For the time being, there is still WSUS to fall back upon. I also read somewhere that security related updates are bundled separately (for Server editions of Windows). While I get the idea behind this change at MS, they could underestimate the side-effects of many who will disable Windows Update. Lately Windows could be labelled as fairly stable and was making inroads with web-facing servers.
Disabling Windows update isn't a good thing, but with the botching updates that come out of MS lately, it becomes less interesting to have critical servers run on Windows. If it only takes one botched update to stop your business dead in its track...
The Windows operating system isn't the cash cow it once was, but with these kind of moves I am starting to doubt that MS will be putting much effort in continuing with these at all in the not-too-distant future. There is more money to be made with software as a service, which appears to be the mantra these days at MS.
