At Microsoft’s Build conference, the company showed off the Windows Fall Creators Update. This update is going to bring a number of quite interesting things to Windows – such as a number of features that let you move between applications on Windows and iOS/Android, using Microsoft’s Cortana application on those platforms.
For instance, you can share your clipboard with your mobile devices, and pick up where you left off reading articles or watching videos – yes, like Apple’s Continuity, but cross-platform. There’s also a timeline feature which allows you to scroll back in time to see what you were watching or reading or whatever days or weeks ago. All this will be available in the Cortana application on iOS and Android, too.
Microsoft also officially unveiled its new design language for Windows applications, Fluent Design System, replacing the Metro they’re using now. To be honest, it’s not really replacing Metro so much as expanding it, and I think the best way to describe it is “Material Design, now with lots of blur”. Fluent Design is already making its way to current Windows versions and applications through the Windows Store, but much of what Microsoft showed off today in videos is still in the concept phase.
Additionally, Microsoft shed some light on its Windows-on-ARM plans, detailing how it allows x86 code on ARM processors. You will be able to run any x86 Windows application on Windows-on-ARM, both from the Windows Store and downloaded elsewhere. The technology is an extension of Windows on Windows, which is currently used to allow 32bit applications to run on 64bit Windows (WoW64) and was also used to allow 16bit applications to run on 32bit Windows (WOW).
Lastly, Microsoft unveiled that it’s working with Apple to bring iTunes to the Windows Store as a UWP-packaged Win32 application. Autodesk and SAP will bring their applications to the Windows Store as well.
So now it’s a “cellular PC” they are targeting with Windows on ARM, not a smartphone. Goodbye Windows Phone, it was a good run. Not holding my breath for the oft-rumored Surface Phone either; I think Microsoft is focused on tablets and up at this point.
I fear you are probably right.
Seems to be the gist..
However, what’s to stop 3rd party making this ‘windows Cellular PC’ a 5.5″ – 6.2″ screen size device?
And adding a dialer app, contacts.
Ta-daaaaa! …phone!
Or will MS put licensing restrictions in the way to prevent this? is/would that even be legal?
I would assume the software would be too hungry on resources for this form factor.
Also, which third party would get fooled again after Windows Phone, which, at least on paper, was supported by Microsoft.
Some serious internal struggles going on inside Microsoft.
How can you have one hand saying that Windows 10 S is the future, and then have the ARM team telling you can just go and download 7zip x86 so you can access some files and it all works automagically.
Is is just me or are both Microsoft and Apple experiencing some very pronounced Leader <-> Engineer rifts?
I see no conflict. Windows 10 S isn’t the future of Windows, it’s a small part, a single SKU to target a market that Windows is losing out on.
The x86 is just a component of Windows, of any version – allowing your ARM laptop to run x86 apps under, say, Windows 10 Pro for ARM, or allowing Windows 10 S to run x86 apps from the app store.
If you believe that then you must believe that Apple are at any-moment about to begin licencing of iOS for 3rd party manufacturers. — It’s nonsense.
Microsoft are putting Win10-S on their $1000 flagship device. It’s clear they expect Win10-S to be seen and to be used by professionals.
Also, I came up with a better way to enunciate my point — the engineers are giving you more functionality, whilst the leaders are planning to take it away! Look at Microsoft’s own projects — VSCode is not an app-store app; heck, they’re a year or more away from even achieving that with their current set-up.
So, in your world:
-Talking in depth about how ChromeOS is taking over the education market
-Releasing a similar product to ChromeOS, talking about how it is geared for education
-Releasing a suite of new tools designed for small IT departments (like those found in schools) to manage Windows S systems in the classroom
-Speaking in depth about upcoming Windows 10 S devices in the $200 to $400 range
-Speaking of the Surface Laptop as a sort of halo device, explicitly targeting college students (Not Professionals)
That all points to Microsoft eventually removing the ability to install applications at will, for everybody, forever, despite their hundreds of millions of customers that need this functionality?
Steve Ballmer is gone. Microsoft has done much to reverse their attempt to do this with Windows RT, having taken a series of steps in the absolute opposite direction.
These announcements about Windows 10 on ARM being able to install any x86 software, at will, without having to go through the store – as well as other details that indicate the absolute opposite of what you’re saying – were released at the BUILD conference, a highly publicized conference, which while being developer and engineering focused, is still tightly organized by marketing, and is extremely unlikely to have anything presented that is off-message or goes against what the higher ups are actually planning on doing.
I haven’t heard anyone from Microsoft saying that Windows 10 S is the future. Tech Reporters have surely said that and they might be correct. But Microsoft is way to big to focus on 1 type of user. So they make “S” for the K12 education market while also keeping all the other SKU’s available. This is called CHOICE and is generally considered a good thing.
ARM is now also getting up to performance levels that are good enough for modern PC’s, so Microsoft is going to provide SKU’s that run on ARM but can still run x86 programs. Again, they will also keep all the other SKU’s available, so again they will provide more CHOICE.
Is this easy for consumers to understand? No
Is this paving “the one road” to the future? No
Does this give users better options? Yes, and that is what the New Microsoft is all about: Giving everyone tools that allow them to work they way that suits them best.
Another update that will take an hour and bring all sorts of compatibility issues to our enterprise applications (over which we have no control). And, of course, if we don’t install their precious big update in the fall, we’ll stop getting security updates. Screw this! One required update per year was bad enough!
I might have some sympathy if the “Enterprise” software market wasn’t completely god damn awful with most vendors having no clue how to maintain and properly develop software. Enterprises bring so much pain on themselves with their own piss poor decisions and then complain about their own decisions.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/waas-over…
Microsoft never publishes feature updates through Windows Update on devices that run Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB. Instead, it typically offers new LTSB releases every 2–3 years, and organizations can choose to install them as in-place upgrades or even skip releases over a 10-year life cycle.
The most exciting thing for me about all these announcements is Fluid Design. Even if Windows never manages to crack the phone market, there are still plenty of folks using it on PCs and tablets, and it’s awesome that the Windows UI will look and feel that much nicer in the future. Honestly, the “polished” feeling to the UI was missing for me in Windows 8 (I guess it seemed “too simple”), and while marginally better in Windows 10, this takes things to a new level where MS has a chance to match Apple in “fluidity” of their UI, if they manage to follow through across the board.