Something cool just happened.
Microsoft MSFT +10.45% has released the biggest new version of Windows 10 in ages and it does something vitally important: it gives us the first look at the platform as a cohesive – and possibly game changing – whole…
So What’s New?
Let’s cut to the chase. What Windows 10 Build 10061 does so well is bring everything together. It brings Start, Taskbar and Action Center improvements, polishes Continuum and Task View, gives the Virtual Desktops some much needed love and there are new Mail and Calendar apps. It’s tight, smart and nicely knits new with old.
Before going into this in more depth, let’s break down the changes in a little more detail:
Start Menu, Taskbar, and Action Center – the Start Menu is at last resizeable again while both it and the Taskbar now have transparency and ‘AutoColor’ to automatically tie their appearance to the main colour of your desktop wallpaper. They also have some smart UI tweaks like moving the power option to the button left corner which reduces pointer scrolling when switching off or restarting.
Windows 10 has the best and most flexible start menu yet – image credit Gordon Kelly
Continuum – is now a whole lot more tablet friendly with automatic resizing of the Start, Cortana and Task View buttons as well as the Notification area. There’s a boot directly into ‘Tablet Mode’ as well which is now default for sub 10-inch tablets.
Task View – you’ll find a whole new suit of windows icons, close buttons and thumbnails as well as a polished look to Snap Assist and Task View itself.
Virtual Desktop – you can now create an unlimited number of Virtual Desktops
Mail and Calendar apps – get an improved three panel UI, performance boosts and customisable swipe gestures to delete/flag and mark emails as read or unread. Mail leverages Word for rich body copy supporting complex elements like tables (a real differentiator) and both now support Office 365, Exchange, Outlook.com, Gmail, IMAP, POP and more.
Why It Matters
Up until now Windows 10 releases have varied wildly. It has swung between ambitious do-everything platform to stagnating releases that gave the impression Microsoft was not going to meet its rumoured
late July release date.
Now suddenly this feels realistic. Build 10061 is a unifying release that finally ties together visual design, transitions and core operation, from Windows 10’s new Virtual Desktops (about time too) and has genuinely powerful Mail and Calendar apps.
Combined with the OSes promises of
Xbox streaming,
automatic updates to Windows 10, platform unification across PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones and the new price of free for customers who buy within the first year (there is no subscription fee thereafter) it has
New Microsoft stamped all over it.
Whether it also marks the end of Windows as we know it with discussion of Open Sourcing the platform in future, remains to be seen.
Of course, being a beta, there are some crucial things broken in the new release…
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