We are also redesigning Windows’ Refresh and Reset functionalities to no longer use a separate recovery image (often preinstalled by manufacturers today) in order to bring Windows devices back to a pristine state.
What Microsoft is trying to say here is that while they will still allow manufacturers like Dell and HP to pre-install a pile of crappy bloat/ad/malware, they will finally give you the ability to do a clean recovery of only Windows 10. As an added bonus, you can apparently create your own recovery partition with updates already applied. Nice!
I’ll not be switching to Windows any time soon, but this was one major reason I wouldn’t even consider it. Unfortunately, even when Microsoft does something really great, they manage to screw it up.
I realize that MS makes its money licensing copies of Windows to OEMs, and they are the ones that screw the users directly But it ultimately hurts MS more than anyone, because the remedy is not buy another PC manufacturer’s piece of hardware, but using another OS entirely. It screws the user because in order to have a great Windows experience, you first have to have a horrible one.
Microsoft has done a lot of things to copy Apple over the years, but putting the user first has never been one of those things.