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The Windows 10 Anniversary Update that was released to Home users in the summer is now available under the Current Branch for Business servicing option.

The Windows 10 Anniversary Update that was released to Home users in the summer is now available for widespread enterprise deployments.

The Anniversary release, version 1607, has been designated as available to Windows 10 machines that receive updates under the Current Branch for Business (CBB) servicing option.

Apart from the Home version of Windows 10, most other flavors of the OS can be set to receive updates under the CBB. A PC on the CBB path will be updated about four months after the Home version of Windows 10, allowing additional time to validate an update’s quality and application compatibility.

This delay to allow bugs to be fixed would seem to be particularly important in the case of the Anniversary Update, which triggered complaints about frozen systems and broken web cams among home users. A group of Windows 10 Home users have previously petitioned Microsoft to allow them to delay updates.

Describing the Anniversary Update’s availability under the CBB, Michael Niehaus, director of product marketing at Microsoft, said in a blog post: “This is an important milestone and signifies that this version has been validated by customers, OEMs and partners giving organizations the confidence to further accelerate deployments at scale.”

The release addresses 1,000 items of feedback from home users and enterprises performing pilot deployments.

The Anniversary Update can be downloaded to PCs on the CBB and will be available to CBB machines via Windows Update and Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) in January. Unlike machines that use Windows Update, computers that are managed using WSUS or System Center Configuration Manager, will require IT admins to choose when to apply the update.

The other version of Windows 10 designated as a supported CBB release is 1511, released in November last year. The launch version of Windows 10, 1507, won’t be patched or updated after March next year.

Niehaus says there has been a 3x increase in deployments of Windows 10 by enterprise over the past six months, but doesn’t reveal the size of these deployments or the number. Businesses rolling out Windows 10 include the Australian Department of Human Services, Hendrick Motorsports and Crystal Group of Companies.

However, some third-party figures on Windows 10 roll-outs have been less rosy, with an audit of more than 400,000 business PCs in North America finding that 99 percent of had not been upgraded to Windows 10.

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Now that Apple’s introduced the first major update to its MacBook Pro lineup in years, it’s time to square off the best of the best in Mac and PC laptops to see who currently prevails in this age-old rivalry. 

The contenders

The newest Surface Book is a top-of-the-line model with a Core i7-6600U, a GeForce GTX 965M, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. The updated product line varies from $2,400 to $3,300 (our model) in price. All three net you a 6th-gen Skylake dual-core Core i7 chip, and all three get you the same Performance Base with a GeForce GTX 965M. The only differences are in the size of the SSD and how much RAM you get. Only the SSD would affect performance significantly.

On the Apple side, the contender is a $2,400 MacBook Pro 15 with a quad-core Core i7-6700HQ, 16GB of LPDDR/2133, and a 256GB SSD. I also had partial access to two MacBook Pro 13’s. The first was the non-touch bar model with a Core i5-6360U, 8GB of LPDDR/1866, and a 256GB SSD ($1,500). The second was the Touch Bar version with a Core i5-6267U, 8GB of LPDDR/2133, and a 256GB SSD ($1,800).

Why this contest isn’t rigged

Let’s make it clear from the outset: This isn’t a direct comparison of the laptops based on cost, but an attempt to compare the performance of the new MacBook Pros to that of similar PC laptops.

For those who’ve noticed the considerable price delta between the Surface Book i7 and the 15-inch MacBook Pro, the stack of other PCs used in this comparison will help smooth out that line. You might argue that it’s silly to compare a $3,300 Surface Book i7 against an $1,800 MacBook Pro 13, or a $1,100 Dell XPS 13 against an $1,800 MacBook Pro 13, or a $1,400 Dell XPS 15 against a $2,400 MacBook Pro 15. But these are all real-world models that you’ll find in a store, rather than configurations contrived to hit a number. Price differences are just part of the comparison puzzle.

For the same reason, we’re not loading the same OS on all the laptops—no OSX on PCs, no Windows on Macs. Real people wouldn’t do that, and neither will we.

