Windows 10 Anniversary Update Review: Microsoft polishes its OS - bowersagning
At a Glance
Expert's Rating
Pros
- Microsoft Edge has significantly developed, in public presentation and features
- Cortana is now accessible from the lock screen
- Minor upgrades throughout Windows 10's apps
- IT's detached!
Cons
- Windows Ink is promising, but Interahamw from dressed
- Sporty properly integrate OneDrive, already
- The bugs are nonmoving thither, in places
Our Verdict
Microsoft's Windows 10 Anniversary Update delivers moderate but meaty improvements to those features you use most, spell pointing the way to more substantial improvements down the road.
I just spent more than a hebdomad dive deep into Windows 10's Anniversary Update. As a birthday gift of sorts to users who've upgraded to Windows 10 in the ult year since the OS launched, it's a beautiful nice one.
Here's what's in the box: Cortana, which is now comprehendible from the lock screen door, is much ubiquitous than ever. Extensions in the end make Microsoft Adjoin usable. Windows Hello improves, Skype's reboot seems to be on the right track, and underneath it complete are even more thoughtful tweaks that improve Windows 10's overall experience. The new Windows Ink is challenging, if only partially baked. One or two features you may birth expected aren't quite fit.
Further reading: The Windows 10 Anniversary Update's best other features
Only if you're a Windows substance abuser still on the palisade (even with the free upgrade deadline just now days away!), the Anniversary Update South Korean won't sway you. This isn't Windows 8.1, Microsoft's apology for the sins of Windows 8. Some of the skeptics' biggest reservations about Windows 10, such as the demand for a Microsoft describe, or the many and varied attempts to keep tabs happening your activities, clearly are here to stay.
Think of the AU instead equally a milestone in Windows 10's journey, a chance to polish some features and induce a few others. We old all this as a foundation for our critical review score for the Anniversary Update, which we leftover unchanged from what we gave the original button.
Editor in chief's note: This article was originally published on July 25, but was updated and republished connected August 2 to coincide with the Anniversary Update's launch. Want to get information technology? Here's how.
One of the most expected features of the Day of remembrance Update has been "dark mode."
Windows Hello—a paint selling point
Microsoft's Anniversary Update was supposed to take the Windows Hi biometric authentication organisation a step advance, lastly delivering on the "Passport" promise of the original OS: Your face operating theatre fingerprint would serve as your countersign for the web equally fortunate as your PC. Microsoft executives tell me Hello will withdraw on this new role one time the FIDO 2.0 standard officially rolls kayoed in a few months. For directly, Hello is now accustomed authenticate you at the Windows Store.
Mark Hachman You'll soon have the option to secure purchases at the Windows Store with your face or fingerprint.
Microsoft's original Surface tablets used a depth tv camera to snap a 3D image of a user's face, identifying and logging them in. Now, Hello has get over even more accessible, as more hardware makers adopt fingermark readers. Both bits of hardware work exceptionally well—and if they don't, on that point's always a Flag or Microsoft password alternatives.
Now, Microsoft is pushing Hello beyond your login screen, and the best stop is the Windows Store. The AU code now uses How-do-you-do to buy apps, music, and more. What's the difference between tapping a push to okay a stored cite card, versus exploitation your face? Not that much, though the dealings is echt via the computer hardware in your PC, providing an additive self-assurance that you are you.
I still mean replacing passwords via biostatistics is the future of shopping on the net, but restricting it to Store purchases helps ease users into this new technology. A great deal is going to depend on which sites adopt Hello certification, particularly banking sites.
Mark Hachman More tablet makers are including fingermark scanners, a to a greater extent compact right smart of enabling Windows Hello. Present, a scanner nestles between the volume rockers of the Huawei Matebook.
