Microsoft Became Too Pushy With Windows 10 Updates, Agrees Chris Capossela

In case you don’t know or have forgotten, Microsoft was very aggressive with its free Windows 10 upgrade offer. The company received a lot of criticism for being too pushy with the customers and technically forcing them to update to the new version of Windows. Many users went on to complain that the Windows 10 update was installed on their computers even after they refused the update.

One moment that added fuel to the fire was when Microsoft decided to change the role of the X (Close) button inside the Get Windows 10 app. The X button in the app was programmed to install Windows 10 in the background and not cancel it. You can imagine the surprise and the resulting frustration experienced by the users who thought they “canceled” the upgrade, only to find Windows 10 installed on their computers hours later.

Well, Microsoft has finally acknowledged that it wasn’t a very smart move on the company’s part. In the latest Windows Weekly edition, Microsoft’s CMO Chris Capossela said that Microsoft went too far when it changed the behaviour of the X button. The two weeks, between the moment when the complaints started pouring in and when the company released a patch to resolve it, were “very painful”, said Capossela.

The Chief Marketing Officer of Microsoft stated,”We know we want people to be running Windows 10 from a security perspective, but finding the right balance where you’re not stepping over the line of being too aggressive is something we tried and for a lot of the year I think we got it right, but there was one particular moment in particular where, you know, the red X in the dialog box which typically means you cancel didn’t mean cancel.”

He added,” And within a couple of hours of that hitting the world, with the listening systems we have we knew that we had gone too far and then, of course, it takes some time to roll out the update that changes that behavior. And those two weeks were pretty painful and clearly a lowlight for us. We learned a lot from it obviously.”

All the Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 users were offered the free Windows 10 upgrade during its first year of availability. The upgrade was offered via the criticized “Get Windows 10” app. But the app “forcefully” installed the upgrade on some computers even though the users didn’t want it to. At the end, Microsoft was heavily blamed for forcing the adoption of its new operating system and ignoring users’ choice.