Cinebench R15 multi-threaded performance

Our first test is Cinebench R15. This is a 3D rendering test based on Maxon’s Cinema4D engine. The test is heavily multi-threaded, and the more cores or threads you can throw at it, the better the performance. The test is is a pretty harsh reminder that if your tasks demand a quad-core, listen to them.

Between the two quad-cores, the Dell XPS 15 crosses the finish line first—but not by much. Let’s just call it mostly a tie.

Among the dual-cores, the Core i5-based MacBook Pro 13 is last, but not by much. It’s basically the same as the last-gen XPS 13 with a similar Core i7-6560U.

The surprise is where the Surface Book i7 finishes. Its 6th-gen CPU is hanging right with the 7th-generation Kaby Lake CPUs in the new HP Spectre x360 13 and the new Dell XPS 13.

Cinebench R15 single-threaded performance

Cinebench R15 has an optional test that lets you measure the single-threaded performance. It’s a valuable way to gauge how fast a laptop will be in applications or tasks that don’t use all the cores available.

The surprise to many will be the result from the Dell XPS 13. Its 7th-generation Core i5 CPU could hang with the Core i7 chips on heavier loads, but on lighter loads, it ends up being last. That’s because Core i7 chips in laptops excel at short, “bursty” loads. Once you heat them up, the clock speeds crank back. When running a test in single-threaded mode, the Core i7’s advantage with short burst loads shows up big-time.

The real shocker is how the HP Spectre x360 with a 7th-gen CPU comes out the clear winner. The quad-core MacBook Pro 15 or Dell XPS 15 were expected to lead the pack, but nope. That Kaby Lake CPU is indeed pulling its weight.

Cinebench R15 OpenGL performance

Our last Cinebench R15 test measures performance with OpenGL, a popular graphics API used for rendering professional CAD/CAM applications and a few games.

The results here break down into three bands. At the bottom is the new MacBook Pro 13 and an older Dell XPS 13 model. Both use Intel’s Skylake CPU and include “faster” Iris 540 graphics with 64MB of embedded DRAM inside the CPU. Both are nearly dead-even, which validates this test for comparing OSX to Windows 10 performance.

The second band up is a shocker to me. The pair of 7th-gen Kaby Lake laptops from Dell and HP are a good 25 percent faster than the 6th-gen Skylake laptops in OpenGL. The Iris 540 laptops were expected to come out in front. The results made us wonder whether this isn’t some driver optimization that Intel put into Kaby Lake but not Skylake.

The last band is the graphics performance of the discrete-GPU laptops. Unexpectedly, the GeForce GTX 960M in the XPS 15 finishes just ahead of the GTX 965M in the Surface Book i7. The MacBook Pro 15, with its Radeon Pro 450, finishes in a firm third place. Some MacBook Pro reviews have said the graphics don’t measure up in games, while in “work”-related tasks, they rules. So far, no one has seen that to be true.

GeekBench 4.01 multi-threaded performance

Another popular cross-platform benchmark is Primate Lab’s GeekBench. Experts may disdain its cross-platform results between ARM and x86. Within the same micro-architecture, however, it’s pretty kosher, especially when running the newest 4.01 version of the popular test. There is  also a score to report for the MacBook Pro 13 with Touch Bar

The first result we’ll look at is the multi-threaded performance. Like Cinebench R15, you can see the quad-core XPS 15 and MacBook Pro 15 step away from the dual-core laptops. It’s just more proof that if your tasks really need a quad-core chip, pay for it.

On the dual-cores, the redesigned HP Spectre x360 13 again shows the newest 7th-gen Core i7’s clock speed advantage over the Skylake models. The Surface Book i7 and MacBook Pro are pretty much dead-even. For MacBook Pro 13 fans that might be something to crow about, because we’re talking about a Core i5 MacBook Pro 13 vs. a Core i7 Surface Book.

GeekBench 4.01 single-threaded performance

Moving on to the single-threaded performance in GeekBench 4.01, there are a few patterns we can discern. First, that 7th-gen Core i7 in the HP Spectre x360 13 is indeed faster in lighter loads, outpacing the Surface Book i7 and the Core i5-equipped MacBook Pro 13 with Touch Bar.

