Windows 10’s Fall Creators Update is now available

Microsoft's Windows 10 Fall Creators Update is here and ready to download. The software giant first started testing its Fall Creators Update back in April, and now all Windows 10 users will be able to experience the improvements today. Just like previous updates, Microsoft is rolling it out in stages, and you can check whether it’s available for your own PC from Windows Update. If your device is eligible then it will start downloading in the background, and a prompt will appear to schedule a time to install.

If your device isn’t on the list, then that doesn’t mean you can’t skip the line. You can manually update to the Fall Creators Update over at Microsoft’s Windows 10 site. Simply click the “update now” button and proceed with the upgrade assistant. You can also download ISO images of the final copy of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update should you want to clean install it on your PC.

Microsoft’s Windows 10 Fall Creators Update includes a number of new features. The top addition is Windows Mixed Reality, making the operating system compatible with new headsets from PC makers that are in stores today. You can read more about Windows Mixed Reality in our guide. Microsoft is also adding contact integration into the task bar, and tweaking the design of Windows 10 to include subtle animation effects. This new Fluent Design will include updates to apps, too. You can read more about the top 10 new Windows 10 features in our Fall Creators Update guide.

Microsoft reveals new Windows 10 features coming in fall update

Microsoft's next Windows 10 feature update now has a name: the Fall Creators Update.
And as that name telegraphs, it also has an approximate due date. In the new semi-annual release schedule for Windows 10, this will almost certainly be version 1709, finished in September and delivered via Windows Update starting in October.
(Microsoft won't yet commit to those dates, however, saying only that the Fall Creators Update will arrive "later this year.")
In today's keynote address for the second day of the Build 2017 developers conference in Seattle, Microsoft executives also announced some of the features that will be in the Fall Creators Update, which was previously code-named Redstone 3.

The most obvious change will be a new design language called Microsoft Fluent Design System. Previously code-named Project Neon, this is the latest refinement of the ongoing work that started years ago as "Metro style apps." This iteration adds shading, blur effects, and animations to the Windows interface and to apps.

More information about the Fluent Design system is available at http://fluent.microsoft.com/.

The company also showed off a new Universal Windows app, Windows Story Remix, designed to blend photos and videos into stories with a soundtrack, theme, and cinematic transitions.
In other app news, Microsoft dropped a bombshell with the announcement that iTunes will be coming to the Windows Store this summer, as a converted desktop app, making it possible to run iTunes on all Windows 10 editions, including Windows 10 S. Other new entries in the Store include Autodesk Sketchbook and SAP Digital Boardroom.

Other new features announced work not just with Windows but with mobile devices running Microsoft apps on Android and iOS devices:
Timeline - This feature is an extension of Task View. Microsoft touts it as a way to scroll through a time-based representation of what you've been doing and "hop back into files, apps, and sites as if you never left."
Pick Up Where You Left Off - A partial implementation of this feature already exists in current Windows 10 builds. The idea is that Cortana can help you keep track of what you're working on and offer to resume working on a document or working with an app when you switch from a mobile device to a PC or vice-versa. (Expect Mac users to call this a knock-off of Apple's Handoff feature in MacOS.)
Clipboard - This venerable Windows feature will work across devices, Microsoft says, allowing you to copy a map link, a paragraph of text, or an animated GIF and exchange it between a mobile device and a Windows PC.
OneDrive Files On-Demand - Microsoft executives say this is the single most requested new feature in the new update. It brings back the "placeholders" feature that was abruptly dropped in early preview releases of Windows 10. With this update, Windows 10 users will once again be able to open File Explorer and see a full representation of all files stored in OneDrive, regardless of whether they're synced locally.
Other features aimed at enterprise users will be in the Fall Creators Update as well, most notably Windows Defender Application Guard, which uses Hyper-V virtualization to isolate potentially dangerous web content in containers that can't interact with the rest of the PC or network.

Some of these features are already in preview builds for Windows 10, delivered to members of the Windows Insider Program. Based on previous development cycles, it's likely that most of these features will appear in preview builds in June and July, allowing Microsoft to finish testing and development work in time for a fall release.

Source: http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-reveals-new-windows-10-features-coming-in-fall-update/

How to force Windows 10 to download the Creators Update

Microsoft is planning to start pushing out the free Windows 10 Creators Updateon April 11. As is often the case, this will be a gradual rollout, meaning not everyone will get the update on day one. Microsoft will slowly ramp up the update’s release — but starting today, you can get the latest build of Windows 10 without waiting.

You can use the Windows 10 Update Assistant to avoid having to convince Windows Update to serve the Creators Update to you. On the Windows 10 computer you want to update, head to microsoft.com/software-download/windows10 and click the blue “Update now” button. This will download the Windows 10 Update Assistant (about 6MB).

After opening the downloaded file, you should see a screen like the one below. Click on the “Update Now” button at the bottom right.

