The Windows 10 November update is available now to everyone running Windows 10. This first major update has a handful of visible features, a variety of bug fixes, and even some enterprise features. Microsoft’s message to businesses is that if they were following the traditional policy of waiting for the first Service Pack or major update to Windows before deploying it, this is it: time to take the plunge.
It’s also the time for gamers to make the switch too – in parallel with this release, Microsoft is rolling out the new Xbox Experience, which is based on Windows 10, and gives the dashboard a big shake-up.
Only a Windows update could extoll the virtues of reducing the number of differently design context menus.
…finally allows to resize the environment variable window, after 20 years of 640×480 compliant sized dialog box ?
Yes, and makes path-style variables use a component based editor, etc, etc.
See http://imgur.com/KHlH2Tb and http://imgur.com/sqq4RPA for screenshots of this version.
Edited 2015-11-12 20:40 UTC
As a Mac user it is great to see that Microsoft is finally spending time on fit and finish given that I’m always surprised how horribly inconsistent it is given how many employees they have working on Windows at any one time – You’d think that they had 50 programers and arty folks cleaning up the UI as the rest work on the ‘under the hood’ stuff.
With that being said, although Apple can boast about the head start they have what is ignored is the fact that between now and Redstone Microsoft is working with partners to get win32 applications in the AppStore which will run within App-V containers so the ‘app gap’ will quickly become a thing of the past as large sways of software vendors repackage their applications for the marketplace. Where as Apple has banked on ARM, Microsoft has worked with Intel which gives them the ability to leverage their existing ecosystem.
Right now I’m sitting tight on my iMac and MacBook Pro but I am open to the idea of moving to Windows if Microsoft really do get their act together – the question is whether they have the drive to make it succeed and the focus to really bring the fit and finish people are now demanding.
I don’t care about the inconsistency in UI controls in different parts of the OS.
What bugs me is behavioral differences. I am really bugged that I can’t shift+click in the scroll bar in some apps to move the scrollbar directly to where I clicked, or if I click and drag on the scroll bar in some Metro apps, moving the cursor away from the scrollbar doesn’t return me to where I started, like it does in the rest of Windows.
Edge works; the rest of Metro seems to not (Though, I don’t use Metro apps often at all)
Fix that, dammit.
Metro apps have behaved differently since day one. While the fact that they are now windowed makes for some consistency in appearance, I don’t believe they’ll be “finished” within the next couple of years so that they run as well as desktop programs do. Your point about behavioral difference is correct.
I like that Microsoft is trying to smooth out the differences in legacy and current UI windows and dialogs. But they have a long way to go and this update is barely a drop in the bucket compared to the sheer magnitude of multiple personality disorder that is the Windows 10 UI. Microsoft has taken legacy compatibility way too far without any modularity. Case in point, while you can choose to “remove” Internet Explorer in the Windows components, you can’t actually uninstall it as it’s still integrated into the UI, it’s still there and it’s still there even in the European version of the OS. Microsoft foisted Flash upon Windows users again, and it can’t be removed either. It can be controlled with the GPE, but it can’t be uninstalled entirely (and if you erase the files Windows update will start having problems, I tried it).
Like I said, long way to go and, frankly, I don’t believe Microsoft has the institutional willpower and intestinal fortitude to actually do the deep surgery Windows (as a service) needs to reduce complexity, remove long deprecated APIs, and improve security through simplicity and modularity.
Flash included with the OS?
WTF are MS thinking.
Oh silly me. This is the company that still tries to get me to install Slitherlight (on Windows 7).
Any OS that included/needs Flash will not see the light of day on any of my kit.
Adobe should nuke it pronto.
Skipping ten. Their “force it down your throat” via update re-issue and costing me a lot of money with blowing my data cap for a bunch of machines, no.
They’ve rapidly burnt the good will they gradually earnt with me and a lot of others with 7 over the last 4 years.
Started telling members of the family and friends “don’t come looking for support from me if your running 10.”
I think you have your “Microsoft skip release policy” out of step with everyone else’s
I’ve gone even further. If you’re running Windows 10 you aren’t getting my Wi-fi password.
I can’t believe ANYONE settles for the crap that MS and Apple still put out. Linux has been much, much better for nearly every task since 2005. The superiority of Linux Mint to either Windows or OSX is now so vast I can’t imagine either corporation EVER catching up.
Plus the forced updates, plus the NSA spying, plus the broken backwards compatibility (Did you know lots of old Windows games run better in WINE than in newer versions of Windows?)….
I cannot believe how ludicrously stupid people are. Watching “Dancing with the Stars” and using Windows. We really are just barely ahead of the other primates.
Good to you if you have higher standards. However an OS without application is just an empty shell. There are several professional applications out there that just haven’t a Linux version and/or FOSS equivalent. The hardware 3D support of open standard such like OpenGL on Linux is yet to be desired (Nouveau is a reverse engineering hack, not a clean implementation).
Linux APIs are unstable and subject to change at Linus’ will, breaking complete backward compatibility, while at least OSes like Windows offers emulation layer so stable and well documented even Linux can emulate them (Wine, Mono) and can runs win32 applications back and forth between Windows 2000 and Windows 7, if not more. Without requesting companies to release their source code to recompile it against updated SDKs (if it ever compiles at all).
That’s real life and not your conception of how the world should run. I can understand your defeatism not being amongst the leaders, but actually what makes the world spin is a market. There is no to little market into Linux. Its success is only due because it is “good enough” and free. It’s like between a young good looking yet expensive whore and an old but free brat, which one would you visit on a daily fashion ? Idealism have its limits when faced with pragmatism and real life.
So until Linux gets some facts together and a complete internal and external surgery, it will only remains a large load of hacks glued together by millions of coders having no common conception and leadership about what matters to common people and companies. I can understand it’s feeling good believing being part of a greater pool, claiming for a greater good, accusing market shares, pointing finger at people not following your dreams. Now wake up and grow up.
Make this happen and I will switch to Linux immediately:
* Run Adobe Lightroom (or a fairly comparable photo editing software) with no problems;
* Make GUI as responsive as it is in Windows 7/8;
* Make sound card and video card run without any issues and with full acceleration.
Until then, Linux is no-go to me. I have tried “Darktable” as a replacement for Lightroom, and frankly, that sucked big time. GIMP is NOT and option, as GIMP is a replacement more for a Photoshop than Lightroom, and I really don’t need or want a Photoshop.
Indeed, and then try to get your colourspace sorted under Linux, which has all sorts of problems – forgetting profiles, not being supported by the 3rd party drivers for your graphics card, editing config files manually, problems with multiple monitors… And then you get onto printing. Proper printing where you correctly use all the inks in a high-end printer is an exercise in frustration that brings me back to Windows or Mac every time. And that’s just the photography end of things.
It’s unfortunate, I use Linux for most things, but it most certainly isn’t anywhere near being able to replace Windows for me unfortunately.
“pulseaudio”.
I admit, pulseaudio is getting better– it’s almost to the point where it’s release-worthy.
Too bad we’ve had to deal with it for the past 10 years.