The Dell XPS 15 inches over the MacBook Pro 15, but the real takeaway is this: If you don’t do many multi-threaded tasks on your laptop, you don’t need a quad-core CPU.

GeekBench 4.01 OpenCL performance

GeekBench also has an OpenCL test that simulates popular Computer Language tasks on a GPU that would normally be handled by the CPU.

The first takeaway: Unlike in the OpenGL performance tests, the older Iris 540 in the Skylake dual-cores is faster than the Kaby Lake integrated graphics for whatever tasks Prime Labs thinks best represent OpenCL.

The second takeaway: OpenCL loves fast GPUs. The Surface Book i7 and its GTX 965M run away with this test, and trash the MacBook Pro 13. For those who didn’t pony up for the MacBook Pro’s faster Radeon Pro 455 or 460 GPU, it’s hard to watch how thoroughly the the Surface Book i7 smokes the 450-equipped MacBook Pro. The Surface Book’s GTX 965M even makes a mockery of the GTX 960M in the XPS 15.

LuxMark 3.1 OpenCL GPU Render Performance

When you play the benchmarketing game, one truth that’s often overlooked is that no one test defines the entire category. You can’t take the results from Geek Bench 4.01 OpenCL and declare it representative of all OpenCL performance.

To balance Geek Bench 4.01, I also ran the free LuxMark 3.1 OpenCL test. This takes a scene and renders it using the LuxRender engine on the GPU (or CPU if you ask it to.)

The results put these GPUs a lot closer than the OpenCL numbers from Geek Bench 4.01 would have you believe. In the end, both the XPS 15 and Surface Book i7 again both clearly win. But would this be true if it were a Radeon 460 in the MacBook Pro 15? Probably not.

Blender 2.78 Performance

The last “work”-related graphics test we’ll run is Blender 2.78. This a free rendering application popular in a lot of indie movies. For a test render file, I used Mike Pan’s BMW Benchmark and set Blender to ray-trace the scene on the GPU rather than the CPU. The result is, frankly, beyond ugly. The Surface Book i7 finished in about eight minutes, and the XPS 15 took another two more minutes. The MacBook Pro 15 took more than an hour to complete the task.

This doesn’t mean the MacBook Pro 15’s Radeon Pro 450 is a dog. The other benchmarks should tell you that the Apple isn’t that bad in some tasks. Still, this kind of performance disparity indicates a serious problem at the OS or driver level, or something with this compile of Blender. Unless or until that mystery is solved, you’ll want to do your Blender renders on a PC laptop.

Tomb Raider performance

The last graphics test is Tomb Raider. It’s an older game available in both OSX and Windows and includes a built-in benchmark. While we could set the graphics settings the same on both platforms, we couldn’t quite sync the resolutions. Depending on the laptop, we could set the horizontal resolution at 1680-, 1650-, or 1600×1050 (the latter, for the Macs). The graphics setting on all of the laptops was Normal.

If you can’t bear to look, don’t: The Surface Book i7 and XPS 15 soundly thrashed the MacBook Pro 15. The Radeon Pro 460 would not make a difference here, either. If you want gaming performance at any decent levels, no surprise—buy a PC.

Battery life

The final test is for all-important battery life. The same 4K-resolution were used, open-source Tears of Steel short video, looping continuously. On the Windows laptops, we used the Movies & TV player, and on OSX Sierra, we used QuickTime.

All of the laptops had their screens set at 250 to 260 nits in brightness. All laptops had the adaptive brightness setting turned off. All were tested with Wi-Fi disabled and with earbuds plugged into the analog ports. One thing to note: The Windows laptops are left in their default power settings, which means they use their last bits of battery life to shut off unused apps and slightly dim the screen. OSX was set not to dim the display on battery—otherwise, it immediately dims the screen once unplugged.

Our results on the pair of MacBook Pros were amazingly similar. Started both early in the morning and watched until they died in the early evening. Both were minutes apart.

Apple claims about 10 hours of run time in iTunes. We were pretty close in QuickTime at nearly 9 hours. The variance can be attributed to the video file and the settings the company uses.

