Windows 10 Week: Why you shouldn't write off Windows 10 Mobile just yet

Introduction and Continuum advantage

Microsoft has never had much success with its mobile phone business, and buying Nokia for $7.2 billion (around £5.5 billion, AU$9.7 billion) back in 2013 didn't help Redmond claw its way to relevancy, either.

Revenues from its phone business, which includes Lumia-branded handsets, dropped over 70% in the three months leading up to July, on top of a 50% decline in the quarter before that, and a similar drop in the previous quarter.

Research firms, such as Gartner and IDC, peg the market share of Windows 10 Mobile at somewhere between zero and 1%, a figure that could also be described as a rounding error equivalent to BlackBerry's share of the market.

Billion blunder

The company hasn't been releasing many new handsets of late and recently revised its stated goal of getting Windows 10 onto one billion devices by 2018 because of "the focusing of our phone hardware business."

The "focusing" in question is, by and large, a mystery. Microsoft declined to show off any new Windows 10 Mobile details earlier this year at its Build conference, and after this was picked up on by the media, Redmond was subsequently forced to release a statement clarifying its commitment.

The platform the company built with Windows 10 has been growing and now has 350 million active users across a range of devices, including Xbox, PCs, tablets, and (some) smartphones. But the downward revision of the big billion goal – and its reasoning – is embarrassing for Microsoft and signals just how far its mobile ambitions have fallen.

There is, however, a way to turn this around.

Deep and meaningful relationships

Microsoft has always had the best, by which we mean the deepest, relationships with big enterprise customers who run Windows, use Office, and most likely have some kind of Azure setup humming in the background.

While Amazon has snapped up growing startups with its Amazon Web Services platform, Microsoft has retained many big clients, which are defined as companies with over 100,000 employees, $10 billion (around £7.5 billion, AU$13.5 billion) in revenue per year, or both.

According to Gartner, Microsoft software and services are used in these kinds of companies the majority of the time, and the dominance only starts to fade as the organisations become smaller than 250 employees or generate less than $50 million (around £38 million, AU$67 million) in revenue.

As you'd expect, the bigger the company the more money Microsoft generates from it. Office 365, the cloud version of its productivity software, is used by over 23 million people, many of which are employees of big firms.

These relationships – which are likely years old – could be used to sell Windows-based smartphones.

Advantage Microsoft

"In the enterprise segment, Microsoft has a chance," said Francisco Jeronimo, a senior researcher at IDC, in an interview earlier this year. "They are looking at selling a bundle of products and services, rather than just the operating system, and when they go to a client and offer a device that comes with Continuum, the docking station, and Windows 10, it can be quite interesting."

The features that Microsoft has developed for its mobile operating system are some of the best-in-class. Continuum, for example, uses a $99 (around £75, AU$133) dock – called the Display Dock – which attaches to a mouse and keyboard to turn a Lumia smartphone into a fully-fledged computer running Windows 10.

Demos of a smartphone turning – literally – into a computer are really impressive and, more importantly, represent something only Microsoft is doing currently. Apple, which makes the iPhone, chooses to keep its desktop and smartphone operating systems separate, and Google, which develops Android, has chosen never to merge Chrome OS and Android in any meaningful way.

So, either by design or by accident, Microsoft has a huge, marketable advantage that would be uniquely beneficial to enterprise customers.

Avoiding phone pain

Android agony

The other advantage that Microsoft has is a realisation by big businesses that letting every employee carry their own smartphone is a pain. iPhones are okay because there are a finite number of versions, but Android is open to anyone who wants to make a handset which means there are a host of different screen sizes, features, OS versions, and so on.

"Companies have realised it costs a lot more to manage very different versions of phone OSes, hardware, etc, and it's easier just to roll out corporate phones on one platform," said Jeronimo. "Many companies are going back and giving employees the phone they want, or allowing them to choose between a set."

This change, which is happening over time and will likely continue in the future, is of huge benefit to Microsoft. The relationships it has so carefully nurtured with companies who will feel the pain of BYOD can be leveraged to sell handsets of a specific type, design, and software version.

Microsoft can go to a company which is frustrated by the process of supporting 30 different types of Android phone, or five types of iPhone, and say: "We have two handset types across the low- and high-ends which run Windows 10."

That, Microsoft should be hoping, is a compelling proposition, especially as company computers will soon be upgraded to Windows 10 and are running Office.

Universal solution

There is, of course, a lack of native apps on Windows 10 Mobile – including ones like Snapchat – but the Universal Windows Platform alleviates many of these problems.

Essentially, Microsoft managed to get Windows 10 fully unified across devices which means that apps developed for a PC, running Windows 10, work on a smartphone, tablet, or Xbox. Basically, any device that runs Windows 10.

This has meant that some big developers, like Uber, have produced a single Windows 10 app that is then available across multiple platforms, and Microsoft hopes others will do the same.

For enterprise, however, the number of popular apps is irrelevant (and fewer is most likely a good thing). What is relevant is that the company's software team can use one version of its software – and that's it. From here, it will run on a smartphone, PC, tablet, and so on.

