Ars’ take on the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, due out today.
For now, the Anniversary Update is an incremental update that makes Windows 10 incrementally better. For Windows 10, the decision to upgrade is obvious, and in many cases, there’s no decision to be made. In fact, home users will be getting it whether they like it or not. They shouldn’t fear this; if nothing else the revised Start menu layout makes the upgrade worthwhile.
But the decision for Windows 7 and 8.1 users is rather different now than it was a year ago. A year ago, upgrading to Windows 10 was an easy decision to make, because the upgrade was zero cost. Unless upgrading was absolutely impossible (due to an incompatibility or being particularly wedded to Media Center), then upgrading was the obvious thing to do. Windows 10 is a better operating system than those two, especially for $0.
I’m pretty sure there’s loads of people who’d much rather hold on to Windows 7, for a multitude of reasons, but that’s just me.
Honestly, I’ve been out of the loop on this whole Anniversary Update, mostly because Windows (and OS X and desktop Linux for that matter) just isn’t very exciting. Windows got exciting with 8, which, while deeply flawed and inherently broken, at least represented some form of progress from what had come before to something new, but in Windows 8, that “something new” – Metro – was incomplete, buggy, slow, broken, and effectively useless.
We’re Fiona knows how many years down the line now, and it’s still an incomplete, buggy, slow, broken, and effectively useless mess. There’s not a single Metro application that’s worthy of anyone’s time, and there’s a better – albeit less attractive-looking, at times – Win32 alternative in virtually every instance. This leaves Windows 10 as a Windows 7 where you need to turn a whole bunch of useless crap off or hide it to make it work properly.
It’s far from ideal, and the idea many bloggers are peddling – that Windows 10 is a must-have upgrade over Windows 7 – seems rooted more in a sense of “the shiny” than actual merit.
They’re probably afraid Microsoft won’t allow them to review anything else if they don’t give the review Microsoft wants. Either that or they’re just obsessed with the new beyond all reason, though I’d usually expect better of Ars.
I’ve used all those versions – Windows 10 is remarkably fast compared with Windows 7, which seems to have gotten slower over time. Win 10 is not as terrible as Thom suggests, and there are plenty of games that regular users love – even Candy Crush! Apps like the Facebook app could use some TLC, but that’s more of an investment issue from Facebook I would imagine, than a lack of a capacity for better UI.
I’m one who doesn’t understand holding out on the older versions of things (except in the rare case that some feature you rely on was removed – that was the case for many with Windows 8). Even if it was better at some point in history, subsequent updates usually disrupt those older versions in long term update status. Developers just don’t put as much effort in patching the old crap as they do the new. This is true basically of every system for profit platform (except some Linux distros – Linux broadly has a superior development model that isn’t based on profit).
iOS gets a pass, because they just don’t update the old versions any more, though they have the same exact problem when it comes to hardware that they support for too long (iOS gets VERY slow on older hardware – usually about 1 release too far). Android probably gets a pass too, because they mostly just don’t ever update that thing…
Edited 2016-08-02 21:21 UTC
Great expectations on the pen UI. Powerful tools should be available at the OS level. Take care not to trash trans-generational UI stability at this engaging facet.
It’s very popular and easy to bash Windows 8, but it really wasn’t as bad as people made it out to be.
Sure, Metro applications were pointless, because they insisted on turning your large screen desktop into a tabley – but you never had to use them (OK, there was the Mail app – but it’s easy enough to find alternatives).
And yes, they made mistakes with positioning of obvious functions (like shutting a PC down). Start Screen was bit jarring, but really it was easy to just use normal desktop apps much like it was Windows 7.
And it’s been refined since then. Windows 10 has a neat customisable start menu. UWP apps work and can fit in like regular desktop apps.
Like anything new, it takes a bit of getting used to if you are very familiar with an older Windows – but I wouldn’t go back to Windows 7 out of choice.
