And in another entry from “The Public Relations department took a vacation”, Microsoft continues to make waves with Windows 10. As we all know, updates on the Home version of the operating system are mandatory. Beyond the data caps incidents, the new problem is the information accompanying these updates — or rather, its absence. What’s Redmond’s response? Only specific details will be provided for “significant updates”.
Imagine that your car breaks down and you take it to a garage. The next day, when you go to pick it up and ask what the problem was, the mechanic on duty hands you the keys and simply says “trust me”. Needless to say, the logical thing is that your car never enters that garage again, but something similar is happening with Windows 10 today. One thing we’ve noticed with each new version of Windows is that the information about its hotfixes is scarcer. The code assigned to the Knowledge Base should be enough to find detailed information about a patch, especially when it involves bug fixes and other critical security aspects. Now, it seems that we won’t even have that.
Let's take as an example the update published on August 11, KB3081436. In its official entry, Microsoft explains that four vulnerabilities were fixed, and patches for Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge were included. It also indicates that updates are cumulative, since KB3081436 contains all the adjustments we saw in KB3081424. So far, everything is perfect. However, KB3081438 appeared, replacing KB3081436, and its only line in the description speaks of “improvements to optimize functionality” of Windows 10. In other words, it’s a “trust me” from Microsoft. What changed between one package and another? What was wrong, and what was added or removed? Perhaps the average user feels very comfortable with this idea, letting Redmond remotely manage the security on their installation, but the issue here remains the lack of communication. Microsoft’s spokespeople justified the situation by saying that “depending on how significant the update is”, the company “might make” additional promotion of new features.
Granted: The enterprise environment has an extra safety valve because the Pro version of Windows 10 allows controlling the download and installation of updates. But forcing these updates “and” not providing details about them (beyond the possibility of delaying “upgrades”, which is different)… let’s say it doesn’t sound like a very reasonable practice. Maybe the update is harmless, something as innocuous as a problem in the Calculator interface… but we would still like to know about it. I don’t think we’re asking for too much.
