Category: Windows 10

One of the big changes coming in Windows 10 is the unified app store where no matter what device you are using – Windows 10 PC, Tablet or Phone – you go to one store to get the universal apps for all the platforms.  Today Microsoft has announced another step forward in this process.  Earlier this month in the Windows 10 Store beta we saw the Movies & TV section go live but you couldn’t actually access any content.  That has now changed and over the course of the next 24 hours, all users should see this roll to the Store beta on their devices.

A few weeks ago a good friend of mine who shall remain nameless but works for Samsung sent a Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 8″ tablet.  The joke was, I showed up at a meeting with my Toshiba Encore 2 8″ tablet and he, being an Android centric company, gave me a fair amount of shtick over the Windows tablet coming into the meeting.  In reply, I said, send me a tablet and I’ll happily give it a go.

So there you go.  I now have a Galaxy Tab 4 tablet (which I have to send back to him BTW).

With the amount of travel I’ve had going on though it wasn’t until this past week and weekend that I had the chance to use this tablet and, more importantly, Android in anger.  The net result:  It was a very depressing experience but not for the reason you would expect from an admitted Windows and Windows Phone fanboy.

With the release of the Windows 10 Technical Preview Build 10049, we get our first public glimpse of Project Spartan, the all new browser that will be coming in Windows 10.  Project Spartan has been talked about and teased since January but it has taken them until now to get a build of it that they felt was stable enough to use.  In the life of the Internet though, two plus months is a long time so I thought I would give everyone a refresher of what Project Spartan is exactly and equally as important, what it is not.

The is not part of the list is actually small.  Project Spartan is not killing Internet Explorer.  In fact, Windows 10 will ship with Internet Explorer and Project Spartan both.  However, IE will essentially be there for legacy apps and pages only with the focus and future development on Spartan.  Paul Thurrott over on his site has a great write-up on the Microsoft browser strategy and it is well worth the read.

It took nearly two months for the Windows 10 Technical Preview to be updated after the initial release but the Fast Ring is apparently very fast right now.  Windows Insiders on the Fast Ring of Windows 10 have now had Build 10049 pushed out to them.  This update has a lot of fixes but it also is the first release with the all new singing-and-dancing Project Spartan web experience.  The update will only be available to those who are on the Fast Ring so if you are wanting to see Project Spartan and are on the Slow Ring, you will have to wait or move to the Fast Ring.

Also, if you are a developer and using Visual Studio 2015 Preview, you should not upgrade to this build.  More on why after the break.

Microsoft has dropped three important updates for those who are running the Windows 10 Technical Preview.  Build 10041 has been updated to fix some security issues but also address some bugs from the original release last week.  If you are running the preview you will want to get these updates ASAP.  Also, good news for those of you who are on the Slow Ring.  The team over at Windows Central is reporting that this build will be pushed out to Slow Ring Windows Insider’s later today.

The amount of content and information about Windows 10 and Windows 10 for Phone from last week’s WinHEC event in China has been impressive.  Some of it has been reaffirmation of things that we already knew (like further explanation of the Universal App development) while other news has been fresh like the Windows 10 for Phone hardware requirements.  This latest tidbit likely will fall in the “About Time” category for many who have been using Windows Phone for some time.  When we see Windows 10 for Phone roll out later this year it will natively support Wi-Fi Protected Setup, or WPS.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with WPS, it is way of securely connecting to your Wi-Fi network without having to enter in a long password.  The idea behind it is that you can have a secure network but not be encumbered by a massively long security key, the significant reason people at home do not setup secure networks.  While Windows 8.1 supports WPS today, it is not supported in Windows Phone 8.1 so this change will make it easier for users to connect their devices and keep their networks secure.