Winning enterprise

Apple has also been pushing the iPhone into the workplace by partnering with IBM, Box, and others but its solution – beautifully designed enterprise apps – still requires hard work on the part of each individual company to bring its app onto iOS, not to mention that similar versions also have to be made for Android.

It's unlikely that 'winning' enterprise will yield the same kind of profits that selling phones to consumers does – as Apple discovered – but it will be some repayment for the time, money, and energy that Microsoft has consistently dedicated to Windows on smartphones over the years.

Selling the complete package – an operating system, productivity software, hardware (including the Surface), and infrastructure – is a very compelling offering, and Microsoft is uniquely positioned to do just that. The company best take full advantage of this fact.

• Also check out how Satya Nadella just fixed a massive problem at Microsoft

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Windows 10 Week: The next 5 updates Windows 10 needs

Windows 10 feature wishlist

The Windows 10 Anniversary Update is here at long last and while it brings improvements to digital pen usage and Cortana with a slew of new features, we still want more Microsoft! Call us greedy, but Windows 10 isn't perfect yet and we think there's still room to improve with even more features and UI tweaks.

So here's a quick wishlist of the future upgrades and updates that are just begging to come to Windows 10 and don't forget to hit the comments with your thoughts on what's still missing.

This article is part of TechRadar's Windows 10 week. Microsoft's latest operating system turns from a free to a paid upgrade on July 29, and we're looking to answer the question of whether it's good for you.

Streaming PC games to Xbox One

Right now you can stream your Xbox One games to a PC, but what we want to really do is the reverse. Microsoft is already investigating the idea, but it hasn't set a timeline of when the feature might possibly come out.

The biggest hurdle in the process is finding some way of translating games you can only play with a mouse and keyboard. However, Phil Spencer has also said such peripheral support is already in the works with Xbox One's developer kit. For now though, it seems mouse support isn't quite there yet and won't likely be there until months away.

Given that Razer, Valve and Nvidia have figured out technical part PC game streaming, we can't imagine this would be impossible with the Xbox One.

Windows 8.1's Start Screen

I know what you're thinking but hear me out before you call me crazy. There's actually still some design elements that were better on Windows 8.1 than Windows 10. The biggest one namely is the way Windows 8.1 rendered all your applications on Start Screen.

Live Tiles on Windows 10 are great and all, but if you want to scroll through every application you have loaded on your system, you're relegated to a small list on the side. Windows 8.1 on the other hand gave you a full-screen slate of apps with larger icons to tap on. It's great that Microsoft focused on improving the desktop experience of its OS, but it could still use a few touch-friendly tweaks.

Better display scaling please

High-resolution displays are quickly becoming the norm on Windows machines, but some applications still have yet to scale properly. For the most part, if you want to display your desktop at 4K that's no problem. Just set your scaling higher to increase the size of text, apps, and other items to 200% – which also happens to be the default scaling set on Microsoft's self-made Surface Book and Surface Pro 4.

The problem is everything outside of Microsoft's software portfolio doesn't follow the same model. Everyday applications from Photoshop to Hipchat have comically small and unusable interfaces at higher resolutions. It's high time that Microsoft made a plugin or worked directly with software developers to make display scaling universal across both first- and third-party applications.

Account management within Windows 10

Our use case with Windows 10 is a bit extreme, having to review a ton of laptop and desktop, but we're tired of having to go through Microsoft's websites to (de)authorize devices connected Office 365 and the Windows Store. We could easily see the same settings being slipped into the account options in settings and it would also be a fairly easy tweak.

Tabbed file browser

Tabs have around for over a decade since they hit the street in Opera and Firefox, but in 2016 we still don't see a single tab in the Windows 10 file explorer. Just like browser tabs, they would make opening more than one folder and switching back and forth between them so much easier.

Apple adopted a tabbed version of Finder back in 2014 with OS X Yosemite, but Microsoft hasn't even hinted at the thought of introducing the helpful feature. What gives Microsoft!?

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Windows 10 Week: Why Xbox Play Anywhere is important for developers and gamers alike

Xbox Play Anywhere

At E3 2016, it came as little shock that Microsoft would be introducing, for the first time ever, a cross-buy program between Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs. After a year of showing strong support for the Universal Windows Platform, Microsoft's software consolidation push, it was high time for the company to start thinking about gaming on PCs.

With Xbox Play Anywhere, Microsoft is giving PC gaming another shot for the first time since the ill-fated Games for Windows Live. Instead of simply publishing PC games, this new initiative lets you buy a game once and own it on both the Xbox One and PC plus transferring saves, achievements and DLC content between both.

Though some gamers see it as the death of Xbox One exclusives, it seems like an obvious win for others. Knowing it couldn't remain complacent in Sony's backseat, Microsoft had to make like Apple and think different. And it did so while taking into account what was at its disposal all along: Windows.

We Happy Microsoft

Play Anywhere, in Microsoft's director of program management for Xbox Mike Ybarra own words, "is designed to give players the ability to play on Windows 10 PCs or on consoles – for convenience, bigger multiplayer pools and more." More earnestly, this means that if you buy a game digitally on your Xbox, you'll automatically gain access to the same title on your PC, tablet or 2-in-1 – whatever's sporting Windows 10.

