Since it’s Thanksgiving/Black Friday weekend in USA, I’m going to keep the news brief because I know many of our readers in the States and are struggling to finish the Tryptophan-laden turkey leftovers before they go bad in the fridge.
So, here’s our three news stories for the week…
- Windows 10 patch woes
- Windows 10 is still spying on you
- Windows tablets will be as big as Apple in 4 years
Short and sweet, right? You can easily read this Weekly Surface News Roundup before you have to eat yet another turkey sandwich.
[divider]
Weekly Surface News Roundup: Windows 10 patch woes
Last week, Microsoft came under fire for the November Update being pulled from servers and the MCT without warning.
Earlier this week, the folks over at BetaNews contacted Microsoft and were told…
Recently we learned of an issue that could have impacted an extremely small number of people who had already installed Windows 10 and applied the November update. Once these customers installed the November update, a few of their settings preferences may have inadvertently not been retained. For these customers, we will restore their settings over the coming days and we apologize for the inconvenience. We worked to resolve the issue as quickly as possible — it will not impact future installs of the November update, which is available today.
While it sounds like Microsoft “did the right thing”, they probably should have done a better job of communicating to their customers what was happening. But, at least, we know now. So if you were wondering why your Surface wasn’t getting the November Update until well after it should have, now you know.
Related: IBT, BetaNews [divider]
Weekly Surface News Roundup: Windows 10 is still spying on you
Here we go again…
With the November Update, Microsoft reset privacy settings on many people’s machines, so that they send a lot of data to Microsoft. In addition, they changed some of the data collection services, apparently in an effort to make them harder to find and disable.
DiagTrack was the original name of the data collection mechanism which Microsoft renamed to ‘Connected User Experiences and Telemetry’.
The developer of Tweakhound says that…
Since the beginning of this month this is active in Windows 10 and sends data like your name, email address, browser usage, app usage, system configuration and search behavior. On mobile phones it also sends phone and sms data.
If you’re concerned about digital privacy, this will be of problem for you. Even if you’re not that worried about privacy, there’s still cause for concern over this spying because it also seems to be disabling applications you may have installed and the transmission of data to Microsoft is certainly shortening your battery life.
If you don’t want Microsoft to track you, just go into your Services then stop and disable the Connected User Experiences and Telemetry service. After that, double-check your privacy settings to make sure they are acceptable to you. It might not fix the problem but it should help.
Related: Forbes, MYCE, Hot Hardware [divider]
Weekly Surface News Roundup: Windows tablets will be as common as iPads in 4 years
According to the research company Strategy Analytics, Microsoft will have nearly as much tablet market share as Apple by 2019.
They go on to say that Android will still have the lion’s share of the tablet market but will drop from 68% to a “mere” 59%. Microsoft will be picking up these percentage points in the tablet market as Apple will remain nearly flat at around 23%.
So, if you’re worried about the Surface line being around in 4 years, it looks like you are worrying about nothing. At least, if Market Strategy’s predictions are right. Personally, I think they are being conservative in their estimates because I believe Android is going to loose even more ground and Windows devices will fill in. But we’ll see…
Related: Strategy Analytics, The Register
OK, you’re up to speed with the latest Surface related news. It’s time to have another sandwich and slip back into your Turkey coma before reentering the combat zone in your local shopping mall to get the latest must-have toy for your child before supplies run out.
(Yes, I know the Tryptophan thing is a myth but, it’s an entertaining one.)
Tim
