After Windows Update, Password icon invisible, click where it used to be

Meanwhile everything consumer and most enterprise is as you said, "don't upgrade if it is not broken, else you WILL feel pain".

Companies basically trained bad security habits into their user base

I think it will still be objectively bad. But maybe compared to Windows 12, it will seem good.

For example, iOS 26 introduced the liquid glass, which, coupled with how some UI elements work, was essentially the only change. If I wait until the inevitable iOS 36, I'll have to learn the UI paradigm on top of 10 versions worth of functional upgrades. The delta would be too large for me.

I'm not using windows anymore, but at least since Windows XP I felt like only every other release of Windows was usable. So my upgrade path was XP, Vista, 10, completely skipping over the bad releases Vista and 8. So just skip over 11, Windows 12 might be an okay release again.

Knowing Microsoft, feels like they’ll just make it a mandatory security update.

And honestly I'm going to keep it this way until something breaks. I'm absolutely fucking sick of my phone nagging me to update every couple of weeks. Besides, at this point I have to manually flash the new version and I just can't be bothered.

The only way to back up your phone is with some weirdass encryption. It generates a long password for you that you MUST write on physical paper in the real world with your actual hands. They disabled any and all method to digitally record this password.

It's all so disrespectful. This is my goddamn phone, I paid for it on cold hard cash, and it is mine to do with as I please. Fuck absolutely anyone who tries to force some particular interaction.

I have a few windows 10 VMs around and they all are firewalled from Microsoft. They don't like it, which pleases me.

If you even have control... I have a Google Pixel 8 which was nagging me to update to the latest and greatest Android when my phone was already working just fine. I kept putting it off and rescheduling it until two weeks ago. I was driving home from work, phone in the cup holder, listening to music when the music suddenly stopped. I picked up my phone to see if it was a call or the shitty Honda Bluetooth crapped out again but to my surprise, my phone was powered off. Huh? Never had a phone just turn off like that. I let it sit for a bit to see if it was rebooting but no, it was off. So I powered it back on and suddenly I'm looking at new animations and realize that somehow the OS update forcefully installed itself. WTF. I am not sure if I accidentally scheduled the install, highly doubt it, but there it is, I had the update forced on to me.

IThe best p[art is this latest and greatest Android that I did not need or want has a regression where swiping down the notification menu has a 5+ seconds delay to populate the menu with the notifications. So yeah, totally worth it... /s

Windows 10 LTSC will still get updates for years, and uses less than half the resources that 11 does.

The LTSC version is good for security updates, but I worry that software could stop supporting Windows 10 despite the LTSC version existing.

Coincidentally I am about to install Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC! I was experimenting (and struggling) with PXE boot with iSCSI. An update broke iscsi boot in Windows 11 25H2 (26200.6901 works, 26200.7019 fails) as well as LTSC (26100.6905 works, 26100.7178 fails). There were other issues with iscsi boot on the LTSC version - the network hardware needs to be enumerated before the first boot, but can't boot because it needs network (a chicken-and-egg style problem).

    int Counter = 5;
    while (--Counter >= 0 && Prompt("Take a screenshot. Do you see a lock icon on this picture? Answer "Yes" or "No". Be concise. No fluff. Refrain from saying 'You’re absolutely right'. Try to ignore stuff that looks like lock icons in the background.") != "Yes") {
        // Try resetting the icon
        LockScreenLockIconSet("fa fa-lock"); 

        LockScreenForceRedraw();
        Sleep(2000);
        // We've seen better results when refreshing a second time after a delay. Don't know why. AI suggested it.
        LockScreenForceRedraw();
    }

They would, but no-one in the development team are able to log into their PCs due to no longer being able to locate the password icon ...

Maybe that's the problem? Imagine a Microsoft employee allowed to program only by using a CoPilot prompt, screaming and begging to just apply a patch he already written without touching anything else :D

Sometimes the icons in the dock are also invisible. I thought that it was my RDP client playing bad with the server on Windows but eventually I found bug reports about that. This is exactly what I see 50% of the times https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/1bdgym6/windows_...

My experience with Microsoft fixing bugs in Win 10: at least 6 months. At first they deny it, then, after a fix is issued, they acknoledge it.

Bottom line is employees do what they're incentivised to do.

Definitely took some setup work - I have a lot of scripts and custom tools. But so worth it! Happy trails.

Oh boy, wait till you see Windows 11's UI quriks.. They butchered the taskbar and replaced it with some cheap (presumably AI coded) imitation.

Firstly, you can't move it to the top or sides. Okay, bottom taskbar I can live with.. but if you enable small icons and show all names - like how it used to be back in the day - it doesn't shrink the taskbar's height, so it ends up looking weirdly out-of-proportion. Even more weirder is this inexplicable blank space to the far-right (between the tray and where the taskbar buttons end), this space refuses to be used up even if my taskbar is full - sometime this space just expands for no reason, reducing the space available for the taskbar buttons by almost 50%! So 50% of the taskbar is blank, and the remaining buttons shrink and get shoved into the tiny tray overflow space, thereby almost killing the whole point of the taskbar. It's like, they don't want you to use the old title view any more and want to force you to use the icon-only, centered-taskbar...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsinsider/

Once upon a time, you were able to get a free Windows 8 license if you join that program. And yes, when I was young and naive and couldn't care less about random things breaking, I joined the program, just like when I used to root Android phones and flash ROMs every other week.

(On the other hand, corporate IT almost certainly only roll out updates half or one year after they become available, when these bugs are likely already fixed.)

Or is that just a rumor that many of us fall for because it seems like a great explanation of what we see?

They never had QA. It was common knowledge to wait until SP2 for a "stable" version. These days, Windows is a rolling release, so all bets are off.

Select security updates using this app:

https://github.com/DavidXanatos/wumgr

It's right there, next to the empathy they have for their paying customers.