Windows 10: Designed for All Your Devices | Hacker News Reader

Windows 10: Designed for All Your Devices

blogs.windows.com

65 pointsmk4467 comments

I just installed the latest Windows 10 build in a VM, and I'm remarkably impressed. Cortana is working much better than expected, and I'm loving the new start menu. I'm planning on switching to Win10 full time for at least 6 months or so after release; been on OS X for many years, but I much prefer the direction MS is going, these days. It looks like they're going to be the first folks to really get a universal ecosystem across desktops, tablets, and phones; frankly, I'm surprised it wasn't Google.

>I just installed the latest Windows 10 build in a VM, and I'm remarkably impressed

wat.

> Cortana is working much better than expected,

wat.

>and I'm loving the new start menu.

waaaaaaat.

> been on OS X for many years

oh. now it makes sense.

Actually, I'd like to second how impressed I am with Cortana. I got a windows phone a little while ago (really cheap, no contract, no love for the Android interface, etc) and was a bit skeptical of how useful it'd be at first.

After trying to ask it more and more natural-language questions, and having it speak useful answers back to me, it feels more and more like I'm in Star Trek.

I'm not usually that impressed by technology anymore (i.e. I still think lots of things are cool, but seldom do they surprise me), after being in the field for 30 years, but Cortana impresses the heck out of me.

I'm really looking forward to Windows 10, but how come every single marketing page they put out instantly lands on the front page around the top results?

Because 1) lots of people are interested in it, and 2) if you submit a link that's been submitted already, it gets upvoted automatically.

happens with Apple, why not Microsoft?

Internal MS voting circle.

Edit: Not to say they're necessarily doing it on purpose or for marketing: Microsofties would receive these urls internally, and if only 20 or so of them immediately submitted them to HN, it would go to the top of the frontage.

Although personally and knowing the extremes Microsoft goes to with marketing, I'd also not doubt if said Microsofties were 'informally encouraged' to share such links on social media as much as possible.

>Microsofties would receive these urls internally, and if only 20 or so of them immediately submitted them to HN, it would go to the top of the frontage.

>Although personally and knowing the extremes Microsoft goes to with marketing, I'd also not doubt if said Microsofties were 'informally encouraged' to share such links on social media as much as possible.

The blog was posted publicly around 6 hours ago, this post was made less than one hour ago.

Yep, and the admins should be able to see that. They should get one warning to stop or all accounts involved should be banned.

It's slightly tricky because people usually upvote what they are interested in. Therefore if a big bunch of people are interested in Win10, then it is just completely normal if they upvote these topics. Similarly, basically every new Apple hardware ends up on the top of HN. Same applies to many other things -- secure messaging, depression/burnout related articles, all Tesla news, etc.

It's very hard to run a news site and keep stuff out that actually interest people.

I very much doubt that these articles are upvoted by employees, etc.

The web developer community is well known to have a massive Apple bias. I'm not surprised by Apple stuff going to the top quickly, usually.

But this post in particular is suspect because it is totally devoid of content. Look at the comments so far, the most discussion has been prompted by the lack of content resulting in wondering how on earth this got to the top so quickly.

I'd bet dollars to donuts there was coordinated voting by Microsoft employees. Lots of companies do it on reddit, it's much less common here at HN (I think), but it still does happen.

> web developer community

What makes you say this is the only community on HN? I personally wouldn't say there's one specific community HN caters to beyond "technology people". There's all sorts of topics posted daily on here, and only a select few cater to web devs. Honestly, if it's something done by one of the big companies (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc), it'll most likely get on HN because there is no one particular focus.

Accusations of shilling without evidence are typically boring. This post is not an exception.

You know what's even more boring? Someone replying with "This is boring." without contributing anything.

Won't happen - there's little doubt that each person adding an upvote would be a real person. In order to police something like that you'd be effectively policing people's reasons for upvoting which is impossible.

They should be able to see that a bunch of immediate up votes to this submission were from Redmond, WA IP blocks. There's no need to guess as to motivation then.

They can also look for people going straight to a story and upvoting there, upvotes clustered around MS domains, and other things. All of which are currently in the voting ring detection code.

HN has pretty advanced code to handle cases like what MS is being accused of right now, and none of it's been triggered (or this story would've gone up the front page then fallen back down).

Linking to an HN post internally and saying "please upvote this" is wrong; multiple people independently deciding they want to post or upvote the article, even multiple people from the same company, seems completely fine.

Is it brigading if I post a permalink to a comment on slack?

Your theory probably explains why my comment got down-voted so much. Within 2 seconds of positing it had 3 upvotes now look at it.

I downvoted it as well, for the simple reason that you post has _nothing_ to do with this article, and because the whole thing about click/key logging is nonsense (at least in the RTM, yes I know they're gathering statistics for the previews, and they have been very open and honest about that).

