Well but if you op-out you op-out of everything, including security updates. There's no "I want security updates but no random feature/interface changes" button.
Aren't all Windows Update packages optional? This is what I see when I look at Windows update on 8.1 (I think 7 had similar options):
http://imgur.com/MxRVZ94
As someone else mentioned, to support the enterprise Microsoft makes updates piecemeal and optional.
I had Windows 8 here, Windows 8.1 force-installed itself, I found no way to opt out, or even to control when to update, I was working one day and it suddenly decided to shut me out and update itself to 8.1, there was no "cancel" or "wait" button.
So, MS already pulled a stunt like that recently, why they would not do it again, specially if they want people to use some shiny new tech part of their 3e strategy?
Internet Explorer 11 had that automatic updates too.
But it shows that Microsoft changes things that I may or may not want. They changed the "F12" Developer Tools in a significant way, basically completely replaced it with a completely new version with its positive and negative sides. And they introduced a "Search web" Bing search search box directly on the "New Tab" page that cannot be changed or removed. It also ignores the default search provider is DDG and not Bing.
I really liked IE since v4 and used it ever since Windows 95 with IE4 shell upgrade that made Win95 look like Win98. But the new Microsoft is the same as the old one, maybe even worse given their software as a service mentality. I won't upgrade to Edge/IE12 and maybe not even to Win10. Win7 is perfectly fine until 2022. And afterwards maybe we all use Android or a Web based OS like Chromium/FirefoxOS and Microsoft screwed up their Windows to irrelevancy/legacy.
you're wrong. IE/Edge has the same type of updating, and it can and ill always be opt-outable because of the enterprise.