> But neither Apple nor Canonical has ever gone to the lengths Microsoft is going to in Windows 10 in terms of phone-home
Citation please. This seems like an opinion rather than a fact, as Apple's had at least 3 major privacy scandals involving iOS that I can name offhand.
Remember when Apple was like, "We do not currently/We no longer put that spyware on your phone?"
> and automatically applied updates
I agree here, but this is a muddier issue. You _could_ adopt Apple's "we create an upgrade for older hardware but it's actually a shit upgrade that not only doesn't give you new functionality but makes your device slower since it's not our primary performance target but btw Apps will force you to upgrade" modality. Obviously, I take a dim view of that, as it's not really "not" forced.
As for forced upgrades on Canonical. They won't force your computer to upgrade, but if you don't you'll end up in a situation where you have no choice but to totally reinstall your OS, they'll discontinue hosting the bridge patches. So unless you were very careful setting up your OS (and no, the Ubuntu installer doesn't do that automatically), you can end up in an ugly situation where you need to backup your data and reinstall like it's 2003.
Or you could take MS's tack which is, "You NEED to upgrade. Now. Infosec and our product roadmap won't wait for you to feel comfortable with this."
Citation please. This seems like an opinion rather than a fact, as Apple's had at least 3 major privacy scandals involving iOS that I can name offhand.
Remember when Apple was like, "We do not currently/We no longer put that spyware on your phone?"
> and automatically applied updates
I agree here, but this is a muddier issue. You _could_ adopt Apple's "we create an upgrade for older hardware but it's actually a shit upgrade that not only doesn't give you new functionality but makes your device slower since it's not our primary performance target but btw Apps will force you to upgrade" modality. Obviously, I take a dim view of that, as it's not really "not" forced.
As for forced upgrades on Canonical. They won't force your computer to upgrade, but if you don't you'll end up in a situation where you have no choice but to totally reinstall your OS, they'll discontinue hosting the bridge patches. So unless you were very careful setting up your OS (and no, the Ubuntu installer doesn't do that automatically), you can end up in an ugly situation where you need to backup your data and reinstall like it's 2003.
Or you could take MS's tack which is, "You NEED to upgrade. Now. Infosec and our product roadmap won't wait for you to feel comfortable with this."
All of these approaches have downsides.