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For months, Microsoft has been stepping upwardly the pressure on users to upgrade to Windows ten. The company has multiple reasons for doing this — it wants to prevent a long tail of Windows 7 or 8.1 users from dragging out its support cycles (like to what happened to Windows XP), information technology'south prominently pledged to hitting one billion users on Windows x, and it undoubtedly wants to push the market every bit a whole towards its new revenue model, which is much less focused on Windows 10 license sales, and more about advertising and in-Os content sales.

In keeping with this goal, Microsoft has steadily made information technology more difficult to opt out of Windows x upgrades. The company has reworked its installation messages to imply that consumers couldn't opt out of upgrading, only clicking on the red "Ten" at the top right of those messages still canceled the procedure. According to reports streaming in from multiple sources online, Microsoft has inverse this beliefs. Clicking the X does nothing to cease the upgrade process at present.

GWX-New

Clicking the X in this dialog doesn't actually abolish anything.

Last week, ZDNet hailed these changes as a positive step for Microsoft, since there'south now a "Click Here" link to cancel the upgrade as opposed to no clear method of doing and then. The problem is, Microsoft just inverse ane of the core behaviors of the GWX.exe awarding without telling anyone it did so. PC Globe's Brad Chacos wrote about how his wife was caught upward in the upgrade, and reports take been coming in from Reddit equally well.

Literal standards vs. perceived dishonesty

Microsoft would undoubtedly argue that this modify isn't actually a change at all. In that location are many, many modern applications that don't automatically exit when y'all click the "Ten" button — and Microsoft's formal guidelines equally far back as Windows 95 instructed developers that they should treat the 10 as a "Close" push button, not an "Exit" push button. The problem is, X generally is interpreted as exit, and there are plenty of Microsoft applications, including Office, Internet Explorer, and Border, that still follow this behavior.

In other words: Microsoft has technically done cipher wrong with flip-flopping on treating the X as a "Close this dialog" selection as opposed to a "Abolish this procedure" pick. It can even argue that it'south now operating according to its own all-time practices, especially since GWX.exe runs in the background anyway unless you lot kill it via GWX Command Panel or Job Director (and information technology restarts itself if all you use is Chore Manager, so not much luck there.)

The problem is, humans who apply Windows aren't devoted consumers of Microsoft's best practices as elucidated in UX development manuals, and clicking on the X to abolish the upgrade was the proper way to avert the earlier Windows 10 upgrade notifications.

Win10

The old version of the notification didn't have a mode to opt out, except for the 10.

In this context, it'due south very hard to telephone call what Microsoft has washed anything but disingenuous. The company has swapped one behavior for another, likely counting on the fact that people would wake upward and find themselves running Windows 10 after they thought they'd disabled this from happening.

Yes, treating the Ten like an exit or cancel button is against Microsoft'southward recommended UX practices, simply so is dramatically overhauling the beliefs of application buttons without informing the consumer that things have changed.

It's time for Microsoft to step dorsum and consider the long-term consequences of its actions. In the beginning, GWX.exe served a useful purpose — it told users that they were eligible for free Windows 10 notifications, and information technology communicated when PCs were ready to update. Over the by x months, GWX.exe has become an invasive application. It has adopted malware-like obfuscation tactics designed to flim-flam people into choosing an upgrade they didn't want, including changing the function of icons and hiding the pick not to upgrade.

Making the opt-out button slightly more prominent while changing the office of X is no comeback at all. This is an example of a nighttime pattern — a design congenital into an application designed to trick you lot into making sure choices, similar to how adware will sometimes flip the "No" and "Yes" dialog boxes, or use registration choices that require you to check a box if you lot desire to opt out of something as opposed to opting into it.

The people who wanted to upgrade to Windows ten have already done and then. The people now beingness captured by these dragnets are those who haven't wanted to do so, and forcing them into scenarios where they mistakenly upgrade anyway will non create feelings of warmth and joy. What you're really building is a grouping of users who will either fight to hold on to Windows 7 / 8.one with both hands or volition shift to either Bone Ten or Linux.

Forcing people into upgrades past tricking them is perhaps the worst way to build support for Windows 10 we tin imagine. It'due south fourth dimension to knock this off and let people who choose not to upgrade become their ain way.