For the MacBook Pro 15, that’s pretty impressive. The battery life for 15-inch laptops with quad-core CPUs, discrete graphics, and high-resolution screens tends to be mediocre. For example, look at the XPS 15 and its six hours of run time. (Dell offers an XPS 15 battery with about 50 percent more capacity—but it’s also heavier.)

Even worse is the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro, another quad-core laptop with the addition of a 4K screen. Ouch. Overall, I’d say the MacBook Pro 15 has decent battery life for a quad-core.

Moving to the MacBook Pro 13, the result is a little more nuanced. With roughly nine hours of run time, it compares well to some laptops, such as the XPS 13 with a QHD+ touchscreen. But there are a lot more PCs ahead of it. You know, like the Surface Book i7, which sets the bar at an amazing 13 hours of video run time. Other laptops with better video stamina include the newest XPS 13, HP’s redesigned Spectre x360 13, and even the older Surface Book. When you consider that all three are also generally faster, it’s not good.

The cost equation

The most important question for users isn’t related to an obscure OpenCL benchmark but to how much these laptops cost. To help you understand just how much of a premium Apple and Microsoft are charging, I mapped out the cost of most of the laptops that appeared here, along with other configurations worth highlighting.

That top-spec Surface Book i7, formally known as Surface Book with Performance Base,  really pushes the boundaries of what people will pay for a dual-core laptop. To be fair, this is no ordinary laptop. It has a 1TB SSD and 16GB of RAM, plus pen support, a tablet mode, and probably class-leading GPU performance. But umm, yeah, 3,300 bucks.

Apple is no stranger to nose-bleed altitudes. When you throw a Core i7, 1TB SSD, and 16GB of RAM into the MacBook Pro 13 with Touch Bar, you’re looking at  $2,900. And you don’t even get the discrete GPU, touch, and tablet or pen support of the Surface Book. Apple’s most powerful MacBook Pro 15 tilts the meter all the way to $4,300. Granted, that’s with one of Intel’s priciest mobile CPUs and a whopping 2TB SSD, but that’s also the price of a modest used car.

Compared to a “normal” PC, both Microsoft and Apple give you a lot less performance for your cash. The Dell XPS 15, which pretty much aces the new MacBook Pro 15 except in battery life, is $1,400.

Take that Dell XPS 15 and load it up with a 1TB M.2 SSD, 32GB of RAM (which isn’t available on the MacBook Pro 15), a GTX 960M, 4K touchscreen, and a larger battery: $2,600. That’s only $200 more than what Apple charges for a machine with 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and the slowest Radeon Pro GPU.

You can do the same with the new HP Spectre x360 or Dell’s current XPS 13. Both give you a lot more value than either the MacBook Pro 13 or the MacBook Pro 13 Touch Bar.

Conclusion

Ten tests and one price comparison later, the PC wins. Again.

That’s no surprise. The MacBooks are caught in a tough spot—even if they were running higher-performance configurations. They’re both ultra-expensive compared to most PCs, and at the top-end, outclassed in GPU performance by Microsoft’s comparably expensive Surface Book i7.

It’s not all bad news for the Mac, though. The MacBook Pro 15’s battery life is impressive for a 15-inch laptop with a quad-core CPU and discrete GPU. Comparably powerful quad-core laptops we’ve seen can’t touch it in battery life. Even the MacBook Pro 13s do relatively well in battery life compared to a similar PC.

The problem for Apple and Mac fans is PC makers just don’t ever stand still. And as we know, Apple seemingly does that now with its Macs.

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Microsoft’s massive $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn finally closed, and CEO Satya Nadella explained how the companies will begin working together.

Microsoft’s $26.2 billion purchase of professional networking site LinkedIn officially came to a close on Thursday, after the deal was approved by regulators. Following the close, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella penned a blog post on LinkedIn detailing how the website would begin integrating with Microsoft’s products.

For starters, LinkedIn identity and network capabilities will be coming to Microsoft Outlook, and to the Office suite in general, the post stated. Additionally, LinkedIn notifications will be available to users in the Windows action center as well.

