Fed up with endless unskippable Windows updates? Microsoft has heard you. Changes are coming to the update process that will allow you to defer them for a few weeks at a time. Ironically, it's possible this couldn't be happening at a worse time...
You may wonder why Microsoft ever opted to effectively force people to install updates in the first place. They know it infuriates them, so why do it? They do it because their telemetry has shown them that if they don't, then a sizable chunk of people just never install them. And then their machines get hacked or their apps start breaking because Windows is out of date, and then they blame Microsoft! They can't win, basicaly...
They have decided the lesser of the two evils for now is to put the power back in the hands of the users. This will allow people to pause updates for 35 days at a time. At the end of that 35 days, it will be possible to pause for another 35 - effectively allowing updates to be paused indefinitely.
Microsoft's timing here certainly seems interesting. If you've read our blogs in any detail previously, you may well have noticed that AI is leading to an uptick in security issues being found in software. Not only that, AI is also sometimes making it trivial to then exploit those security issues, even for people with no coding skills. The amount of time between problems being found and patched and those problems being actively exploited is almost becoming quicker than people that very actively run updates can keep up with, let alone those that just find them a nuisance and dismiss them for as long as possible. Of all the times to relent and allow users to pause updates, now seems a very odd one.
On that basis, our advice would be to contnue applying updates as soon as you possibly can. Annoying as they may be, it's far less annoying than the potential aftermath of the alternative. It's one of those things you think doesn't matter until the day it does.
All that said, there is a tweak coming in this updates that will be useful to even the people that religiously install updates as soon as they can. You will almost certainly have noticed that once updates have downloaded, your only options on the next restart or shutdown is to install that update right then, and that can sometimes take minutes. That may be fine most of the time, but there will always be the odd occasion you're in a hurry and then have no choice but to wait because you have no other option. It will now be possible to defer that install until the next shutdown / restart.