No, your comment was down voted because it doesn't add anything to the discussion, other than ranting about Microsoft and closed source. Do you trust not only the Linux kernel, but the people who developed your sister of choice, along with the source you downloaded it from? Did you verify that the version you downloaded and installed was the same as the version you have source access to? Did you do the same thing for all of the third party software such as your web browser, video drivers, etc. did you do the same for your mobile phone?

Also, is everything on your machine open source? Are you using open drivers, firmware, boot loaders, BIOS?

Assuming you've done all of the above, how many people do you know of that you trust to read the code and verify the above is true for them? How many people do you know that have vetted the source code of the distro you're using. Just because someone can, doesn't mean someone has, especially if everyone else thinks someone else will verify it for them.

Within two seconds? I'm calling BS on that. But I downvoted it as soon as I saw it. It's nonsensical FUD and added nothing to the conversation.

I refreshed the page as soon as I posted it and it had +3

So the two people who agree with you upvoted early, and now the people who disagree are downvoting. It's crazy how opinions work.

I've been using the preview full-time for quite a while now, and my favorites are by far the multi-monitor window management features.

Essentially, you can now snap windows to any one of the 4 corners or 2 sides of any monitor and it just works (corners and sides are "sticky" when you're dragging windows). It also offers you the option to snap another window to the adjacent space with a single additional click.

It's by far the most user-friendly and elegant way of managing windows on multiple monitors I've seen on any OS so far.

My primary devices are an Ubuntu laptop + an Android phone. Both are very flexible for my needs. I'm scratching my head to figure out why should I be excited about all that integration, perhaps I'm not their customer. Don't get me wrong, I love & own Windows laptop too, but my Android phone does almost everything that Cortana is supposed to do, Dropbox gets me the files I need, I've moved away from MS Office...

It's just that the stuff mentioned in the blog isn't as magical as they are trying to project.

So, I have a couple of machines running the preview. I basically feel like I am not their targeted market most of the time. I don't use cortana, windows phone, or own an xbox. The use case it play a game or browse the web. So, the integration feature set doesn't really do anything for me. Overall, the preview generally feels pretty good, with the occasional massive issues that tend to happen in software previews, nightly builds, and beta software the world over. Generally, think windows 8.1 but with slightly more desktop feel.

The gripes I have are mostly things that will likely get better by release, or are simply things that I disagree with design choices. To pick one example, let's talk about wifi.

The wifi selection recently moved from the windows 8 style UI to a newer UI. In the process it lost several features, the only things I can change on the properties screen for a wifi network are if it metered and if device discovery is on.

It might just been that I have spent too much time in linuxland recently, but that seems a bit like going too far the way of being idiot proof.

Outside of some stability/compatibility issues that I hope are ironed out before release, I've been pretty impressed with Windows 10 preview so far. I only use Windows for games these days, so I can't really speak to it from a productivity standpoint, but the interface is much more intuitive than Windows 8's while still keeping the handful of things I liked.

Ironically, there were a couple of Windows 8 behaviors I had to unlearn (for example, there's no longer the super strange "hot corners" that were the only way to access the shutdown menu). Definitely didn't take as long as initially learning how to navigate Windows 8, though :)

> there's no longer the super strange "hot corners" that were the only way to access the shutdown menu

I'm not a fan of the hot corners. If you use a keyboard, you can use the following shortcut to shutdown your PC

WIN KEY + X, U, U

> WIN KEY + X, U, U

Windows Key + X is pretty much the one thing that makes Windows 8 tolerable on the desktop and the one thing I would recommend everyone having trouble with Windows 8 learn even if they aren't generally keyboard shortcut users and navigate the resulting menu (the WinKey+X menu) via mouse. I've been using Windows 8 since release and never use the hot corners stuff at all thanks to this menu.

Agreed 100%

alt + f4, enter, enter also works well

I like a lot of what I'm seeing and hearing, but unless I can find a good replacement for Media Center on the desktop I might still be using Windows 7 for a few more years.

I really recommend Kodi (previously XBMC). It's open source, the ecosystem is vibrant, and pretty much everything plugs into it. http://kodi.tv/

Alternatively, also check out Plex (http://plex.tv). IIRC it's a fork of XBMC, but in my opinion is more polished and the non-free price is fair for that polish. If you're just using it on one PC you should be able to do that for free.

I think it was originally a fork of XBMC, but they rewrote from scratch with their new "Plex Home Theater" application.

Thanks for the recommendations. I looked briefly at Kodi but wasn't sure whether Netflix (my primary source of video entertainment) plugged into it. I'll have another look.

Also consider something like a Roku. I mentioned plex earlier, which plugs into the Roku as a "channel" - I use my Roku 3 with Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Plex, and a few other things here and there.

It's not a free replacement like Media Center but it works really really well, and is worth the price if you are a regular streaming media user.

I believe both Plex and Kodi should have plugins for Netflix. NetfliXBMC should be Kodi's, and Plex should have it as a Plex Channel, which you can set up on the server.

But Media Centre has the ability to record DRM-ed cable. XBMC will never have that.