For developers it's a little more complicated than that, but surprisingly not by much.

From Microsoft's viewpoint, game creators have little to worry about in regards to its cross-buy initiative. Obviously, games published by the company's own studios will participate in the program by default, but for third-parties, cooperation is entirely optional.

"Xbox Play Anywhere is an opt-in program for developers, meaning there are no requirements of any sort and the decision is up to them," Ybarra told us. "There's minimal added work for developers to make their title an Xbox Play Anywhere title."

Interestingly enough, Compulsion Games' (Contrast, We Happy Few) chief operating Sam Abbott had a similar stance on the matter but added one major detail that contradicts Microsoft's messaging.

Too early to tell

When asked if Play Anywhere is opt-in, Abbott said, "Yeah, I think it is. For us, we kind of take the Valve approach, the idea that games should be playable anywhere. We love to make them available, and UWP is not super difficult to make it happen."

While this aligns almost seamlessly with what Microsoft told us, at the bottom of the Play Anywhere website rests a worrying disclaimer:

"Xbox Play Anywhere functionality will be enabled once the game is released on both Xbox One and in the Windows 10 Store."

That leads us to Sam's biggest qualm with the service. Even with the imminent launch of Microsoft's major Anniversary Update to Windows 10, there's still no sign of early access support. So, for those of us who purchase We Happy Few now on Xbox One as part of the Preview Program, it's unclear whether it'll pop up in our Windows 10 libraries upon the game's hard launch.

"We spoke to Microsoft about early access on the Windows Store, UWP basically," Abbott told us. "And they said, 'Well, we don't really want to support that right now.'"

For that reason, Windows 10 is more of an afterthought for Compulsion rather than a feature at launch, with Sam likening it to platforms with little market reach in gaming.

"What it means is that UWP is going to be something that we look at a little bit later on," he said, "probably around the same time we look at Mac and Linux."

Microsoft, on the other hand, seems to have acknowledged the lack of early access on the Windows Store as a widespread complaint, though in traditional corporate format, they "have nothing new to share around early access programs on the Windows Store at this time."

What's interesting is that Sam, COO of Compulsion Games, doesn't know whether We Happy Few will cost money once it releases on the Windows 10 Store for those buying it now on Xbox One.

If I bought the game today for my Xbox as part of the Xbox One Preview Program, would I be able to boot it up on my PC later this year when it inevitably reaches the Windows 10 Store? We don't know yet, but then again, neither do its creators.

Although porting games over to Windows 10 doesn't necessitate more than a few lines of code, converting it from the age-old Win32 standard to a more closed-off, tile-like Windows 10 app, Microsoft's communication with developers has been unclear.

Xbox One S, Project Scorpio and beyond

Perhaps one of the most shocking happenings at E3 this year was when Microsoft decided to reveal two different consoles less than 90 minutes apart from each other.

The Xbox One S, set to rollout this August, promises a form factor that's 40% smaller than the current Xbox One, 4K HDR video output and, perhaps less commonly known, a Bluetooth controller with native support for Windows 10 PCs. Project Scorpio, on the other hand, is being boasted as "the most powerful console ever built," complete with native 4K and VR gaming capabilities made possible by a whopping six teraflops of graphical performance.

If Xbox One S is the elegant Lunar White controller, Project Scorpio is an exorbitant Elite. Unfortunately, while more power is more than welcome in a world where consoles are rapidly falling behind high-end PCs in terms of graphics, the addition of Xbox One S and Project Scorpio to the Universal Windows Platform only complicates things for developers.

For We Happy Few in particular, Sam Abbott isn't too keen on adding a whole lot of glitz to the upcoming pair of consoles. When asked about Xbox One S, he wasn't sure if optimizing for the shiny white slim was even possible. For Project Scorpio, on the other hand, you can expect little more than a higher resolution.

"I think what we're probably going to end up doing is still design for the baseline model, and with reasonably high-res assets," he surmised. "So our pictures would all be at least 4K and that sort of thing."

"Once we have it optimized and running really well on the base model," he said. "We then spend some time bumping all of the various things that we can."

For the more powerful variants of the Xbox One, Abbot explained they could tweak the lighting significantly and change the post processing effects, but ultimately the biggest change users could expect is an upscaled version of the game's default resolution.

Catching up at a cost

Microsoft, on the other hand, offers a separate, but equally valid point. Developers have been making games for hardware with a wide range of disparate specs for years now on PC. The only difference is that now they'll have to do the same thing for consoles.

"Today, developers already often author their content at 4K resolutions or higher to take advantage of high-performance PCs or consoles and then they scale the content down for mid-range or lower PCs and devices," Ybarra told us.

Although that's not completely accurate, at least according to Sam Abbott, it comes pretty damn close to the truth. Because consoles have been lagging behind in the performance department as of late, it's more probable that developers are "authoring their content" to leverage the mid-range or lower hardware.

"You can design for the people that buy the highest end graphics card, but the market is not that big," he explained. "All of the optimizations that we do for the Xbox One make the game run faster on higher end PC cards; they make the game actually run on lower end PC cards, which is really, really good for everybody."

