Steve Smith talks about a few features in Windows 10 that break people's trust, and kills illicit software and hardware.
Episode #5-49 released on August 24, 2015
Windows 10 is a first in operating system that can be obtained freely if you already owned a personal license for a Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 Device. Being a brand new operating system, there is going to be some instability issues, plenty of fails, and plenty of people pissed, are you one of them?
Privacy, well the lack there of, is a particularly big issue for many users, complaining of the accessibility to data Microsoft has granted to itself, and if you don't agree with it, you can't use Windows 10 period. With the advent of newer search tools, as well as, Cortana and how the system supposedly does, or could, listen to every word you say, a lot of people are freaked out. Mainly because people are used to the idea that everything do they do on their computer is private, which to be quite frank, has not been true for a long time, especially if it happens to be connected to the Internet. It is, also, not limited to Microsoft's Windows operating system.
Now, it is, also, possible, that users will shutter at the idea of a company collecting usage telemetry of the operating system in a fashion that would seem to be unpredicted. I just want to state one fact, web-sites have been able to "see" more than you are aware of using various statistics tools that can determine far more about the user, with far greater precision. The only difference is, Microsoft will know who you are, and some web-sites report collecting the information anonymously.
Undesirable functionality includes a few features that can break functionality of specific classes of applications, and even rid of a user's ability to prevent things such as updating the operating system. Let us tackle the update policies. They are now required. Even having a professional license only allows you to defer the update. This means two things for people. They no longer have a choice in updating their system, and some systems may crash, as a result. Now, for that argument, only the system crashing possibility is a valid reason to want to defer or refuse updates. The reason is, a lot of security vulnerabilities can expose the operating system to security issues with hackers and viruses. The current issue is that a large portion of people do not update their computers, or turn off this functionality. This makes their computers vulnerable. While, they may believe that they are protecting their system, they are doing more harm than good.
The other undesirable functionality allows Microsoft to detect, and disable counterfeit games, software, and hardware. Services that would be covered by this include but are not limited to the following, Office 365, Outlook.com, Skype, OneDrive, Xbox Live, MSN, and Bing. Let's talk about counterfeit software, and how they would determine if it was, in fact, counterfeit or not. First, let's talk about the fact that only games and applications they currently maintain and update would be affected by this kind of action. This means, if it is updated by either Windows Update, or the Windows Store, it can be shut down. This means those other games and applications should remain unaffected, for now.
Now, as for unauthorized hardware, that may sound more difficult to handle, but considering that Windows 10 requires developers to sign their drivers, it's not that hard to believe. If Windows update does detect unauthorized hardware, it could simply disable it. My personal belief is that it should reduce the amount of cheaters in games, and maintain capability for hardware with games and software.
For those wondering what I currently dislike in Windows 10, let's talk about SLI Surround and the Start Menus. Windows has yet to master its own positional information for its start menus, and while many hated Windows 8's version of the menus, at least it was full screen, and not on the wrong monitor altogether. The same applies for the new action center menus. I understand that users normally use one monitor, but it incredibly lazy of them to think that some power users won't have more than one screen.
Host : Steve Smith | Music : Jonny Lee Hart | Editor : Steve Smith | Producer : Zed Axis Productions