An official of Microsoft has admitted that the company was too aggressive in pushing people to upgrade to Windows 10. Chris Capossela, Microsoft's chief marketing officer, said in a video that the company was aware of complaints about Windows 10's rollout that forced users to update their operating system even if they did not want to.
Some Windows users were upset when the application that notifies them of system upgrades still enabled itself even after they clicked the red X button, which is supposed to cancel an operation. That meant they downloaded Windows 10 by accident, Myce reports. One of them even sued Microsoft and won.
In the video, Microsoft's Capossela acknowledged that the red X button in the dialog box of the Windows 10 upgrade notification did not work as it is supposed to. "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," he said.
Capossela said Microsoft had wanted all its users to upgrade to Windows 10 for security reasons. He added that the company tried to convince people to get the free upgrade without being too aggressive but failed when it was rolled out.
While some lauded the official's admission of error on Microsoft's part, others argued that his statements raised more questions than answers. Ghacks Technology News notes that Capossela did not explain why, in the first place, Microsoft changed the functionality of the X button in the notification window.
Microsoft has drawn flak for the debacle but at first attempted to explain its design choices. It then decided to remove the X button, but that only made users angrier.
Capossela said Microsoft has learned its lesson. "Those weeks were pretty painful and clearly a low light for us," he said.
Despite the complaints, tech experts say Windows 10's biggest advantage is its security, with software such as the SmartScreen filter that checks web sites for malware. According to The Guardian, Windows 10 is more secure than previous Windows operating systems, and so government agencies like the US Department of Defense have switched to it.