Originally Posted by MD
Looks to me like a strategy to avoid another end of XP support disaster by forcing updates whether users want them or not - which will doubtless include silly interface ideas each time. If it is free (including updates) how are they going to make money? My guess is through targeted advertising direct to the desktop, using data gathered by this "Cortona" "assistant" rubbish. I hope you will be able to turn such rubbish off (along with one drive, etc, etc)
Partly true, but you can switch from the consumer-default rapid release branch to a longer-term-supported branch, with intervals of about 2 years. You can skip one of those releases and still be supported (I think the LTS releases will be supported for 5 years).
As for advertising and Cortana... let's hope that common sense prevails.