At Microsoft's Build Conference on Wednesday, April 29, the software maker unveiled how it plans to take back its once dominant hold over the technology industry.
This year's keynote, delivered by CEO Satya Nadella, is focused sharply on his "mobile first, cloud first" strategy and looks far ahead into the future with products such as Windows 10, Microsoft Edge, and HoloLens—products that people would never believe could have come from the Microsoft of old.
Making way for Microsoft's new future is Windows 10, which the Redmond, Washington-based company hails as being so innovative that it skipped an entire number in the naming sequence from Windows 8. Users who have downloaded Microsoft's Technical Preview of Windows 10 won't be surprised by build number 10074, also known as the first Insider Preview build, released on Wednesday.
Microsoft released a number of bug fixes and updates to the user experience and interface, but the most noticeable change is the addition of the attractive Aero Glass start menu that became popular on Windows 7. It's one of the features users have been hankering for. This time, Microsoft showed it was listening. If enough users like the frosted glass Start Menu complete with its animated live tiles, Aero Glass will become a permanent fixture.
Cortana also gets a major upgrade on Windows 10, aside from the visual makeover to make it fit better with the rest of Windows 10's design language. Onstage, operating systems corporate vice president Joe Belfiore demonstrated how the intelligent personal assistant can execute commands straight from third-party apps. If people are used to telling Cortana to open, say, Viber and start a chat with someone, Cortana can actually do what Belfiore wanted it to do when he said, "Hey Cortana, tell Terry Myerson I'm running really late using Viber."
"Windows 10 is not just another release of Windows, but a new generation of Windows," Nadella said. "The tech business is about being able to know before it is conventional wisdom that that is where the market is going ... and knowing that you can get there first, get there with the best innovation."
Another exciting thing we saw at Build is HoloLens in a live, physical demo. When Microsoft announced its new augmented reality platform earlier this year, many people thought they were blowing hot air. However, it's clear that Microsoft is working on the technology, and augmented reality is here to stay. Microsoft demoed HoloLens by interacting with a robot through augmented reality panels projected into the walls of the room. The panels could be moved anywhere and could be resized to become bigger or smaller, depending on the space available and the user's preference.
Also unveiled was Microsoft Edge, the replacement to the laggy, buggy Internet Explorer. The name is much less catchy than its Project Spartan code name, but what is really important about the new browser is its ability to use extensions built with HTML and Javascript, the same extensions used for Chrome and Firefox. This means developers won't have to do so much work to port their extensions over to Edge, although they may need to do a little bit of tweaking to get them to work properly. As of now, Windows 10 previewers say Edge's performance isn't as good as its existing competition, so we hope Microsoft gets to that before releasing Windows 10 later this year.
Microsoft is also pulling out all the stops in attracting developers. While Windows runs on about 95 percent of all computers in the world, PC sales are steadily dwindling, and Windows Phone's share is less than 3 percent, mostly because of the dearth of developers willing to work on Microsoft's platform. Its latest move, however, is also its boldest.
Terry Myerson, Microsoft's executive vice president of operating systems, announced on Wednesday that developers will be able to use Visual Studio to code in Objective C and Java, the language used for iOS and Android respectively. Microsoft expects that by allowing developers to convert their apps easily for Windows Phone, users will see a dramatic rise in apps in no time.
Analysts are pleased to see Microsoft trying to adapt to the times, even as the company lost a lot of time ignoring the signs that it was lagging far behind.
"Everybody thought hell would freeze over before Microsoft would do something like that," said Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy. "It convinces everybody that Microsoft is in it to win it. They're willing to put all their sacrificial lambs out there. They're willing to do what it takes to thrive in a cloud and mobile world."