Cortana: Eager to delight, and with a better memory
If you believe that Microsoft is the devil in Redmond, gobbling up your information to pass along to advertisers (or worse), nothing about Cortana's modish features will convert that. (But you'll be laughing to know that the French governance agrees with you.) That said, the Cortana digital assistant has steadily improved since the initial release of Windows 10. The Anniversary Update presents a Cortana that's more aware of you than always, assuming you appropriate her access to your living .
(In the Anniversary Update, you can't good turn Cortana off, though you can periodically decimate her memory past erasing what she knows and by disabling Windows's 10 personalization features via the Privacy options in Settings.)
Mark Hachman You hindquarters't sour technically turn off Cortana in the Anniversary Update, but you can make her deaf, dumb and blind if that's what you want.
Cortana tin can now speak several languages, whiff your email for flight times and other pertinent data, and more. Two key additions make Cortana especially useful, however: Her hangout connected your lock screen, and her ability to remind you of in essence anything.
Tag Hachman With the Anniversary Update for Windows 10, you can perspective a simplified view of your calendar happening your Personal computer's lock shield.
This is a great trick: You can call out across the room—"Hey Cortana!"—and trigger off a some actions happening the lock away screen, without needing to log in. Cortana privy tell you your upcoming appointments, OR even tell you a trick. United of the product managers trustworthy for Cortana told me that she likes to see her calendar on her screen across the board, and she's right-wing—that sure is handy.
The other reclaimable addition to Cortana's repertoire is that you can now put on a "reminder" for a random fact: "Remember that my room number is 1443," operating room "think back that my nephew likes Ghostbusters toys." Later, when you need to, you toilet then ask "What is my room number?" or "Tell Maine the toys my nephew likes."
The best summary of Cortana's capabilities lies within the Cortana Notebook, where you'll find all sorts of little tidbits: Do you want Cortana to know when you typically deplete lunch, and schedule around it? To connect to your fitness tracker? To gain restaurant recommendations? I fire bump off reminders to myself all the time, impartial by yelling at Cortana while tapping away at something. And you can send texts to Humanoid and iOS phones, too, if you've installed the Cortana app.
Mark Hachman Cortana does ask for information from a variety of connected accounts, though they're off by default. In part, that's to assist you architectural plan out getting to and from meetings, enunciat, via Uber.
Butt against: extensions take in the deviation
Edge, Microsoft's integrated browser, was a glaring flaw in the original Windows 10 release: too spare, too slow. Even now, as Windows 10 boasts a right 19.1 percent market share, Edge's share sits at just 5.1 percent. IT still deserves note here, though, because it's steadily and surprisingly improved over meter (although no specific improvements are really recent sufficient to be persona of the Anniversary Update). March now syncs data with the cloud, adds extensions, and even offers integration with Cortana.
Mark Hachman As long as you substantiate your identity, Edge Favorites and passwords should now be exchanged among Windows 10 devices you have keyed to your account.
When Windows 10 debuted, neither Edge's Favorites nor its stored passwords easily synced with the mottle, which is especially discouraging when moving to a new PC. There were workarounds—I could store favorites in Chrome, install the browser, load up the favorites, then export them to Edge—but that was a bother. Now, as provident arsenic you sync everything to your Microsoft chronicle, all of that data should roam between devices. Fair-and-square make a point to clave Settings > Accounts > Sync your settings and verify your identity.
Mark Hachman More a cardinal extensions add some long-awaited, and much-needed, extensibility to Microsoft's Edge browser.
The Anniversary Update computer code now contains support for extensions, a sport the original version of Edge notably lacked. At compact sentence, 13 Edge extensions are ready via the Microsoft Store, none of them fluff: AdBlock and AdBlock Summation, the LastPass free password manager, an Evernote Web clipper, and more. They're easy American Samoa PIE to install: Simply go to the ellipsis card at the upper right, scroll behind to Extensions, and put in them like whatsoever other app. (For more detail, go over PCWorld's guidebook to effectively using Microsoft Sharpness).
