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Microsoft: No More 'Patch Tuesday' For Windows 10 Home Users 141

Posted by Soulskill from the no-more-patchy-coverage dept.
citpyrc writes: According to the Register, Microsoft is making some changes to how it rolls out updates in Windows 10. Home users will receive updates as they come out, rather than queueing them all up on "patch Tuesday." Business users will have the option to set their own update cycle, so they can see if any of the patches accidentally break anything for home users before trying them out. There will also be an optional peer-to-peer updating mechanism for Windows 10. Microsoft announced a service called Advanced Threat Analytics, which employs various machine learning techniques to identify malware on a network. As a premium service, top-dollar customers can pay for Microsoft to monitor black-hat forums and alert the company if any of its employees' identities are stolen.
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Microsoft: No More 'Patch Tuesday' For Windows 10 Home Users More

Microsoft: No More 'Patch Tuesday' For Windows 10 Home Users

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  • On all devices that like to auto update.

    Especially Android, where the motto "change for change's sake" seems to be the MO of many devs ( Page, Brin, and Zuck boy, I'm looking at you).

    • Re: Always turn off auto update anyway (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You'll probably not be able to turn it off, just like so many other forced things you'll must have on your system (one drive, Skype, store, weather, maps, etc).

    • Re:Always turn off auto update anyway (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 05, 2015 @04:36PM (#49624175)

      Not sure how Win10 will turn out once it's final, but in the preview editions, you can't turn off autoupdate. You only control your reboot schedule, somewhat. If MS pushes out a patch, you either disconnect from the Internet or you download it, eventually. If you have to roll back a bad driver that you got this way, it'll keep making you redownload and reinstall the driver, again and again, and there's no practical way to stop it without some serious PowerShell hackery that might break Windows Update entirely.

      It's one of Win10's worst features to date.

    • On all devices that like to auto update.

      Yup. Patch Tuesday is followed by Bluescreen Wednesday, "We're looking into it" Thursday, "We've been unable to replicate it here" Friday, "No wait a sec..." Saturday, and "We think we've identified an issue on some machines" Sunday. By removing that nice fixed timeline, users will have to record when each update is pushed out, wait a week or so for the third rev of the update that may actually resolve the issues to be released, and then manually install it. Ugh.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Business customers will simply get updates after 'home users'. Home users will be crash test dummies who will simply be blamed for configuring their machines poorly or using it insecurely. M$ is running into harsher more competitive and demanding business market and hence is working to look better for them, so the monopoly market becomes a crash test dummy market (with all their machines reporting problems back, basically paying to be lab rats).

  • Interesting (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It's interesting how this habit by Microsoft has become embedded in the IT operations of many companies.

    It will be cool to see if what the effects are (ie. what breaks) with this change since it's "process" change much more than an a technical change. Often, that's where the biggest challenges are since dependencies and other factors are often invisible at first glance.

    • It's interesting how this habit by Microsoft has become embedded in the IT operations of many companies.

      I always thought it was the IT operations of many big companies that precipitated "Patch Tuesday"

  • Are you sure that option isn't already on? (Score:3)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Tuesday May 05, 2015 @02:44PM (#49623293)

    >> Home users will receive updates as they come out

    Are you sure that option isn't already on? It seems that a couple of my older Windows boxes already spend most of their cycles on downloading, processing (scanning) and installing countless updates.

  • random breakage (Score:1, Insightful)

    by roc97007 ( 608802 )

    > Home users will receive updates as they come out, rather than queueing them all up on "patch Tuesday."

    So random breakage, then, rather than breakage on a particular weekday. Sucks to be a home user.

    > so they can see if any of the patches accidentally break anything for home users before trying them out.

    "if"? It's inevitable.

    • > Home users will receive updates as they come out, rather than queueing them all up on "patch Tuesday."

      So random breakage, then, rather than breakage on a particular weekday. Sucks to be a home user.