They fixed a lot of it in 8.1, but 8 itself was horrible. Buggy drivers, subtle incompatibilities, and an overall unresponsive interface. Like Vista before it (which actually did get better post-sp2 or so) it will be forgotten that Windows 8 was improved.
Dumbest argument people make about new things. Because you like it it must be better and the other people are just too stubborn to see it.
Just drag the side of the start menu over and voila!
One down. 2 to go. (every day)
I have used classic shell in Win8x but I am now trying the W10 startmenu. It is much better but it still does less than classic shell.
Sounds like you’re running Windows 8.0. 8.1 really is much better, and allows you to configure it to default to the desktop, and only show the start screen when you want it.
Yeah, having a bunch of features disappear so Microsoft could finally reverse course from crazytown and streamline its SKUs would take some getting used to. Having to pop over to Windows XP (since my 7 license is busy being 10) to play any disc-based game and even certain Steam games would take a *lot* of getting used to. And ultimately, having my PC instantly restart on me with no option to cancel or delay while I’m in the middle of doing something because its opinion matters more than mine was more getting-used-to than I was willing to take, which was the ultimate reason why my 7 Ultimate license is back to being used on 7.
If you’re enjoying your free Windows 10 beer, great. But I have little tolerance for the stance Ars Technica and other blogs are taking that Windows 10 is a no-brainer for any computer user.
The Netflix app is pretty great. The Kindle app is OK.
I use Mail on my Surface 4, but only because using Thunderbird with a finger is too finicky.
The old Windows 8 Facebook app was OK for a while, then it got really buggy (I think Facebook changed their backend API), and now the new Metro Facebook app is prety horrible. It doesn’t scroll correctly, and it includes its own web browser. What?!
Some other things I have are a Bejeweled game which works quite well, and a book reader app for everything that isn’t Kindle. Fiction Book Reader. Which is OK, until your book library gets too big then it has a few bugs.
Anyway, not all Metro apps are bad. Some are quite good.
Well, with XMing installed, I have a native X-term.
Now, I only have to figure out how to launch it from an icon…
This is what I’m craving in this update. Windows still sucks, but with WSL it sucks a lot less.
Windows 10 is Windows 8 without its bad part (Metro UI). Of course Windows 10 is better than 7, I didn’t even like Windows 8 and just to get fast boot times and better performance I made the switch.
Being a free update and with the promise of the new rolling release model, the people that stayed on 7 will be regretting not having made the upgrade in a couple of years.
Something tells me that ReactOS is going to see a pretty decent rate of adoption now that it can run Skyrim. Won’t be too long now before it starts looking much more like a usable OS and less like a hobby tool.
Darkmage,
They’ve made amazing steps for such a small team, but who knows when it will be production ready. Microsoft would be forced into a position of treating customers respectfully or loosing many of them to Reactos. Even some manufacturers might start to offer it on new PCs.
…
Hey it’s just a dream, but deep down I know the moment it becomes a serious risk to microsoft, they’ll sue it into oblivion. Oracle has already set the precedent for copyrightable APIs and Reactos is surely guilty of implementing windows APIs. There’s no way around it, the whole point of the project is to be compatible with windows.
Got news for you, Oracle lost:
http://www.osnews.com/search?q=oracle
You might want to dig a little deeper into that search page you so blithely through up. Check the dates on Oracle losing vs the Court of Appeals, then next time do a little research before you pretend you know things you don’t.
If you have any new information do let me know. But this was the last thing I heard about it:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/google-wins-trial-agains…
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/judge-blasts-oracles-att…
Also this:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/07/how-oracles-b…
Edited 2016-08-04 16:23 UTC
Lennie,
Ah yes you are right about Google’s fair use case. I was thinking about the copyrightable API case, which remains in effect.
The trouble with fair use exceptions is that it has to be fought on a case by case basis. Fair use rights cases are going to depend largely on the individual courts and the skill of one’s legal team. I feel there’s a ton of uncertainly around the legality of projects like ReactOS if they have to rely on fair use exceptions. IMHO it should automatically be something everyone is allowed to do with their own resources, just like it’s always been prior to having copyrightable APIs.