Whether you equivalent the new Edge depends on whether you have an ad blocker installed. Without it, web browsing still cadaver jerky. With it turned on, though, Edge straight off is in the same league as other browsers, rendering webpages about a second slower than the competition. I still found Edge somewhat unstable, though, crashing on media-rich pages at such sites as CNN.com and SFGate.com flatbottomed with ad block on. Fortunately, such crashes rebooted the tab, with nary apparent ill effects to the other tabs. I just hope that the crashes seat personify chalked up to a bad ad, rather than an issuing with the Edge encrypt.
Mark Hachman The new Edge extensions sit in the upper right, and can be accessed via the ellipsis menu. Note that you can turn them on or off as you wish.
We all shop online, and Edge has added few handy features. Bound is integrated with Cortana, indeed the digital assistant will return results victimization Bing and Edge, that she can't find herself. Better allay, when you visit a shopping site comparable BestBuy.com, she'll offer you a voucher. (Check out the MacBook Flying ignore!)
Mark Hachman Visit a site like Target.com or BestBuy.com, and Cortana leave offer a voucher to help you shop.
Right-click an image (of a dress, lawn mower, or whatever) and Cortana will rive up a sidebar with damage and accessibility at varied online locations. I'm not ready to bid Bound a great browser, merely it's up to the unwavering of acceptable.
Mark Hachman Microsoft Adjoin allows you to right-click an image and "deman Cortana" to find places where you might be able to bargain the aim relevant.
Next: How seriously should we require Windows Ink?
Windows Ink: Reasonable the basics of pen computing
Pen calculation has been part of the Apple Newton, the Tablet PC, the Surface Pro 3, and other devices. Just the Microcomputer world has never in truth answered the cardinal enquiry concerning the pen: What exactly do you do with information technology?
Saint Peter Ruecktenwald One of the new ways to interact with your PC is via the pen.
Virtually everything about Windows Ink was designed for the Day of remembrance Update. OneNote wont to embody Microsoft's great inking diligence; now, a collection of native Windows Ink-powered apps (which originated from the massive Surface Hub)—Sticky Notes, Sketchpad, and Screen Study—is elbowing into its territory. And if those aren't good, a curated ingathering of inking apps are now in the Windows Store.
Mark Hachman Windows Ink begins with this tiny image on the Windows 10 taskbar.
A few years agone, Microsoft executives showed a Surface Professional 3 tablet that could be written upon just by clicking the style, symmetrical without unlocking the PC. Today, that same feature (which, due to a germ operating theatre faulty Earth's surface Pen, I could non get to work) unlocks the Windows Ink Workspace and any of the joint apps. They're also found behind the new pen icon, in the Windows taskbar.
Of the leash Workspace apps, neither Sticky Notes nor Sketchpad particularly impress Maine. Sticky Notes simply plop themselves on your screen—yes, like tiny, physical sticky notes. A Modern-breaking fine-tune just before the Anniversary Update launched added the Insights feature article, which allows Bing to interpret a scrawled flight number, for instance, as effective, actionable data.
Mark Hachman Click the pen icon, and Windows testament launch the Windows Ink Workspace, a collection of ink-specific apps.
Sketchpad's existence, meanwhile, basically tells Pine Tree State that Microsoft felt up OneNote, even the easy Metro version that shipped with the Surface Pro 3, was simply overkill for what users want to do: scribble a quick mention. Sketchpad, though, doesn't quite fix things: It feels more than like a drawing tool than a note-winning app. What I'd like to find is for Sticky Notes to leave and Insights to migrate to Sketchpad. Ideally, Windows would "read" all of your digital scribbles, anyway—or leastways those that you've designated.
Mark Hachman Eastern Samoa long as you have Insights turned happening as an option, Cortana and Bing buns interpret certain notes as items that they sack get out up more info on.
Screen Sketch, meanwhile, reminds Maine of how I function a Galax urceolata Government note smartphone: for grabbing webpages or scrawling a note of hand, and posting them online. My kick is how Windows fails to recognize that my direct desktop monitoring device is not touch-enabled, and dumps both Sort Sketch and Sticky Notes at that place, rather than happening my touchscreen immediately next thereto.
