The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update Feature Focus
by Brett Howse on November 10, 2017 8:00 AM ESTClosing Thoughts
The new pattern of a spring and fall (or fall and spring, depending on your location) update for Windows 10 has worked well for 2017. The Creators Update added some new features, and several under the hood changes, but also missed out on a couple of features that were originally promised to hit the early update. Luckily, there’s another update six months later to target, so missed features aren’t missed for too long.
After a relatively tame Creators Update, there’s a lot of great new features in the Fall Creators Update, including the much-missed OneDrive Files On-Demand, which, for me, could have been the entire update. It’s great to finally have access to all of OneDrive, even if you don’t have enough disk space to store everything, which is often the case when SSDs are generally too small for bulk file storage. After a couple of weeks, the new Files On-Demand feature has been flawless, without apps randomly crashing as they wait for files to be downloaded, which wasn’t the case back in Windows 8.1.
Mixed Reality was a major selling point from Microsoft, but it’s still too early to know if this is going to take off in any meaningful way. The hardware is still expensive, although there’s a lot more options now with Mixed Reality, and the benefits are difficult to justify outside of a few select use cases. The AR portion of Mixed Reality might have more of an impact, with the Mixed Reality Viewer where you can project 3D objects into live space. Microsoft has gone pretty heavily into 3D animation, and VR/AR, but the jury is still out on it.
The people-first experiences are where Microsoft can really shine, and the My People has the potential to be a very nice tool. It needs more app integrations to really take off, but early use has been promising.
Photos has also suddenly become very powerful, with the ability to create and edit videos right in Photos itself. Originally this was announced as a separate app, but rolling it into Photos seems like a smart way to get it noticed, and hopefully used, since it does some cool effects without a lot of work.
The new security features are very strong, and should help drive adoption of Windows 10 in the enterprise. But even for the home user, or small business, controlled folder access is a great feature to protect your most important data.
Windows itself looks better than ever, and Fluent Design has been a nice refresh of the look of Windows 10. The lighting effects and acrylic give a nice touch to apps that leverage it. We’re still not at the point where all of Windows, or its apps, have fully embraced Fluent Design, but the initial apps and settings that support it really do look great.
Edge has continued to improve, and this update’s addition of PDF annotation is a very welcome change. Edge was difficult to recommend as a daily browser for a long time, but feature improvements have helped a lot, and it’s now generally good enough for most tasks. There’s still some features not available in Edge that were in IE, or Chrome, but the list gets shorter with every update.
Overall, the Fall Creators Update has been a very nice feature update, building off the Creators Update earlier in the year. The naming convention still needs a lot of work, but that’s not a huge concern. The rollout for the Fall Creators Update has been quicker as well, so Microsoft must be getting more confident in their update process. If your machine hasn’t gotten the update yet, head on over to Microsoft.com to download it and check it out.
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prophet001 - Monday, November 13, 2017 - link
Oh that's rich. Google trying to shut off another manufacturer's spyware.rofl
pjcamp - Monday, November 13, 2017 - link
How the hell do you spy on a machine with the power off?BurntMyBacon - Wednesday, November 15, 2017 - link
I think that was referring to a system with power connected, but in the "power off" state. The Intel Management Engine would still draw some power, so it wouldn't really be considered fully powered off. It just hasn't initialized the boot code from UEFI / BIOS / Etc. If I recall correctly, the Intel Management Engine doesn't require boot code to bring it up, but it can be reconfigured by the boot code. This is where coreboot could become useful if you want to disable the engine.Shiitaki - Tuesday, December 5, 2017 - link
It's not that hard to bypass the ME engine, just add an external network card.Ratman6161 - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link
"Microsoft should block ALL applications by default "People love to make sweeping comments like that without thinking through the consequences. Block ALL? Sure. So what does your average home user do then? With everything blocked you have to give them some mechanism to unblock the things they need or want. Unfortunately 99.99% will have no idea....and will click "yes" or "OK" or whatever. OR they won't have any clue what to do and will only know they wanted something and it doesn't work. Then the people who can't figure out how to get to their google docs etc will be on here flaming about the Microsoft Conspiracy to prevent them from using third party products.
Hurr Durr - Saturday, November 11, 2017 - link
This psycho was running around comments not long ago screaming how he "hack-proofed" WinXP and "challenged hackers and various intelligence services around the world" to crack it. Make your conclusions.Bullwinkle-J-Moose - Saturday, December 23, 2017 - link
Which Psycho is that Hurr Durr?I recall running around claiming that they couldn't "wreck" my box but I never said they couldn't "hack" my box
I would NEVER use XP for banking or passwords because even a read only system can be "hacked" but not permanently wrecked
This box is for testing the best of the best malware on the planet and it has often been "hacked"
However, a simple reboot restores it to pristine and fully functional condition by wiping away any malware, so stop trolling with your fake news
Samus - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
I trust Microsoft diagnostic submissions a hell of a lot more than amazon, Facebook, or google. As a whole I trust Microsoft and Apple over just about any other tech company because they are the only two that have business models not revolving around ad revenue. That’s partially why Bing failed...it didn’t invade your privacy enough.ddriver - Monday, November 13, 2017 - link
LOL and WOW, how dumb are you. Their business model revolves around milking people in every possible way they can as hard as they can. What an idiocy it is to assume they go though the effort to create an OS that is spyware at its core and they will not monetize on the acquired information just because they have other sources of revenue.prophet001 - Monday, November 13, 2017 - link
They did this in the wake of the sheeple devouring Google's and Apple's creations and paradigms.If you can't beat em, join me.
Microsoft was one of the last bastions of personal privacy in an OS but ya'll told them, through your adoption practices, "hey it's cool. take my stuff" and so they did.