The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update Feature Focus
by Brett Howse on November 10, 2017 8:00 AM ESTBundled App Updates
Many of the built-in apps have gotten some subtle updates, but unlike Edge, most of the apps are less tied to Windows feature updates itself, so frequent updates are more the norm here. But with the Fall Creators Update, many of the built-in apps have started to support features like Fluent Design to give a nice refresh of the look and feel. A couple of apps have had more significant things done though.
Groove
The biggest news for Groove Music is that Microsoft is officially killing its streaming music service, Groove Music Pass. People who subscribe are being prompted to switch to Spotify, which Microsoft has partnered with. The two companies have worked together to allow Groove users to migrate all of their playlists over to Spotify until January.
For Groove Music Pass subscribers, this isn’t great news, since Groove did offer features not found in Spotify, such as the ability to watch music videos, the ability to mix your own music into playlists, and the ability to stream music uploaded to OneDrive even if it didn’t exist in the Groove subscription catalog.
Groove will continue to function as the built-in media player, and you’ll still be able to stream music uploaded to OneDrive, but the subscription music will be gone by the end of 2017, as will the ability to download mp3 files of purchased music, so if you’ve bought music off this service, go get it now.
Photos App
The Photos App gets a lot of new functionality, and is one of the biggest updates of the entire Fall Creators Update. You can now use the Photos app to create movies from your photos, or edit videos. You can add filters, text, and 3D effects to the videos as well. Photos will be adding the support for full 3D Objects soon too, allowing you to make stories from your photos. The process is very simple, and it can automatically add music to the videos as well. This really is a nice update.
Microsoft Store
Bearing a new name, and a new icon, the Windows Store is now the Microsoft Store. There’s small tweaks to the layout, but overall the use of the app is pretty much the same as before. This is also losing the ability to buy music though, as part of the Groove changes, so be sure to backup any music you’ve purchased from this service.
The app situation in the store is improving, although slowly. One of the biggest improvements to the store is the Desktop App Converter, which lets developers package existing Win32 apps into the store, and this has helped with several apps. Earlier this year, Microsoft announced Apple would be brining iTunes to the Windows Store, through the Desktop Converter, which should be welcome news to many. The nice part of iTunes through the Store is that it will be isolated from the rest of the system.
They still have an uphill battle here, but any time they make it easier, it does help with adoption.
My People
Originally announced for the last update, but cut before release, is the My People functionality. This lets you pin your most used contacts to the task bar, over by the system tray. The goal is to make it easier to interact and share with them. You can drag and drop files onto their icon to share them, and launch their profile to view all interactions.
Bringing back the days of MSN messenger, emoji from pinned contacts will appear above their icon, giving a more intimate connection, or a more annoying connection, depending on the person you’ve pinned to the taskbar.
The idea behind My People is pretty solid, with an emphasis on people-first. Since the update came out a few weeks ago, I’ve not used it as much as I expected, but that may change as more apps integrate with the functionality.
Cortana
Cortana has gotten quite a bit of attention with this update, but not in Windows itself. Cortana has become the link between your Windows PC and your non-Windows based smartphone. This lets you work across devices, with the ability to continue emails on your PC that you started on your phone, and get and send SMS messages from your PC. It works fairly well, although it’s going to take some shifts in workflow to really start to take advantage of it, at least in my experience.
Cortana on the PC hasn’t been completely forgotten though. You can now issue voice commands to shut down, restart, or put your computer to sleep.
Performance Slider
First introduced on the new Surface Pro, Windows 10 now includes the ability to choose a power mode right on the task bar, to allow for better performance, or battery life.
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Lunaria - Saturday, November 11, 2017 - link
This was the update that made me go back pre-creators update. I am done with them for now. It must be the first time they messed up DX so much, all because of some placebo game mode, some useless game bar and what the hell is that new feature that they added about cheaters gonna do? I sent them feedback about it, and pointed out how clunky it is, how much frame drops I am getting after it and how "disable fullscreen optimizations" or adding game mode toggle in the settings panel and then hiding that same toggle from us in this update is just terrific. They already messed up plenty of things. Sure your games alt tab faster in fullscreen exclusive mode... who cares if they don't run properly? I am on version 1151 build whatever, some February 2016 one. Immediately changed the update server IP so I do not get updates. Leave me alone. If they want to market gaming as a thing, they should go back to their origins and take their stable DX core, reduce latency even further, implement low profile recording with minimal impact and most importantly ask users if they want to use those features or even worse if it goes bad again, those "features". They improved it, yes, but it doesn't even come close to the smooth heaven that gaming before it was added was. Not to mention the creators tools that most people do not need. The Settings menu is getting populated slowly with useful and not so useful information, but it is nothing impressive and I doubt it will ever be. Microsoft if you get only 10 people to test your features, you will recieve better and more valuable feedback than pushing those things to users who will find a way to disable and not use them because you forced them to do so. Give us back what we love and don't Telemetry on us or force us to use Windows Defender, thank you.bill44 - Saturday, November 11, 2017 - link
Whatever happened to Windows 10 Color Management?WFCU supposed to bring in stage 2 improvements to color management, but looks like it's been left out.
Wide COlor Gamut support is useless without it.
Lunaria - Saturday, November 11, 2017 - link
Not to mention they reset my gamma settings all the time.Icehawk - Saturday, November 11, 2017 - link
Let me know when they figure out how to make W10 not bork a good % of my machines when upgrading, super annoying having to rollback and have wasted an hour.Lolimaster - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
Stick to win7 and maybe get a xbox one for those games that are win10 exclusives?Lolimaster - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
Nothing else justifies having win10 for productivity.marvdmartian - Monday, November 13, 2017 - link
No doubt! At least flash something up on the screen, letting me know that you're pushing an update, and installing it. That way, I'm not suddenly dealing with a crippled machine, that is spending so much of its resources installing a bunch of (mostly useless) "new & improved" apps, and wondering why it's not doing what I want it to do?At least you got a notification of updates, with previous versions of Windows. W10, you're not sure, until you finally get so frustrated, that you reboot....and only THEN get the "Please wait, installing updates" message.
My 2nd favorite part of W10, is the apps that they don't want you to uninstall....even if there's no chance in hell, that you will EVER use them! Because, who doesn't want a bunch of crapware, clogging up your OS, right??
Apple Worshipper - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
Windows sucked and will continue to do so. iOS is the undisputed future while iPads will be the one and only true form of mobile computing going. All others are not even worth speaking aboutMarburg U - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
And, as ALL the previous updates. This gives out the "interactive windows station" error, on half my computers. Another great job. Probably it will take me 4 days to reformat everything (AGAIN).Glock24 - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
Another change I noticed is that that air now using more of the "modern app" control panels. For example, when you right click the network icon and select "network and sharing center" you her one of those new control panels, which I personally dislike. The one good thing though is that it's now possible to set any network as "public" or "private" in the new network control panelAnother change I noticed is on the task manager. It now shows GPU usage and also shows multiple GPUs where it applies.
I've not seen any of the new "Fluent Design". Is that only for " modern apps"? If so I'll never see it, as I uninstall all of those as I find them very annoying.