It will be 4 years since the launch of Windows 10. It does not seem like much, but that is a whole world for an operating system like Microsoft’s , which from the beginning conceived this version in a very different way from the previous ones.
This new philosophy has been supported by the appearance of major updates. We already have the last of them with us, and once again we see how Windows 10 is a well-oiled machine that keeps getting better over the years. Despite everything, Microsoft has not managed to get rid of the burden of the past: there are still many components that are there for the sentence? of backward compatibility.
Windows 10 is here to stay
The launch of the so-called Windows 10 May 2019 Update – the names are from here, I hope you, I liked the Service Packs more – is the latest barrage of (small) great news in an operating system that is still vital for the day to day day of millions of people.
It is because although the mobile is that pocket PC that we always have within reach, the Windows PC continues to be a fundamental part of the professional, creative and entertainment routine around the world.
Yes, PC sales do not stop going down. The problem with that phrase is that it is a bit (quite) misleading. Data from IDC and Gartner (both coincided, curious) reveal that 58.5 million PCs were sold in the first quarter of 2019. The figure is not good and represents a drop of 4.6% compared to the same period of 2018, but still 58.5 million PCs in three months is a lot of PCs sold.
Apple sold 3.98 million
A lot, and that despite the traditional message for a long time that the PC is dead and hardly anyone uses it anymore. The reality is quite different, and there is another important piece of information here: the vast majority of those PCs — Apple sold 3.98 million in that period — come with Windows.
So Windows is still very important. Perhaps not so much for Microsoft or Satya Nadella, who made this division disappear to focus on the cloud and artificial intelligence, but it is like that interface with the computer that allows us to work and enjoy with it. Windows has never been perfect, but with each major update it shows that the vocation to improve is always there.
By now we would have had a “Windows 11”
The latest major update comes 1,453 days after Windows 10 was released on July 29, 2015. If you pay attention to the release dates of the various end-user editions of Windows, you can draw interesting conclusions:
Windows 95 – Released August 24, 1995
Windows 98: Released June 21, 1998, 1,032 days after the release of Windows 95
Windows Me – Released September 14, 2000, 816 days after the release of Windows 98
Windows XP: Released October 25, 2001, 406 days after Windows Me was released
Windows Vista: Released January 30, 2007, 1,923 days after the release of Windows XP
Windows 7: Released October 22, 2009, 996 days after the release of Windows Vista
Windows 8: Released October 26, 2012, 1,100 days after the release of Windows 7
Windows 8.1: Released October 17, 2013, 356 days after Windows 8 was released
Windows 10: Released July 29, 2015, 1,006 days after Windows 8 was released (650 from Windows 8.1)
Windows 10 May 2019 Update: Released on May 21, 2019, 1453 days have passed since Windows 10 was released
Windows XP to appear soon
Microsoft was in a rush to release that infamous version of its operating system called Windows Me , prompting Windows XP to appear soon after to become by far the most popular edition of Windows for many years. Maybe too many, because the Redmond company took a long time to renew its operating system, and Windows Vista took more than 5 years to be released.
Except for these two irregularities, the cadence of the appearance of new versions of Windows has always remained in that approximate band of 1,000 days , a number that was surpassed long ago by Windows 10: it has already been with us 1,454 days.
That would suggest that Microsoft should have introduced a new version of Windows by now, but everything changed with the launch of Windows 10, a seemingly “immortal” operating system that would never see a successor.
Here many compared this philosophy to the famous ‘rolling release’ Linux distributions. The constant updates and the absence of differentiated versions are clear signs of developments like Arch Linux, but in reality the scheme is somewhat different. In Arch there are no big updates that are applied suddenly from time to time as they do in Windows 10.
Still the focus is similar on certain points, and of course Microsoft seems to be clear that Windows 10 is here to stay for many, many years. This has allowed things to be taken a little more calmly , which in turn has enabled perhaps modest and less revolutionary changes than some would like, but which in perspective are more important than it seems.
Iterative improvements are good (even if they aren’t very exciting)
And so we have arrived at this update of May 2019 – I insist, horrible name – in which once again it is difficult to talk about great news or great surprises. And yet there are some of them that are important in certain areas.
Sandbox1
This is the case of Windows Sandbox, that isolated environment that will allow all kinds of applications and work sessions of “a Windows within Windows” to be executed safely. It is an option that perhaps not many will use, but it is fantastic to protect against malware when testing applications -those.exe files that we download from “dark sites” for example- or suspicious websites.