Microsoft, It’s Time for a Reliable Computing Initiative

Faced with rampant security issues in the recently-released Windows XP, Microsoft in 2002 announced its Trustworthy Computing Initiative and halted all major software development so that it could fix the problems. Today, Microsoft needs a similar effort, but for reliability. And the stakes are just as high.

I've often referred to the iPhone as the meteor that killed the Windows dinosaur, the extinction event that hobbled the once-greatest personal computing success story of all time. But today, the greatest threat to Windows isn't iPhone, or Android, or Chromebook, or whatever other bogeyman you care to name. It's Microsoft. Its Microsoft's hubris. It's Microsoft's inability to own up to the fact that is continually and routinely breaking a very important contract that it has with its customers.

And that contract is this. You, as the customer, will accept frequent and even spur-of-the-moment updates of all kinds to Windows 10 and to other recent software, whether you want or need them.

Left unstated is the second half of that contract, that Microsoft, as the supplier of this software, will not break anything as a result of delivering these updates whenever the mood strikes. That Microsoft will not disrupt its customers' work and productivity. That Microsoft will not take a perfectly-working computing environment and turn it into a minefield of potential problems, leaving its customers with a feeling of distrust and uncertainty.

In the United States at least, contract law comes with a few prerequisites. Among them are that both parties understand the terms of the contract, and that both parties agree to terms of the contract. And in addition to continually breaking Windows 10, Microsoft, I feel, is also violating both of these prerequisites. Perhaps it is time for some legal entity to examine this and the EULA (End User License Agreement) rules that Microsoft hides behind though they have never been adequately tested in court.

Perhaps. But we don't need the courts. We just need for Microsoft to do the right thing.

And the issue here is simple enough: How many things need to go wrong before Microsoft owns up to the issues, explains to customers what is happening, and provides a plan---and a timeline---for fixing those problems?

Windows is arguably the most complex piece of software that's ever been deployed to users at this volume. And yet Microsoft has taken it on themselves to update and improve it regularly over time as if it were a simple mobile platform. More important, Microsoft has proven itself to be unable to successfully do so. Again, and again, and again.

The rampant issues that have come to light in the weeks following the Anniversary Update---which, make no mistake, is in fact a major new Windows version, that would have in the past been sold and marketed as such---are indicative of the problems Microsoft causes.

But it's not just Windows. In the past year, Microsoft's customers have suffered through a...