The thing is, Microsoft made a promise at E3 that even with the launch of new hardware, no one Xbox One owner will be left in the dust amid all the excitement. Instead, it looks as if games will still be authored for the original Xbox One, opting only for higher resolutions on its successor.

The requirement of ensuring that every game runs on every system in accordance with UWP guidelines will not only complicate development but minimize the need to upgrade for gamers who couldn't care less about 4K.

This differs from previous console cycles as the need to latch onto old tech was negated by games pushing the graphical limit on newer hardware to . Then again, this is a four-year console cycle we're talking about and not the eight years we spent with the Xbox 360.

Play Anywhere, but not everywhere

As it stands currently, Play Anywhere is a well intended effort to bring Xbox and PC gamers together. As part of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, you can now see what your friends are playing on PC (regardless of whether it's a UWP game or not) and vice versa.

Of course, in the end, it's important to recognize that playing triple-A games on a PC is simply out of reach or interest for many gamers. It's unlikely that the vast majority will even want to swap between and Xbox One and PC to play their games, but for whatever reason, if they do, Play Anywhere now makes that possible by way of the Universal Windows Platform.

It's important to keep in mind that Microsoft isn't shooting itself in the foot by porting its first-party lineup to PC. The company still takes a 30% cut from Windows 10 app purchases, and it wasn't making much off each console anyway. After all, PC and Xbox target two very different audiences, a fact Microsoft is intently aware of.

"Some will want a high-end gaming PC that allows them to optimize the fidelity of their experience, while others will want the curated benefits of the console enjoyed in front of the largest screen in the home," Ybarra explained.

"Our goal is to bridge these communities in a way that extends and builds on the best of what they do," he said. This is about uniting players not dividing them by the platform they choose to play on."

As a result, Microsoft is effectively paving the way for the Steam Machine Valve never could by making PC gaming more accessible than ever, even if it is through a console.

This article is part of TechRadar's Windows 10 week. Microsoft's latest operating system turns from a free to a paid upgrade on July 29, and we're looking to answer the question of whether it's good for you.

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This is (very likely) the new Samsung Gear VR

 As Samsung prepares to launch its next-gen phablet extraordinaire, the Note 7, at its special event this upcoming Tuesday, the leaks are continuing to flow. Today, photos of the new Gear VR were leaked from leaker OnLeaks (h/t 9to5Google). The device is reportedly going to be sporting a USB Type-C connection which corroborates reports that the new Note 7 will be shifting to the new… Read More

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Windows 10 Week: Why Microsoft won't hit 1 billion Windows 10 installs

At last year's Build conference, Windows and devices chief Terry Myerson announced one of those "bold ambitions" that Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella is so fond of: "Within two to three years of Windows 10's release, there will be 1 billion devices running Windows 10".

That wouldn't be just upgrades or even new PC sales; it would include Surface Hub, Xbox One, the upcoming HoloLens and Windows Mobile phones.

• We ask: should you upgrade to Windows 10?

Surface Hub was delayed for some months. It took longer than expected to ramp up the brand new factory Microsoft was building in Portland, but they're shipping now. Xbox One sales dropped in Microsoft's most recent financial results, but it's already announced the Xbox One S and Project Scorpio.

HoloLens isn't on sale yet, but businesses as well as gamers are interested in the promise of mixed reality. But having taken a long, hard look at the smartphone market and the rise of local phone makers in China and India who are taking share from Apple and Samsung alike, Microsoft seems to have decided not to compete in the budget smartphone market where the bulk of device sales are made.

Shifting goalposts

Talking to investors when Microsoft announced its most recent financial results, Nadella pointed out that Windows 10 has had the fastest adoption rate of any version of Windows (helped no doubt, by the free upgrade offer), but admitted "given changes to our phone plan, we've changed how we will assess progress". Microsoft will now report not just how many devices have Windows 10 installed, but in active use, and 2018 is no longer the target.

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that to TechRadar. "Windows 10 is off to the hottest start in history with over 350 million monthly active devices, with record customer satisfaction and engagement. We're pleased with our progress to date, but due to the focusing of our phone hardware business, it will take longer than FY18 for us to reach our goal of one billion monthly active devices. In the year ahead, we are excited about usage growth coming from commercial deployments and new devices – and increasing customer delight with Windows."

With no new phones from Microsoft so far this year (and only a few new models from the OEMs Microsoft is now relying on), phone revenue in their latest financial results was down 71%, and sales have dropped 57% from the previous year.

Microsoft seems to be doing better at bringing Office 365 to iOS and Android than on shifting its own mobile devices.

It's not that Microsoft is abandoning phones entirely; Terry Myerson confirmed at Build this year that Microsoft is "fully committed" to phones and plans to "do some cool things with phones" but for 2016, they're important but they're not the focus that PCs and Xbox and HoloLens are, because they're not the right place to reach a lot of customers.

The anniversary update to Windows 10 Mobile certainly improves the platform, but it still has a number of rough edges (the previously impressive shape-writing keyboard and Wi-Fi have both been problematic in recent builds).

