It’s already been a year since Microsoft launched Windows 10, and we have had a couple of updates since release. The biggest update yet though is the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, which was codenamed Redstone throughout its development. It’s the first major branch from the launch codebase, which was codenamed Threshold. With it, Microsoft has added a lot of new features, polished some of the  interface , and overall provided a nice update to those on Windows 10.

The Road to Redstone

Windows 10 had a pretty strong launch, although the company did stumble a bit through some controversy over the last year: especially in the area of the collection of data from the operating system. Windows 10 was a big change in policy for Microsoft, with the goal of being able to improve the experience however there was a period of time where the answers from the Redmond company were vague at best. Much of that has been answered now, and although the answers won’t appease everyone the end result of anonymous telemetry data can certainly be seen with this update. With this update, we see fixes for many user interface issues, as well as the constant squashing of bugs. There was also plenty of deserved controversy around the underhanded Get Windows 10 dialogs on older versions of the Operating System. Confusing would be an understatement, and the dialogs got progressively more deceitful over the year, until only recently a large outcry resulted in the company accepting that they had gone to far and toned them back.

Despite the controversy, Windows 10 has been pretty successful over the last year. The last update from Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi on June 29th was that there were over 350 million devices running Windows 10 now, which is a pretty healthy number considering the decline in the PC market. Windows 10 is also a big part of the Xbox One, and it also includes IoT and Windows 10 Mobile. Microsoft had set a target of 1 billion devices running Windows 10 by mid-2018, and although they have admitted they likely won’t hit that goal now with the practical exit of the phone market, they still could hit that mark later in their 2018 fiscal year.

Part of that initial uptake in Windows 10 was due to the already mentioned free Windows 10 Update for all computers running Windows 7 or later. This was the first time ever that Microsoft has taken the tactic of eliminating the upgrade fee, but they had a couple of reasons to do so. In enabling their users to move to Windows 10, it would expand the reach of their built-in services, including OneDrive, Bing, and the Windows Store. The other motivating factor was that Microsoft was pretty eager to avoid another mess that they had with Windows XP, where a big chunk of their user base was stuck on an outdated version of the operating system. For the users, it meant a lot of money in support, as well as long term legacy teams back at Microsoft. Windows 7 was certainly set up to be the same, with a solid framework and stable platform, and we will see how they make out when Windows 7 starts to run into the end of its long term support window. Already they’ve seen some large corporations make the move to Windows 10, with many more actively piloting it now, so perhaps the XP mess might have been avoided.

But enough about the past. The Windows 10 Anniversary Update brings a lot of welcome changes to Windows 10, and many of them have been actively adjusted based on almost real-time feedback from what is most certainly Microsoft’s most successful software beta program yet. The Windows Insider Program has been a huge success for the company, with millions of active users providing feedback on changes, implementations, and bugs. The program has received over 70,000,000 pieces of feedback this year alone, and was a driving factor on many of the changes in this update. 

Let’s dig into what’s new.

Windows 10 Gets Polished

When Windows 10 launched, Microsoft set it up to be “Windows as a Service”. The goal of W10 was for it to be continually updated going forward. In 2015, this is pretty much the default for any new software, which relies on a connected world to always allow constant updates. Windows previous to 10 were patched for security fixes every month, but other than the rare service pack which brought feature updates, what you saw on day one was pretty much what you got when the operating system went out of support. This has changed in a big way with Windows 10. A few months after release, it saw its first feature update to build 1511. This was a small update, but it brought a lot of nice fixes that didn’t make it in time for launch.

The Anniversary Update is an extension of this, bringing a lot of polish to the operating system. Windows 10 didn’t ship in a broken state, but there were certainly a lot of areas where you could see it wasn’t quite done. They’ve made quite a few tweaks for this round, and many of them are quite welcome, while others are purely aesthetic.

Start Menu Changes

The Start Menu has been a work in progress ever since it made its way back to Windows with the Windows 10 launch. Throughout the insider builds, there were quite a few iterations of the start menu, and even with the 1511 update in late 2015, Microsoft updated it to add the ability to add more tiles.