Since LinkedIn is known as a digital CV of sorts, Microsoft will enable LinkedIn members who draft a résumé in Word to directly update their LinkedIn profile page, and more easily search for and apply to relevant job postings, the post said.

One of the potentially troubling integrations is “extending the reach of Sponsored Content across Microsoft properties,” as Nadella wrote on his blog. Whether that means that users will begin seeing ads in their Office apps remains to be seen, but it sets the stage for a potentially tricky user experience.

Enterprise LinkedIn Lookup will soon be powered by Active Directory and Office 365, which could make it easier for employees to connect with one another. Nadella’s blog post also noted that LinkedIn Learning will be made available across the Office 365 and Windows ecosystem, giving Microsoft shops access to new forms of training and continued learning that could prove valuable to their employees.

Additionally, Nadella wrote that the two companies would begin developing a business news desk across their existing ecosystem of content, and for MSN.com. Sales Navigator and Dynamics 365 will also be integrated in hopes of improving social selling capabilities.

Since the acquisition was first announced, it’s been fairly clear that data was the driving force behind the deal. The two companies had non-overlapping, complementary data graphs, and these integrations show just the first steps that Microsoft is taking to leverage LinkedIn’s data, along with its own, to build out a more holistic ecosystem of business technologies and services.

Current LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner will continue to lead the company after the acquisition, and theNew York Times reported that roughly 10,000 LinkedIn employees will join Microsoft.

The 3 big takeaways for readers

1. Microsoft closed its $26.2 billion acquisition of social networking site LinkedIn on Thursday, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella outlining how the two companies will merge.
2. LinkedIn features and services will be coming to Outlook, Office 365, Dynamics 365, and even MSN.com, with LinkedIn search getting a boost from Active Directory.
3. The deal has always been about data, and the integrations are just the start of how the two companies will merge their individual data graphs.

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Search for files and folders by date:

The more files you have, the more frustrating it can be to find the exact one you’re looking for. That’s especially true when you’re using search terms that are common to dozens or even hundreds of saved documents.

One great way to narrow the list is to enter a date-related search operator along with matching parameters, using the search box in the upper-right portion of File Explorer (Windows Explorer in Windows 7). For example, datemodified:2013 tax allows you to filter search results to show only files that contain the word tax and were last saved in 2013.

The search parameter you enter after the colon can be any date, even a partial one. So datemodified: June 2016 works even with the space included. To find only files before or after a given date, use the > and < operators, as in datemodified: >1/1/2016

If you prefer a point-and-click interface, just type datemodified: by itself and use the calendar or predefined options below it.

In Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, you’ll find date-related shortcuts on the Search tab, which appears on the File Explorer ribbon when you click in the search box.

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A look at the most significant changes due to hit Microsoft’s evolving OS in the coming year.

Microsoft has made many promises about what Windows 10 will do, and while some have materialized, others still remain ambitions.

As a perpetual work-in-progress, Windows 10 continues to accrue new features, as Windows catches up with Microsoft’s vision of it being an OS that runs anywhere, syncs with the cloud and has an intelligent assistant at its core.

While Windows 10 will be buffed up by the arrival of the Windows 10 Creators Update early next year, 2017 as a whole will see the OS undergo significant changes, some of which are long-awaited. Here’s what to look out for.

Windows 10 phones edge closer to replacing desktop PCs

Microsoft has long pushed the idea that Windows 10 on phones will be so powerful, it’ll be akin to carrying a full PC in your pocket, courtesy of the OS’ Continuum feature.

“With Continuum for phones, we believe that any screen can be your PC,” Joe Belfiore, Microsoft’s corporate VP of the operating systems group, told the Microsoft Build Developer Conference in 2015, going on to add:

“Imagine the effect this could have on mobile first countries, where individuals could be as effective with the phone that they’re buying.”

Today the reality of using Continuum on Windows 10 falls somewhat short of Belfiore’s future-gazing. While a select Windows 10 phones, such as the Lumia 950, can be hooked up to mouse, keyboard and monitor and used as a Windows desktop there are significant limitations. Only one fullscreen app can be used at a time, legacy Windows apps won’t run on existing handsets and even Universal Windows Platform apps need to explicitly support Continuum.

