switch back and forth between different environments—whether it be 32-bit Windows 7 apps or modern apps. And yes, they will include virtual desktops, with the ability to switch back and forth between virtual environments. A “snap assist” feature will allow users to select similar windows to snap alongside other apps. And up to four apps or windows can be snapped to the four corners of the desktop, Belfiore said.

Even more advanced uses will be able to take advantage of new keyboard shortcuts, with the ability to ALT-TAB between desktops. “It’s a nice forward enhancement to make those people more productive,” Belfiore said.

Microsoft even improved the command line interface, with an improved keyboard interface. (You can use Crtl+V to paste now!)
Touch when you need it

Belfiore wrapped up by talking about touch: “We’re not giving up on touch,” he said. But he did say that that massive numbers of users were familiar with the touchless Windows 7 interface, while supporting those who have jumped to Windows 8.

So that means that the Charms experience will be revamped. When you swipe right on Windows 10, the Charms bar is still there. But Belfiore said that the Charms experience would change. When people swipe in from the left, Windows 10, you’ll get a task view. “I’m using touch in a way that accelerates my use of a PC,” Belfiore said.
windows10 continuum start screen

Microsoft is also working on a revamped UI that isn’t is in Windows 10, yet. For two-in-on devices, a “Continuum” mode will adjust the UI depending on whether or not the mouse and keyboard is present. When a keyboard is disconnected, the Windows 8-style Start menu appears and a back button is available so that users can easily back out to a prior command. Menus grow larger. Bu when a mouse and keyboard is connected, the desktop mode reappears, Windows apps return to desktop windows, and the Start page disappears.

Now, Microsoft needs to take the next step: pitching enterprise customers, Myerson said. And that’s critical for Windows’ future, analysts said. Expect more details on the consumer flavors of Windows 10 early next year, more application details at BUILD, and then a launch of Windows 10 near the middle of next year.

“For businesses, I think there are some businesses who have picked it up and they are really early adopters, but in general, the sense—when we engage with customers, we’re not hearing a lot of reception out there,” Wes Miller, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, said in advance of the briefing. “We’re hearing a lot of businesses even before whatever that thing comes out tomorrow, before that came out, businesses were saying, we’re going to hang out on Windows 7, it’s stable, it does what we need to do.”

Starting Wednesday, Microsoft will launch a Windows Insider program, distributing the technical preview of Windows 10, Myerson said. Through Window Insiders we’re inviting our more vocal Windows fans” to help refine the Windows experience, executives said. Users wil be able to sign up at preview.windows.com, he said, where they will be able to hold private discussions with Windows engineers and give feedback.

“Windows 10 will be our most open, collaborative OS project ever,” Myerson said.

 

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Microsoft

Microsoft suspends Windows 8.1 Update release to businesses

Bug prompts Microsoft to halt update’s delivery through WSUS, the standard enterprise update service

Microsoft on Tuesday suspended serving Windows 8.1 Update to businesses that rely on WSUS (Windows Server Update Services), saying that a bug would prevent devices from recognizing future updates.

WSUS is Microsoft’s standard corporate update service and is used by IT staffs to manage the distribution of bug fixes, security patches and other updates to Windows devices on a company’s network.

“There is a known issue which causes some PCs updated with the Windows 8.1 Update to stop scanning against Windows Server Update Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 (WSUS 3.0 SP2 or WSUS 3.2) servers which are configured to use SSL and have not enabled TLS 1.2,” Microsoft wrote on its WSUS blog.

Microsoft released Windows 8.1 Update on Tuesday. The refresh was a follow-on to last October’s Windows 8.1, which in turn was a major update to 2012’s Windows 8.

The problem affected WSUS 3.2 running on Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2, Windows Server 2008 SP2, and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 when HTTPS and SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) were enabled but TLS 1.2 was not.

Until the Redmond, Wash., company comes up with a fix, customers that have already deployed Windows 8.1 Update can apply workarounds — enable TLS 1.2 or disable HTTPS — that will let PCs recognize future WSUS-delivered updates.

It’s unclear how many businesses were affected, and Microsoft did not provide an estimate. But neither HTTPS nor TLS 1.2 are enabled by default on WSUS.

Even so, Microsoft halted Windows 8.1 Update’s rollout via WSUS.