With the Anniversary Update, they are at it again. The biggest change is the 'All Apps' option, which is now gone. All of the apps now default to showing in the Start Menu in a scrollable list, with the most used and recently added apps at the top. The 'Recently Added' option now also shows three apps, which is a nice change. Keeping all of the apps accessible makes it easier to navigate to them. You can of course still just type the name of the app as well, and it will populate from an indexed search.

Action Center Updates

The Action Center gets some nice changes as well. The icon has been subtly tweaked, and it now shows how many notifications you have. The notifications have been increased in size, and Windows 10 now allows you to set priority levels for notifications, so your most important ones are always on top. With apps like Skype, you can reply in-line with the notification, either through the toast pop-up when it first arrives, or later through the Action Center.

Microsoft demoed Universal Dismiss and Notification Mirroring at the Build developer conference, which will allow for notifications dismissed on one device to mirror that dismissal to all devices, and that’s made it into this update. One tip for Windows 10 notifications: if you have an app that spams notifications, you can right click it in the Action Center and turn off notifications for that app. This existed prior to this update as well, but it’s a very handy trick so I figured I’d mention it.

Settings Gets Icons

This is a small change, but Settings was completely text based in Windows 10 until this update. Now, there are icons for each setting. In addition, some of the settings have been broken out a bit better into their own categories.

For example, if you want to join the Windows Insider Program, that has its own category under Update & Security, rather than under and Advanced menu for Updates themselves. Settings continues to offer the search function as well, which makes it much quicker to find any setting.

Lock Screen Changes

The Lock Screen has always been a bit of an odd thing in Windows 10. It’s origins are from the mobile side, where notifications and detailed status updates can be quickly seen when you power on your phone. On a tablet or phone, this is likely more useful than on the desktop, but since Windows 10 is the same OS across all of those devices, the lock screen updates are of course across all devices. The new lock screen now integrates Cortana, and the image on the lock screen is now the same one as the log-in screen, meaning it’s a less jarring experience to unlock the PC. The two images was always a bit odd. These are small changes, but a lot of this update is about making a more consistent experience, so they fit well.

New Features And Built-In App Updates

Dark Mode

The Anniversary Update also adds another feature to personalize the experience: Dark Mode. As the name suggests, Dark Mode changes the default color scheme to black. The built-in apps also set their color scheme based on this setting, including mail, the store, and more.

This is certainly a nice feature for personalization, but it’s also a smart idea with recent launches of PCs and tablets with OLED displays. Lenovo showed off their own theme for Windows 10 at CES, for use with their OLED laptops, which eliminates a lot of the bright white display aspects that desktops and laptops have become accustomed to.

Other apps, such as Edge, also include a dark mode but the toggle is in the app settings, so you can customize this the way you prefer.

Mail App

The built-in Mail app hasn’t changed much visually since it was launched, but it’s continued to gain features which were very much missing when the OS first shipped. For instance, the mail client originally shipped with Conversation View as the only way to see your mail. About a month after Windows 10 shipped, an update arrived which allowed you to set the view to the more traditional view of chronological order.

With the Anniversary Update, Microsoft has finally fixed another missing feature which was a huge inconvenience for many people (myself included) which is you can finally send mail as another address. The Windows 8.1 mail client supports this, Microsoft’s Outlook.com supports this, but until this update, the Windows 10 mail client was missing this. You could of course put multiple accounts into it, but if you’ve consolidated to one, you can now use a drop-down selection on the send address to pick any addresses configured.

OneDrive

The OneDrive experience changed dramatically with Windows 10. Windows 8.1 featured the ability to see all of your files in OneDrive, and only download those that you wanted to access. Windows 10 ditched that and went with a per-folder sync when OneDrive was configured. With the limited storage on many devices, this wasn’t always ideal. To compound matters, there was no app for OneDrive when the OS launched.

At least one of these issues is now gone, and while not tied to the Anniversary Update, there is now an app to access OneDrive. It does give access, and you can download files that you need, although it’s a traditional file-save dialog rather than just download it and keep the file in sync within the OneDrive folder like in Windows 8.1.