Ahh, yes, now I see what you mean.
I guess having a lot of prior art and precedent like this court case might help.
Anyway, the only business I’ve seen that wanted to be involved with ReactOS was a Russian company. They probably wouldn’t care less about some stupid law in the US.
Lennie,
This statement is false and highlights his weak grasp of technical concepts, but without more momentum in the judicial, executive, or legislative branches, I’m afraid the ruling is likely to stick.
With copyrightable APIs, it becomes necessary to go to court and fight a fair use defense on a case by case basis, which ultimately means you’ll need good lawyers and a favorable court to let you implement an existing API.
Edit: Of course, you might have more rights outside the US…assuming this market doesn’t matter to you.
Edited 2016-08-04 16:02 UTC
Because I thought this was the last news:
http://www.osnews.com/permalink?632774
So after a failed install initialization, a failed install progress and finally a non starting process it went smoothly all the way.
I have to say, the memory management is the best so far in any Windows edition including the past ones of 10.
I don’t like how it shoves Windows defender down your throat, or how it screws around with your settings without giving you options. I don’t want to use sky drive instead of google drive, and I definitively don’t want to use the App Store in the task bar.
I am very happy with its performance though, and they finally fixed a long standing UPS/airplane mode bug.
…is a common trend in many places.
But in my opinion it’s got its fair share of good features, and they never get highlighted enough.
First, it’s what finally got Windows its own distinctive design language. Does anybody remember the Win3.1/9x/XP days, with all that clash of styles and antediluvian UI? Does he miss any (aesthetic) bit of that?
Some might rightfully not care at all about the GUI and feel good with just a shell, but for those who really do, it’s impossible to ignore the improvement. And don’t tell me about Vista/7, that was just Windows trying to be an OSX copycat! On the contrary, MS was the real pioneer in flat design, and IMHO theirs is still the best implementation of that (still-remaining glitches included!).
Second, it’s the perfect touch interface – if you don’t agree, you probably have never used it on a touch screen. And please notice that I’m not talking about the admitted performance problems it had (mostly on the older Lumias), but about user interaction and UI paradigms. MS’s big mistake was to try forcing that in the wrong place – desktop – and this negative backlash obscured a lot of its merits, too. Shame that the phones didn’t catch more momentum.
Third, the most recent apps don’t suck that much. The first ones seen in Windows 8 (phone, too) frankly did in a lot of ways, but nowadays they have progressed enough to be quite nice – just to name a few defaults, think Pictures, Weather, News, Maps (COUGHoffline maps!COUGH). And the Start Menu in Windows 10 ideally lets you use them just as ‘widgets’ (as they were called a few years ago), especially for those that offer a Live Tile.
In conclusion, I think that depicting ‘Modern UI’ so badly is just… Unfair. Personally, I am happy that I don’t have to deal with things such as Paintbrush or WordPad anymore… (just to name a couple)
MrHood,
Many people, including myself found the windows 8 implementation jarring on the desktop and just didn’t want it at all. It’s fine if you liked metro on touch devices, but it was pretty bad for computers where it got the most strong criticism. By the time the windows preview came out microsoft was showing evidence that it intended to blatantly ignore it’s own customers pleas to respect their choice. Some will even remember a simple registry setting that allowed windows 8 preview users to set the OS back to windows 7 UI, which was great but got promptly removed even as windows was facing stiff criticism on metro. This was such an obnoxious behavior, to spend developer time making windows worse, that it left a very sour taste in my mouth and for me personally that hasn’t gone away.
Fast forward to windows 10 and we see that MS has a very toxic disrespect for their consumer’s privacy and right to choose. I wish they’d focus on making windows 10 great without any of the BS. Many windows users WANT to enjoy windows but it’s difficult to praise when microsoft resorts to snakeoil practices and keeps making windows synonymous with BS anti-consumer policy. This is not a technical argument and you might not like the bashing going on on the headlines, but it’s something they’ve earned through their own actions IMHO.