Bigger in business

Until those new cool things come along, where Windows Mobile is most likely to prove popular is with large businesses like BT, Telefonica and Delta who want to buy phones that they can run the same apps on that they're building for Windows 10. That's a reasonable market, but it's not the same as the huge consumer market for phones.

IDC analyst and VP Al Gillen agrees that phone sales are an issue. "Without a meaningful contribution from Windows Phone, Microsoft won't get to one billion Windows 10 devices until 2019 or 2020. We project the total to be at about 700 million units by the end of Microsoft's Fiscal Year 2018, when the company had hoped to get to one billion."

But it's not quite such bad news for Microsoft as it might sound. While the shift to smartphones and tablets that we've been seeing for several years continues, PC sales are also higher than was predicted (and sales no longer include PCs that qualify for the Bing promotions Microsoft had been using to reduce Windows licence prices). Fewer PCs are being sold, but the drop is less than IDC expected; between April and June 2016, 62.4 million PCs were sold worldwide.

That's helped Microsoft's numbers. The recent financial results beat predictions and Windows was partly responsible for that; revenue from consumer versions is up 27% even though PC sales are flat in western Europe and down worldwide.

Microsoft is predicting that it will make as much or more money in the next three months from Windows (or at least from the More Personal Computing division that includes Windows and devices like Surface and phones). The prediction of $8.7 to $9 billion is close to the $8.9 billion it made in April, May and June. And while it's down from the previous year, when revenue was $11.3 billion, the latest results and the predictions for next quarter are only slightly down from $9.2 billion this time last year.

In other words, while phones and tablets have changed the world, PCs don't dominate any more but they aren't going away either. And that means prospects for Windows 10 are still healthy, says Gillen.

"While this has been spun up as a miss by Microsoft, the reality is the movement to Windows 10 is going especially well, and this product is seeing a faster growth rate (in terms of the percentage of market total) than any previous Windows product.

"For instance, if we look back at Windows 7, one year after release, it accounted for 15% of the worldwide, paid Windows installed base. By comparison, one year in for Windows 10 and it is sitting at 24% of the Windows installed base. By the end of this calendar year, Windows 10 should be at about 33% of the worldwide, paid Windows installed base. Windows 7 didn't get to 33% until it had been on the market for over two and a half years."

The recent Spiceworks survey shows that the business adoption is a little better than that, especially in larger businesses; while Microsoft says 96% of its business customers have "active pilots", 38% of organizations in the Spiceworks study are running Windows 10 on PCs and tablets, although only 10% on phones. 42% of those are still testing, but 58% have it in active use. They picked it for the better performance, the new features, because their existing OS was out of support – and because the upgrade was free.

That makes 62% of businesses in the survey who aren't running Windows 10; less than half say they won't switch in the foreseeable future, but 11% will upgrade in the next year, 22% in the next two years and 16% after that – which means a steady trickle of business adoption. Laptops and desktops will get the majority of those upgrades; 34% of tablets and 11% of phones in those businesses will have Windows 10 within a year.

So far, Windows 10 growth has actually been slightly better than what Microsoft would need to get to those billion devices by 2018, but that's with the free upgrade offer. Without phones, new consumer PCs and business upgrades will make up the numbers.

It will take a couple more years, and two-in-one tablets will be a much bigger part of Windows 10 family than phones, which means you should expect more features that work with pen – like the new Ink workspace – and connect up a much wider range of phones than just Microsoft's models.

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The Windows 10 Anniversary Update vs. macOS Sierra: two paths to OS unity

The age-old battle of Microsoft vs. Apple has subsisted since MS-DOS. And, while Windows buffs and Mac junkies are likely to never reach an agreement, it's always fun to dive into the nitty gritty of each platform to see how they stack up.

It's no coincidence that both Microsoft and Apple have opted to update their desktop operating systems (OS) around the same time. While Windows 10 attains new features regularly by way of Microsoft's Windows Insider Program, the anticipated successor to OS X El Capitan is out in the open via a public beta.

• Windows 10 Anniversary Update: everything you need to know

Both Windows and the newly renamed macOS are being treated to some massive overhauls as we speak, Windows 10 with the Anniversary Update and Apple's desktop OS with macOS Sierra. And, although the two updates boast distinct feature sets, there are undoubtedly some similarities (and major differences) to be discussed.

Personal assistants: Siri vs. Cortana

It shouldn't come as a shock that Siri is finally making its way to macOS, years after making its introduction back in 2011 on the iPhone 4S. What's more surprising, frankly, is that the personal assistant hadn't made its way to the Mac sooner.

Though it isn't much more than a port of the iOS version with a few tweaks suiting it to a desktop interface, Siri is here in its definitive form – blessed we are to avoid the underdeveloped and underwhelming Apple TV treatment. For the first time ever, you can mark your calendar, send emails and navigate Finder using voice controls from your Mac.

Cortana, on the other hand, was Microsoft's reaction to what Apple and Google had accomplished in mobile years prior with their own personal assistant AI. The resulting software is nothing short of exceptional. To thank, Cortana has the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), which unifies devices running not only some variant of Windows 10 but, to an extent, even those bearing Android and iOS.