There were reports of placeholders coming back to Windows 10, but at least so far, there hasn’t been any official word of this feature coming back. Until a new solution is found, OneDrive is not be the integrated experience it was in Windows 8.1.

Hey Cortana, Remind Me to Explain Windows Ink

Cortana

Microsoft’s digital personal assistant has been updated as well. The most obvious change is that Cortana can now be accessed on the lock screen. If you’re not too worried about others seeing the lock screen, such as on a home PC, you can even have Cortana access your calendar and email on the lock screen. If you enable voice control with “Hey Cortana” you could even ask Cortana to play a song from across the room. It’s a nice feature, but on a PC it may not be that useful. On a tablet or mobile device, it might get a bit more use.

Perhaps the biggest updates with Cortana is just how much Microsoft has expanded the reach. While Cortana began as a feature of Windows Phone, Microsoft now offers it as a downloadable app on Android and iOS as well. That makes a lot of sense considering how the mobile smartphone game has played out, and gives Windows 10 users the ability to have reminders across their devices.

Speaking of across device abilities, Cortana can now send notifications from a smartphone to the PC. You can even reply to SMS messages on the PC using Cortana, which is pretty handy.

One other change has certainly caused some confusion prior to the release. The ability to turn Cortana off completely has been removed from the update, as well as the ability to assign a different browser/search engine via the registry - from now on users will be limited to Edge and Bing. You can opt to sign out of Cortana to remove the personalized features, but Cortana will still be the default search in the taskbar. It’s a change in policy for sure. As always, you can adjust what Cortana knows about you at any time by using the Notebook, and if you sign out of Cortana you’ll get a non-personalized version.

Windows Ink

It’s fair to say that Microsoft has been a proponent of the stylus input on computers for a long time. Over the years, the capabilities of the inking support have grown, and when Windows 10 launched last year, inking was a first class input method, with the ability to use the pen to write on any dialog box, and more. With the Anniversary Update, they are taking it to the next level with Windows Ink.

Windows Ink is a one-stop shop where you can easily access all of your inking apps, like Sketchpad, Sticky Notes, and others. It’s also an easy way to discover more apps built for the pen, and you can configure the pen here as well. It’s a smart idea to help people use the pen to get more out of the experience.

They’ve also added more features to the inking experience, including a digital ruler. It’s one of those “wow that’s so obvious” additions to the pen input, and being digital it can be more than just a straight ruler. Microsoft showed off at Build a version of Adobe CS with a digital French Curve ruler. I’ve actually tried to use an actual ruler with a stylus before, and it’s a pretty frustrating experience. The digital version is much easier to use, and more adaptable.

Some of the inking is even integrated into Cortana, and now Cortana can automatically decipher hand-written sticky notes in the sticky notes app, and create reminders based on them. Sticky notes are still one of the skeuomorphic ideas, but for some people they are indispensable, even as a digital version.

Edge and Xbox

Edge Updates

With all of the changes that have come with the Anniversary Update, none have been more impactful or more necessary than the updates to Edge. When Edge came along, it offered some much needed performance improvements over Internet Explorer, and a goal to keep it up to date more, and improve standards compliance. That has happened, at least somewhat, but not to the extent that I had hoped or expected. We were promised that Edge would be updated through the Windows Store, so updates to Edge would no longer be tied to the operating system, but overall that hasn’t happened yet. Edge has been updated, but it seemed to happen only when there was an OS update. There have been a few changes brought along since release, but all of them have been pretty minor. I’m not necessarily disappointed in the update speed of Edge, but more that we’re still stuck with waiting for the core OS to get a major update in order to get a major update to the browser.

Still, the changes that have come for Edge with the Anniversary Update are very welcome. The biggest update is for extensions.

Internet Explorer had plug-ins, but when Microsoft created Edge, they ditched that model completely. The goal was to use extensions, and the extensions would share much of the same ideas as those in Google Chrome. However, the feature didn’t launch with Windows 10, and we’ve had to wait an entire year for it. With this update, Extensions are now available, and it makes Edge all the better for it.