“Microsoft plans to issue an update as soon as possible that will correct the issue and restore the proper behavior for Windows 8.1 Update scanning against all supported WSUS configurations,” Microsoft said. “Until that time, we are temporarily suspending the distribution of the Windows 8.1 Update to WSUS servers.”

Microsoft has stumbled over updates numerous times in the past 12 months. Last September, Microsoft shipped several flawed updates, including one that emptied Outlook 2013’s folder pane and others that repeatedly demanded customers install them even after they had been deployed. In the months before that, Microsoft yanked an Exchange security update, admitting it had not properly tested the patches, and urged Windows 7 users to uninstall an update that crippled PCs with the infamous “Blue Screen of Death.”

Microsoft did not hint at a timetable for fixing the bug, but discouraged customers who rely on WSUS from manually deploying Windows 8.1 Update, which is also available from Windows Update, MSDN (Microsoft Developers Network) and the Microsoft download center.

“We recommend that you suspend deployment of this update in your organization until we release the update that resolves this issue,” Microsoft said.

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Microsoft

Microsoft’s long, messy, occasionally clumsy CEO search is about to end

Microsoft could name a new CEO within the next week, after making it clear that whoever gets the job at this point was a back-up choice.

Microsoft could be ready to announce a new CEO within the next week, and it looks to be an insider, after the lengthy outsider search failed to produce results.

Re/Code and Bloomberg both report that Satya Nadella, the head of the server and tools division and 22-year Microsoft, is now the leading choice, although Tony Bates and Stephen Elop remain in the running.

Whoever among this group ends up getting picked will be a second choice. Microsoft’s board chased a lot of outside people, and to pick Nadella or the others suggests the board gave up and just went with the inside guy.

Consider: first it was Allen Mulally of Ford and John Lawrie of CSC. Lawrie faded fast but Mulally hung in there for months before bowing out. Then came word that the job would go to former VMware CEO and ex-Microsoft exec Paul Maritz, who turned it down immediately. Then there was talk of Steve Mollenkopf, COO of Qualcomm, who ended up being promoted to CEO. Finally, there was Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg, who also shot them down.

How would YOU feel to be the sixth choice for anything?
There is still the chance for an outsider. Re/Code boss Kara Swisher is still rooting for current VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger, who would be a great choice, but there have been no hints about him in any direction.

Swisher says this protracted search is making a mess inside Microsoft. It’s disrupting the reorg announced prior to Ballmer’s announcement and has left the company in a state of uncertainty. On the one hand, you want the Microsoft board to make the right decision, but on the other hand, they can’t drag this on much longer.

Both Re/Code and Bloomberg report that Steve Ballmer will step down from the board, a wise decision, but there are conflicting stories between the two over Bill Gates. The founder and 800-pound gorilla is either going to become more involved or leave as Chairman. John Thompson would replace him.

Nadella would be wise to demand this. He needs those two out of the way to do what he must and should demand it as a condition of his acceptance.

 

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Microsoft

How Microsoft can save itself in the mobile world

Once upon a time, Microsoft encountered a foe in the PC market. What it did then is what it should do now in the mobile market.

Microsoft continues to pursue its fatal attraction to proprietary mobile devices, much like Michael Douglas pursued Glen Close in the 1987 movie Fatal Attraction.

Its earnings announcement last night exceeded analysts’ expectations, and seem to suggest that Microsoft doesn’t need to own the endpoint to thrive. But Microsoft’s odds of outflanking Apple and Google are slim.

With so many positive developments in Microsoft’s core businesses, what can possibly be gained from a small, tenuous share of the smartphone market at the risk of Nokia entering a BlackBerry-like downward spiral?

Though Nokia’s $7 billion acquisition cost is small relative to Microsoft’s wealth, competition with Apple and Google in the smartphone market confuses consumers, and likely confuses Microsoft. Microsoft should take a lesson from itself and accommodate Android and iOS in the same way it once accommodated Apple’s Mac in the PC market. It extended Office and Outlook to the Mac platform and made a great margin on every Mac that shipped to customers who needed document interoperability and email with Microsoft’s enormous base.

Nokia’s performance last quarter was dismal. Radio Free Mobile predicted smartphone revenues to grow by 12% in this last quarter. In comparison Nokia revenue declined by 2%.

Radio Free Mobile’s Richard Windsor noted four main problems described in Microsoft’s earning’s announcement.

“Android is getting better at the cheaper price points, making the Lumia 520 not such great value at $135. Low-end Lumia needs to be refreshed to re-extend the gap to Android.

