I'm not blaming consumers and I apologize it came across as such to you [and others, if applicable]. This isn't about assigning blame, it's about personal responsibility and taking the time to troubleshoot issues you encounter and not expect someone else to do your due diligence for you. If users don't want to do their due diligence when problems are encountered, there are paid services they can buy which will do everything for them. While I don't believe such a mindset as being helpful, to each their own and it's not for me to judge anyone for it.
I 100% agree it's not good business, but Microsoft has a history of shafting consumers, regardless if it's good business or not. ***For those troubleshooting, please skip the bullet point below and go on to the next paragraph, as it has nothing to do with the issue at hand.***While having nothing to do with Windows, in order to show an example of this, I'll refer to the Xbox Live Marketplace to demonstrate this:
- As of 2007, users were able to pay for (buy, not rent) and download TV and documentary episodes through Live Marketplace. In mid 2009, Microsoft, on it's own accord, changed their licensing structure, which prevented all video content prior to this licensing structure change from being accessible on the Xbox One, nor available on Windows, even though everything post 2009 is (keep in mind they're on their 4th or 5th licensing iteration). I had to contact executives at A&E, which has more content that any other provider due to owning something like 17 channels and inform them that Microsoft was forcing their customers to repurchase content they already owned a license for in order for it to be available on Xbox One and this didn't sit very well with A&E since Microsoft is only acting as an intermediary to sell licenses that content providers own. Needless to say, even though I tried for months to get this resolved within Microsoft's executive offices, even offering to rebuy content I already owned licenses for as long as I would be reimbursed (I bought more than $1500 in content prior to mid 2009), within a month of contacting A&E all content bought prior to 2009 (unfortunately excluding music videos) was available on my Xbox One. This demonstrates that Microsoft does not do what's in the best interest of consumers. Had the issues plaguing KB2919355 affected business customers running thousands of PCs and Servers, you would see action as that is the side of Microsoft that makes significantly more money than a few thousand consumers that total a market share value of less than half a million dollars.
I don't blame people for being confused, I blame them when they come here venting and refusing accept help. I'm more than happy to help anyone, provided they attempt to read through whatever thread they're posting in prior to asking for help. If they do not, I will politely ask them to and then if questions are still there, I have no problem taking the time to help them (as I've done below as well as a few pages back).
I agree as well, using a computer should not render it unpatchable, but this doesn't negate the responsibility of the user to understand whatever alteration they make can cause problems they may have to take the time to troubleshoot. For exampled. KB2955164, which is the last update to be installed following KB2919355, will cause explorer.exe to not load and present a black screen to the user if they don't have the most recent update of [Stardock] WindowBlinds installed. Is the user not responsible for troubleshooting this? Patches are meant to be universal for the most part, but they are not a 100% guarantee they will interact in the way intended on every system.
I also agree users should contact microsoft if they don't wish to troubleshoot themselves, however as you and I have both seen, users get a 50/50 shot of either having an excellent experience, which should be the norm, not the exception, or having a really horrible experience. You nailed it with saying the right hand doesn't seem to know what the left hand is doing.