Windows 10 Launched Last Tuesday. Or Did It?

Windows 10 officially shipped two days ago, on 29 July. As I write these words, today is 31 July, and I just got the following email from Microsoft:

When will my free upgrade arrive?

You’ve already reserved, so your free upgrade is on the way. This is the largest software upgrade event ever and we’re managing it so everyone has a great experience.

Your notification to upgrade could come as soon as a few days or in a few weeks.

“When will my upgrade arrive” is the one question this email does not answer. As it says, having “reserved” it, the actual upgrade bits could arrive at any point in the near future, at a time apparently of Microsoft’s choosing.

As it happens, you can upgrade to Windows 10 on demand. Tired of waiting, I upgraded my Surface Pro 3 yesterday morning , though that too was a needlessly confusing process. I don’t remember how I found the page on microsoft.com that explains how to upgrade sooner; I do remember it was framed as for “tech-savvy users” only.

If you don’t mind downloading a few MB of tracking JavaScript, The Verge has a post with all the links to download the right Windows 10 installer for your system. Except they don’t call it the Windows 10 installer; Microsoft calls it the Windows Media Creation Tool, a Windows program whose job, at first glance, is to create DVD or USB installation media. But if you want to upgrade and decide to go this route, don’t bother rummaging around in your desk for a USB disk. You won’t need it. If you’re running the tool on an eligible Windows system, the first option is to “Upgrade this PC now”.

Which to me begs some questions. Why not just call this program the Windows 10 installer? And, more importantly, when you click “Get Windows 10” on Microsoft’s site, why don’t they just give you this app that installs Windows 10, instead of this whole “reservation” mess?

I’ll come back to that. First, let’s talk about ads.

I can’t watch anything on Hulu without having to sit through several commercials from Microsoft’s ad campaign for Windows 10. Mostly the campaign is shots of babies, as a voice-over explains how our kids will grow up in a world where computers work in certain futuristic ways, because they’ll grow up in a world with Windows 10 in it. The ads have a few brief action shots of the new OS, but you’d be forgiven for not noticing them, or for thinking the ads describe a product that doesn’t exist yet.

Specifically described in the ads are Windows Hello, which can authenticate you by recognizing your face, and Cortana, a voice-driven “virtual assistant” similar to Siri or Google Now. Neither one is exactly science fiction, but neither are they quite available today.

Hello relies on front-facing 3D cameras that almost no computers have, except for brand-new computers which have them for the purpose of enabling Hello. My Surface Pro 3 doesn’t have — won’t have, can’t have — such a camera, so for me, one of Windows 10's hottest features may as well not exist.

With Cortana, the feature is available on all PCs running Windows 10, but it’s oddly unclear how to invoke a voice search — if you click the “Cortana” icon in Windows 10, you see a panel explaining what Cortana can do, but no indication of how to ask Cortana to do them — or, in fact, if Cortana might be doing them right now without you asking. It’s weird. It’s like the OS is selling me on the concept of a Microsoft cloud thingy helping me with my life, but not quite able to tell me how it actually works.

This all starts to feel like a theme. Everything about this release seems so coated in what really seems like bullshit that it’s hard to notice when Microsoft actually delivers on what they’re promising.

Which is a real shame, because with Windows 10, Microsoft has actually made a sincere effort to not only fix what was wrong with Windows 8, but move their platform forward in significant ways.

Adaptive, multi-screen design is a first-class feature. Sure, there’s a massive existing base of classic Windows apps that will probably never make sense on phones or tablets, but apps from here on out can be designed in such a way that they can be used anywhere. The lessons of the Web are migrating back to the desktop.

The resurrected Start Menu, in addition to being a return to safety for longtime Windows users, also provides an intelligent, widget-y view of one’s apps and information in a much more compact, less overwhelming way than the now-thankfully-retired Start Screen.