However, in addition to the possibility of legacy apps running on smartphones, see below, various improvements to Continuum are due to land with the Creators Update in early 2017.

These include support for more PC features, such as running multiple Windows side-by-side on the desktop, pinning apps to the Taskbar and hitting the Windows button to bring up the search box. Other improvements include the ability to keep your phone in your pocket and have it connect wirelessly to a docking station and to independently customize the Windows Start screen on the phone display and on a PC monitor.

Running classic Windows software on your phone

This one’s a rumor but based on solid foundations, and with the potential to transform Windows 10’s appeal on mobile if correct.

The big fly in the ointment when it comes to using Windows 10’s Continuum feature to run a phone as a PC is that Windows 10 phones only run Universal Windows Platform apps. This incompatibility means that widely-used Windows apps from desktop PCs can’t be used on handsets.

However, by sniffing around inside Windows 10’s code, users have uncovered signs that Microsoft is working on bringing these apps to Windows phones.

The code in question suggests that Microsoft is building an emulator that would allow desktop x86 apps to work on the ARM64-based handsets.

As reported by ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley last month, Twitter user WalkingCat found a reference to what he termed “Windows’s hybrid x86-on-ARM64 tech” in Windows’ codebase, which also referenced the term, “CHPE.”

The clue chimed with Foley, who said her sources had told her that Windows 10 will gain this x86 on ARM64 emulation capability, but not until Fall 2017.

Foley guesses that C stands for Cobalt, the codename for x86 emulation on ARM, and that HP relates to the tech giant HP, which has been working with Microsoft on its the HP Elite x3 Windows Phone, a Windows 10 handset that can serve as a desktop PC via Continuum.

Microsoft certainly has good reasons for wanting such emulation to work. If Windows 10 phones could run as Windows desktops with full support for legacy apps, without having to resort to remote desktop software, Windows 10 phones could suddenly be far more appealing to business.

Return of OneDrive placeholders

Since the launch of Windows 10, many users have been petitioning Microsoft to reintroduce placeholders to the OS’ built-in OneDrive cloud storage service.

In Windows 8.1, placeholders, also called smart files, let users see all of their files stored on OneDrive, whether those files were stored on the device or not.

This feature was removed from Windows 10 but is now due to be bought back in Windows 10 File Explorer when browsing OneDrive. The returning feature will work in a similar fashion to Windows 8.1’s placeholders, showing users files both stored locally and on OneDrive, allowing them to download files and folders to the device and keep them in sync with OneDrive.

Orchestrate Windows apps using Linux tools

Microsoft recently updated Windows 10 to let users run a range of Linux tools from inside the OSand seems committed to continuing to improve support for Linux command-line software in Windows.

In Windows 10, Ubuntu/Linux software runs on top of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Users run Linux software and issue commands at the command line via the Bash shell.

Microsoft is working to increase the range of commands that can be run via the shell but perhaps the most significant change on the horizon is increased interoperability between the Bash and Windows environments. Effectively this will let developers call Windows applications from within Bash — allowing them to write a Bash script to automate a complex build that includes Windows applications — and to invoke Bash applications from Windows PowerShell.

These changes will be generally available in Windows 10 after the Creators Update early next year.

Easy communication with friends and family

Next year’s Creators Update will boost Windows 10’s social credentials, with a series of changes to make it simpler to stay in touch and share content with friends and family.

The Windows MyPeople feature will allow users to pin their favorite contacts to the right-hand side of Windows taskbar. Clicking on a pinned contact’s face brings up email or Skype messages from only that person and files can be dragged files to that person’s face for quick sharing. Informal check-ins also become easier, with the Shoulder Taps feature allowing pinned contacts to send friends animated emojis and other clipart, which pop up above that contact’s face on the taskbar.

Focusing Windows around virtual and augmented reality

Microsoft plans to put 3D and virtual reality at the heart of Windows 10, as it bets on the success of low-cost headsets due out next year.

Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo will release virtual reality head-mounted displays, with prices starting from $299.

