Microsoft’s new Windows 10 upgrade popup is pretty damn sneaky

It takes a brave human to market an operating system to its legion of potential users, and when Microsoft set its arbitrary billion devices in three years running Windows 10 goal at the OS’s launch, we imagine that the company’s marketing team unanimously sighed.

Either that, or they threw in the towel, because Microsoft’s latest ploy to get people to upgrade to Windows 10 is just downright dirty.

After the numerous pop-ups, dialogs and alerts in Windows update users have dealt with this past year, the company has played its final card: tapping the X button on its new popup now confirms a scheduled Windows 10 update. It doesn’t cancel it.

This rather significant change was spotted by long time Windows analyst Paul Thurrott, and Forbes’ Gordon Kelly, who calls the move “nonsensical.”

Why? Well, it goes against everything we’ve come to know as normal in the Windows ecosystem. “X” usually means “hell no” in almost all OSes. When you tap the X button, you’re closing a window, denying a program access, or cancelling a request. The fact that the X doesn’t cancel the Windows 10 scheduled download goes against this, and is actually quite sneaky.

Kelly asked Microsoft for comment, but the company didn’t quite explain the reasoning for the X button’s revised functionality. It did however suggest that the new popup is “an additional opportunity for cancelling or rescheduling the upgrade.”

“If the customer wishes to continue with their upgrade at the designated time, they can click ‘OK’ or close the notifications with no further action needed,” continued the statement to Kelly.

For the record, if you’re faced with this popup and don’t want to install Windows 10, you’ll need to hit the hyperlink on the “Click here to reschedule or cancel” line below the blue box, where the scheduled installation time and date is located.

Thurrott also suggests that users can download third-party programs that stop the upgrade notifications.