Microsoft Edge is a good, modern web browser. Let me repeat that: Microsoft Edge is a good, modern web browser. I would not switch platforms just to use Edge, and the inking features are more than a little gimmicky, but if you find yourself using a Windows PC or tablet and are forced to use Edge, it’s not a bad experience. (I’d even say Edge, as a first-party, Windows-only app, offers a superior user experience to Chrome or Firefox. Just like Safari on OS X, Chrome may be the superior web runtime but Edge is a better app.)

I can understand Microsoft favoring the crazy, sci-fi-esque aspects of their new product to these in their ads. As marketing bullet points, “it has a decent web browser” and “the Start Menu is back!” can’t hold a candle to “your computer will recognize your face!” Such is conventional marketing wisdom, which touts the hell out of any kind of sexy differentiator. Don’t forget the Sega Genesis’s “Blast Processing”, or virtually every fast-food restaurant’s “char-broiled” burgers. Windows Hello is to Microsoft in 2015 what “It’s Toasted!” was for Lucky Strike 50 years ago.

The problem is that not just are these ads burying the lede — that Microsoft has actually improved Windows . I also think they’re out of touch with what consumers have said over and over again they want from computers. Apple’s mid-00's “Switch” and “I’m a PC” campaigns resonated because they had a very simple message: Apple’s computers just fucking work. While Apple hasn’t spent nearly as much time advertising Macs in the post-iPhone era, when they do they keep the message pretty simple, and build upon what most consumers already know about Apple products: these computers are light, portable, and beautiful — and they just fucking work.

Microsoft is in a sensitive place right now, whether their marketers realize it or not. A lot of what they’ve put into Windows 10 are features aimed at fixing problems and frustrations with their last release. All but the most die-hard Windows users are coming into this cycle with the preconception that Windows does not just fucking work, or worse, that the new, sexy features Microsoft touts are useless nonsense, cluttering up the core of an operating system that generally does work. That’s not to say Microsoft shouldn’t include cool, future-looking stuff like Hello or Cortana, but before they can convince us they can pull off facial recognition, they should first convince us their product is a good computer operating system.

Ads like this “Hello” campaign are good for a company that’s in a strong position. Apple’s done similar campaigns recently, such as the photography-focused “Your Verse” one for the iPad Air, which are more about creating romance and excitement around the brand. (Microsoft, I should say, can’t even do that quite right; even at their most touchy-feely, Apple ads almost always show people using the product in touchy-feely ways — a product that, lest we forget, always just fucking works.)

But Microsoft is not in a strong position. It’s still a bit early to say they’re in decline, but they still are not speaking to where their customers are at.

Which brings me back, finally, to the stupid “reservation” nonsense.

To summarize, the most remarkable thing about Windows 10 as a product is how often it actually does just fucking work. It is not, and will not be, my first choice of operating systems, but it is not a bad product. Used on Microsoft’s excellent hardware, with Microsoft’s latest apps, it is a good product.

Microsoft is spending loads of money making consumers aware of Windows 10's release, but they seem actively unwilling — perhaps even afraid — to have people get and use Windows 10. It’s not like Microsoft is afraid for people to know about Windows 10, especially given that major tech reviewers all were sent sample builds. They just seem to really want to limit the number of people who try to upgrade their computers to it on day one.

It’s not like every PC running Windows 7 or 8 will attempt to auto-update to Windows 10. In order to get the “reserved” upgrade, first you have to download the Get Windows 10 app, then click a button saying yes, I do want this upgrade, then later click a button confirming that you’re ready for the upgrade to be installed. All of this could have gone into one app, released at midnight on 29 July, called Windows 10 Upgrade. When you click Get Windows 10 on Microsoft’s site, that’d be the app you get.

I can imagine loads of scenarios where Microsoft is doing this to soften the first-day, first-week, and even first-month crush of people migrating to the new system and using cloud-based services like Cortana. The obfuscation around how to get the Media Creation Tool installer is clearly there to scare off all but the most confident, enthusiastic users. The subset of people who can navigate Microsoft’s web of support pages in order to install Windows 10 is not only likely to be small, they’re probably also the ones most likely to cut Microsoft slack if Cortana is slow, buggy, or (as I’ve found) seems not to work at all.

