Fair point, but at least when Canonical was doing it it was just searching Amazon for something relevant to your query. All of the outrage was that doing this meant that Amazon would get searches for stuff like local file names that presented an information leak. Canonical also proxied these searches so Amazon didn't actually get enough information to tie a search back to a particular user.

As for Apple though, I disagree with a lot of their design decisions but Apple hasn't introduced Spyware, Adware, and Malware into any of their products. Their walled garden philosophy is crappy but they aren't doing what Microsoft has been doing.

Microsoft isn't injecting adware, spyware or malware into the OS either.

Telemetry can't be completely turned off in Windows 10. It's software that phones home what the user is doing without the user's consent or knowledge of what is being sent home. That's literally the definition of spyware. Windows 10 also bundles advertisements with no way for the user to opt out of them. Windows 10 was also installed on millions of computers without the user's consent. Again, textbook definition of adware. When GWX was being intentionally blocked Microsoft decided to evade that block by ignoring the registry key that used to be able to block it. Microsoft also promised that they wouldn't try to force the upgrade or GWX on domain joined computers, that was a lie. They also said that Windows 10 would be opt in only and that they wouldn't upgrade without consent. They also lied about that, unless you believe Microsoft obtained consent by the user not pressing "no thanks" and ignoring the GWX spam once.

Even just the upgrade itself broke more than hundreds of thousands of computers. Sure, you can blame that on drivers or sketchy hardware but the bottom line is that Microsoft still upgraded those computers and caused them to become nonfunctional. Even after the upgrade, Microsoft allowed users to revert back to the previous version of Windows but I've personally seen that fail on three separate occasions.

I'm not just using hyperbole here, Microsoft really did do all of that and more with Windows 10.

And if you doubt the users who say that it upgraded when they weren't at the computer and that they never consented, there are plenty of cases of isolated machines like HVAC computers that didn't even have a display or input hooked up to them that broke because Windows 10 was installed. How exactly did Microsoft get consent for a computer that had literally zero input devices and no display?

You're picking edge cases of machines that you can't/couldn't verify and speaking in half truths.

Yes, Microsoft had some updates that updated some machines but they fixed that so it wouldn't. Yes, MS mad some silly assumptions to cache the update - that isn't what this is about.

THis is about the fact that the HVAC company SHOULD have upgraded. They should have known their outdated/unsupported OS constitutes a security risk and THEY should have corrected it and not assumed to leave it up to users who have/had no clue.

Windows 10 "Redstone 2" allows you to disable the supposed "spyware" that isn't really spyware when compared against any other OS out there. There are also easily abundant scripts to completely remove the concept of the store and anything attached to it from ever starting.. luckily you can do that on Windows 10 and pretend being isolated is what matters more than being current..

As for the ads, its supid easy to turn off the notifications. There is this "Notification center" where when you see the Office Notification - just click "don't show notifications for this app" and its gone. And if you see "Recommend apps" in start bar, click click and disable show recommended apps.

Both are dumb defaults, we can agree on that, but they're there and they can be removed/disabled. It's not that hard.

>You're picking edge cases of machines that you can't/couldn't verify

I've personally seen a computer that was upgraded to windows 10 after being left on over the weekend. The user claims that they never clicked on the upgrade and seeing as tons of other people reported the same thing I'm inclined to believe them. Fun fact, rolling back the Windows 10 update frequently doesn't work. The longer you wait after upgrading, the less chance you have of it working IMHO. After seeing this, I figured I'd test it myself and I booted up an old netbook that I had lying around and after running updates on it, it started installing windows 10.

>Yes, Microsoft had some updates that updated some machines but they fixed that so it wouldn't. Yes, MS mad some silly assumptions to cache the update

I've yet to see any reasonable explanation as to how that could possibly have been unintentional. MS just started trying to excuse their BS behavior by lying about what they did and trying to justify it with "but it's an upgrade".

>THis is about the fact that the HVAC company SHOULD have upgraded.

That HVAC company shouldn't have upgraded to Windows 10, they should have upgraded to a reasonable operating system fit for the purpose.

>Windows 10 "Redstone 2" allows you to disable the supposed "spyware"

>As for the ads, its supid easy to turn off the notifications.

Just because I can remove Microsoft's adware and spyware doesn't change the fact that it's spyware and adware. As for being easy to do either of those things, you might as well be speaking Greek to at least 95% of Microsoft's users. It's simple if you know a little bit about Windows, but most users out there don't know much of anything about Windows. Just look at all of the outrage over changing the start button in Windows 8. There was literally hoards of people who couldn't even figure that out. I guarantee you those same Einsteins aren't ever going to figure out how to disable telemetry with third party software or figure out that "Notifications" are all of the ads that they're getting spammed with.

Also, Redstone 2 isn't out yet, and to be honest, I don't have high hopes that Microsoft will allow Home users to completely disable telemetry when it does come out. They've lied about everything else involving Windows 10, why should this be any different?