I understand the privacy concerns after all. It’s true that allowing the [anonymous, hopefully!] analysis of your personal data allows for better services delivered through aggregation of such data, but if a user does not intend to share them he/she should be fully granted the right to do so.
What I can’t understand is how this kind of criticism appears – at least to me – very polarized against Windows and not any of the Google Services (just to make an example). Said services collect tons of user data and declare it openly, but… Is such declaration a guarantee that their usage shall always be appropriate? I don’t think so. Not to mention the way other OSes (macOS or Android, as per their very users’ declarations) act during updates, making certain upgrade choices in place of their users – but again, I don’t see the same outrage bursts that happen in the case of Windows.
MrHood,
Personally I don’t like being tracked by any of these corporations and I’ve criticized google on many occasions. However this time it is microsoft’s turn, it is an article about windows 10, after all
It’s hard not to be cynical when they all seem to be copying each others worst traits, over time the industry is going down hill.
They all want data. I think they all want to do their big-data and machine learning research before their competitors come up with something they would need many years to catch up to.
Apple is trying to look like the good guy. But they just can’t, they have the most closed system. There are no guarantees: https://www.wired.com/2016/06/apples-differential-privacy-collecting…
Try do something like Google Now which tells you automatically when _your_ flight has been delayed and how you have an other 30 minutes at home based on some e-mail you had months ago when you booked your flight. Really only one way to do that: they need your data. Probably all of it.
“…Really [there is] only one way to do that: they need your data. Probably all of it.”
If every big Actor keep actual path, then a collateral, gray industry of secure communications is going to be born. Nothing the big Ones could do by then.
I’m sorry if you find it unfair that some of us really dislike the metro apps and their “design language”.
I think a lot of Metro fans fail to realize that a lot of us *liked* how Windows’ UI was designed and ran approx around year 2000. The only major complaint I had about Windows back then was their antique rendering tech (GDI) and that their visual theme could been a little bit prettier (like macOS of the same era). Instead of fixing that they chose to rewrite it all – and got something much worse.
What you suggest would have been perfectly doable – and less expensive for MS, I bet! However, I guess part of the intent was that of producing something abruptly different from the other UIs on the market, and the ‘evolutionary’ approach that you suggest, while probably more conservative and wiser in the short term, would not have been the ideal choice in this connection. In any case, I like to think that such an ideal ‘blend’ of old and new Windows UI styles is happening right now with Win10. Now, if only they could finally gimme one single Settings app and get rid of those old, hidden dialogs from 1993…
Edited 2016-08-03 12:27 UTC
You mean from the developers/creative people working at Microsoft’s perspective. Users like me didn’t want to be revolutionary – we pretty much liked what we already had. That’s why we chose Windows in the first place. How many of my type is there versus yours? That’s hard to say – but you will never ever get me to say that Metro is better than we had. Their edgy new ideas were wrong as far as I’m concerned.
I have no idea what the ‘current one’ is, but last time I saw Mac OS X it was after they did some changed to their original Mac OS X design and it was all over the place. Consistency was gone and I don’t think it ever got back or did they fix all of that ?
I was referring to the latest iteration of “Aqua” (*) graphics on both macOS and iOS – I don’t use these OSes directly, but I have had the chance to see quite a bit of them from online reviews / friends’ devices. By now they are probably consistent in their own right since the transition to this new ‘Apple Flat’ look gets more and more complete – except it’s really horrible! To me, it seems like the mac long-fabled interface without the mac long-fabled interface’s magic…
A good spot-on article appeared here on OSAlert a few days ago, in case you missed it:
http://www.osnews.com/story/29318/The_Apple_goes_mushy_OS_X_s_inter…
(*) Does it still make sense to call it “Aqua”? The name-appearance tie first envisaged by Jobs is long gone in my opinion. A more appropriate name now would be something like “Candya” or “Bronya”… ;-D
Edited 2016-08-04 10:09 UTC
He’s probably right, just like I mentioned Windows 2000 in the comments here. Also more traditional WIMP. Mac OS 9 didn’t do to bad.