Some of these headsets will be released in March, to coincide with the release of the Windows 10 Creators Update, which will include various tools to simplify the creation and sharing of 3D content, including a new version of Microsoft Paint.

In a demo earlier this year, Microsoft showed how Windows 10 could work on virtual reality headsets, demonstrating a mock-up of a virtual space with a large TV screen and virtual shelves stocked with apps and 3D models, and with the Edge browser appearing as a large window in the wearer’s view.

Another demo, this time using the far more expensive Microsoft HoloLens, showed Microsoft’s Edge browser as a window in the user’s vision, from which the demoer dropped actual-sized 3D models of stools from the furniture site Houzz around the room, in order to see what they looked like in real life.

Allowing Windows to function in this way is Windows Holographic, a variant of the Microsoft OS that provides a platform for virtual and augmented reality headsets to run Universal Windows Platform apps.

More detail on Microsoft’s VR and AR plans are expected this week at the WinHEC conference in China.

Better battery life

Windows 10 PCs and tablets should have better battery life after the Creators Update lands in March, thanks to changes to how the OS is patched.

The steady stream of updates isn’t going to slow down but they are going to suck up less bandwidth and reduce strain on phone and laptop batteries.

Download sizes for major updates will be cut by about 35 percent and battery life of Windows 10 mobile devices will improve, due to each device spending less time checking for updates.

The improvements will stem from Windows 10’s new Unified Update Platform, already used for Windows 10 on phones, which only updates each device with the files it needs, rather than delivering all updates to date, and doesn’t rely so heavily on the user’s device to process update data.

Windows Defender Application Guard

Coming to Windows 10 Enterprise users early next year, Windows Defender Application Guard is designed to help protect firms against online threats.

The new safeguard will add container-based isolation to Windows 10’s Edge browser.

Application Guard will ensure that when Edge accesses a website not designated as trusted, the browser will be launched inside a container, a virtualized environment isolated from the rest of the Windows OS.

If the site tries to download and run malicious code on the device, that code remains within the container, unable to permanently compromise the Windows device or the wider network, and disappears when the browser session shuts down.

Unlike the software-based sandboxes that are offered by other browsers, Microsoft says that Application Guard provides a hardware-based container that offers greater protection to the device.

Other enterprise-focused changes in the forthcoming Creators Update include improvements to Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection’s ability to detect and respond to network attacks, an upgrade to the Windows Analytics dashboard to display additional information about the composition of IT estates, a new tool for in-place UEFI conversion, and a mobile application management feature for protecting data on employees’ personal devices.

Home Hub

Rather than building hardware to challenge voice-controlled virtual assistants such as Amazon Echo and Google Home, it seems as if Microsoft is working on transforming Windows 10 into what it calls a Home Hub.

Evidence of this shift comes from a Windows Central interview with unnamed sources. These sources claim that Home Hub will turn Windows into a shared computing environment for the home, allowing family members to more easily share calendars, apps and services.

A future-gazing Microsoft video from 2013, dug out by ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, shows how this system might eventually work. In it, family members share access to photos, apps and calendars on a screen attached to a wall and interact with computers around the home, for example scanning carrots to find appropriate recipes. Adding credence to the Home Hub rumor are references to Home Hub being a shared family account in Windows 10, as discovered by Twitter user WalkingCat.

ZDNet’s Foley also references a recent Microsoft job posting for a software engineer in the Windows and Devices Group, which is seeking someone to expand Windows’ “family” credentials.

According to the ad, this engineer will play a critical role in helping families to “share pictures, videos, applications, games, and other purchases easily” and to “communicate freely and stay in touch” using Windows 10.

Blue light reduction

One more unconfirmed new feature appears to be aimed at helping Windows 10 users get a good night’s sleep.

Being exposed to blue light from computer screens late at night can supposedly disrupt the body’s sleep cycle.

To counter this disturbance, Windows 10 already has f.lux software that reduces blue light emitted by screens close to bedtime.

But it seems that Microsoft may be working on its own feature to address the issue.

Twitter user Core has discovered references to “BlueLightReduction” hidden within early builds of the OS being tested under the Windows Insider Program, a setting which appears as if would be toggled from Windows 10’s Action Center.

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