Microsoft, Transparency, and You (Premium)

After pointlessly making us wait for months to discover what Windows 10 version 19H2 was all about, Microsoft talked up its “commitment to transparency.”

Look, I’m glad that Windows 10 version 19H2 worked out the way it did. And that’s true both personally and in my self-appointed role as Microsoft customer/community advocate. As I noted last night in A Windows 10 Field Guide Update, Microsoft’s decision to turn 19H2 into the Service Pack/R2-type release that Mary Jo Foley and others have been calling for will help me get the book caught up and, better yet, keep it that way for a long, long time to come.

More important—I realize this isn’t just about me—Microsoft is, for now at least, doing the right thing for its customers. And that’s a phrase I haven’t been able to use a lot with regards to Windows 10, at least not since the initial release of this system. Windows 10 is awesome in many ways and is, of course, the best Windows version ever, yadda-yadda-yadda. But it also has problems big and small. The biggest of which includes its egregious and ever-expanding in-box advertising, in-box crapware, and non-disableable telemetry, in which your PC is silently sending usage data back to Microsoft whether you want that or not.

But the biggest problem with Windows 10 has always been the fiction that Microsoft calls “Windows as a Service.” In today’s era of Fake News, the very phrase “Windows as a Service” as changed, unsubtly, to “Windows is a service.” (Emphasis mine.)

No, Microsoft. It is not.

In truth, Windows is the exact opposite of a service. It is a gigantic, complex legacy codebase that is overstuffed with decades of continual changes, many long since abandoned, and is bursting at the seams, crying out for a replacement. It is the technological equivalent of Naples, Italy, a place where mountains of garbage cover the wonderful history hidden beneath.

Windows has also become the lens through which we can view Microsoft’s jealousy of the companies and platforms that have surpassed it in the past decade and a half. Specifically, the adoption of a mobile apps platform and store which make absolutely no sense in a desktop environment—now, finally, killed off for good—and, even worse, this WaaS nonsense. By which Microsoft could emulate the way in which mobile platforms like Android and iOS are updated.

With one wrinkle, of course.

Like Android and iOS, Windows 10 receives scheduled monthly security and bug fix updates; Microsoft calls these quality updates. And to be fair, we might credit Microsoft for inventing this concept, sort of: Patch Tuesday, after all, has been a thing for quite a while. (I don’t get to describe Microsoft inventions very much, so enjoy that.)

But Microsoft has exploded the updating scheme popularized by mobile platforms in two ways. First, the firm has increasingly started issuing quality updates multiple times each month and not just once. The very notion of Patch Tuesday now seems rather quaint

Worse—much worse—Microsoft has one-upped Android and iOS by releasing major Windows 10 version upgrades twice per year, instead of once. (This, despite the relative maturity of Windows and the complete ambivalence of most of its users.)

Microsoft calls these upgrades “feature updates” to soften the blow, psychologically. But make no mistake: Moving from Windows 10 version 1809 to 1903 is just as dangerous, frail, and problematic as was upgrading from Windows 2000 to Windows XP back in the day. The difference is that those older upgrades were celebrated with public events and worldwide news stories. Today, Microsoft tries to hide its too-aggressive upgrade strategy by noting the changes in unprofessionally-written Insider blog posts and by branding them as is they were innocuous changes.

And then 19H2 happened.

Windows 10 version 19H2 is exactly what Microsoft should be doing each year: Issuing one major version upgrade in the spring and then a minor, cumulative, service pack refresh in the fall that is aimed at the longer-term support lifecycles required by its biggest business customers. It will arrive with no new features at all, compared to previous feature updates, which arrived with most superfluous new features, often tons of them.

I like that. A lot. I want this to become the way it is going forward. It’s better for all of Microsoft’s customers. All of them, pretty much literally.

There’s just one problem.

In a blog post describing Microsoft’s thinking on Windows 10 version 19H2, John Cable literally starts off by noting the firm’s “commitment to transparency.” And I’m sorry, Mr. Cable. But when it comes to Windows 10, and to version 19H2 specifically, Microsoft has not been transparent in the slightest. In fact, it has overtly worked to hide its plans, we now know nonsensically, and to publicly belittle those who questioned what was happening.

Here’s what happened.

