Almost 20 years after Windows 95 changed the world, Microsoft is back with Windows 10 — but has the world changed too much? Darren Yates digs into the latest release of this iconic OS
It’s hard to believe but come this August, it’ll be 20 years since the release of Microsoft’s game-changing Windows 95 OS. And a game-changer it was, turning the PC from a business and enthusiasts’ box of tricks into the device all of a sudden everyone had to have. In that first year, Microsoft sold 40million copies of Windows 95 and the consumer PC market took off.
Wind the clock forward to 2015 and Microsoft is setting up, hoping to do it all over again with the launch of Windows 10 on July 29. However, this time around, the landscape is all but unrecognisable from those glory days and the challenges are immense. The PC has fragmented into a million different devices where Microsoft is just one brand clamouring to be heard, its share of the global smartphone market has fallen below 3%, and hardly a week seems to pass without some pundit declaring PC sales are collapsing.
Adding to its dramas, Microsoft’s last Windows outing arguably did as much to advance the cause of smartphones as the phones, themselves. The decision to kill off the Start button seriously underestimated how important this feature was to millions of users. While geeks and Windows fans learned to love the new Start Screen, the backlash likely kept many consumers hanging onto their ageing Windows 7 systems, hoping that sanity — and the Start button — would one day return.
WINDOWS EVERYWHERE — MK II
In Windows 10, Microsoft is aiming to cover all of these issues, but the company’s prime target is this fragmented computing landscape. The company tried to lasso it with Windows 8, but with the market even more fragmented this time around, Windows 10 has an even broader remit, gunning for desktops, tablets, smartphones, Microsoft’s new HoloLens, the new Raspberry Pi 2, Internet of Things (IoT) devices and even the computationally-diminutive Arduino microcontroller. In other words, just about anything that computes.
It’s being made possible by a major overhaul of the Windows codebase and the creation of what Microsoft calls the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), a basic set of programming access points or ‘interfaces’ common to all versions of the new OS. The biggest benefit of UWP will be ‘universal apps’, apps with a single codebase capable of running on many of those devices.
In fact, app developers are amongst the biggest winners in Windows 10 — and not just Windows app coders. Aside from the universal apps concept, Microsoft is also putting the final touches on some special toolkits for iOS and Android app developers to help them port their apps to Windows Phone. The potential here is enormous and reportedly, gamemaker King has jumped on board, trialing the technology to port Candy Crush Saga to Windows 10.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
But at the same time, Microsoft must also repair the angst amongst Windows 7 users and that starts with the new Windows 10 Start menu. Frankly, it’s a tall order for it to appeal to everyone, as Microsoft appears to have the new Start menu trying to bridge the divide between Windows 7 Start menu and Windows 8 Start Screen.
The first thing Microsoft has right this time is that the Start menu keeps you on the desktop. Second, Modern UI apps can now open as desktop apps. Add the new Cortana voice-recognition digital assistant parachuted in from Windows Phone and while it might not please everyone, this Start menu certainly has features galore.
NEW GAMING
Gamers and game developers aren’t left behind either with some major bodywork happening to Windows gaming in the shape of new DirectX 12. In fact, DirectX 12 looks properly impressive and should give game coding a signifi cant shake-up, not just in performance but importantly, in improved battery life. By providing closer access to the GPU’s raw functions, game developers will have the ability to squeeze out faster frame rates from the same slab of silicon, or alternatively, achieve the same performance with noticeably reduced power consumption. That alone should have a significant positive impact on Windows Phone and Surface Pro 3 devices (not to mention the sea of Windows 10 notebooks and tablets nearing the start line). There’s also very clever tech called Multiadapter, enabling discrete and integrated GPUs to work side-by-side for the first time.
NEW BROWSER
The software giant has also signalled it’s getting ready to call time on Internet Explorer with the first release of an all-new web browser called Microsoft Edge. Internet Explorer 11 will still appear in Windows 10 to keep enterprise and business customers happy, but Edge will now be the default browser, featuring a new, trimmed Trident-based render engine that’s already proving to match Google’s Chrome and Mozilla Firefox for processing speed. But it’s Edge’s very cool new ‘inking’ feature that allows you to draw, highlight or annotate webpages — Microsoft calls them ‘web notes’ — that should turn heads.
FREE* UPGRADE
In fact, so serious is Microsoft in righting the Windows ship, the company will offer a free Windows 10 upgrade to all genuine-licensed Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 consumer devices. It’ll also cover Windows Phone 8.1 with an upgrade to the new Windows 10 Mobile.
However, the company seems to have struggled to word this offer well, leading to confusion and reports of ‘Windows-as-a-Service’ and the free upgrade becoming a subscription service after the first year. Actually, with Microsoft’s plan to provide continual updates to Windows 10 — and the growing rumours it will be the last discrete version you buy — it’s likely at some point in the future, Windows could become a subscription service. But for this free upgrade offer, the word from Microsoft is this — you’ll have a year to download it free-of-charge, but once installed, you’ll have a free license for that install, valid for the life of the device, again free-of-charge.
READ ON…
Add to all of that the new virtual desktop feature called Task View, the new Action Centre, lots of new tricks and there’s plenty to talk about. Even at this pre-release stage, Windows 10 looks to be one of the more polished iterations of the OS Microsoft has produced. But as we’ll see, there are features and issues we’re definitely not happy with, so join us as we rip the cover off, peer inside and see what all the fuss is about.