There’s a surprisingly lengthy post on the Windows Experience blog, co-written by two senior Microsoft managers: Michael Fortin (CVP of Windows and Devices Group Core Quality) and John Cable (Director of Program Management, Windows Servicing and Delivery).

Okay, what’s so important that these two folks decided to write about it? Just this: after the upcoming Windows 10 “Creators Update”, Windows 10 will be slightly less likely to do things at inconvenient times.

I don’t know about you, but allowing users to have control over when updates are installed, and when their computer reboots, seems like a pretty basic feature. And in fact that kind of control has existed in Windows for years. Until Windows 10. But instead of fixing the problem and apologizing for it, we get senior Microsoft managers talking about this bug fix as if it was the most amazing new feature ever.

I understand that there are good reasons to force updates and restarts, the main one being that otherwise many people allow their computers to get out of date, and vulnerable. But seriously, wouldn’t it have made more sense for automatic updates and restarts to be the default behaviour, and allow for this behaviour to be overridden, when Windows 10 was released?

The Verge’s take on this. And Ars Technica’s.

Update 2017Mar22: A new ‘tip’ from Microsoft shows Windows 10 users how to change ‘Active Hours’, during which Microsoft hopefully won’t remotely restart their computer. Of course, the maximum duration for active hours is still only twelve hours. On a related note, I was wondering why my Windows 10 test PC always seemed to be logged out lately, and discovered that it’s been trying to install one particular update every night for a couple of weeks. Windows reboots to complete the install, but the installation fails, and the cycle repeats. This is exactly the kind of thing that bothers me about letting Microsoft screw around with my computer without my knowledge.