Windows
10 is everything Windows 8 should have been. Now, it's still early: the technical
preview was just released , and barely scratches the surface of what Microsoft
has promised is coming down the
pipe. It's also buggy, and definitely shouldn't be installed on your primary
PC.
But
this fledgling operating system is at once panacea and prescience, a remedy for
Windows 8's identity-crisis that also rethinks and reworks the overly-bold
approach to Microsoft's dream of unifying the desktop and mobile experience.
Fresh start
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Boot
up a PC running the Windows 10 Technical Preview, and you'll be dropped off at
the oh so familiar desktop. A taskbar with familiar looking icons sits on the
bottom, and the recycle bin sits in the upper left corner. A build number
sitting on the right side of your desktop is the only indication that this
isn't Windows 8 all over again.
Windows
8 was a bold reimagining of the operating system, but the Start screen has
proven contentious. The colorful Live Tiles offer useful notifications and
information, but they were designed with touchscreen devices in mind: much of
the work we do in Windows involves a keyboard, a mouse, and large displays
chock full of windows and apps. Windows 8's Modern apps demand a full screen's
attention, oblivious of our need to multitask. And many app developers have
stuck to apps that rip us back to the desktop, creating a confusing experience
for folks who want to make the most of Windows.
The
Windows 10 Start Menu sidesteps those problems entirely, giving us the best of
both worlds.
Old is new again
With
Windows 10, the familiar and the new are mashed together in a form that's only
a little different, but suddenly more useful than ever before. The new Start
menu behaves much like older versions of Windows, with frequently used apps and
any folders you've pinned lined up in a neat little column. To the right of
that column are the Live Tiles, which function much like they do in Windows 8 in
a fraction of the space. You pin apps as new tiles on a whim, and also resize
and rearrange tiles to your liking. You can also resize the entire start menu,
making it tall and narrow, or short and wide. And if you'd rather not deal with
the Live Tiles at all, just right click them and remove them.
Press
those Live Tile shortcuts, and the Modern apps introduced in Windows 8 open as
classic windowed apps. This is a welcome change, allowing us to sample the new
aesthetic Microsoft is pushing for the next generation of Windows without
sacrificing our entire display. You can now drag these Modern apps around, snap them to half of your display, or
minimize and maximize them at will.
Windows
10 lets you work smarter, too. Click the Task view button, and you'll get a
quick glimpse of all of your open apps and windows. A black box running along
the bottom of the display prompts to create a virtual desktop: that's a sort of
private island that keeps everything you open there as an independent
workspace. You can, for example, create one desktop for all of the applications
you use for work, another to browse gaming forums or sites like Reddit, and yet
another for games, or whatever you want.
The
virtual desktop feature alone tempts me to install the preview on my primary
machine. Of course we've had virtual desktops on Linux and Mac machines for
years (and on Windows, from third-party apps), but it's nice to see Microsoft
catching up here.
And
then you press the Start button, and are greeted by the return of the Start
menu. It's a proper Start menu too, with your apps all stacked in that endless
column of nested folders we've all been scrolling since Windows 95. And sitting
alongside that column are Windows 8's lovely Live Tiles, with news-bites and
social updates spinning ad infinitum.
In
Windows 10, You can press Ctrl + Windows key to jump between your desktops,
triggering a slick little sliding animation that was added in the latest build of the Technical Preview.
You can also right click an app when you're in task view and select a specific
desktop to move it to.
It's
not completely there yet, however. I'd really like to be able to drag and drop
open apps to different desktops instead of right click all of the time. And
being able to rearrange the virtual desktops I've created would be a huge boost
to my productivity.
A
step forward
But
Windows 10's real game-changing potential is still purely theoretical: this'll
be one operating system to rule them all, serving up a device-specific
interface that'll scale from desktops down to smartphones, and everywhere in
between, with universal apps that will run everywhere too. Microsoft has also
offered a look at new trackpad gestures that are slated to make their way into
the Technical Preview.
Some
of these gestures will likely be familiar to folks who've used the trackpad on
a Macbook: swipe down with three fingers for example, and you'll minimize all
of the open windows on your desktop. Swipe up with three fingers to reopen
them. You'll also be able to jump between open applications by swiping three
fingers to the left or right, if you'd rather not use the Alt + Tab shortcuts,
or are on a device without a keyboard.
These
features haven't yet made their way to the technical preview, but you'll
eventually be able to pop a 2-in-1 convertible device like the Surface Pro 3 onto its keyboard base, and watch the
full-screen Start screen melt away, offering instead the new Start menu and the
familiar desktop.
That
could be a cure for the confusing mess that is the current Windows 8 PC
ecosystem, chock full of laptops that
bend over backward
or split from keyboards, or simply graft touchscreens
onto familiar designs. We should finally see an end to the
jarring, generally unsatisfying experience that urges us to dance between the
desktop and that weird, full-screen purgatory where Modern apps live.
And
if you want to flirt with the Windows 8 experience you can do that too: just
right click the taskbar and choose the option that disables or enables the
Start menu. If Windows 8 had shipped with that option to begin with, we would
probably have avoided this issue entirely.
Future-proofing
Windows
10 isn't going to fix everything, but a seemingly simple tweak to one of
Windows 8's most divisive elements has made a world of difference to the OS.
And that's crucial to Windows' future, as Microsoft is still looking at the big
picture: PCs are old news.
Desktops
and laptops still handle most of our work and play, but tablets and
smartphones have long since stolen the limelight: future operating systems will
need to work to bridge that gap. We've seen steps in this direction from Apple,
with OS
X Yosemite's ability
to hand off files and things like emails and calls from your phone or tablet.
And some Android apps are making their way to Google's Chrome OS, and interesting
sign of where Google might be headed.
Microsoft's
vision of tomorrow's ideal operating system is grander still. The goal is to
offer a unified experience across devices of all shapes and sizes, and one that
will morph to make sense: icons to tap and home screens when you're on a phone
or tablet, but windowed apps and nested folders when you're armed with a
keyboard and mouse.
Windows
8 dreamed of dragging us into that future, but we kicked and screamed at the
inefficiency of its one-size-fits-all approach. With Windows 10, Microsoft
seems to be getting it right.
Source: Cnet
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