Windows as a Disservice (Premium)

Microsoft last night admitted that it cannot update certain Intel Atom-based PCs to the Windows 10 Creators Update. In doing so, it proves that Windows as a Service (Waas) is unsustainable.

I wrote about the underlying issue of this particular event earlier this week in Users with Older Atom Processors Should Wait on the Windows 10 Creators Update. But it looks like that wait will now be interminable, and not indeterminate, for most. That is, most PCs using those older Atom chips will likely never be updated to the Windows 10 Creators Update.

Microsoft is throwing those users a bone, however: PCs running one of the four underpowered chips cited in that previous article, the newest of which is over 4 years old, will receive security updates for the Windows 10 Anniversary Update (version 1607) through January 2023, which is when support for Windows 8.1 expires. Because these computers (pretty much) all shipped with Windows 8.1 in the first place.

See the problem?

Microsoft’s support matrix for Windows 10 was already, I think, unsustainable. But now they’ve added the first of what will clearly be a never-ending series of one-off exceptions that will require them to develop security fixes for older, otherwise unsupported versions of Windows 10 on an arbitrarily-extended timeline. And to do so only for very specific PC configurations.

Let me put this simply: Windows as a Service is not just unsustainable, it’s impossible.

The plan, supposedly, was that Microsoft would support just two versions of Windows 10 at any given time. With the new schedule, in which Microsoft releases two major Windows 10 version upgrades—“feature updates”—each year, that means that no individuals should ever be running a version of Windows 10 that is more than one year old. You know, in theory.

But in this context, “support” doesn’t just mean “you get new feature updates.” Here, the word is used more broadly: Users running a non-supported version of Windows 10 will no longer receive the “quality updates” that Microsoft hammers us with every single month, not to mention the other cumulative updates that seem to come flying through Windows Update at least once a month as well. If you’re using a Windows 10 version that is over a year old, your PC is literally unsupported.

Except, of course, that Microsoft has a really hard time breaking with the past. And it has shown again and again that it will bend the rules to be inclusive to anyone who complains loud enough. As it is doing here. And will do again. And again, and again.

But individuals are small fry in this equation: The biggest exceptions to the Windows as a Service plan arrive via Microsoft’s business customers. This group, notoriously uninterested in keeping their PCs up-to-date, is given a series of exceptions that basically get bigger and bigger the more they pay. Microsoft’s volume licensing customers can probably still run Windows for Workgroups if they want. (I’m exaggerating here, but you get the idea: Money talks.)

But let’s just stick with the issue at hand. And to do so, I’m going to pick apart the surprisingly long Microsoft statement about this event that Brad obtained, and the software giant’s plan to make things right.

With Windows 10, we introduced Windows as a Service, a model for continuous value delivery via twice annual feature updates and monthly quality updates.

And right away, we’re off to a bad start.

Microsoft did introduce the Windows as a Service model with Windows 10, which first arrived in mid-2015. But the current schedule, where “continuous value” is delivered via two feature updates per year and monthly quality updates is actually new to 2017. The truth is, Microsoft has been kind of dicking around with the schedule ever since it was conceived, and as I noted above, it actually releases other cumulative updates at least once each month in addition to the automatically-scheduled quality updates.

Here’s how a Microsoft representative explained this to me recently.

“Microsoft aspires to only deliver one cumulative update a month that is automatically downloaded and installed from Windows Update,” I was told. “These automatically scheduled updates are released on the second Tuesday of each month, and contain all previously released security and non-security updates, and make use of the expanded active hours which decreases the likelihood that an update will be installed at an inopportune time.”

“For advanced users, Microsoft is making the non-security portion of that update available for manual download about two weeks prior by pressing ‘Check for Updates’ in Settings,” the representative continued. “This update is still cumulative of all previous security and non-security content, but since it is not automatically scheduled for download, it allows us to offer a better user experience by only shipping one automatically scheduled cumulative update a month. This option for manual download gives users more choice and control in the update process and the ability to access quality improvements sooner if they are willing to take an extra reboot to install it.”

Also, some of you might take exception to that term “continuous value.” That’s semantics, I guess, but I’ll just say that, of course, Microsoft sees this, and presents it, as a positive.

Along with this updated delivery cadence, we adjusted our support lifecycle policies to reflect the Windows as a Service model.

When he first announced Windows as a Service in January 2015, Terry Myerson spoke of the “lifetime of the device,” as in, “Windows 10 will be supported for the lifetime of the device.” Many have pointed out, correctly, that this term is nebulous in the PC space because it’s not clear what marks that timeline. We’ll get to that in a moment, but first, the term “supported” needs to be considered.

What does support mean?

For example, Windows 7 is still “supported.” But the last feature update for Windows 7 arrived way back in February 2011 with Service Pack 1. So the way Windows 7 is “supported” today involves only what Microsoft now calls quality updates: Bug and security fixes, and no feature updates.

Windows 10 is likewise still supported in most cases, but due to the vagueries of Windows as a Service, what that support constitutes varies. The initial version of Windows 10 is no longer supported, technically … and yet, it was literally just updated with a cumulative update this past Patch Tuesday. For some unexplained reasons. Subsequent versions of Windows 10 are also supported: They receive quality updates and app updates. The Creators Update is itself a major feature update that represents a different level of support, but it’s only made available to those versions of Windows 10 that are themselves supported. (As an upgrade, it’s also made available, at cost, to supported versions of Windows 7 and 8.x.)

We’re only on the second sentence of that statement, by the way.

Recognizing that a combination of hardware, driver and firmware support is required to have a good Windows 10 experience, we updated our support lifecycle policy to align with the hardware support period for a given device.

Here, we see Microsoft attempting, after the fact, to quantify what that term “for the lifetime of the device” means. And they are introducing the notion of hardware support to do so.