      I'd be surprised if you can't still set the auto-update to work once a week (or whatever you want). It's just that from now on the patches will be sent out constantly.

      • In the current Windows 10 beta, the only option you appear to have under the setting Choose How Updates Are Installed is "Automatic" and "Notify to schedule restart". It appears you have no choice but to get the patches as they're released, with the only exception being if you indicate you're on a metered connection (possibly useful loophole there).

        I'll admit, I was a bit surprised by this as well. I understand the logic of pushing patches out as soon as they're ready to home users. "Patch Tuesday" was d

        • In the beta, yes. That's because they don't want people bitching about a feature that was fixed or changed 6 weeks ago.
          Nothing in that article suggests that patches are 'forced' on users, only that they are available when they are done, rather than once a month.

        • Re:random breakage (Score:4, Insightful)

          by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Tuesday May 05, 2015 @06:16PM (#49624791) Homepage

          Yeah, no kidding. I predict Microsoft is 100% guaranteed to mess up a LOT of machines. I don't trust *any* vendor's patches on day one, and Microsoft even less.

          If Microsoft thinks they're not going to be pilloried by saying "fuck it, we're updating your machine and rebooting now" they're idiots.

          If Microsoft just goes ahead and does them, they're going to create a support nightmare as they'll fuck up machines left and right.

          When will Microsoft learn that there is a reason why we don't trust them?

          Sorry guys, but I'll apply patched and reboot my computer when I choose to, not when some idiot in Redmond decides for me. it's my property, not yours.

    • Re:random breakage (Score:4, Interesting)

      by roc97007 ( 608802 ) on Tuesday May 05, 2015 @04:40PM (#49624205) Journal

      Score "troll", seriously? Who among us here hasn't had to fix breakage from a drive-by update?

  • Excitedly waiting for my computer to break (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 05, 2015 @02:47PM (#49623317)

    Business users will have the option to set their own update cycle, so they can see if any of the patches accidentally break anything for home users before trying them out.

    Looking at the The Register article, apparently Terry Myerson himself actually said the above. So home users are now officially crash test dummies for Microsoft's quality assurance? Cool, buckle me up.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday May 05, 2015 @02:48PM (#49623323)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • "Business users will have the option to set their own update cycle"

    I've had that for a decade now. WSUS has been pretty easy to manage.

  • I was going to dissect the security service for not taking customer data importantly, but the linked articles have no mention of "Microsoft monitoring black-hat sites for employee credentials" at all. I don't know where the Slashdot article editor got that.

    Advanced threat analytics is from Microsoft's acquision of Aorato last November, who's main product protected against internal threats by warning of non-typical login activity:

    A compromised employee's mobile device exposes the organization, through Act

  • Some 300 million PCs were shipped world wide [seattletimes.com]. What fraction of it is home PCs? How many people are still buying a PC for their homes? While 1 billion android devices [cnet.com] shipped and another half a billion iOS devices were shipped last year. More gaming consoles were probably sold than home PCs. Further home PCs are on the low end of the price range, often cheaper than smart phones. So if you count dollar volume of home PC sales, the picture looks dismal for home PCs.

    During the hayday people bought window

    • It will and it won't be a tablet or chrome book or netbook that replaces it, it won't even be an iPad.

      It'll be your smartphone itself. It'll be your work computer and your home computer all on one device with a bluetooth or some other wifi connection to pass video to a full sized monitor keyboard and mouse.

      • It will and it won't be a tablet or chrome book or netbook that replaces it, it won't even be an iPad.

        It'll be your smartphone itself. It'll be your work computer and your home computer all on one device with a bluetooth or some other wifi connection to pass video to a full sized monitor keyboard and mouse.

        Aint matching my dual screen monitors and my raid 0 ssd and i7. Yes I am an IT professional, but others who need real work done at home (the original IBM PC users) will keep it run office and a real screen.

        No a crappy docking station with the mobile version of office won't suffice. At that price you might as well get the real PC.