The assistant will perform basic checks on your hardware and start the download process if everything looks good (it should be if you already have Windows 10 installed). You can keep using your computer while the update downloads, choose when to actually update, and roll it back if you do not like the Creators Update.

After verifying the download, the assistant will start preparing the update process automatically.

The assistant will automatically restart your computer after a 30-minute countdown. The actual installation can take up to 90 minutes. Click the “Restart now” button in the bottom right or the “Restart later” in the bottom left to delay it.

After your computer restarts, the setup will ask you to verify Windows 10’s privacy settings. Then you can sign in and Windows 10 will go through the final steps to finish installing the update. Finally, Edge will open up and greet you with a “Welcome to the Windows 10 Creators Update” message.

Installing large Windows 10 updates is a long process, but Microsoft has made it quite smooth overall. Given that the update is free, there is no reason for you not to get it as soon as possible.

Anybody can now buy Microsoft’s $3,000 HoloLens

You can now buy Microsoft’s HoloLens Development Edition, the company’s futuristic augmented reality helmet, without having to go through an application process. Until now, Microsoft only made HoloLenses available to developers who put in an application. Now, if you have $3,000 to spare and you are in the U.S. or Canada, you can simply buy up to five units directly from Microsoft.

At $3,000, HoloLens is still pretty expensive, so I don’t expect that too many people will just spontaneously want to buy one, but at least if you want one, you can now have it. Officially, Microsoft says HoloLens is available to developers and business customers (this is still the “Development Edition,” after all), but even if you’re not one of those, it will still happily sell you one. All you need to buy one, after all, is an address in the U.S. or Canada, a Microsoft account and enough money.

Microsoft notes that its retail stores do not have HoloLens inventory.

In addition to making HoloLens more widely available, Microsoft also today launched the HoloLens Commercial Suite, which includes the hardware and additional enterprise security and device management features.

As part of this enterprise suite, HoloLens is getting a Kiosk Mode so you can limit which apps run on the device, support for identity management, device management, BitLocker support for data encryption and more.

This update clearly shows that Microsoft wants to get HoloLens into the enterprise market — a market Microsoft knows better than virtually any other player out there.

Microsoft started shipping HoloLens to select developers in March. The fact that it is opening up this program so quickly means that it feels pretty confident in the hardware (and that it can produce it at scale), but also that a wider consumer launch probably isn’t that far off.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/02/anybody-can-now-buy-microsofts-3000-hololens/

Moore’s Law Soon To Be Given Last Rites

Moore’s Law, one of the most prescient observations made about the increasing power of computer processors that has become accepted theory and practice for almost 50 years, may soon be no more.

Intel has made great advances with the latest Haswell processor

This is the news, that barring some sort of technological breakthrough, the practical limits on improvement of copper on silicon technology (microchips) may have already reached the practical limit of what can be achieved.

According to Moore’s Law, originally published in a 1965 research paper, by none other than Intel co-founder, Gordon Moore, the number of transistors capable of being placed onto an integrated circuit board doubles every two years, and consequently it was postulated that processing power also doubles.
Although something of a hypothetical back in the sixties, the theory was soon proven to be true, sort of, or was at least close enough to the truth that now iconic piece of thinking became universally known as Moore’s law.
Experts have now predicted however that it will be nigh on impossible to shrink transistors any further by the year 2021. That is at least from an economically viable perspective. While it theoretically possible to make transistors smaller and smaller, after a certain point the costs involved become exponentially prohibitive, and also begins to involve quantum mechanics.
Moore’s law worked around the idea that the reason behind integrated circuits were and would become more powerful every 2 years or so, was because there was a demand for ever more powerful electronics. However, getting around the problems that come with working around quantum physics would probably bankrupt any company that tried to do it.

An end to the future?

No. Probably.
Because as we’ve already seen, there are always possibilities and new ways of thinking. We’ve already gotten used to the idea dual, quad, and even 20 core processors in computers, where technology and economic limits of single processors has been bypassed by getting more done with several side by side.
The next step will probably see the extension into 3D, but unlike 3D TVs, this will probably work.  Current generation processors are essentially built on a 2D plane.  The next generation may see transistors being stacked on top of each other, to break through the barrier of the end of Moore’s law.
But as always, it will be time that tells.