True, but I really think that's a shrinking sector. I used to have a dual-tuner HDHomerun (and before that several ATI cards), but over time my viewing shifted entirely to services like Netflix. Unfortunately it seems that people who use services like Netflix on a Windows desktop is also a shrinking sector.

There's your first problem: you bought more cable than you needed for your internet connection.

Second problem: you tried to use DRM. See XKCD 488 as to why it's a problem.

I don't think "tried to use DRM" is an accurate description. They were trying to watch their cable sub on their computer. I did it for years, and it was quite convenient and very high quality, but Comcast slowly encrypted all their offerings, the HD Homerun cable card version was slow to appear, etc., etc. It all just became too much of a hassle and streaming won.

you bought more cable than you needed for your internet connection.

What?

Second problem: you tried to use DRM.

I didn't. The cable company did. And plenty of the TV I am able to record is not available to stream on the same day, if at all.

you bought more cable than you needed for your internet connection.

> What?

Cable Internet in the US requires some sort of service to be bought alongside internet. That's usually Basic Cable. My comment was saying that if you bought more than basic cable, you bought more cable than you needed.

Second problem: you tried to use DRM.

> I didn't. The cable company did. And plenty of the TV I am able to record is not available to stream on the same day, if at all.

You can easily get your new via other avenues online. The only exception would be local.

Cable Internet in the US requires some sort of service to be bought alongside internet. That's usually Basic Cable.

No it doesn't. In NYC at least you can buy internet through Time Warner without buying a TV service.

My comment was saying that if you bought more than basic cable, you bought more cable than you needed.

Incorrect. I bought the amount of cable service I required in order to watch the things I want to watch when I want to watch them.

You can easily get your new via other avenues online.

Not legally. Live sports in particular.

Media Center does exist in W8, but it's basically completely untouched. And now I think MS would really rather you get an Xbox One if you want to interface with cable etc - big shame.

I've been using Plex for a few years now, and have nothing but good things to say about it. Everything is accessible from anywhere and everywhere.

Plex has completely replaced it for me but ymmv.

I still use winamp, but I may be a madman.

I may be a madman

Whether that is the case or not, know that you are not alone in this world :]

I do my devel work on a Xubuntu 14.04 install, tweaked for Compiz (yes, I use the cube desktop extensively).

I have Winamp installed via WINE. Best player ever.

Try XBMC.

I recently installed Win 10 on bare metal to have a go with the Win 10 IoT version for the Raspberry Pi 2. Works well on an old MacBook Pro with a bit of disk swapping even if bootcamp says it won't.

Seems OK but it definitely wasn't intuitive (and I'm already running Win 8). The only thing I can think of is they are making it an easier learning curve from Win 7 than from Win 8. It's a step backwards in some respects but I guess that's the idea.

I'll probably upgrade once the first round of patches are out for the stable version. More than I can say for the Raspberry Pi version which I won't be touching again unless it gets a lot better. Sticking with Linux on that for now. At least the mouse is usable.

Nailed it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4074053

(especially the parenthetical)

So, rather than a way to sync with your phone or setup stuff like calendar, contacts, photos or music sharing, they have just made a thing telling you to install Microsoft's cloud apps?

Disappointing.

Apple has a great iOS/OS X experience because the integration is deeper than just "install Apple's apps on your iPhone".

I don't use it because I don't like Metro UI apps but a large part of the list you give is already supported in Windows 8: calendar, contacts, photos (thru OneDrive). Some are available in a cross-platform fashion (calendar, contacts via MS account) others require a Windows Phone (IE opened tabs sharing, some systems settings). So I don't see them being removed from Windows 10 and don't really understand what you are exactly disappointed about.

> I don't use it because I don't like Metro UI apps but a large part of the list you give is already supported in Windows 8: calendar, contacts, photos (thru OneDrive)

So the only way to sync them is via the cloud?

Not sure about Android, but I doubt Apple provides a way to sync stuff to a desktop app. iTunes is heavily locked down and there have been cases in the past where they deliberately broke compatibility with sync apps.

What they can do on iPhones is quite limited there, yes. Although there are probably some things they could do. With iTunes installed, iPhones show up as cameras on Windows, and there may be some way to integrate with iTunes.

In Android's case, apps can do virtually anything. They could make a sync app if they wanted to.

That's because apple's apps come pre-installed on your iPhone.

is this legit? its hilarious https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt5iLwNChyo

I don't trust Windows even though my laptop has windows 8.1 installed. I'm planning on building a custom desktop so I can install a Linux OS and not have to worry about MSFT tracking my every click/keystroke.

It doesn't matter since your ISP/Browser/Mobile is tracking you anyway.

This makes me doubly sad to think that IPv6 backed away from requiring IPsec at all times. Very Sad.

Why? If who you're talking to is blabbing over a side channel, encryption doesn't matter. Encryption only stops Eve from seeing the content. And this says nothing regarding authentication. And there is no internet-wide RADIUS server.

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