And yet, The Verge has run what seems like a dozen articles that start with “now that Windows 10 is out…”, and my Hulu watching is interrupted by babies who’ll grow up in a magical future where Microsoft still exists and everyone uses Windows 10.

In some ways, this is brilliant, this content-free software launch. Outside the Apple monoculture, where software updates are always free, generally rock-solid, and customers are encouraged to get them immediately, Microsoft knows that their users fear change, but probably love babies. They are running ads, and journalists are running articles, swearing that Windows 10 is a thing. And it is, if you go looking for it, if you invest some time into finding it.

But how many people are likely to do that? Probably not many. Most Windows PC buyers never upgrade to new major versions of the OS. This is a platform where a significant portion of the user base is still using a six-year, three-major-releases old version of the OS on purpose. The first time most Microsoft customers will encounter Windows 10 is when or if they buy a new PC that comes with it preinstalled. For these people, Windows 10 isn’t a product, it’s a feature of some gadget they haven’t bought yet. Windows 10 doesn’t come with Blast Processing, it is Blast Processing.

Again, Microsoft is being fairly artless in how they make this pitch. Google ran some ads a year or two ago where a kid found his way home using Google Now — impressive new technology not just touted, but demonstrated. The babies can’t demonstrate Windows 10 features, because they’re babies. The ad’s hook isn’t any particular thing Windows 10 can do for their, or your, life. It’s just that babies are cute, and Windows 10 is here, and therefore… profit?

But I digress again. The simplest explanation is that there are two Windows 10s. One is an actual piece of software, which began rolling out months ago via Microsoft’s early access program, with “final” bits delivered at various times over the last and coming few weeks, and future software updates slated to fix bugs and improve stability. You know, like always.

The other is a brand, which launched with grand fanfare last Tuesday. Ordinarily, these two things would be paired — the brand would represent the product, the two would share a release date, and for all intents and purposes would be the same thing.

It seems Microsoft’s biggest innovation with Windows 10 is to de-couple the brand from the product, keeping their big launch date but making it irrelevant to when the actual code is delivered to actual computers. They apparently don’t even need to say in ads what the product is. They just need to say that it is, and by the way, babies.

In this kind of post-semantic bizarro world, how can one even say that “reserving” an upgrade and getting it are different things? I’m sure there’s someone inside Microsoft who thinks being reminded to upgrade eventually is not only okay, it’s even better than users getting Windows 10 on the release date. Maybe users prefer eventually to right now?

Really, this post was a long, roundabout way of saying I think the way Microsoft is rolling out this product is utterly bonkers. Satya Nadella’s new Microsoft has done many things right — or, at least, not done them so horribly wrong as in past years under Steve Ballmer. They have a lot to prove, but for once, they have precious little to hide. Windows 10, amazingly, is good. This whole indirection play, with babies standing in for feature demos and “reservations” taking the place of upgrades, feels totally unnecessary from a practical standpoint, and wholly unconvincing as marketing.

At this point, nobody expects Microsoft to do well, but no one expects them to do poorly either. Generally, everyone who doesn’t have strong, unchangeable opinions about Microsoft tends to have no opinion at all. The simplest messages Microsoft can — should — convey with this release are that they’re still here, and their stuff just fucking works. Show it working in the ads. Show people we can relate to being productive and having fun with it. Don’t talk about the sci-fi future. Don’t spend thirty seconds bad-mouthing companies consumers like. Just make a good product, show it working, say where we can get it, then let us get it.

Instead, it’s like, not only can we not trust Microsoft to make a Windows that works, we can’t even trust them to have shipped it when they say it was shipped.

Windows 10 Launched Last Tuesday. Or Did It? was originally published in David Demaree’s blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.