        However, Windows 8.1 is great on a surface or tablet and Windows 10 can do both and run ported Android and IOS apps. My guess is it won't be phone vs pc. It will be one where a real

        • I think there's three markets here: (and my numbers are complete bullshit)

          1. Joe Public, needs a web browser and perhaps a word processor (90% of the old PC market)
          Solution: a cellphone, perhaps with docking station and external monitor (TV)

          2. Advanced office user and 50% of developers and gamers (9% of the old PC market)
          Solution: Something like the Surface tablets, with docking station and external monitor

          3) Real power users and gamers with more money than sense (1% of the old PC market)
          Solution: Workstati

          • Still number 1 and 2 need a filesystem. Yes the newer office tries to save to Ondrive by default but still. Even Joe Public does Turbotax and needs a real PDF saved and not gone tomorrow on his Android phone.

            A good keyboard is good too.

            PC gaming market is growing believe it or not according to a statistic by maximumpc.com. Basically the newer consoles are gimped with atom like cpus and a growing millennial generation. It is growing too as developers and video users do need real towers.

            Also it is nice to hav

            • Still number 1 and 2 need a filesystem. Yes the newer office tries to save to Ondrive by default but still. Even Joe Public does Turbotax and needs a real PDF saved and not gone tomorrow on his Android phone.

              Agreed, and this is where Windows and Ubuntu mobile devices have an edge over Android and iOS.

              PC gaming market is growing believe it or not according to a statistic by maximumpc.com. Basically the newer consoles are gimped with atom like cpus and a growing millennial generation. It is growing too as developers and video users do need real towers.

              I agree, but the question is really how big is that part of the market?

              Also it is nice to have storage options to hook into cameras,phones, and external disks.

              And again, this is where Windows and Ubuntu mobile devices win and Android/iOS loses.

              This is a fad like the netbooks.

              And this is where I disagree, the tablet market is established as BOTH a replacement and an augmentation to the PC and I think it will grow as the power and capabilities of these devices grows. (Note that Microsoft is no longer losing money on the Surface.)

              Not to say tablets will vanish, but rather they do not constitute a takeover. It is like the truck and SUV phase that started in the 1990s. Remember? Do we not have cars anymore? No we have both.

              Which

          • If you're a photographer or at all into video editing (Photoshop, AE, Premier, FCPX, Davinci Resolve, etc)....you'd damned sure bet you'll still be using a PC for your real work.

            I can bog down a core i7 with 16GB ram, with a SSD external drive for dedicated cache, etc.....in seconds with one decent render or Photoshop project with 4-8+ Smart Objects open.

            And more and more...if you are even a decent hobbits photographer, you depend on post to do your magic and you can overload a computer pretty quickly ev

            • I certainly agree with all that, but I also think that there's a spectrum there as well. Not all hobbiest photographers will need a real workstation, though many certainly will. Are they in that 1%?

              Or perhaps my numbers are off and it's more like 75% 20% 5%?

              In any case, the vast majority of people I know who are not software developers or visual artists could do all of their computing on a Suface, and certainly 80% of them don't do much more than web browse.

        • However, Windows 8.1 is great on a surface or tablet

          And, quite honestly, by the time you disable the Romper Room crap, get a classic shell, and set it up to feel like a more classic Windows desktop ... it's absolutely fine on a desktop as well. But 100% of the stuff they have for tablets is pretty much garbage on a desktop if you do actual work on your PC. I utterly loathe the metro interface, and gave basically turned it off. So all the money Microsoft is spending "innovating" seems like garbage to me.

          a

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by batkiwi ( 137781 )

        Windows 10 on phones will do this exact thing. Google "continuum windows phone 10" for demo videos etc.

        It's pretty cool.

    • I don't have to buy a home PC. I've already got one. And I have no plans to get rid of it, since neither iOS nor Android is even close to replacing it.

    • Home PC's are going no where.

      No my phone is not a real PC.