Microsoft has helpfully collected many ink-enabled apps in the Microsoft Store. (In that location are much than what you see here.)
I ne'er thought I'd say this, but there's a section of the Windows Store Charles Frederick Worth checking away, and that is the Windows Ink section. It contains at least 40 apps, all curated for compose use. This is a refreshing change: a smart accumulation of apps organized with a purpose.
One expected feature, digitally inking a route in the Maps app, isn't ready yet. Microsoft tells me information technology also plans to expand OneNote's smart inking—a original roofy, for example, converts to a machine-generated extraordinary—to equations. But this misses the point: Until Microsoft delivers the capability to interpret inked letters as rich, editable text, that can be inserted into Word or Outlook, Windows Ink isn't fully baked.
Task View and Snap: Still priceless
The Day of remembrance Update doesn't change that much about Task View, Microsoft's practical screen background usefulness, but it adds the ability to pin windows from a particular app to multiple desktops—not impartial one—and to do the unchanged for eight-fold windows. It also allows you to pin a chat app or music player where it's always accessible.
MARK HACHMAN A new Task View option within the Windows 10 Anniversary Update allows you to pin an app to multiple desktops, such as Groove Music or Slack.
I suspicious that most users choose to use multiple physical monitors, past forget roughly Microsoft's extremely useful Task Survey feature when they're confined to a notebook. Snap and Task View go pass in hand: You can snap apps to the four corners of a screen, or unmatched to each side. Task Look at allows you to swop betwixt these "screens" of apps with just a keystroke combining.
I just wish there were a simpler way to slide 'tween desktops. Ctrl + Win + either Right Beaver State Left Arrow isn't all that intuitive, and there's still that pesky hard layover at the end of the row of virtual desktops. Perhaps Microsoft could follow through a touchscreen gesture, or the three-finger swipe used to move betwixt apps could be reassigned to desktops. That hasn't stopped up both Catch and Task View from remaining one of the most valuable features of Windows 10.
A number of minor features have been added to the Windows 10 codification since last year, additive improvements that sometimes fly under the radar. I highlight a few below that I intend take a leak a meaty divergence: the gain of Numbers to taskbar icons, dark mode, a quick calendar view, improvements to the Action Center of attention, and a tweak for configuring audio sources.
Mark Hachman Click the time/date box connected the taskbar, and a quick consider your twenty-four hour period pops up. Also note the superimposed "1" over the Carry out Center: We'atomic number 75 (just about) all caught up.
Notifications are now an important component of the red-brick operating system, and the Action Center has landscaped in the last few months' worth of Insider Builds. Previously, the Action Center was dominated by whichever application had the virtually notifications (e-mail, in my case). Now, it gives equal weight to various apps, tucking older notifications concealed.
Windows will also show the number of tot up notifications in the Taskbar. Clicking the Taskbar's clock time/date will besides show off a concise view of your calendar for the day. That sentence and date will likewise appearance up on all of your displays—not exactly the primary one. Oh, and there's a dark mode, too, available in the Settings bill of fare's Personalization section—but just for some UWP apps, and not Win32 apps or even the completely of the Windows 10 UI.
Mark Hachman Action Center now better organizes your notifications into categories. Note the quick settings icons at the penetrate. (You may need to click Expand to see them.)
Hera's one hidden feature I really love: Switching betwixt audio sources (like headphones or pad speakers) used to follow a function of a buried control panel. Straight off, you can simply click the bulk icon, then click the pointer above the slider to change your audio sources. (But there's still no graphic equalizer in Groove!)
Next: OneDrive loses smart files, then gets them back, sort of.
OneDrive: An app that meets you fractional
In May, Microsoft launched a UWP OneDrive app, which helped address the loss of "smart" surgery "placeholder" files in the original expiration of Windows 10.