In early April, Microsoft suddenly changed how the Windows Insider Program’s Fast ring worked and moved testers not to the next Windows 10 release, 19H2, but instead to the one after that, 20H2, it did so without any explanation at all. “We will begin releasing 19H2 bits to Insiders later this spring and will talk more about what that will look like in the near future,” Microsoft’s Brandon LeBlanc wrote at the time.

So the clock ticked. Build 2019, the obvious time for this discussion, came and went in May without any word. The Insider program released more and more mostly-featureless 20H2 builds. And finally, June 21 arrived. The end of spring. And the beginning of summer. And how did Microsoft celebrate the expiration of the time frame it previously promised?

By mocking those wondering what it was doing.

“Our definition of ‘spring’ doesn’t necessarily match to exactly when spring ends and summer begins,” that same Mr. LeBlanc wrote on Twitter in response to a perfectly legitimate question from one of Microsoft’s customers. “It’ll happen when we’re ready. We’re not operating against a deadline. Call it a ‘delay’ if you want.”

This statement is even worse than it may first appear. Every sentence he wrote is a lie or a misdirection. Collectively, this statement tells the world that Microsoft does not give a crap about its customers or their needs.

Our definition of “spring” doesn’t necessarily match to exactly when spring ends and summer begins. As I described in 19H2gate (Premium), this is yet another example of Microsoft making a public promise and then later pretending it didn’t do so. In the Windows 10 era, the Windows 10 “team”—I’ll use the same qualifier here as LeBlanc did with the well-understood term “spring”—has done this far too many times.

It’ll happen when we’re ready. (Emphasis mine.) This regards Microsoft explaining what’s happening with 19H2. That’s an acceptable phrase when you’re talking about a software release, like a game, that doesn’t need to ship on a particular schedule. (“We’ll ship it when it’s ready.”) But Microsoft itself established the twice-yearly feature update release schedule, and it has named these releases to match their expected completion dates of March and September. (It changed to the H1, H2 monikers this year to avoid a Windows 10 version 2003, which would be confusing given Windows Server 2003.) LeBlanc said in early April that Microsoft would communicate what 19H2 was by June 21. And it has now confirmed, incidentally, that it expects to ship 19H2 in September. But Microsoft, for no good reason at all, allowed three full months to elapse before announcing that—surprise!—19H2 is a feature update with absolutely no new features. Hilarious, on one level. But “It’ll happen when we’re ready” is a shitty thing to say to a customer who simply expected you to do what you said you would.

We’re not operating against a deadline. As noted above, Microsoft is the one who established that deadline in the form of the WaaS twice-annual (March, September) release schedule. Microsoft is very much operating against a deadline. For that, and for the “later this spring” and “in the near future” promises you made publicly in early April.

Call it a “delay” if you want. Oh, I did. Because “delay” is the nicest way to describe the pointless deception and lack of transparency that occurred here. “Microsoft delays Windows 19H2, pretends public statements about schedules aren’t real and don’t matter to its customers,” I tweeted when I first read LeBlanc’s horrifically insensitive response to Microsoft’s customers. “Great job communicating, as always.”

But isn’t just about a tweet. John Cable’s comments about “transparency” are every bit as offensive as LeBlanc’s tweet. And this isn’t the first time that Microsoft used this term, transparency, to describe how things were changing with Windows 10 updates this year. Back in early April—there’s that date again—Mike Fortin wrote that Microsoft was “adding new features [to Windows 10 starting with version 1903] that will empower users with control and transparency around when updates are installed.”

These features included a new way of handling how feature updates are installed, and that is indeed a big and welcome improvement. But he also said that Microsoft was “continuing to invest in clear and regular communications with [its] customers on status and when there are issues.”

And that is exactly how Microsoft failed us between that exact blog post and this week’s belated announcements regarding 19H2. There were no communications at all in the interim, aside from LeBlanc’s terrible tweet, certainly nothing clear or regular.

“Our goal is to provide the best, transparent Windows update experience,” he concluded in that early April blog post. That’s a good goal. But Microsoft should further strive to provide the best, most transparent communication with its customers as well. As I’ve noted so many times, there is no such thing as too much transparency when it comes to this kind of thing. But Microsoft has done exactly the opposite. Even worse, it continues to not acknowledge or apologize for this behavior, all while touting its supposed “commitment to transparency.”

Microsoft, that’s not fair to any of us. Your customers deserve better.