Microsoft Opens Windows Update to 3rd-Party Apps
Security fixes and other updates will be “orchestrated” by Redmond’s own update tool.
Windows Update keeps Windows updated (well, duh). It can also update some “other Microsoft products,” if you let it. Soon, it’ll be able to do the same for other companies’ apps.
But why must Microsoft misuse the concept of “orchestration” to describe it? Messy musical metaphors aside, this seems like a good idea. In today’s SB Blogwatch, we wave a baton.
Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment. Not to mention: This one thing.
A Breath of Fresh Air
What’s the craic? Tom Warren rabbits on: Microsoft wants Windows Update to handle all apps
“Windows Update orchestration platform”
Microsoft is starting to open Windows Update up to any third-party app that needs to be updated. [It] is now allowing developers to sign up for a private preview. … It’s focused largely on business apps, but it will be open to any apps or management tools.
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Most apps on Windows are updated independently, using update mechanisms that developers have created themselves. Microsoft’s new Windows Update orchestration platform will let app developers take advantage of scheduled updates based on user activity, battery status, and even sustainable energy timing.
Features and benefits galore? Paul Thurrott adds: Windows Update is Going to Update Third-Party Apps, Too
“Better user experience”
The Windows Update orchestration platform … provides developers with an API … they can target, so that their apps can provide updates through Windows Update, rather than using the Store or their own systems. Windows Update will intelligently schedule updates, provide a simplified notification experience, support admin policies, and provide future improvements automatically.
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Some developers won’t or can’t put their apps in the Microsoft Store, so they’re forced to provide their own update mechanisms. [Now] Microsoft can offload that requirement, which benefits developers, and it can centralize those updates with a known-good system, providing admins with better control over what gets updated and when. This should be a better user experience for end users as well, since individual apps won’t be updating at seemingly random times.
Horse’s mouth? Microsoft’s Angie Chen: Introducing a unified future for app updates on Windows
“Join the private preview”
Updates across the Windows ecosystem can feel like a fragmented experience for IT admins managing applications that have their own update orchestrators … and commercial management tools that handle their own download, install, restart, and notifications today. To solve this, we’re building a vision for a unified, intelligent update orchestration platform capable of supporting any update … alongside Windows updates.
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Updates are intelligently deferred based on user activity, system performance, connection to AC power, and sustainable times to update. … The orchestrator will support MSIX/APPX and apps with custom implementation such as Win32 apps.
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Are you a developer or member of a product team who builds apps or management tools for updates? Join the private preview. … (If you are already [publishing] apps through the Microsoft Store, … there is no action needed: you will get the benefits described here by continuing to use that method.)
But why now? guidedlight asks the obvious question:
I have always wondered why Windows never had a unified installation, update, and uninstall framework. … It seems like an obvious omission.
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Even now, corporate customers need to individually package software themselves to manage applications in their fleet. My guess is that Microsoft encouraged applications to share DLLs from the start, and to provide backwards compatibility Microsoft never enforced … a mature software management framework.
Redmond playing catchup? So says Groo The Wanderer – A Canuck:
Gee, 20 years later they’re catching up to Linux. … RPM and apt and a host of other package managers have been available for a long time. And open to membership by simply submitting software for consideration in the standardized catalogues, or providing instructions and signing keys for adding your distribution servers to the client’s repositories.
Well, there’s always WinGet. That idea seems to give buss_error PTSD flashbacks:
Fer cryin’ out loud. Just get WinGet working reliably and not have to do stupid stuff to kick start it on the first installation. Gee whillickers.
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Been working for two years with a pro bono team to get a simple code base share for Windows to work without needed the user to do more than just breathe. … It works sometimes, [but] most of the time there’s something going with the WinGet server side and it breaks horribly. … Oh, the humanity!
Well, there’s always the Microsoft Store. But some devs seem to hate it. Not u/FuzzelFox, though:
I get the hate for the MS Store but I’ve installed a number of apps through it that I can never be bothered to update manually. Apps like GIMP, VLC, etc. It’s nice knowing the store quietly keeps them all up to date.
But isn’t Windows Update horrifically slow? Nope, says WorldMaker:
Windows Update’s slowness is a feature more than a bug. The underlying Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) is still such a cool piece of tech even if it has been ages since any web browser let you send low priority downloads to it or an RSS reader was built on top of it.
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It’s designed to prioritize active user needs over pending downloads, throttling itself based on CPU activity and bandwidth usage and download quotas and battery state and expected runtime and now things like estimated energy mixtures—why not download big things when energy is greener?
Aside from the obvious need to push updates quickly, is there another security angle? Here’s fuzzyfuzzyfungus:
A zillion ad-hoc update agents (more than a few of them clearly written in some haste with naïve assumptions about things like actually checking signatures properly; and basically all having their own distinct mechanisms for scheduling and scripting and the like) is fairly clearly an awful way to handle things.
Meanwhile, u/BrothelWaffles is more succinct, less wordy, without prevarication, nor beating around the bush: [You’re fired—Ed.]
I would ****ing love something like this for VST plugins. If … you think the number of launchers out there for games is too high, don’t ever get into music production. So. Many. G*d. Damn. Launchers.
And Finally:
NARRATOR: It was, in fact, more than one thing
You have been reading SB Blogwatch by Richi Jennings. Richi curates the best bloggy bits, finest forums, and weirdest websites—so you don’t have to. Hate mail may be directed to @RiCHi, @richij, @[email protected], @richi.bsky.social or [email protected]. Ask your doctor before reading. Your mileage may vary. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Do not stare into laser with remaining eye. E&OE. 30.
Image sauce: Tim Mossholder (via Pexels; leveled and cropped)