At the moment, there are only a couple of extensions, but likely more will come over time now that it’s officially available and not just part of the insider program. Popular extensions like Lastpass are available, and they are installed and updated through the Windows Store. To find extensions, there is an Extensions hub in Edge’s settings which will take you to the store where you can see and search for them. The insider preview has shown that these extensions can be pretty much as fully customizable as those in Chrome, and other than a few times where the extensions have had to be reinstalled because of an update (and they were reinstalled automatically) the practice of using them has been great. Even though it’s early days, using Lastpass in Edge is already better than it ever was in Internet Explorer, as an example.

Other than extensions, there are other updates to Edge, but none of them are as highly visible. Instead, it gains support for things like Paste and Go, and the ability to navigate forward and backward by swiping the screen to the side, just like Internet Explorer had in Windows 8.1.

You can also specify what to do with downloads now, and change the default save location. Somehow this wasn’t available at launch, but it is here now. Sites that support it can also do web notifications in Edge, and Windows Hello integration is here too, allowing for sign into supporting websites. But don’t worry – your facial image won’t be sent to the site. Instead it will use a token system which Windows Hello will take care of.

Xbox

The Xbox itself is also getting the Anniversary Update, which will bring Cortana, Universal Windows Apps (UWP), and more to the console, but the big addition on the PC side is the new Play Anywhere initiative.

Microsoft has been updating their gaming platform on the PC continuously, and unlike Edge they have not been waiting for major OS updates to bring these changes. For example, in May, Windows 10 gaming got support for V-Sync control and Adaptive Framerate which was an early criticism of Universal Windows App based games like Rise of the Tomb Raider.

With the new WDDM 2.0, quite a bit has changed, and for a full refresher on this I’d recommend the Windows 10 Review which goes into some nice detail. As a summary though, WDDM 2.0 removes the full-screen capabilities of older games, and the sandbox model of UWP means that apps like FRAPS no longer function. It’s a change from the past, and people love the past, but with support now for variable frame rates and V-Sync, the compositing in Windows 10 is the best compromise for a tear-free gaming experience.

The big news on the Xbox side though is that Microsoft has created the Xbox Play Anywhere program. Games that are part of this program will offer both a version on the Xbox One as well as the Windows Store. You can buy the game on either device, and you get the copy on the other. Saved games will sync through the cloud to all devices. While the Xbox One has not been as successful as the Playstation 4, Microsoft has made a smart play by leveraging its other strengths, including PC gaming. Although this will require developer support, Microsoft Studios will be supporting it on all of the games they showed on-stage at E3 this year.

I still think they have some work to do in order to compete against the likes of Steam and Origin though, including the ability to backup games and more. One change that has helped though is that you can now specify which drive to install a game on. Considering games can now easily be 50 GB or more, having that default to the C: drive as it was at launch can be a big problem when you have a smaller SSD as your boot drive. You can now specify where to install the game when you choose to download it.

Developer and Enterprise Features

Bash shell

At their Build developer conference, Microsoft announced that the Bash shell would be available in Windows 10 with the Anniversary Update, and they have delivered. Bash has been available in the Insider Program for quite a while, so it’s been well tested already. For those wondering why Microsoft would go to the trouble of adding another shell, the goal is to make Windows 10 more friendly for web developers who often have toolchains in Bash.

Image Source: hanselman.com

Microsoft partnered with Canonical to provide user-mode binaries, so most of the commands which work in Ubuntu will work in Windows 10 as well. The Bash shell is not running Linux in a virtual machine behind the scenes either. This is Ubuntu binaries running on Windows 10.

For those that wanted to leverage open source toolkits but could not do it on Windows before, this should be a nice addition to Windows.

Centennial Apps

Project Centennial is Microsoft’s solution for existing Win32 apps being moved forward to the new Universal Windows App (UWP) platform. With the Anniversary Update, Microsoft is bringing official support for Centennial Apps on Windows 10, where as prior to this it was all part of the testing phase.

