Windows 10 hands-on: Cortana leads a feature-packed update
Is Windows 10 lovable? With the venerable operating system still in previews, it's too early to say, though we now know that's Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's goal: "We want to make people love Windows on a daily basis."
In my brief hands-on experience with what's being commonly referred to as the "Consumer Build," Windows 10 is inching in that direction. Let's say that if it's not quite lovable, Windows 10 is more than ever like the helpful and smart friend you’re usually glad to see.
Most people will tell you that Windows 10 was upstaged at its own event by the HoloLens augmented reality headset. That's not entirely true. HoloLens is, after all, a Windows 10 device HoloLens is, after all, a Windows 10 device. In fact, for all the changes Microsoft unveiled today the biggest one may have been the sharpening focus on Windows 10 everywhere, in every device, without always feeling just like Windows.
So while I'll focus here primarily on PC-based changes, we will take a couple of detours into other hardware platforms that will soon gain the benefit of a Windows 10 bloodline.
Cortana
As expected, Cortana, Microsoft's voice assistant and Apple Siri competitor is now a part of the OS. It's actually what Microsoft is calling a Universal or Converged App, looking and working almost exactly the same across desktops, laptops, tablets and phones.
I tried it out on a handful of Windows 10 laptops. First of all, Cortana is resident in the taskbar next to the Start button (more on that in a bit). It's a type field with a microphone icon in it. For now, there's no way to turn off this field over even stop Cortana from listening. It's not listening to everything, but if you say "Hey Cortana," it wakes up and is ready respond.
Even in the challenging environment of a demo room with at least a dozen other journalists also speaking to Windows 10 laptops, Cortana heard me when I said, "Hey Cortana, show me that spreadsheet."
As soon as I said "Hey Cortana," the Cortana window expanded up into a tall white box (the opposite of her black-background look on Windows Phone) and I could see it interpreting my spoken query in real time. Within a second or two Cortana showed me a folder full of spreadsheet files. I then asked Cortana about the weather. Again, Cortana understood and returned a visual forecast.
There were a couple of times where Cortana did not get the whole or even part of the question. Microsoft told me that laptop microphones are not usually as good as those found in smartphones. However, the cloud-based Cortana system is always learning and all the information Cortana will soon get from both the mobile and desktop platforms should help it perform even better, even when Cortana doesn't get the whole query — in other words, Cortana will have enough information to perhaps intuit the rest of your question.
And if Cortana doesn't hear you at your desk, that shouldn't be a big problem. Microsoft believes that, on the desktop, most people will probably still type in their Cortana queries.
I noticed a couple of other things about Cortana. When I scrolled through the information Cortana presented, it began to resemble Google Now, with news, weather, and all the bits of info that might be relevant to you right now. Also, thanks to that cloud back-end, your Cortana queries on your mobile device are stored in a synced, cloud-based "Notebook." Your Cortana searches on Windows Phone 10 are also available through Cortana on your Windows 10 desktop.
Start and action
Microsoft continues to refine the Start Menu in this latest Windows 10 build. The most noticeable change for me is the new expand button that resides in the upper right corner of the menu system, next to a now more easily accessible power button. A tap on it expands the menu to the entire screen, which makes it almost just like the Windows Design desktop of old.
Right now on my Windows 8.1 Surface Pro 3, a swipe from the edge of the right side of my screen brings in the vertical Charms list bar. In Windows 10, you get the robust Action Center. It was easy enough to make it appear with a swipe — a tap anywhere else on the screen made it disappear.
Action Center is full of system, email and social notifications (essentially notifications for any app you have installed on your PC). The bottom of the Action Center is reserved for quick actions like airplane mode, Wi-Fi and system settings.
It looked like there was a lot of information in the Action Center, but without really knowing what was on this particular demo PC, it was hard to know how useful I'd find all that information.
In a later demo, I did get to see some of the calling and messaging integration between Windows 10 and Windows 10 phone. A Microsoft rep showed me how he could start a Skype text conversation between a Windows Phone and a Windows 10 PC (Skype is built into Windows 10). These Skype notifications can appear right in the Action Center. However, if the person at the PC has to go mobile, he can switch to sending texts through SMS text, while not breaking the thread of communication.
Continuum
With the latest Windows 10 build, Microsoft has finally introduced an easy way to switch between tablet and desktop mode. I found a Lenovo Yoga system, which converts from a laptop to a tablet (you fold keyboard all the way to the back of the screen) to try it out. I was a little disappointed that the change is not automatic, but it easy enough to enable.
The control sits in the Action Center. It's a little square icon at the bottom that says Tablet Mode. You tap it and the screen subtly changes. The most noticeable difference, at least to my eye, was that the Cortana box disappeared and was replaced by a small circular Cortana logo. The screen did not, as I thought it would, switch to the Windows Design interface.
The one odd thing I noticed about this function is that, when you tap the Tablet button, it doesn't switch from saying "Tablet Mode" to "Desktop Mode" and vice versa. It just always says "Tablet Mode" and only the color change indicates if it's on or off
In either mode, it was easy enough to manage multiple windows and task-switch between apps. Windows 10 can show you them in a collection of floating live windows, making it much easier to know what you want to maximize and use. I do wish the tablet change were a bit more dramatic, but I get the sense that Continuum, like so much else here, is still a work in progress.
Spartan
Microsoft replacing Internet Explorer with something code-named Spartan is very big news, and the look we got during the keynote was exciting. However, sadly, that's all we got. Spartan was not running on any of the demo systems we saw. What we know is that it has a new engine and Cortana integration. We got no comparisons to existing browsers, not Google Chrome, not Firefox and not even Internet Explorer.
Gaming and Photos
Windows has always been a powerful gaming platform, but it's never had rich deep integration with the Xbox ecosystem. With Windows 10 all that changes. Windows 10 more or less puts the Xbox experience inside every Windows 10 device. Letting you stream games to mobile devices and allowing mobile Windows 10 users to join Xbox gameplay. The new Xbox app for Windows 10 puts a dizzying array of Xbox Live in formation on any Windows 10 system.
It is, to be honest, an incredibly busy interface with four densely-packed columns for main navigation, Recently Played, Activity Feed and Friends. For a devoted Xbox gamer, this is likely nirvana. From this one app you can see your friends’ activities and accomplishments and when they log on and off, jump right to a live Twitch stream and view your own and others recorded game play. Microsoft said Xbox Live is actually built into Windows 10.
Microsoft is also updating the Photos app across all Windows 10 platforms with a collection of features that seemed to have been borrowed equally from Apple and Google. There's now better photo management with "Collections," which was not yet ready to demo, and auto enhance, which will fix things like redeye and lighting from photos residing locally on the Windows 10 device and, eventually in the OneDrive cloud. Microsoft said that, statistically, they should be able to improve about 50% of your photos. All changes can be rolled back.
Final thoughts
I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with Windows 10 and until I can download the latest build sometime next week, I can’t quite get a coherent picture of the scope of this update. That said, Microsoft's vision for a unified, yet flexible system architecture that spans a variety of devices and activities is coming into focus.
Windows 10 has the potential to be one of Microsoft's best OS updates, if not most beloved.
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