Here’s What’s Really Happening with Windows 10 (Premium)

Yesterday, Microsoft revealed its plans to further force Windows 10 users to use its Edge web browser. How you respond to this news will vary. But I’d like to also discuss why Microsoft is doing this.

Here’s what happened.

Yesterday, Microsoft announced three Windows 10 Insider Preview builds. Those testing Redstone 4 in the Fast ring got a new build, 17123. Those testing Redstone 5 in Skip Ahead also got a new build, 17623. And those in the Slow ring picked up build 17120, which had hit the Fast ring three days earlier.

There’s a lot to be said here, given that Microsoft has never released three separate builds like this before. But the key takeaway is obvious: Redstone 4 development is winding down and could be completed as soon as next week. And the development of Redstone 5, the next Windows 10 version that will ship in September, is heating up.

Speaking of heating up, the release notes for Redstone 5 build 17623contained the following blurb, buried under a section about “general changes, improvements, and fixes.” (Microsoft, for some reason, also adds the text “for PC” as if mobile were an ongoing development concern. This kind of laziness should be pointed out since much of what’s wrong with Windows 10 these days can be traced back to this kind of thing.)

“For Windows Insiders in the Skip Ahead ring, we will begin testing a change where links clicked on within the Windows Mail app will open in Microsoft Edge, which provides the best, most secure and consistent experience on Windows 10 and across your devices. With built-in features for reading, note-taking, Cortana integration, and easy access to services such as SharePoint and OneDrive, Microsoft Edge enables you to be more productive, organized and creative without sacrificing your battery life or security. As always, we look forward to feedback from our WIP community.”

The responses I saw to this change, presented as it is as a benefit, were immediate and predictable.

The sycophantic pro-Microsoft crowd, faced with a hard-to-defend policy, chose instead to criticize those, like myself, who chose to stand up for choice instead of everyone’s favorite corporation and what I see as its increasingly user-hostile policies. We are, after all, petulant children. How dare we.

My own reaction was typical, for me. Righteous indignation communicated with my characteristic and sarcastic humor on Twitter. You can almost watch how I process this information in real time if you follow the tweets.

Paul Thurrott on Twitter:

For the love of

Paul Thurrott on Twitter:

Windows 10’s Mail app forcing you to use Edge for clicked links is too much. This is what the bad old Microsoft would have done. You’re better than this.

Paul Thurrott on Twitter:

I’m going to go the car wash and wash all this Edge off of it.

Paul Thurrott on Twitter:

We want people to use our product. Should we:

a) Make a better product

or

b) Not give them a choice and ram this inferior product down their throats?

Is not a normal question to ask.

Paul Thurrott on Twitter:

I mean, I don’t see why they even need to do this, what with the 330 million people actively using Microsoft Edge every day at last count.

\crickets

So my knee-jerk reaction was pretty predictable. And I still believe, very strongly, that this is the wrong thing to do. That Microsoft usually is, and can always be, better than this. I feel that anyone who dismisses this change with a shrug is, at best, a traitor to the cause. And that cause is not “the advancement of Microsoft’s needs,” which no human being should support. But rather “the advancement of the needs of Microsoft’s customers.” Which every human being who thinks/cares about this stuff should support.

But I respect that opinions differ. And rather than push my case further here, I’ll simply assume that you understand where I stand, where I’ve planted my flag. And instead, what I will do here is explain why I think Microsoft is doing. Given a bit of time to reflect and consider, I’m pretty sure I figured it out.

First, and most important, this change does not represent the first time that Microsoft has subtly (or not) pushes users to its (now not-so-new) web browser, Microsoft Edge. Instead, Microsoft has been artificially intercepting connections the default web browser that users configure in Windows 10 in various ways for a long time. The situation is so untenable to some that there is a utility called EdgeDeflector that was designed solely to circumvent Microsoft’s circumventions.

“Seemingly normal web links all over Windows 10 and the Cortana digital assistant all force-open in Microsoft Edge rather than in your system defined default web browser of choice,” the EdgeDeflector website explains. “Users who have bothered to configure a different default web browser should be allowed to keep using that default web browser. Edge is a portal for Microsoft to push its own features and services, and to collect personal data about people’s browsing habits. It’s understandable that Microsoft wants to push their own web browser, but this is not the way to do it.”

One of the many tragedies here, of course, is that Microsoft Edge isn’t even that bad anymore, and many normal users would probably be OK using this over popular options like Chrome and Firefox. Though it is a laughing stock for its low real-world usage and, even more so for Microsoft’s provably false claims about that usage, Edge has gotten considerably better over the past few years and past three or four Windows 10 versions. I’ve been using it with Redstone 4 for the past few weeks and I’m really enjoying the latest Edge version. Coupled with native support for Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), Microsoft Edge could be on the verge of having a real moment where people actually choose it based on merit. This kind of behavior could undermine those gains.