I think BeOS took many ideas of Mac OS 9 and made it look better/more modern/better colour scheme. Now that I think about it BeOS interface is than probably best ?
You liked XP fisher-price look ? That’s the first time I’ve seen that.
Well, Windows 2000 classic, no frills, was fine actually. Maybe even the least inconsistent of all the versions.
Edited 2016-08-04 08:35 UTC
There was an elegance in the consistency of the user interface of Windows 2000. Also, as far as I can remember, all input boxes contained both keyboard and mouse controls/inputs.
Starting with Windows XP, there were a number of simple tasks which could be only performed with the mouse.
It appears that Windows 10, even the First Anniversary Update, allows keyboard, mouse, and touch controls/inputs for most tasks. I am concerned that the Second Anniversary Update will likely see a significant shift to a number of touch only controls/inputs.
Win2K was a whole design effort. Agree on its greatness. MS didn’t had to deal with legacy there. But not even They came to be sure about that being one of their best selling points. They kept blind trying [and trashing code -and trashing UI stability and consistence on its way].
Lennie,
I liked 2K as well, even though there was room for improvement it still did what I needed without getting in the way. In XP I set classic mode, no need for any of the glitzy stuff! Specific areas I felt declined over the years were the control panel and especially networking panels, which couldn’t be any more god awful. I’m willing to bet most people who liked 2k found that windows evolved from something relatively nice & simple into a mess of confusing wizards without any clear navigation between them.
Also in many cases in newer versions of Windows, after navigating through a bunch of dialogs you’ll end up at the exact same dialog screen with the same settings.
Take for example Computer Management and a lot of the other MMCs still exist. They’ve not changed.
Obvious result to me [maybe wrong] that there are consoles not even handled by the same graphics stack! [Clues like different dithering algorithms].
I’m not particular obsessed with consistency, although I think any good UI has well defined conventions. From Windows 3.1 to Windows 7 those were always the same and well understood. With Metro they flushed it all out in the toilet. Linux and macOS is closer to the UI conventions I want than Metro.
Yes, that is actually what I meant. Very good observation. I meant: well defined conventions and consistency. You obviously need both to have a simple to use UI.
Really love the resource savvy attitude of Win10, indeed
[Have heard rumors about it punishing SSDs a lot with R/W. Those processes should be mediated through a RAM disk].
Windows 10 has all the good stuff of Windows 7 with all the new stuff and lots of new features that you can really benefit from on newer hardware (touchscreen, windows hello). It is also about infinitely better at updating itself and automatically finding drivers.
It also makes much better use of the internet for syncing/backing up.
There have also been a lot of improvements on the commandprompt, in Window Management, in just about all the build-in tooling, security, performance, powermanagement, stability, etc etc.
And most of all, it just works a lot more like most people want out of the box, while still allowing hardcore users like myself to customize and hack around.
There are lots of apps that are really good by now and especially small games and consumption/social apps are much nicer to use in app-form. But of course there are still many terrific Win32 programs that don’t have an equally powerful app-version. So mostly I use apps for leisure and Win32 for work. The same way that I separate browsers in personal (Chrome) and work (IE) while adding Edge when I am using my machine in tablet mode sometimes.
For me, that is the strongest point about Windows. It works the way most people want it to work and if it doesn’t you can customize it and add every kind of app/program that you might need.
And the best way to see if Windows has improved is always “use the new version for a while and then go back to the old version”. I cannot use my machine efficiently without WinKey+X, CTRL+C / CTRL+V in Commandprompt and WinKey+Left/Right/Up
Win 10 takes away your ability to avoid windows updates you don’t want — giving complete control of “your” machine to Microsoft.
Is Win 10 a must-have update? Sure, for Microsoft.
(Of course, for those who think metering is a good idea for controlling updates, see http://www.howtogeek.com/226722/how-when-and-why-to-set-a-connectio…)