For many Windows users, the biggest frustration of 2016 was having to fight Microsoft tooth and nail just to prevent their PCs from being automatically upgraded to Windows 10.
As you probably remember, the company was determined to get as many users to “accept” the free upgrade to Windows 10 as possible during the free upgrade period.
They kept getting more aggressive by the day as the calendar approached the end of the free upgrade period on July 29, and it finally got to a point where I asked if the “Get Windows 10” app hadn’t actually morphed into the realm of malware.
A lot of people agreed that the app had indeed morphed into malware, but many of the tech experts and pundits that I follow disagreed even though the evidence was quite compelling.
Well, it turns out I was right, and Microsoft themselves just admitted it (in a round-about way).
In the December 21 edition of TWiT TV’s Windows Weekly Podcast, Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer Chris Caposella said the company had gone too far with the “Get Windows 10” app.
The video is below. If you want, you can skip to around 17:40 in the video to hear Mr. Capossela’s “confession”.
In a nutshell, Microsoft admitted that they ignored their own written guidelines for software developers by changing the effect of the “Get Windows 10” app’s “Exit” button (the X in the top right corner of the window) from “Cancel” to “Ok”.
Millions of users clicked the X in an effort to avoid receiving the Windows 10 upgrade because they knew clicking the X had always meant “Cancel” in the past. Instead, clicking the X resulting in the update being installed.
As one might expect, the outrage from the duped users was both immediate and harsh.
Mr. Caposella also said the powers-that-be at Microsoft realized the app had gone too far within a couple of hours, but it took quite some time to get a “fix” pushed out to the Windows Update servers.
Hopefully those folks learned an important lesson that day, but only time will tell.
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