Windows 10 Fall Creators Update: the 10 best new features
theverge.com
theverge.com
Also, I'd be remiss to not bemoan the ridiculous fact that as a Windows 10 user I am not able to avoid updates if I so choose. These updates that are forced upon me routinely break my games until drivers/games are updated and I'd very much like the ability to only apply them when and if I choose.
Oh, how I wish gaming on other platforms was viable. Sadly, I don't think that's ever going to happen with Apple not taking Mac gaming seriously and Linux gaming having been "almost there" for a decade.
edit: typo and update to first paragraph
I think my issue with this is largely philosophical in that I should be able to choose what software is installed and which patches are applied to my system. Microsoft's controlling, patronizing decisions for me are grating and demeaning. I am well capable of making up my own mind about when and which updates to apply.
I know this is a core argument for a Free OS, but I am unable to use one for gaming, and all Windows versions before 10 and all macOS versions allow the user to choose to update.
You actually can (partially) do that by simply disabling the Windows Update service. The only downside I've experienced thus far is that it also breaks the Windows Store. Apart from that you obviously need to reenable the service when you want to apply the updates. It's not quite ideal since you cannot apply individual (e.g. security) updates, but it works very well to avoid the random updates & included reboots.
When I'm ready to update, I switch to a non-metered connection.
Regarding Updates: Why don't you switch to "Current Branch for Business" then?
- Creators Update
- Fall Creators Update
Which is first? "Creators Update" doesn't have a modifier, so maybe it came in Spring? But which Spring? Before or after the Fall update?
- Service Pack 1
- Service Pack 2
- Service Pack 3
If you can count, you can figure out the order.
similar to Windows 8.1 Update 1, which was a full in place upgrade of Windows, but more like a Day One update to an RTM, 3 months later.
6.1.7600
6.1.7601
Win 8
6.2.9200
6.3.9200
6.3.9600
Win10
10.0.10240
10.0.10586
10.0.14393
10.0.15063
10.0.16299
I'm inclined to defend Microsoft's strategy for forced security updates, they're really doing a commendable job of proactively defending their users from newly discovered threats. Feature updates not so much.
I just want a fast, stable, and lightweight OS. Not really interested in design overhaul or features I'll never use.
To be fair, macOS has been doing that since Snow Leopard as well, but Google probably adapts to it.
1 Improved Cortana: you can now remove it in one click
2 Improved OneDrive: you can now remove it in one click
3 Improved resistance to featuritis: you cannot install anything AR or VR
4 Improved UI - will not freeze entire laptop for 3 secs by clicking the battery icon
5 Better Edge - downloads Chrome/Firefox 20% faster
6 Emojis - auto-bans contacts who use non-text emojis
7 Replaces Task Manager with much better MS Process Explorer that already has GPU stats
8 Does not try and gather all my contacts emails under the pretext of "People Integration" whatever that means
9 One button to turn off all the tracking/telemetry
10 Improved UI - Clicking on start does not result in times' square popping up.
Windows 10 fall creators update: No one asked for any of this but here it is anyway.
Windows 10 fall creators update: You should've seen the features we cut!
1. Bring the "power plan" (balanced/presentation/high performance) switching into the tray battery icon next to "Battery saver", which is independent of the "battery saver" power plan. This seems (!) like an easy change which many users would adore.
2. Finally unifying settings into one and only one place instead of having a "Settings" app only to find that every other thing you want to change eventually leads to the old setting window which hasn't changed since at least Windows XP.
3. Fix the occassionally horrific Start search, which will do things like find "Word 2016" as "Best match" when having pressed "wo", but once another "r" is pressed to make the search string "wor", the "Best match" changes to "Wordpad". Way too often does it happen, that you notice the best match as you're typing and then hit Enter only to find that by the time another letter was pressed (still the right one considering the current "Best match"!!), the "Best match" changed to something else.
That's in the cases where the Search only finds programs installed to a specific date and is not able to find anything newer, which has already happened on two computers I've seen. Not even mentioning that the "best match" gets updated with time even when no new keys are pressed. So the same can happen just due to the "Best match" changing between you start and finish the movement to hit "Enter".
4. Finish improving the horrific thing that is looking up a network drive/device using explorer.exe, leading to freezes and delayed error popups that feel very Windows 95ish.
5. Maybe change that a window of Explorer becomes unresponsive if waiting for a HDD to spin up. This happens regularly if your system is on an SSD and you have a second disk (HDD) mounted on another letter (D:\). When you haven't clicked that disk for a while, everything freezes between you clicking on it and it spinning up to start reading.
But hey, let's add another presumably more sexy and unifying look to the uppermost layers of the system.
Edit: Maybe they did other under-the-hood changes that are just not being discussed. If so, where would one find them?
Yeah the article here is explicitly "10 Best New Features" and so doesn't explicitly include improvements to old features, and clearly doesn't represent the breadth of changes in the Windows release.
The easiest way to find hints about just about every change made in the update is probably to browse through the Windows Insider blogs. They are quite detailed and rather intimate looks into the changelog of Windows over time. I don't know if anyone is building a good summary of everything that changes. Some of the area-specific blogs will do summary posts just before the release of everything going into the release; in particular I'm thinking about summary posts I've seen from the Windows Subsystem for Linux team (biggest tl;dr: multiple distro support, side-by-side distro-support, no need for Developer Mode anymore, just download distro(s) of your choice from Windows Store) and Windows CLI/CMD.exe team.
As with each previous update, more Settings have incrementally moved to the modern Settings app, per your point 2. That likely will remain a slower process than everyone would like (there are a lot of Windows settings), but they continue to work on it.
I can't speak to most of your other points as they've not been personal pain points for me; I don't do most of them often enough to notice.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/76t8r4/windows_1...
For example my work machine is outright refusing to install the last one, and Googling suggests the only way to get around it is a manual install via USB. A family member's home machine also got corrupted during an install, and I had to wipe it to recover (since it couldn't roll back or complete the installation).
I like the concept of these "big bang" updates with new features, but there's something wrong with how they're delivered.
I guess it is reasonable to assume that MS works out issues with the updates as failures are reported.
But yes, the way they are forced upon users is sickening.
So it is possible, at least with Windows 10 Enterprise... even if I'm not quite sure how. I've ticked so many damn boxes in that stupid policy editor. But, if you ever find yourself losing faith as you click through another advert-infested Windows "help" site, stay strong! A solution is out there!
(It still isn't perfect, though. Sometimes the updates are downloaded before I get prompted; other times, I'm prompted and then they download. More than once, the "download" process has used 100% CPU for an hour, which makes me suspicious that it's doing a bit more than it claims. And a couple of times when I've had the Security & Updates page open in the background, I've seen things just install themselves without asking, suggesting that certain updates are able to bypass this. But: no forced reboots.)
So I have to wait to update until I know I have a chunk of time set aside to repair GRUB.
It's somewhat akin to provisioning an entire new VM template and then replaying an automated install script to bring it up to date.
As someone that remembers how long in-place upgrades of that sort used to take (something like 98-ish to XP I recall taking hours), it's amazing they've got it down to "just" 15 minutes and a couple reboots.
(It feels like most Insider Preview builds get installed in this full image in-place upgrade system, too, and it's fascinating to see it happen sometimes two or three times in a week.)