      What is happening is PC's are for the working people again and professionals and not just those who want to access facebook and browse the internet. Second, as we saw for the first time with WindowsXP refusing to die last year is that pcs are now stable and fast enough for light work use so why upgrade?

      Poor people who are not educated who want to twitter with their friends may want a tablet and a nice phablet phone, but my pc is not going anywhere. O

    • Now... not many are buying home PCs.

      Because most people already have a good desktop or laptop PC at home. PCs do not change as much as they used to, so you do not need to buy a new one (or even upgrade your current one) every year like you used to (unless you play games and really want to have as high FPS as possible). A PC now lasts for many years for common tasks like web browsing.

      On the other hand, tablets and phones change a lot, while the hardware may not change as much (or rather, as noticeably), you cannot most of the time upgrade to a

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vux984 ( 928602 )

      Maybe one day eventually. But students and people who actually do any work are still buying them. Usually in the form of a laptop, but often desktops if they value power and performance and longevity over portability.

      There is a large exodus sure... grandma might not need a PC now that she has a tablet. But nobody is giong to write a 10 page essay on a tablet if they dont have to.

      The keyboard can be worked around with bluetooth... but the ability to multi-task-- collaborate with you friends in skype, while h

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by armanox ( 826486 )
      They aren't disappearing, which is why the sales numbers look the way they do. Most people are satisfied with their home computer and won't replace it if they don't have to.

  • So can set updates to install a few weeks after they get rolled out to everyone else. That way next time there is an update that hoses people systems like last August's I can find out before I get burnt.

  • This change is for home users, and as far as I know, most home users already have automatic updates set on their machines. The only difference is that it won't be delayed to next Tuesday.

    For those like me who manually check for updates every month or so, nothing will change. That is, as long as we can still decide which update to install.

  • " so they can see if any of the patches accidentally break anything for home users before trying them out."

  • Things may have improved, but you still have to reboot for far too many Windows updates for a daily update cycle to be anything other than frustrating as hell for most people. Microsoft used to be hated for that before "Patch Tuesday" was started. I guess they never learned their lesson, and are going to drag the public kicking and screaming back into the daily boot cycle.

    What a shame they couldn't have learned their lesson and either started issuing patches that don't require reboots for the most triv

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by msobkow ( 48369 )

      Fanbois downvoting, eh?

      Have you ever bothered to read the notes on Windows 7 updates? You'd be disgusted to realize how many of them "may require a system restart". Over half. WAY over half.

  • That's oh so nice of Microsoft to use the home users as beta test sites before the patches are released to businesses.

  • Oh joy. Now I get to reboot the computer a whole bunch of times a month.

    I really wish Microsoft would figure out how to write an operating system that doesn't require a reboot for every insignificant update. I'm sure the Linux people would be happy to teach them.

  • Patch Tuesday was flawed (Score:3)

    by Cro Magnon ( 467622 ) on Tuesday May 05, 2015 @03:57PM (#49623867) Homepage Journal

    The big problem with Patch Tuesday was that most exploits from the following Wednesday on wouldn't get fixed for a month. MS should get rid of that.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by fisted ( 2295862 )

      Yeah, it's really a shame that there's only one Tuesday per month. If only they had picked a different day...

  • Oh, no... (Score:3)

    by alvieboy ( 61292 ) on Tuesday May 05, 2015 @04:20PM (#49624039) Homepage

    So... they will have to reboot daily from this point onwards ?
    And wait for extra 15 minutes before leaving work ?

    Oh god. Bring back patch Tuesday.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      So... they will have to reboot daily from this point onwards ?
      And wait for extra 15 minutes before leaving work ?

      Oh god. Bring back patch Tuesday.

      Thank you Google, for your inflexible 90 day deadlines that expired a couple of days BEFORE patch Tuesday.

      You can bet this came out directly because of those issues that Google published a few days early This way Microsoft can have patches ready ahead of time before the deadline, instead of having to wait for patch Tuesday.

      Google: FYI, Windows users probably make

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by q4Fry ( 1322209 )
        I take issue with your "people selling" phrase. It is totally out of line!

