Does MSFT mess with patches to 'motivate' OS migration?

Trying to chase down a claim I saw in this ZDnet article, by Darkworks (bolding I added): "I can tell you by design when Microsoft releases a new OS, they not only strong-arm you into upgrading, but release patches that will actually destabilize the former operating system."

I've noticed that patch-destabilization following a new OS iteration, ever since Windows 98SE: but I couldn't say it was 'by design' so much as likely a programmer now having to issue patches to cover current and new OSes, would inevitably have problems.

Certainly that claim can be made for Windows 10 GWX pushes!

But by design? Have any of you inclination and/or information to help resolve this claim?

And if this topic is inappropriate, please feel free to delete it. I just can't find sources. Thank you for your time!

 

I wouldn't say Microsoft "destabilizes" older operating systems to encourage upgrades. If they did, they would have a lot to answer for from their business customers who have relied on Windows XP and Windows 7.

That being said, MS has done things to try and force people into whatever they've cooked up. The strong arming for the Windows 10 "upgrade" is there for sure. In the gaming space, the Xbox One controller wireless adapter is only compatible with W10. Going back a few years, the PC release of Halo 2 required Vista. I'm sure there are other instances, but that's off the top of my head.

 

Prior history shows that with each new iteration of the OS older versions have lost support. While not truly destabilization any patches after support are not made to specifically enhance stabilizing the OS for future issues. So in effect by not supporting latest issues a destabilizing effect could be seen.

 

For one thing I used the disable GWX and DisableWindows10Update Registry files and that stops Windows 10 nags.

 

There was some reports here that Windows 7 users was having problems of receiving windows updates, other than that i havent heard anything else. I wouldnt be surprised if Microsoft does something like that to force users to upgrade to 10

 

M$ does push there changeovers in operating systems, all win 7,8, and 8.1 gets update to windows 10 thru windows update all the time and reinstall time. With Windows 10 it will be even more so as this platform has M$ store with it pushing buy this and that , the teasers of faster bootup, free upgrade for a year and free forever after that, 1- M$ op sys for all your needs, gaming, Phone, Laptop, Desktop, Online Activation-no more typing in licensing numbers, ect

The good note on M$ win 10 is pro upgrade has been relaxed for now,, I have bought 2 licenses for Pro and they were inexpensive, the upgrade from home to pro is a small download.

When the promotional yr is up, Win 10 upgrade will cost ya.

The current leader of M$ is lazy and overpaid, He issued win 10 without a smart installer so that it could differentiate between phone, pc and so on that way the GPS parts of find you to within so many feet would not be installed and other annoyances ect.... last I heard peeps are not using anymore there laptop or desktop for gps, they use a phone or a Garmin or there car gps built in.

Desktop for GPS, alrighty then.

IPS snooping to find out incidentials of your pc and what city, state, country your in has been going on along time before telemetry-gps. Add cookies and now canvas html-unique token writer to follow someone around and snoop on them....

Cheers
3Fees



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HP 17.3 win 10 Pro, AMD 5750M/Radeon 8650G 16gb Crucial Ballistix Sport 1866Mhz Samsung 850 Pro
Acer 15.6 win 10 pro, i5 Core 5200u/HD5500G, 16GB 1600Mhz, Nvidia 940M Samsung 850 Pro

 

Heheh, that one is funny (and yeah, I know you know ). Last I checked Windows 7 supports all of these, with the exception of the phone, and nobody, but absolutely nobody in their right mind wants a Windows Phone. More generally speaking, 99.999% of all Windows Apps (the app store crap) are complete and utter garbage that nobody wants.

 

I'm not sure of the numbers, yet it seems that M$ is offering Win 10 Gratis as Linux Free, ubuntu, mint ect are getting popular , in Europe Linux is a virtual monopoly , Linux needs no defragging, no virsus scanner,ect and as the support increases for simple install and everything works , so M$ and M$ partners dont want linux taking over like it did in Servers, almost all big companies are using Linux server software it is free and these servers can host a whole myriad of op systems,Linux free basically asks for donations without hassling its patrons.

I used linux mint for a while and its nearly ready for primetime as install and your done and they support each version for years-free, the only thing I had to do was install a wifi driver, everything else was covered in the kernel. Linux Mint has 100's of programs in many categories that they host themselves thru there server network-all free-Gratis, its getting better and better and Linux mint uses ubuntu and several other distros to make the rtm Mints, so they work good, you can access the world wide web just like windows.

So, yes M$ will nudge peeps to upgrade.

IMO

The operating system languages have gone thru quite a bit of changes, Fortran and punched card , Cobol,PL-1,RPG,Pascal,DOS,Timex Basic, Sinclair-Basic, Dell-Basic, Basic-universal, Basic Plus, ect not necessarily in the above order..lol

Someone designs a new op system that works with current hardware and cost less than M$ BINGO-New software giant is born and M$ Windows is like Fortran basically gone with the wind.


Cheers
3Fees

__________________________________________________________________________________

HP 17.3 win 10 Pro, AMD 5750M/Radeon 8650G 16gb Crucial Ballistix Sport 1866Mhz Samsung 850 Pro
Acer 15.6 win 10 pro, i5 Core 5200u/HD5500G, 16GB 1600Mhz, Nvidia 940M Samsung 850 Pro

 

I thing saturnotaku is largely on point. Microsoft will artificially limit some hardware and software to only newer OSes, and his examples are good. The idea is it will encourage people to buy the newer OS for the compatibility... in practice, I'm not sure how well it works. Halo 2's Vista-only requirement resulted in my friends and I buying at least 5 copies of Halo 1 since it would run on all our machines, and spending about $150 less on Microsoft software than we would have had Halo 2 also supported XP as a result (since Halo 1 was about $30 cheaper at the time).

I can only think of two cases where I'd say a Microsoft change somewhat broke something on an older OS that may have caused some people to upgrade, and one is anecdotal. The non-anecdotal one is the Win7/8 patch this fall that disabled SafeDisc/SecuROM on those OSes. Windows 10 doesn't support SafeDisc/SecuROM at all, but I'm sure there were people who saw their programs wouldn't work anymore, saw the upgrade offer, and upgraded in the mistaken hope that Windows 10 would fix it. IMO it was a poor decision by Microsoft to bork that on Win7/8, and it has effected a decent number of people who still run older games.

The anecdotal one is that after the end of XP support, Microsoft Security Essentials on XP started having a terrible time downloading updates on my machines, either to the next minor-version-update, or even just definition updates at times. Ostensibly MSE was supposed to be supported on XP until July of 2015, but the updates just weren't reliable anymore. And the performance impact of it also got considerably worse around the same time. Could have just been poor support, but I'm not entirely convinced it wasn't an intentionally-overlooked-bug type thing with the hope of getting people to switch to Windows 7 or, better yet, 8.1. I wound up just switching to Kaspersky anti-virus instead, and found it had even less performance impact than MSE had even when MSE was fairly good.

While I don't think it's anywhere near that simple, largely due to Windows software compatibility, Fortran is not at all gone with the wind. It's still getting pretty significant compiler support added, and still has good use in the scientific community. True, its market share isn't like it was in 1959, but it still has some staying power.