Technology
What Microsoft Didn’t Say About Windows 10 is Important to Know
(Phys.org) – There’s a lot to like about Windows 10, the next version of Microsoft’s flagship operating system. But the tech giant has also worryingly left unanswered a lot of important questions about the software.
At an event at its Redmond, Wash., headquarters last week, Microsoft gave developers and the press the latest peek at Windows 10. I’ve not yet tested the software, but from what I’ve read and seen from the webcast of the event, the new operating system appears to address many of the worst flaws in its predecessor, Windows 8. It also offers a bunch of cool and innovative features, such as a Siri-like personal assistant that will work on your desktop computer, the ability to stream Xbox games to your PC, and support for HoloLens, a new kind of computerized eyewear.
Best of all, Microsoft will be offering it as a free upgrade to many existing Windows users and will continue to upgrade the software to those users at no additional cost.
But I was troubled by some of the things that Microsoft didn’t fully discuss. Most notably, the company envisions transforming Windows from a piece of software that receives major, but infrequent, updates into something that resembles a Web service like Gmail or Facebook that sees much more frequent incremental changes. But it’s not clear at all how that will work in practice or how much control consumers will have over the updates.