But this change is really part of a wider continuum of change that Microsoft is making over time. And it goes far beyond Microsoft Edge and web browsing. No, this is about Windows broadly. The Windows we use today. And the Windows to which Microsoft aspires.

If you look at this forced usage of Microsoft Edge in the context of Windows 10 S/S mode, you will see the hints of this broader strategy. In what is now called S mode, users don’t have a choice when it comes to Edge and other Microsoft technologies. Web browsers are powerful desktop applications. And S mode does not allow users to think for themselves and choose to use powerful desktop applications. (Including, not coincidentally, useful utilities like EdgeDeflector.) Worse, Windows 10 S and S mode actually removes the default web browser choice from Settings: Even if Chrome or Firefox did come to the Microsoft Store, you would not be able to set one as the default.

Oops.

This is as much about totalitarianism as it is about modernizing Windows as quickly as possible. In fact, these two things are the strategy.

I’ve often compared Android to Windows, and have noted that Android is the next Windows. This topic came up again in this week’s Ask Paul, and I mentioned that I mean this comparison very broadly. Android is just like Windows in so many ways.

In plotting the future of Windows, Microsoft very specifically doesn’t want Windows to be like Android anymore. It doesn’t want Windows to be like the Windows of the past and present. It wants something that is more secure, more reliable, simpler, and something that provides better performance up-front and over time.

It wants Windows to be like iOS.

In doing so, Microsoft is not just copying Apple yet again and betraying its never-ending jealousy of that company’s successes and ability to lead its user base—which, by the way, is about as big and diverse as that of Windows now—in what it feels is the right direction. It is instead trying to transform this legacy tech product, this mountain of software spaghetti, into something that resembles—no, is—a mobile product.

Re-read that line about “something that is more secure, more reliable, simpler, and something that provides better performance up-front and over time.” That’s how Microsoft describes Windows 10 S (now S mode), isn’t it? And when you couple S mode with support for the same ARM-based hardware platform on which all mobile devices run, you can see the end-game. Windows will become a mobile platform. Windows will become Microsoft’s iOS.

The seeds of this future started with Windows phone, which was a mobile platform, albeit one that was developed by what was internally referred to at the time as the “B team.” Meaning, those former Windows team members who were cast out of “Big” Windows when Sinofsky took over and ruined everything.

The new “Big” Windows team at the time brought us Windows 8, and while the less said about that nightmare the better, the one salient point for this conversation is that it brought us the first renditions of what we now call the Microsoft Store and Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps. Which is collectively a mobile platform, not a desktop platform.

That Microsoft has not evolved this platform quickly enough, that developers have not embraced this platform in numbers big enough, is sort of beside the point. This, combined with related initiatives like Windows 10 S, S mode added to all mainstream Windows product editions, Windows as a Service, Always Connected PCs, Windows 10 on ARM, and support for Progressive Web Apps, are all part of that continuum. How Microsoft plans to get us from here to there.

Taken in context, this push to force Windows 10 Mail app users to use Microsoft Edge in Windows 10 starting with version 1809 is, in fact, not a big deal. Is, in many ways, just a minor and somewhat innocuous change that few would notice. Left unsaid here is that the Mail app is terrible, is in many ways worse than Edge at what it does. And that someone with needs so simple that Mail works for them would probably use and be happy with Edge anyway.

But that’s how they get you. That is how democracies like Windows fall. Not in one fell swoop. But in tiny bites. Many of which come from within.

It is hard to argue that Microsoft’s goals for the platform are sound. Are almost certainly correct. Looking at Microsoft’s description of Windows 10 S today, you see many positives: It is streamlined and secure, and it offers superior performance. Microsoft Edge, it notes, is likewise “more secure than Chrome or Firefox.” Who could argue with such a thing? Nobody wants something that is more complex, less secure, and that offers worse performance, after all.

As I’ve pointed out many times, however, S mode, as it’s now called, is a goal, a destination. And what matters now is how we get from here (full Windows) to there (S mode). There are big pushes, like adding S mode to all Windows 10 product editions and porting the entire code base to ARM. And there are little initiatives, many of which usually fly under the radar. Like the removal of a default browser option in S mode and subtle but continual prompting to just use Microsoft Edge, Goddamnit.

This one is tough for me because I support Microsoft’s overreaching goal. If Windows is not modernized, is not made simpler and more secure, if the performance degradation issues that have plagued this platform for decades are not solved, it will fall.

But the strategy for getting us there is deeply flawed. It is alienating users, especially power users and enthusiasts like us who are Microsoft’s most important advocates. And if you lose the base, as they are in danger of doing so, Windows will likewise fall.

To be clear, the situation which led to this article is not a big deal. But any report that notes only that “Microsoft is forcing Windows 10 Mail users to use Edge for email links” betrays a lack of understanding of the full picture. There is a broader context at work here. And when you see this change within that context, you realize that this is just a single clue about the biggest issue facing Windows and its users today. It’s about survival, about fending off an extinction moment.

And that is how Microsoft justifies its actions internally. It must do whatever it can to save Windows. No matter the cost.