Cortana has, of course, undergone some refinements in the Anniversary Update. However, with Microsoft's ongoing commitment to Windows as a Service, these enhancements were almost unwarranted given the procedural evolution of Cortana over time. Regardless, Windows 10 Anniversary delivers Cortana without compromise.

Windows 10 Anniversary delivers Cortana without compromise.

First of all, you'll no longer be required to sign in to your computer first to start asking questions: Cortana is on your lockscreen. Moreover, the Halo-inspired helper gains interconnectivity with your other devices (at least those equipped with Android or Windows 10 Mobile) by responding to questions like, "How's my battery life?" or, "Where is my phone?" To the latter, she'll check your phone's GPS location or even give it a ring.

As we've bragged in the past, Windows 10 comes out on top with its personal assistant functionality. Don't get us wrong, Siri still packs a strong showing, but Cortana has an obvious lead here. Natural language responses, platform ubiquity and smart home integration are just a few of its quirks. And let us not forget Siri had a near-four year head start.

Platform unity: iCloud vs. Universal Windows Platform

On the other hand, Microsoft has failed to achieve the same level of success in unifying its ecosystem in the same way Apple has. While iCloud integration across all of its devices has enticed Apple users both new and old, Windows 10 Mobile hasn't garnered enough market share to pull its own weight.

Nevertheless, Microsoft does have a few tricks up its sleeve, most notably with Project Centennial, which allows both Win32 and .NET developers to more seamlessly port their software to the Windows 10 Store, making it accessible on a wide range of UWP-enabled devices.

That said, Windows Ink is introduced with Windows 10's summer upgrade, bringing with it a number of improvements specific to handcrafted note-taking and drawing. It appears to be a response to Apple's iPad Pro, which was launched in November of last year and featured an expensive (yet effective) stylus add-on dubbed Apple Pencil.

Windows Ink will comprise Sketchpad, presumably the MS Paint revamp we deserve in this world with more Surface Books and Surface Pros than ever, in addition to the collaborative Screen sketch, stylus-friendly Sticky Notes and even the ability to remap buttons on your pen of choice.

Lastly, Windows 10 Anniversary enables the premiere of Microsoft's Play Anywhere program, a cross-buy initiative that lets you play a sizable chunk of your digitally purchased Xbox One games on PC and vice versa (assuming your games are purchased from the Windows 10 Store). And, speaking of which, games acquired from the Windows 10 Store will get previously unavailable VSync options complemented by compatibility with more than one GPU.

Also arriving on Windows 10 via its Anniversary Update is a vast array of emojis based on the Unicode standard. Fans of communication by way of tiny images to convey feeling will be elated to know that just about every emoji – the only exception being flags – are compatible with Windows 10 following the update. That's right, you can roll your eyes, show your nerd face and even change your skin color on day one with both Windows 10 Mobile and Windows 10 proper.

Contrarily, seeing as macOS Sierra isn't compatible with touchscreen devices, Apple is much less concerned with drawing and handwriting applications in the latest version of macOS. Instead, Sierra is all about making friendly between its various devices – and what better way to achieve that than with iCloud?

Apple is much less concerned with drawing and handwriting applications in the latest version of macOS.

Iterating on the foundation it laid with Continuity, macOS Sierra adds Universal Clipboard, which allows for items be copied or cut from one Apple device, such as an iPhone or iPad, and then pasted on, say, a MacBook. You could say this takes the concept of AirDrop a step further by including compatibility for text formats as well as graphical ones.

On the storage front, prepare your disk drives, as the antiquated HFS+ that's been in place on Mac since 1998 will finally be replaced by the encryption-centric Apple File System, or APFS. For the most part, Apple seems to be playing catch-up to Windows' NTFS with some long overdue space optimization and performance advancements. Overall, it's not much to get excited for, but nevertheless a welcome adjustment.

Likewise, macOS Sierra also integrates a handful of fresh capabilities in its pre-installed Photos app. As with iOS 10, you'll be able to use search terms to find certain people shown in your photo library, recognized by face, naturally. Furthermore, Memories uses an algorithm to automatically arrange images, memes or otherwise, by year and location.

Same OS, different day

Of course, the aforementioned enhancements aren't all you can expect from macOS Sierra and the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. In fact, with macOS Sierra, well-endowed multitaskers can keep a small video window open while they work on other things, thanks to its new picture-in-picture mode. What's more, macOS Sierra puts tabs in the hands of every Mac-supported application, first-party or otherwise.

As for Windows, the Anniversary Update will include a Dark Mode for UWP apps, better scheduling options for Windows Update, the ability to pin applications on more than one virtual desktop screen at a time and – for converted Linux users – unadulterated access to Ubuntu's Bash shell. And last but not least, although your battery life and RAM are certain to take a hit – despite Microsoft's bullish claims for the former – extensions are (at long last) supported by the Edge web browser.

Extensions are (at long last) supported by the Edge web browser.

