After an inexcusable 6-week standoff, Microsoft has finally re-released the Windows 10 October 2018 Update to the public. But only one thing is clear after all the silence: Microsoft has not learned from its past mistakes. And it is doomed to keep repeating them going forward.
In Microsoft's view of the world, there's nothing to see here. It continues to claim that each subsequent Windows 10 Feature Update---each of which is really a new version of Windows---is more reliable and more successfully-deployed than those in the past.
In this view, Microsoft's harebrained scheme to upgrade Windows 10 twice per year, a system it calls Windows as a Service (WaaS), isn't just working. It's getting better and better.
But that's not true.
This year, Microsoft has had to delay the release of both Feature Updates by several weeks. The second delay, for the October 2018 Update, embarrassingly came after it shipped publicly, an event even Microsoft's Mike Fortin admits is of historical significance.
Two years ago, following a similarly terrible launch for what was then called the Anniversary Update, Microsoft engaged in the same kind of publicity stunt that it is now undertaking. It carts out Mike Fortin, a decades-long alumni of the NT years, as a show of adult responsibility. And it claims that, yes, mistakes were made. But no worries, folks. We're going to change our ways.
We've heard this before. What Microsoft is really doing is what the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) does as part of what I call "security theater": It addresses the problems of the past but does nothing to materially impact problems that may---will---arrive in the future.
And remember, Microsoft solved these problems in 2016. It changed its ways.
In early September 2016, I was told that Microsoft took its customer frustrations with the Anniversary Update very seriously. It understood that all of the issues that dogged that release had been uncovered during testing but had still not been fixed for the public release. And it claimed that its staged rollout approach was working because it was able to pause that rollout when customers out in the world experienced problems. The system, the process, I was told, was working.
Sound familiar? It should. Microsoft is making the exact same claims today, over two years later. But they are making exactly the same mistakes, too: Problems were found during testing, they were ignored, and Microsoft shipped a Windows 10 Feature Update to the public regardless.
In responding to the Anniversary Update embarrassments of 2016, Microsoft told me about "super edgy cases," "putting new systems in place," and "catching things across the spectrum as early as possible." It's using exactly the same language today, folks. Because the problem is exactly the same.
Microsoft, I was told in 2016, had increased confidence that it could achieve new levels of quality. That it would no longer "cross its fingers and push the...
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