Microsoft The OneDrive app is a somewhat acceptable via media between what Microsoft used to offer, and what it should.
Windows 10's Day of remembrance Update improves OneDrive in important ways. In my original review of Windows 10 last class, I wrote of OneDrive: "One feature has disappeared, though: the confusing 'placeholder' files that resided on your PC as a timesaving device. And that's good."
No, IT's not. That was simply wrong. OneDrive is a mess, and the procurator files simply should exist there today. Fortuitously, OneDrive meets Maine halfway: It's an app that functions like the OneDrive website, itemisation the files you've stored in the befog. It's also slow. But you can drag files into the app and OneDrive will upload them, so it's nigh, but not rather arsenic good, as a dedicated folder.
Windows Entrepot: The triumph of UWP apps
Two things are noteworthy about the Windows Store: the new apps and descriptions that people it, and the unnecessarily insufficient redesign that Microsoft forced onto it.
Mark Hachman The fore foliate of Microsoft's Windows Store app.
Microsoft's Store app is already hamstrung aside two issues: its relatively low app bet (669,000 Windows Store apps as of September 2015, versus 2 million or so for Android and iOS) and its deman to push those apps at you. Unluckily, Microsoft's Store redesign doesn't help.
Mark Hachman Noting all the platforms a particular app runs along is one sign up that Microsoft is unifying the Windows Store.
Customers obviously weren't scrolling down the page to find the "top apps" or "featured apps," so Microsoft plopped four ugly boxes up top to capture your eyeballs. But what's the difference between "transcend apps," "conspicuous apps," "collections," "Best of Windows Store," also as "Picks for you"? Hold it down a notch, Microsoft. We'll get there.
If you don't die beyond the first base page of the Store, though, you'd never guess that Microsoft suffers from an "app col" between itself and Android—almost everything happening its front page is of superiority. Man-to-man app pages have also been improved, clearly spelling retired which platforms they head for the hills connected, including Mobile and PC. App ratings now can be viewed just for the latest variant, which is handy. We still ask some indication of how many downloads an app has, though, and when the most recent version was published.
Higher-visibility brands care Coin bank of America minimal brain dysfunction some practically-needed credibility to Microsoft's app portfolio.
Kudos to Microsoft for leastwise disagreeable to lift up its Windows 10 reputation with a series of higher-profile game titles, though. These are the somewhat moot UWP apps that straddle both Windows 10 and the Xbox One, including games like Quantum Break, Grow of the Grave Raider, and even a nifty freebie, Forza Motorsport 6: Acme. Microsoft's buy of Xamarin has plain paid sour with refreshing, quality apps: Bank of America, Hulu, Fox Sports Go, Plex, and others. Let's go for it continues.
Skype Preview: To the point
Skype was notoriously left out of the avant-garde Windows 10 eject, replaced with a "Get Skype" placeholder app. Now, Microsoft's prepared for the eventual re-bring out of Skype A a UWP app with Skype Preview, which so far has proven sagittate and good.
Fall guy Hachman The brand-new Skype Trailer supports a number of chatbots, but a tease prevented their responses from being displayed in real time.
Ignore all the silly love emoticons and other cruft Microsoft added to Skype earlier this year. Skype Prevue does calls and electronic messaging—even many of the rising chatbots Microsoft highlighted at its Build conference—and that's about it. Superior features, such as translation, aren't rather there yet. Refreshingly, Skype Trailer just logged me in using my Windows login credentials.
I'm not a huge Skype user, although I tend to have about of my overseas conversations exploitation the military service. Skype Preview might not be the final, full-fledged UWP app, but it seems like information technology does everything I need to at the instant.
Other UWP apps get their own tweaks
You'll notice tweaks big and small to other UWP apps in the Day of remembrance Update. Here are the highlights:
One of the biggest is actually a original addition: the Whap app, which lets developers to try out a Linux environs within Windows, without the need for a virtual automobile. I'll confess that I know little about Linux, however, and can't offer any informed comment on what the shell can or can't do.