Marginal improvements (for the better)

Evidently, Microsoft and Apple are trying to accomplish two very different things with their software. While Apple continues to cultivate its existing ecosystem to establish parity between its various device lineups, Microsoft is extending Windows 10 to new platforms.

At the end of the day, it looks as though both macOS Sierra and post-Anniversary Update Windows 10 present users with few substantial upgrades, but a plethora of little ones, and we aren't even mad. How's that cliché go? If it ain't broke don't fix it (too much)?

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Windows 10 Week: Should you upgrade to Windows 10? How Microsoft's OS could be good for you

Introduction

Is Windows 10 for you? Well, there's a better chance that it brings something to your life than not, whether you use a computer for 10 hours or 10 minutes a day.

The thing is, time is running out to upgrade from Windows 7 or 8.1 to Windows 10 for free. Specifically, you have until the end of today. It's not a decision that you should simply gloss over, as the current price is around $120 (£100 or AUS$160). That's enough for 10,000 penny sweets, and we're particularly fond of the chewy fried egg ones.

I don't know about you, but when I think about the burning core of my being, it's in terms of being a bunch of easily-categorisable stereotypes. Which is handy, as it means I can make a purchasing decision entirely on the basis of said arbitrary categorisation. Am I a frequent flier, a parent, a gamer, or a paranoid survivalist hermit living in wildest Orkney? There's a reason to own Windows 10 for all of you.

(Well, apart from the hermit, but then I'm frankly amazed he's reading TechRadar rather than a 19th century almanac, or scrawling on his bathroom wall with turnip juice.) To see how Windows 10 will probably fit into your life, click (or tap) on ahead.

This article is part of TechRadar's Windows 10 week. Microsoft's latest operating system turns from a free to a paid upgrade on July 29, and we're looking to answer the question of whether it's good for you.

The gamer

Actually, Windows 10 is pretty good for gamers. It's been pretty darn stable since day one, which is unusual for Windows. Microsoft say it's had the fastest ever adoption rate. (Which was only slightly down to the botherware they installed on Windows 7 telling you to upgrade, like someone asking you out on a date four thousand times.) As a gamer, I will aver that it is definitely a better experience than my malware riddled Windows 7 installation.

On top of that Microsoft is committed to gamers, in its own slightly-creepy 'we want to own your world' way. It's made DirectX 12 (the next big graphical back end) Windows 10 only. They've got the Xbox app, which lets you record your gameplay. It's also integrated voice chat with your friends.

Indeed, the company has also Windows 10 integrated the Xbox One so thoroughly that you can crossbuy games and play them on either system at no extra cost, and retaining your saves - or even stream them from one machine to the other. They're really, really desperate to get the Xbox One to be at the Heart of Your Gaming.

Andrew wrote a metric ton more reasons why Windows 10 is good for gamers the other day.

The worker

Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your backwards compatibility! And if you've got a camera, microphone, and/or touchscreen, Window has better support for all those items. This is a mobile OS, after all.

For microphone owners, Cortana is a voice-controlled AI interface with your computer and the web. For RealSense camera owners, Windows Hello uses facial recognition or other biometrics to log you on securely. And touchscreen users will benefit from Windows Ink's total integration of pen and touch control.

It's also a better running OS than 7. It has better security with malware-killer Windows Defender and phishing filter Smartscreen. It uses memory and disk space more carefully. It has built-in virtual desktops. It supports new hardware - like USB 3.0, solid-state drives and hi-def screens - better. And there's integration with Microsoft's OneDrive cloud service, meaning back-ups are much easier.

The upcoming Windows Anniversary Update is adding a load of productivity-related features, to make Windows. You can read more about those over here.

The security-conscious person

You're not paranoid if everyone's really out to get you, they say, but they would say that. Because they're out to get you. And even if they're not, they are.

Anyway, if you're the sort of person who worries about the Chinese and Russians ignoring all those juicy Pentagon and DARPA targets and hacking into your computer… you're right to. President Putin is after YOUR emails about not knowing how to work the fax machine. (And we're not just talking to you, Hillary.) And Windows 10 has ramped up security specifically for you.

Windows Hello is your first stop. This biometric alternative to passwords can use your fingerprint, facial recognition, iris and other secured biometric devices to log you onto your computer and/or compatible websites.

Next is Windows Edge. I know, Internet Explorer was famously insecure, but Edge is much more secure - using what Microsoft call 'advanced sandboxing technology' to isolate your online experience from your personal data and from Windows.

Next is the double whammy of SmartScreen and Windows Defender. Smartscreen protects Edge from phishing sites attempting to nab your personal data, blocking any problematic or malicious sites, as well as blocking malicious-seeming software. Defender helps if SmartScreen fails. It's an anti-malware package that sits quietly in the taskbar - and is going to be heavily upgraded for the Anniversary update.

People with accessibility requirements

Windows 7 was fine for people with accessibility issues, but it wasn't always easy to access them. So Windows 10 has been designed with accessibility in mind from the ground up - there's even an official accessibility blog covering it.

One big thing worth noting; the free upgrade period for Windows 10 doesn't end for anyone using assistive technologies. This is because some of these pieces of tech aren't yet compatible with Windows 10. There will be a page up from July 29th detailing how to access the free upgrade.