        The word you are looking for is "fewer."

        ...and therefore fewer people to sell.

    • Oh FFS its mind blowing how you can be on slashdot and still be too stupid to figure out that you can just switch to manual updates. This is seriously a problem for you?

  • Take a fresh install of windows, update, restart, update, restart,....
    On some machines it says "this update couldn't be installed", after a fresh windows installation.
    For win 8 you have to turn to the shitty shop (or is it called market?) to install win 8.1
    Windows Update is a horrible nightmare, to my disappointment they still don't kill it and make it better.

    btw, has anybody tried updating a windows phone? What a f*ck. "downloading update", "preparing update", "updating", "restarting", "after update

  • LOL Microsoft (Score:2, Troll)

    by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *
    Windows 10. I have a, well, call him a friend, who works at Microsoft and has been forced to deal with the Windows 10 "beta" on his work machine for quite a while now. Apparently it's hard to keep productivity up when the damned thing keeps blue screening all the time. His opinion to me was that Windows 10 was the biggest piece of suckage Microsoft has produced to date. I bought some popcorn and am looking forward to release.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 )
      Conversely, my Win 10 test box has bluescreened exactly zero times. Had the preview installed since day one.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by JazzLad ( 935151 )
        I was running Win10 on an old Core2duo laptop until about a week ago & never once had a crash (even on older hardware). My problem was it eventually wound up being very unproductive. In Win7, if I need to ping something, I click Start (logo, whatever) & type cmd, enter, ping (IP), enter. Easy-peasy. Win10 took away typing things in Start (or perhaps this was an issue with my own install, YMMV), you have to click the superfluous search button next to start. Except that stopped working too. No w

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by batkiwi ( 137781 )

          On my windows 10 box running 10074 right this second:

          -hit start button on keyboard
          -type "ping -t 192.168.0.1" and hit enter
          result: command prompt window with ping running against 192.168.0.1

          -close that window
          -hit start button on keyboard
          -type "cmd" and hit enter
          result: command prompt window pops up at c:\users\myusername
          -type "ping (IP)" and hit enter
          result: pinging

          Exactly the same as in windows 7. The only difference is that it is ALSO running a search in the background and popping shit into the results

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by JazzLad ( 935151 )
            Well, that's why I prefaced that it could have been my install - that is good news, thanks :)

            Still didn't feel completely ready for Primetime (yet, anyway), but 7 was good, I have hopes for 10.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by batkiwi ( 137781 )

              To be fair to you, it doesn't LOOK like it will work due to the search results UI popping up. Just hit enter and I just about promise it will work!

    • You don't need a "friend" inside Microsoft to actually try out the beta, you know. Anyone can sign up, download it, and use it. Millions of people are using it right now, and we've heard NOTHING about such stability problems. Buy all the popcorn you like. Windows 10 may have it's faults, but instability is not going to be one of them.

  • My IT shop waits at least a few weeks, if not months, before deploying updates. For critical security updates they usually wait about 2 weeks after the patch tuesday that it comes out on. For everything else, they eventually roll them out, but it can take a very, very long time.

    I'm not sure exactly what kind of testing they're doing, or if they are just waiting for users to download the patch and see if it breaks things (resulting in a rollback from MSFT), but we never have the latest and greatest anyway.

    Ho

  • Back to the days of Windows 98? Or do they plan to stop requiring a reboot for every stupid little patch they release...

  • Four mentions of Windows and seven mentions of Microsoft on the main page :)

  • "Business users will have the option to set their own update cycle, so they can see if any of the patches accidentally break anything for home users before trying them out."

    Stripping away the spin, updates will come out as soon as they're ready (which is probably a good thing on the whole), and business users will have to test and deploy them at that time, whenever it happens, rather than having a monthly scheduled day to do so.

    That "option to set their own update cycle" spin is nonsense. If you do that, e

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday May 05, 2015 @09:41PM (#49626027)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

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