Notice Hachman With the version of the app that's uncommitted with the Anniversary Update, Groove Music instantly displays a (ludicrous!) number of made-to-order playlists, based on what you hear to.
Insider builds of the Windows 10 Nomadic Photos app now capture video in larghissimo motion, and a similar capability Crataegus oxycantha personify coming to the desktop Photos app Eastern Samoa well. Unluckily, Microsoft pulled it before the Astronomical Unit cipher shipped.
Mail's been updated with the ability to puff-and-pretermit calendar appointments. It's besides mercifully much more stable, unlike in the inchoate days of Windows 10.
Finally, the Start menu looks just a shade contrastive: What was antecedently an All Apps push is now just a scrolling list of apps, by default.
Crisscross Hachman Although you stern tweak it American Samoa you'd like, the Start Menu in my test version of the Anniversary Update went very intemperate on the suggested apps.
Link up: The Continuum you don't take
The Unite app marries your Windows 10 Mobile device to your Windows 10 background wirelessly, providing a Continuum-ilk experience without the cost of the Display Docking facility. I don't quite grok the Connect app on Windows 10.
Score Hachman Windows 10's Tie in app puts your phone's content within a window on your PC.
Connect was one of the anticipated features of the Windows 10 Day of remembrance Update, part because Connect projects your phone's presentation onto your Windows 10 Microcomputer screen, just like Continuum. But Connect simply connects your phone, embedding its screen background within a window on your PC. Shouldn't you already have those files connected your PC? That's not adding often to the experience, in my book. Connecting my phone to my Surface Pro 4 via Bluetooth was simple enough, but the connecter lagged fairly severely. I poked through some photos, surfed the web a trifle, past affected on.
Is the Windows 10 Anniversary Update Charles Frederick Worth information technology?
For anyone who already runs Windows 10, the Day of remembrance Update is coming, like it or not. I hope Microsoft patches galore of the stochastic bugs that however remain, a hardly a of which I noted in this review.
Once more for old times' sake.
Meanwhile, millions of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users are inquisitive if they should take after Microsoft's lead. I suspect that little in the Anniversary Update itself will convince them to do the switch. Former Armed Forces more important iwill be the hit to the pocketbooks of people who skipped the free upgrade to Windows 10, which expired July 29.
Eastern Samoa stable and solid atomic number 3 Windows 7 is today, there simply mustiness come a day when Windows 7 will get so outdated atomic number 3 to get along nearly unusable. Meanwhile, Windows 10 introduced Cortana, Windows Hello, Task View, Edge, and the Action Central. To that, the Windows 10 AU adds Windows Ink and buffs different existing Windows 10 features—worthwhile, certainly, but not the kinda monumental changes that Windows 10 originally introduced.
Has Windows 10 improved? Clearly. Does information technology tranquilize demand further puzzle out? Sadly, yes. Microsoft promised us features much atomic number 3 victimization Windows Hi to log in via the web, and it really ought to leave a full-fledged Ink feel for with rich, editable text. Neither are here so far. Speech should be Microsoft's next antecedency—yes, you can talk to Cortana, but unwritten dictation should be a more outstanding option than it is.
Cortana, biometric web hallmark, information stored seamlessly in the cloud: These are bold strides forrad, and ones that nates potentially remold the fashio we work and gambol. But they're unfinished. Windows 10 may be the last Windows, merely these are still its first stairs.
Correction: Windows 10 Stick codes can at once be thirster than foursome digits. Updated at 12:12 PM on August 2 to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder inside information astir the new Groove Medicine app also as how to get the Day of remembrance Update.
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Eastern Samoa PCWorld's sr. editor in chief, Mark focuses on Microsoft news and chip engineering science, among other beat generation. He has formerly scripted for PCMag, BYTE, Slashdot, eWEEK, and ReadWrite.
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/415794/windows-10-anniversary-update-review-cortana-edge-overshadow-windows-ink.html
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