Once a Win32 or .NET app has been converted to UWP, it will have the ability to do push notifications and have a Live Tile, just like all UWP apps. The install process is much cleaner, and uninstalling ensures that all traces of the app are gone. A converted Win32 app can be transitioned to the new XAML layout as well, which would allow for scaling of the UI much easier than any sort of DPI method.

Converted apps can also be put in the store, and updated through the store. For those that prefer to offer the app in a more traditional download and install way, the converter creates an AppX package which can be loaded onto any Windows 10 PC.

The app will have a virtualized file system and registry, and it won’t work for apps that have to run as administrator, but there are certainly some upsides to having Win32 apps converted to UWP. We’ll have to see how this goes over time, since it’s a brand new feature. Certainly apps that are no longer developed will never move to this model, it’s a smart way to at least offer the UWP platform to traditional Win32 developers.

Enterprise Features

Microsoft can’t leave out the Enterprise, since that’s a huge part of their business. The Anniversary Update brings some updates here too. Things like Windows Hello which are also usable by consumers will of course be available, but there are a couple of features targeted specifically towards the enterprise.

The first is one that we’ve heard about for about as long as Windows 10 has been around: Windows Information Protection. This feature was previously known as Enterprise Data Protection, and it is a mechanism to prevent data leaks by employees, either wittingly or unwittingly. Files can be designated as Business files based on where they are located, or where they came from, and end-users won’t be able to copy those files or their contents without switching it to a personal file, and whether or not they can do that is controlled by policy through Mobile Device Management or System Center Configuration Manager.

We’ve discussed this in the past, but there’s a great TechNet article now that the feature is being made available with this update.

The other big enterprise feature is Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection, and yes the name is a mouthful. WDATP will help administrators detect, investigate, and respond to attacks to their infrastructure. It combines a client built-in to Windows 10 along with cloud infrastructure to provide tools and dashboards to see what’s going on now, and what’s happened in the past. It should be a powerful tool for IT admins. You can read more at TechNet as well.

Tablet Mode changes, Windows Everywhere, and Skype

Tablet Mode

When Windows 10 launched, Tablet Mode, aka Continuum, was the new solution to offer Windows 10 across both traditional desktop computers, as well as touch first, or touch only devices like tablets. Overall, the interface worked well enough, but it was a step back from the usability of Windows 8.1 as a tablet interface. Still, the balance of desktop versus tablet was improved greatly with Windows 10, so it was a net win. With the Anniversary Update, Microsoft is bringing some of the Windows 8.1 features back to improve Tablet Mode.

The first change is the Start Screen layout. It’s still the same basic design, but the left hand side has been adjusted to make it more usable. The hamburger menu stays at the top, but directly under it is now the All Apps button. Toggling this switches from the Start Screen to All Apps much more akin to how it was in Windows 8.1, with a full screen scrollable list, rather than just a list on the left side. It makes it a lot easier to scroll more apps quicker, and see everything you have installed. Also, the left side contains icons for File Explorer, Settings, Power, and logout. It’s a subtle change, but it really is a lot more usable now.

Another thing that was missing was the full-screen tablet experience: in Windows 8.1, full-screen apps would lose the taskbar at the bottom. When Windows 10 shipped, the taskbar would stay planted at the bottom. There’s now an option to auto-hide the taskbar to make it a more immersive feel. I personally really liked the taskbar, since it makes it much easier to switch apps, but it’s nice to have the option back for those that prefer it.

The browser is a big part of tablets, and this has already been mentioned, but the addition of swipe navigation in Edge helps a lot as well.

Tablet Mode has improved a lot since the initial release, and these changes, added to previous changes such as the ability to toggle on “more tiles” makes the latest update much better to use. It’s likely still not quite as good as Windows 8.1 was, but the net gain with the much better desktop is still a better overall solution.

Windows Everywhere

It’s been Microsoft’s goal for a long time to bring Windows 10 to all devices, and that was a tall hill to climb. But, it has happened, and users of Windows can now experience the benefits of the work to get here. Windows 10 Mobile is not a different operating system, but the same Windows 10 base with a different UI to make it work better on the small touch screen. With Microsoft’s failure to establish a foothold in the mobile market, it’s almost too little, too late, but regardless, fixes and changes they make to Windows 10 also find their way to the phone. This is as simple as the new mail app, updated to support multiple sending accounts, instantly worked on the phone too since it’s a Universal Windows App. What’s more, Windows has been expanded to work on devices as small as IoT, to Hololens, to the ultra-large screen of the Surface Hub.

