Why I Will Always Remember Windows 10's Crazy Development
I remember where I was when the Windows Insider Program opened on October 1, 2014.
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I remember because it was only a couple of hours after my mom had called me at work to tell me my grandmother passed away that morning. She had been in a nursing home for a couple of weeks after a fast deterioration at the hospital; she had been in excellent health for many years prior. She was an amazing woman who was born in the 30s, went to college, basically raised me and my sister every day before and after school and during the summer, and was from what I’ve ever seen, loved by everyone who knew her. I miss her a lot.
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Without including that paragraph, you might just figure me a giant geek for remembering the date the Windows 10 technical preview released. And you really wouldn’t be wrong, because I had been following “Windows 9” for many months prior, and had eagerly tuned into Microsoft’s 2014 BUILD keynote. But dammit, I was in the back of a car headed to a work-related destination, distracting myself by browsing the web on my phone, and my emotions were really going bonkers back there.
Anyway, Windows 10! That’s why you clicked on this article.
My reaction to Windows 10 thus far has been: they are fixing the problems Windows 8 brought to the table and implementing many UI changes. Yes! They are providing a frequent update cycle to the end-users. Yes! And hey, it’s going to be free for the first year? G00d — they have some catching up to do! Okay, by this point it’s pretty much an easy sell over previous versions of Windows, which is for better or worse a necessity for most people I’ve met. (Certainly the ones who always ask me to fix their laptops.)
Windows 10 has definitely been fun to follow. But not really exciting. I’ve been enjoying the rapid updates, even when things break, sure. But I haven’t really been too excited about Cortana, or their library of modern apps (currently using… let’s check the taskbar… zero of those).
I’ve been a little miffed that certain parts of the OS still aren’t updated in any way. Both big, system-level things like the File Explorer (which could be so much better) seem to remain completely ignored. Subtle, but frequently used things, like the sound panel, also look like they were first implemented in Windows 2000. It’s an easy sell for Windows 8 users, sure, but I hadn’t really seen anything that will make a “Mac person” or a “Linux person” or an “Android person” turn their head.
My cautious optimism amplified considerably after today’s 2015 BUILD keynote.
The HoloLens announcement in January was quite a stunner, but the video was too polished. It was really fun to speculate about, but it just seemed so unrealistic, so far off in the future. Charming, sure. Possible? Come on, that technology can’t really work that well, can it?
Well, it got the conversation going enough for me to think about how potentially world-changing things like this could be. Having tried an early Oculus Rift demo kit, and imagining Valve’s further potential with the Vive, has started to get my wheels turning about possible VR applications.
And Microsoft looks like it has what nobody else does with a true AR system, with things overlaying your honest-to-goodness vision. This is potentially world-changing stuff. Look how willing everyone is to carry around a cellphone in their pocket (oh, and that reminds me of another cool thing announced at today’s keynote). Some tangible objects and the industries surrounding them have had to almost completely adopt digital formats to meet customers where they are. Newspapers, CDs, physical books, and lots of other things aren’t as necessary as they once were. Imagine what a world with AR could be like. (I’m not saying it’s good or bad, but it’s wild.)
Yeah, the headset looks stupid. Yeah, that won’t be the model that goes to market or even close. Yeah, it’s a whole new level of scary in some ways.
But oh my goodness, so this is where Microsoft’s been putting its energy. Yes, make money from Azure. Yes, make money by investing in big data collection for user analysis and ads. Yes, earn some Windows cred by showing a little vulnerable side and willingness to cooperate (or find opportunities) with other huge platforms.
I know Microsoft probably won’t be the only one with this tech for very long. I fully expect a Google competitor, a Facebook competitor. Possibly Valve. But Microsoft is smart to be building good relationships with developers today. So when they announced new tools for translating both iOS and Android apps easily onto Windows — that’s a huge deal.
No, their modern app aesthetic may not be super appealing or unique, but they are getting some things right. The responsive design of the modern apps is a huge deal, especially in newfound light of resizing things to whatever size you want and plastering them all over your walls. The BUILD demonstration actually breaks things down a bit by using an insane camera rig to give us a real (approximate) glimpse, warts and all, of what HoloLens is capable of right now. It’s impressive. And the software is written for Windows 10? Like this is just one more responsive state? There are APIs for interpreting the physical world and stuff? That’s incredible. It’s a compelling thing.
It makes me forgive them a little bit for not updating the File Explorer yet, or introducing a screenshot feature that comes close to any half-decent Linux distro. Clearly they’ve been busy.
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All of these technology prospects make me think about what kind of changes people like my gram saw over the course of her life, growing up in the 1930s : walking to school in my small, rural town… Attending BINGO at the local school and winning the prize of a real live pig (“Boy, when butchering day came, that was sure sad”)… Seeing almost no one who owned a car, to basically everyone having cars… And phones. And television. And internet.
I know this is not a great tribute — some day, hopefully, I can do her better justice in that way. But thinking about the past also makes me think about the future. What a life our elders saw, full of crazy technological change. What a crazy one we have before us as well.
For Mary Doherty.
