So this week I attended a Microsoft Windows 10 road show, and I must admit, for the first time in years, I truly feel that one of the big competitors has finally pulled innovation back out of the bag and decided to use it again.
For context, I have a Windows 7 machine, an Ubuntu machine and a CentOS machine at home. Im more an open source fanboy these days, but after years of working on Windows servers and client alike, Win7 has always been a happy place for me. This as you can imagine is fine, but the disappointment of Vista, Windows 8 and even 8.1 to some extent, really left me thinking that Linux flavours were the future (I mean Ubutu is easier to use than Windows!!) I attended a few of the Microsoft sessions without too much hope and expecting a very healthy dose of ‘Micro$oft Marketing’. Firstly, the desktop, it has the Start button back ala 8.1 (#Cheers) It also has all the integrated apps available just like Windows phone (more on that later). Now the interesting moment came when it was announced that Windows 10 also shipped with Cortana…. We all know Microsoft has dealt with languages and speech recognition for years (heck I remember trying to teach my dad’s Packard bell running Windows 95 to swear!!) but to integrate a mobile capability to a desktop…. Ok I’m interested now. Next we look at the ‘Smart Snap’ function, so not only can you snap to edge, you can choose to dock documents alongside each other. Ok, pretty nifty but meh, old hat really…. but now were somewhere different (for windows) multiple desktops…. Now this is close to my heart as it’s a Linux feature that allows me to have a Work Desktop and a play Desktop with different shortcuts and documents! Bravo M$ for finally taking the hint!! Next they open the File Explorer app…. Wait…. Did you say “app”? Yes. File explorer, photo editor, Office, they are now all apps. This is because the Windows 10 operating system is universal, you install the same software on a phone, phablet, tablet, pc, desktop, the OS simply resizes and amends the UI to fit!! This means ‘EVERYTHING’ is universal!! Heck, you can plug a phone into a dock, set it to PC mode and use it as a fully functional PC with the Windows Start button and everything, it simply renders the PC UI on the monitor!! They call this capability ‘Continuum’ and they boldly announce that Windows 10 will be the “Last Major Version of Windows”. OK, now I’m interested and paying much closer attention. Next, Edge, the new Microsoft web browser (see, you can tell I’m liking them more as I dropped the $!) its very plain looking and minimalistic, it comes with an inbuilt reading view that removes all ads, video’s and images from the screen, so you just get the text and you can actually read it. It also comes with an inbuilt offline mode so you can save the content to read later. This is not that impressive as you’ve been able to do that for years with ‘add ons’. Personally I don’t expect Edge to make much of an impact on a market where Chrome and Firefox are well and truly in charge. Next up, the Security upgrades. They opened this segment with a very bold statement…. “You will never need passwords again!” Say what…. Basically they have decided to use a either a physical of virtual TPM (Trusted Platform Module). So what does that mean? It means that you use biometrics to access your machine, full face recognition or fingerprints, this then authenticates you onto your local TPM chip, this is called Microsoft Hello. Now, that chip then uses encrypted certificates (as part of Microsoft passport) to communicate with websites, email, banking etc. and automatically log you in! No password = nothing for anyone to hack! No local password means no NLM hash stealing and unauthorised network access…. That’s actually really cool and very much unexpected to come as default! Microsoft Hello and Passport: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AsoSnOmhvU Well after that one I’m stoked! But the best is definitely still to come and it left me jabbering on like a old fish wife to my colleagues for the rest of the afternoon. This session was pre-fixed with the following statement “Everything you see here is functional and production ready. This isn’t CGI, these are actual real life user experiences captured for demonstrative purposes” They then proceeded to play this video: https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-hololens/en-us?video-url=vdeHHP Yep, god damned real life holograms!!!! This is the Hololense, it is a fully functional Windows 10 laptop that is mounted inside a headset and can project your computer screen onto any surface. It has Bluetooth connectivity so you can use a keyboard and mouse, but it functions primarily off Gesture, Sound and Gaze!!! Basically you walk into a room; it scans the room and then uses it as a canvas!! You then use your hands to start throwing out spreadsheets like Shuriken (ninja stars). You can stick bloody excel spread sheets to a wall, walk out of the room and they’ll still be there when you come back!! You can open up Netflix full screen and make it follow you around the house!! Best of all it can be fully immersive like the vomit inducing Oculus Rift (it’s so immersive it makes you dizzy and feel queasy) or it leaves your peripheral vision unhampered, which allows your eyes and head (and stomach!) to adjust and not spin you out! I mean who wouldn’t want to turn their kitchen of lounge into a unique Minecraft world and the flick of a switch!!! Honestly, the possibilities with this are endless!! It is the future (with a large subset of humanity never leaving the house again!! Especially when you think they have Holoskype….. videos to follow but look at the mars scene in the video, that’s work they have done with NASA to recreate Mars on earth, the golden avatar is another person sitting in their office looking at exactly the same Mars land scape and interacting within it…. #Perspective) We were shown several other videos, given a date for the Dev kits to be released, a cost and an estimated arrival on the market, but unfortunately those details are still Confidential. To surmise, I’m impressed. Microsoft has been able to hide a piece of technology they have been working on for years and make it functional and practical to both home and business users. I mean the motorcycle scene is real, it is a 3D modelling application that takes the model off screen and allows you to place it in a real life scenario, any amendments you make are then saved back. Personally I can’t wait to play Minecraft with my kids… and I can say that I won’t have to sell one of them to afford Hololense either….
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
March 2018
Categories |