“Microsoft continues to make a total mess of telling users why they should buy a Lumia device, meaning that there is very little pull for the ecosystem from the handset end.

“The app store is still woefully inadequate when compared to iOS and Android and this is a major turn off for prospective buyers of the devices.

“The change in ownership may have distracted the business from pushing the devices to the best of its ability. I am hopeful that this quarter will see this fix.”

Windsor also noted the truly bright side of Microsoft’s performance:

“Microsoft reported excellent results and guidance, confounding the PC skeptics.”

Revenues and earnings exceeded analysts’ expectations thanks to Microsoft’s strong performance in enterprise, cloud and even consumer segments. Xbox and Microsoft Office shipments were both strong, for example.

Windsor expects a rebound in the PC market due to the end of life and support for Windows XP. Corporations have limited alternatives to remaining on XP. Though locked down, proprietary configurations of XP images may prevail for some time within a well-defended enterprise perimeter, without security available after April of this year, this strategy is a ticking time bomb beyond the short-term transition to Windows 7.

The Nokia business will never produce great margins. If small initial margins were the price for dominating the world’s pockets with Nokia smartphones the way Microsoft once dominated the desktop, the endeavor would be worth it for Microsoft. It is hard to imagine a scenario where that will happen, though.

However, Microsoft could create its own bright mobile future if it would just follow what it learned with the Mac and extended all of its core businesses to integrate seamlessly with iOS.

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Tech

Ballmer’s last decisions at Microsoft prove to be his best

Ballmer’s last decisions at Microsoft prove to be his best
Departing CEO Steve Ballmer knew needed to change Microsoft, but couldn’t change himself. So he fell on his own sword.

An amazing article in Monday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal gives insight into what happened to precipitate Steve Ballmer’s departure from Microsoft. As many have speculated, Ballmer is not leaving because he’s ready. But what is interesting is the process that led to his departure.

The Journal’s article is built on interviews with Ballmer and Microsoft board members, not a bunch of anonymous sources. The story begins in January 2013, with Ballmer on a conference call with the board, who were pushing him hard to make changes far faster than he had been prepared to make.

“Hey, dude, let’s get on with it,” lead director John Thompson says he told him. “We’re in suspended animation.”

(Seriously? These are adults talking to each other like that?)

RELATED: Microsoft employee on stack ranking and the company’s ‘most universally hated exec’

They were getting impatient with Microsoft’s repeated missing the boat on things like smartphones and tablets, not to mention Windows 8 stinking up the market. Ballmer had a vision but it was taking too long. The directors didn’t push Steve to step down “but we were pushing him damn hard to go faster,” Thompson told the WSJ.

Thompson isn’t a lightweight. He was a former IBM senior executive and was the long-running CEO of Symantec before retiring several years ago. He is now heading up the CEO search committee. So he’s someone who could speak honestly and bluntly to Ballmer.

Ballmer said “I’ll remake my whole playbook. I’ll remake my whole brand.”

But he couldn’t. Ballmer eventually told the Thompson and the board “At the end of the day, we need to break a pattern. Face it: I’m a pattern.” And that was what led his decision to retire earlier than he wanted to.

“Maybe I’m an emblem of an old era, and I have to move on,” Ballmer told the Journal. “As much as I love everything about what I’m doing, the best way for Microsoft to enter a new era is a new leader who will accelerate change.”

That is remarkable, especially when you contrast it to the buck passing going on in Washington over the epic fail of HealthCare.gov. There you have a case of no one taking responsibility and no one resigning or being fired. Yet Ballmer, the number two shareholder at Microsoft who would not be easy to remove, looks around at a profitable company, says I am the problem, and steps down. You have to respect that and wonder if there isn’t another CEO or two who needs to make the same admission.

And in the process, he’s taking the loathed stack ranking employee rating system with him. Microsoft announced its demise last week, and that memo was promptly leaked to the entire world.

I checked with my contact that provided so much valuable insight the last time we discussed stack ranking. This person said most people were taking a wait and see attitude, because they had been made so many promises before. HR head Lisa Brummel, whom my contact called “the most hated exec” in Microsoft, was described as looking “happy, very happy…if not relieved to change the subject.”

Microsoft’s board is meeting this week to whittle the list of candidates down to three to five, with outsiders leading the charge. The feeling is that an outsider is needed to shake things up. I couldn’t agree more.

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