The amusing interruption occurred during a forecast of the conditions around Des Moines in Iowa on KCCI News, according to the Guardian. As meteorologist Metinka Slater explained the local weather, Windows decided to call time on the broadcast and instead advise an immediate upgrade to Windows 10.
The “Get Windows 10” dialog obscured the weather background, blocking the view with a large “Microsoft recommends upgrading to Windows 10” message. The broadcast continued until Slater noticed the popup, joking “Microsoft recommends upgrading to Windows 10, what should I do? Don’t you love when that pops up!”
The message was quickly dismissed by somebody behind the scenes. The broadcast was able to continue without upgrading to Windows 10, despite Microsoft being all ready for the upgrade. The prompt indicated the computer powering the broadcast was compatible with the new OS and it was ready to install.
A few seconds later, Slater ran into further issues as her presentation controller stopped responding to her presses, presumably as an operator dismissed the Windows 10 upgrader. Slater again responded in light-hearted fashion, exclaiming “What’s going on? It’s that Windows 10, right – don’t do it!”
The incident is just the latest in a long line of Windows 10 upgrade-related issues. The news station should be thankful the OS didn’t install on its own, as happened to some users for a period after Windows 10’s launch.
The “Get Windows 10” dialogue that appeared on top of Slater’s doppler maps has progressively grown in size to its current monitor-dominating state. Microsoft is continuing to aggressively promote Windows 10 to Windows 7 and 8.1 users, annoying consumers, businesses and weather forecasters in the process.
The prompts have been likened to techniques used by malware to convince you to install software. The two buttons in the dialogue, “Upgrade now” and “Upgrade later,” offer no obvious way to decline it altogether, gradually forcing users towards taking the plunge and installing Windows 10.
The Windows 10 upgrade is now ranked as a “recommended” update in Windows Update, a move Microsoft has described as a way to “make it easy” for Windows 7 and 8.1 customers to upgrade. In practice, it has proved to be a nuisance to many users, frequently prompting to install the new operating system and automatically downloading gigabytes of files without warning.
With broadcasters worldwide using Windows to power their streams, it was inevitable the upgrade notification would appear while on air eventually. However, some relief from the nagware may be only a few months away.
Windows 10 is only free for the first year of availability, ending on July 30. It isn’t clear whether Microsoft will keep it marketing it after that date. If it does, it’s likely to draw even more negative attention for advertising a $100 product to existing customers so it may finally call time on the “Get Windows 10” utility.