This says two things to me: Support from the seller of that hardware, meaning the PC maker. And support from the makers of the hardware components that make up that PC.

And my God does that open up a can of worms. Any company could, at any time, stop supporting any one component in any given PC. And if that end of support is serious enough—like Intel declining to update 3-to-4-year old bargain basement CPUs like those Atom chips at the heart of this matter—that means that Microsoft may be forced to no longer support Windows 10 on that PC. The lifetime of that device has come to a close.

This shaky new underpinning to Windows as a Service further undermines the whole thing, I think. It relies on too many things happening to actually work. And there will be far too many examples of companies that would rather sell new product than support old and out-of-date components or PCs just so their customers from four (or whatever) years ago can have a slightly better experience with a version of Windows 10 that is six months newer than the one they’re currently using.

Or, as Microsoft explains…

If a hardware partner stops supporting a given device or one of its key components and stops providing driver updates, firmware updates, or fixes, it may mean that device will not be able to properly run a future Windows 10 feature update.

No, it will mean that Microsoft will have to block updates to new Windows 10 versions on those PCs. And that it will, as it did here, have to open up new exception pipelines in the Windows 10 support matrix to support these one-off PC configurations.

This is why Windows as a Service is is untenable: The idea is that we’re all on the newest version of Windows, and because everyone is up-to-date, we’re all safe, and Microsoft can more easily and quickly respond to new security threats. But this system is actually dramatically more complex than the old scheme by which Microsoft simply supported all Windows versions for ten years. And it is riddled with PC configuration-specific and enterprise exceptions that make the entire thing an impossible mess.

Moving on to the second paragraph.

This is the case with devices utilizing Intel Clover Trail Atom Processors today: they require additional hardware support to provide the best possible experience when updating to the latest Windows 10 feature update, the Windows 10 Creators Update. However, these systems are no longer supported by Intel (End of Interactive Support), and without the necessary driver support, they may be incapable of moving to the Windows 10 Creators Update without a potential performance impact.

Here, Microsoft is blaming Intel for not delivering drivers for its out-of-date Atom processors from four or more years ago. Intel has a support lifecycle of its own, of course. And when an Intel product exits “interactive support,” Intel no longer updates drivers, as you’d expect.

But I think this is a bit more personal than that.

As you may know, Intel and Microsoft have a spotty record of late. Microsoft was burned by reliability issues in its Skylake processors, leading to the infamous Surfacegate issues with Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book. And the unprecedented problems with that chipset led to a standoff in which Microsoft initially refused to support Windows 7 and 8.1 on Skylake. That situation eventually calmed down, though Microsoft got what it wanted and was able to change its support policies to only allow Windows 10 on newer chipsets. But the bad blood persists, and we should look at Microsoft’s deal to move Windows 10 to ARM for what it is, a revenge play against Intel for its misdeeds. That’s literally the only reason this is happening.

Anyway, what this all means that is that Microsoft can wipe its hands of the blame, point to Intel, and say that, gosh, we’d love to support these pathetically slow and out-of-date processors, but the experience is just going to suck. I mean, if Intel would have just … well, nevermind, we guess that can’t happen.

We know issues like this exist and we actively work to identify the best support path for older hardware.

In other words, this is going to happen again. And again. And again.

As part of our commitment to customers, we will be offering the Windows 10 Anniversary Update to these Intel Clover Trail devices on Windows 10, which we know provides a good user experience.

This suggests that these PCs were not already receiving the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, but I would imagine that’s not the case. Not that it matters.

To keep our customers secure, we will provide security updates to these specific devices running the Windows 10 Anniversary Update until January of 2023, which aligns with the original Windows 8.1 extended support period.

And with that, Microsoft has chipped yet another hold in the leaky dike that is Windows as a Service. Again, this exception is just one of many we’ve seen so far, and you can expect many more to arrive as we move forward.

And that’s the statement. But I have a few more thoughts.

First, those processors. The Atom Z2760 was released in the second half of 2012, and the other three—the Atom Z2520, Atom Z2560, and Atom Z2580—were all released in early 2013. One might expect mainstream processors to work effectively for several years, but these components were bottom-of-the-barrel when they were new, and they were—and, sadly, still are—sold in very low-end PCs that never provided a good experience to begin with.

Does that mean they shouldn’t be supported? No, but remember that “supported” can mean different things. In this case, these PCs are, in fact, supported through January 2023. That’s true if you stay on Windows 8.1. And it’s true if you upgraded to Windows 10; you just have to stick with the Anniversary Update. Which, by the way, is over two years newer than Windows 8.1 and about a million times more usable. So you have support. And you even have choice.

But the people who buy such computers aren’t exactly living on the bleeding edge of technology, right? No one buying an Atom-based PC is expecting anything more than the basics. And they’re going to get the basics in droves. These PCs should work fine, regardless of the OS, for the people who choose them.

My issue isn’t the chips, or the PCs, or the people, it’s that Windows as a Service is unsustainable, and will not work. It’s that Windows is itself too complex, too full of legacy baloney, to ever be maintained like service. And as I’ve argued previously, Android and iOS—both of which are more modern than Windows 10 and not burdened by legacy hardware or software—only receive one major feature update per year. Why on earth does Windows 10 receive two? It just doesn’t make any sense.

And by the way, I just noted yesterday that the Creators Update is being deployed far more slowly than its predecessor. Which means that when the next version of Windows 10 is released in September, we’re going to have fewer PCs than ever, as a percentage, on the latest version when that happens. More to the point, Microsoft’s slowing of feature updates pretty much says implicitly what I’m saying explicitly: If this system worked, the Creators Update would be (reasonably) fully deployed already.

Windows as a Service will collapse under its own weight. In fact, I believe it already has.