> Microsoft's solution was to force the updates unconditionally upon everybody with very few opportunities to opt out (for large enterprise customers only).
Not a Microsoft's fan, but this is not true. Everyone who has Windows Server somewhere, with some spare disk space for the updates, has this ability. Just install and run WSUS (included in Windows Server) and you can accept/reject/hold indefinitely any update you want.
1) the prevailing majority of laptop and desktop PC installations (home, business and enterprise) are not Windows Server;
2) kiosk style installs (POS terminals, airport check-in stands etc) are fully managed, unsupervised installations (the ones that ground to a complete halt today) and do not offer any sort of user interaction by design;
3) most Windows Server installations are also unsupervised.
> 1) the prevailing majority of laptop and desktop PC installations (home, business and enterprise) are not Windows Server;
They are not, but the point is elsewhere: that Windows Server is going to provide the WSUS service to your network, so your laptop and desktop installations (in business and enterprise) are going to be handled by this.
Homes, on the other hand, do not have any Windows Server on their network, that's true.
As a hack to disable Windows updates, it is possible to point it to a non-existing WSUS server (so that can be done at home too). The client will then never receive any approval to update. It won't receive any info wrt available updates either.
> 2) kiosk style installs (POS terminals, airport check-in stands etc) are fully managed, unsupervised installations (the ones that ground to a complete halt today) and do not offer any sort of user interaction by design;
That's fine; this is fully-configurable via GPO.
> 3) most Windows Server installations are also unsupervised.
Not a Microsoft's fan, but this is not true. Everyone who has Windows Server somewhere, with some spare disk space for the updates, has this ability. Just install and run WSUS (included in Windows Server) and you can accept/reject/hold indefinitely any update you want.