Re: Mobile Build 10166 - 10536 how do you like it?
Many claim the same for PC upgrades, that wiping a system to start fresh is the best. I've seen lots of criticism of novices who don't do such on PC and have issues. A final release of a product should not require a system wipe on either type of device, period.
For W10M I absolutely agree with you, and I fully expect the final version of W10M to not require a system wipe.
W10 is a completely different story. After software is installed on a Win32 based system, the OS knows absolutely nothing about it. As far as the OS is concerned, the software installer just vomited a bunch of files onto your file system, which the OS has zero knowledge of and absolutely no control over. This is one of the reasons why Windows systems need to be administered and are labour intensive to support. Every piece of software you install essentially turns it into something else. Given this situation, while I agree that an upgrade should not require a system wipe, there is absolutely no way MS can guarantee it won't be necessary. They can only do their best to avoid it, but there are no guarantees.
There are many reasons why clean-installing Windows from scratch every once in a while is just good practice (the brain dead person who invented the centralized Windows registry deserves much of the blame). If you're upgrading Windows, it's usually also a good time to do that clean-install. The results are simply better. It would be nice if Win32 was less finicky, but it just isn't.
Looking back, we can fairly say that Win32 having no concept of an "app" is probably a design flaw. Unfortunately, that can't be fixed without sacrificing compatibility. That's one of the reasons WinRT exists, which currently runs alongside Win32, but will someday replace it. WinRT does have the concept of app, which allows the OS to manage them autonomously and ensure they are completely and cleanly removed from the system or migrated to a newer version of the OS when necessary.
Windows, or the Win32 environment most of us are used to, is just not a good system for consumers. This is one of the reasons why. We just tolerate it.