Announcing SQL Server on Linux

It’s been an incredible year for the data business at Microsoft and an incredible year for data across the industry. This Thursday at our Data Driven event in New York, we will kick off a wave of launch activities for SQL Server 2016 with general availability later this year. This is the most significant release of SQL Server that we have ever done, and brings with it some fantastic new capabilities. SQL Server 2016 delivers:

    Groundbreaking security encryption capabilities that enable data to always be encrypted at rest, in motion and in-memory to deliver maximum security protection
    In-memory database support for every workload with performance increases up to 30-100x
    Incredible Data Warehousing performance with the #1, #2 and #3 TPC-H 10 Terabyte benchmarks for non-clustered performance, and as of March 7, the #1 SAP SD Two-Tier performance benchmark on Windows1
    Business Intelligence for every employee on every device – including new mobile BI support for iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices
    Advanced analytics using our new R support that enables customers to do real-time predictive analytics on both operational and analytic data
    Unique cloud capabilities that enable customers to deploy hybrid architectures that partition data workloads across on-premises and cloud based systems to save costs and increase agility

These improvements, and many more, are all built into SQL Server and bring you not just a new database but a complete platform for data management, business analytics and intelligent apps – one that can be used in a consistent way across both on-premises and the cloud. In fact, over the last year we’ve been using the SQL Server 2016 code-base to run in production more than 1.4 million SQL Databases in the cloud using our Azure SQL Database as a Service offering, and this real-world experience has made SQL Server 2016 an incredibly robust and battle-hardened data platform.

Gartner recently named Microsoft as leading the industry in their Magic Quadrant for Operational Database Management Systems in both execution and vision. We’re also a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Data Warehouse and Data Management Solutions for Analytics, and Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms, as well as leading in vision in the Magic Quadrant for Advanced Analytics Platforms.

Gartner MQs

Extending SQL Server to Also Now Run on Linux

Today I’m excited to announce our plans to bring SQL Server to Linux as well. This will enable SQL Server to deliver a consistent data platform across Windows Server and Linux, as well as on-premises and cloud. We are bringing the core relational database capabilities to preview today, and are targeting availability in mid-2017.

SQL Server on Linux will provide customers with even more flexibility in their data solution. One with mission-critical performance, industry-leading TCO, best-in-class security, and hybrid cloud innovations – like Stretch Database which lets customers access their data on-premises and in the cloud whenever they want at low cost – all built in.

“This is an enormously important decision for Microsoft, allowing it to offer its well-known and trusted database to an expanded set of customers”, said Al Gillen, group vice president, enterprise infrastructure, at IDC. “By taking this key product to Linux Microsoft is proving its commitment to being a cross platform solution provider. This gives customers choice and reduces the concerns for lock-in. We would expect this will also accelerate the overall adoption of SQL Server.”

“SQL Server’s proven enterprise experience and capabilities offer a valuable asset to enterprise Linux customers around the world,” said Paul Cormier, President, Products and Technologies, Red Hat. “We believe our customers will welcome this news and are happy to see Microsoft further increasing its investment in Linux. As we build upon our deep hybrid cloud partnership, spanning not only Linux, but also middleware, and PaaS, we’re excited to now extend that collaboration to SQL Server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, bringing enterprise customers increased database choice.”

“We are delighted to be working with Microsoft as it brings SQL Server to Linux,” said Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical. “Customers are already taking advantage of Azure Data Lake services on Ubuntu, and now developers will be able to build modern applications that utilize SQL Server’s enterprise capabilities.”

Bringing SQL Server to Linux is another way we are making our products and new innovations more accessible to a broader set of users and meeting them where they are. Just last week, we announced our agreement to acquire Xamarin. Recently, we also announced Microsoft R Server , our technologies based on our acquisition of Revolution Analytics, with support for Hadoop and Teradata.

Source: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2016/03/07/announcing-sql-server-on-linux/

Microsoft expands Cortana support, features in new Windows 10 'Redstone' build

Cortana's language support is expanding with this test build to include Spanish (Mexico), Portuguese (Brazil) and French Canadian. Cortana also is now able to save new reminder information, such as the name of a book and to-do items without specific due dates (like "remind me to wash the car").
Today's new Redstone 14279 test build also provides a merged logon experience, combining the lock screen background and the logon screen background into just one background. For those with custom lock screen backgrounds, the lock screen will now be used for both the lock screen and logon screen.

Build 14279 also includes fixes and known issues, as do all Insider builds. Among the fixes are remedies to the situation that caused the Edge browser and Cortana to crash for users with roaming profiles. Cortana also will no longer show reminders that have been completed. Microsoft also fixed issues causing certain drivers from Windows Update to cause some PCs to bluescreen, according to today's blog post.

In the known issues area, Microsoft is looking into an issue I've heard several users report: Their Surface Pro 3, Pro 4 and Surface Book devices can freeze or hang and prevent inputs including typing and touch from registering. Right now, the workaround is to hold the power button to force a hard reboot.

Users who have Kaspersky Anti-Virus, Internet Security or the Kaspersky Total Security Suite installed may also experience problems, which Microsoft and Kaspersky are working to fix.

Microsoft released a number of additional Windows 10 updates earlier this week for PC users, Windows 10 Mobile Insider testers and for Windows 10 IoT testers.

Source: http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-expands-cortana-support-features-in-new-windows-10-redstone-build/