This work has also expanded to the Xbox One, and with the Summer Update for Xbox rolling out on July 29^th, the fruits of this labor has already been seen. The latest Xbox update offers much of the same interfaces as Windows 10, including slide-out menus with a hamburger button, as well as the ability to (finally) run Universal Windows Apps. The Movies and TV app on the Xbox is the exact same one as on the PC, which is the exact same one as on the phone. Updates to the UWP will fix issues on all three.

It’s been a long road, and the casualty of the march to where Microsoft made it is the loss of the mobile market. They’ve transitioned there to providing apps and services, but Windows 10 Mobile is now pretty good at a time where it’s unlikely most people will ever use it.

Skype

And how can we forget Skype? Skype’s had a long and arduous road to where it is now, but it seems like it’s finally become a focus of the company. With the Anniversary Update, we see our first look at the new UWP version of Skype, replacing the old WinRT version, and likely eventually the Win32 version as well. It’s been out in preview for a while, and overall it’s been pretty solid.

It offers a dark mode, much like many of the Microsoft UWP apps, and the same UWP exists on Windows 10 Mobile as well. Likely the biggest feature is one that hasn’t made it to Skype yet. Microsoft has promised to add SMS support within Skype, so you can use Skype as a portal for both Skype messages and SMS. It’s something that they already had in Windows 10 Mobile when it first shipped, but it was later removed, and then a new Messaging app was tested, which was also killed off. The final solution is to use the Skype UWP to allow you to send SMS messages from your PC, and assuming it’s not too far out, that’s a decent solution considering how much better the Skype UWP has been.

Final Words

There’s a lot to like with the Anniversary Update, and as the first major update since Windows 10 shipped, it’s a good start for Microsoft on their new track of Windows as a Service. We’d already seen a couple of smaller updates since launch, fixing several outstanding items, but the Anniversary Update adds a lot more functionality to the operating system.

With the new Skype, Mail, and other Universal Windows Apps, Microsoft finally has a platform which works across all of their systems. It really has been a long dream, and only with the update to the Xbox One do we really have a universal platform. This should pay dividends going forward, with any app updates being available to all systems. For developers, there’s an opportunity to reach all of Microsoft’s platforms with a single app. Project Centennial should assist with those trying to bring older Win32 apps forward as well.

The updated tablet mode is all about small changes. Using Windows 10 in a purely touch environment is definitely a better experience. Windows 8.1 was pretty good here, but the app selection was weak at best, so Windows 10 is now a superior platform for touch on the Windows side.

The Bash shell was a pretty big surprise at Build, but it makes a lot of sense with the new Microsoft. They’ve embraced open source in a way that didn’t seem possible a few years ago, and their strive to bring developers to the platform has been the driving factor in the addition of a Linux system to Windows. They even call it Bash on Ubuntu on Windows.

Windows Ink is a better way to use the pen. Cortana has improved. But I think the biggest update was to Edge, which really needed extensions to even have a chance of getting use by many users. Edge has always rendered text very well, but it’s lack of extensions made it difficult to use daily. With this update, that should no longer be a problem.

Microsoft made thousands of changes to Windows 10, and there’s no way to go into all of them in a single article, but Windows as a Service has started out pretty well so far. The Anniversary Update really polishes a lot of the aspects of Windows 10, which didn’t necessarily feel rushed, but wasn’t exactly finished either. This update has helped out on a lot of the edges.

The Windows Insider Program has been the driving factor in the development, and it doesn’t appear to be ending any time soon. Microsoft has found a way to tap into millions of people’s feedback and ideas to improve their product. It’s been an interesting road to Redstone, and now that Redstone 1 has shipped we should start to see the new features coming to Redstone over the next several months. For now, the Windows 10 Anniversary Update will start rolling out in waves today, so check your Windows Update.