It's important to remember that it doesn't matter what MS is doing today. What matters is what the force-updated version will do in the future. Or did everybody forget that you cannot prevent updates in this version?
Think about this... If more things forced auto-updates, we might not have been forced to support ie6 for so damn long. It's a trade off. Instant security patches, instant support for new standards, etc, all without having to worry about all of those users who just will not press that "update" button. Sounds like a pretty decent plan to me.
I would be fairly surprised if Microsoft didn't re-display TOS after each update, so feel free to keep an eye out. If you really really care about this kind of thing, then I might suggest avoiding products that are tightly integrated with private entities as a general rule.
Instant security patches, instant support for new standards, etc
...as well as instantly "brick" a significant number of machines out there. At least the user has a chance of correlating something breaking with a recent update if he/she explicitly did so. MS have screwed up Windows updates before, and I don't believe they'll suddenly start getting it perfect now.
> I would be fairly surprised if Microsoft didn't re-display TOS after each update, so feel free to keep an eye out.
And my options as a user are then what exactly? Accept the new TOS or have the device rendered unusable and lose access to all my data? That's definitely the basis for an unbiased, informed decision.
It's important to remember that it doesn't matter what MS is doing today. What matters is what the force-updated version will do in the future. Or did everybody forget that you cannot prevent updates in this version?