Other than that, Windows 10 offers many techs that help with the disabled. Voice control through Cortana, hands-free security with Windows Hello, multi-language Narrator for the blind, Magnifier for the partially sighted, Scan mode for the physically disabled, and lots of specialised app support. You can read more about what's coming with Windows Anniversary here.

The Microsoft team are also developing superb-sounding tech for the disabled - like their Seeing AI tech, which describes surroundings to disabled people using computer vision, image recognition, natural language processing and machine learning.

The frequent traveller

If you're a frequent traveller, then you need a good laptop to keep you grounded from the rich fantasy world you occasionally lapse into when you're stuck in a sad café between countries.

Thankfully, Windows 10's OS is designed to scale nicely to any screen size and be perfectly pleasant on desktops, smaller form factor PCs and right down to mobile phones. Many of the better modern ones come with touchscreens as well, which are perfect for Windows Ink (though I'm not entirely sure what the laptop-touchscreen killer app is…)

If you're looking for a laptop, then you could consider something thin-and-light like the HP Spectre 13, or the LG Gram (in the US).

Good reasons not to install Windows 10

Let's face it - Windows 7 is going away. By 2020, Microsoft will have stopped supporting it, so if you want patches and modern drives, you'll want Windows 10. But you might still prefer older OSes for perfectly legitimate reasons.

I mean, you might simply not have the minimum hardware to run Windows 10. It needs 20GB of free hard drive space. It also needs more space for automatically-downloaded updates which are a hassle to turn off.

Or you might have obscure hardware that Windows 10 doesn't have drivers for. This is especially a problem for enterprise-level businesses, who might have bespoke hardware created for particular purposes - for example, I know someone who manages his restaurant's security cameras from a Windows application that was designed for a particular old version of Windows and Windows Phone. There's no way he's upgrading that computer.

You might also have privacy concerns. As we said earlier, Windows 10's built-in security is better than Windows 7's - but then it also gathers more of your personal data and sends feedback to Microsoft.

Or you could be a raggedy hermit, living in a bothy in distant Orkney, and Windows 10 isn't compatible with your MacBook Air. Well, not without exceptionally-boring partition work that will distract you from your important hermitting duties.

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Round up: The best free PDF editor 2016

Free PDF editors

Edit, split, merge and convert PDFs

Adobe describes PDF as "three letters that changed the world", and it has a point: the Portable Document Format, to give it its Sunday name, was invented by Adobe to make it easy to share electronic documents. It's now an open standard used in everything from publishing to public bodies, and there are stacks of tools to create, edit, annotate and organise PDFs. But which ones are best? We've collated 10 of the most useful document wranglers around for Windows.

If you're a Mac user, don't forget about the Preview app - it's a very useful PDF editor in its own right, although some other programs can do even more.

1. Foxit Reader

A powerful PDF reader and editor that can be customized to suit you

Of all the free PDF tools available for Windows, Foxit Reader is our favorite. It looks and feels rather like Microsoft Office so it's instantly familiar, it has a tabbed interface for working on multiple PDFs simultaneously, and it enables you to complete forms and annotate documents. It also includes security tools for protecting your PDFs.

It's expandable via a bunch of add-ons and if you find yourself needing even more power its paid-for sibling, PhantomPDF, has extensive organisation, sharing and document tracking features for a very reasonable US$109 (about £82.82, AU$144.89).

2. Adobe Reader

Adobe's cross-platform software is superb for marking up documents

Yes, Adobe Reader on the desktop has a reputation for being overly complex and overly needy - but the iOS and Android editions haven't inherited its flaws and stand on their own virtual feet as fast, flexible and lightweight PDF editors.

Some of the best features require an Acrobat Pro subscription, so for example editing text isn't possible without Pro, but you can sign and fill forms and export Office documents to PDF. There's support for Dropbox too.

3. PDF24 Creator

A printer driver with added editing features for perfect conversions

One of the simplest ways to add PDF to Windows is to install a PDF printer driver. Windows sees it as a printer driver, but instead of controlling hardware it actually converts documents to PDFs.

That's what PDF24 Creator offers, but it also adds its own Assistant that can split or merge PDF files, adjust document properties, re-order pages, password protect PDFs and add digital watermarks or signatures. It's hardly the prettiest app around but it gets on with the job and doesn't require loads of system resources.

4. Adobe Acrobat DC (trial)

Edit text, replace and tweak images, add signatures and much more besides

The DC stands for Document Cloud, and Adobe Acrobat Reader DC is designed to cover every eventuality - for a price. You can try out the software for free, but the license is an annual subscription that works out at £11.42 (about US$15, AU$20) per month for the Standard edition and £13.33 (about US$17.54, AU$23.33) per month for Pro.

The Standard edition gives you online access via Adobe's Document Cloud, the ability to create PDFs from almost any source, to work on PDFs via the mobile apps and to electronically sign documents. Going Pro adds multimedia support, the ability to edit scanned documents and the option to request electronic signatures.

5. Nitro PDF Reader

Surprisingly powerful, with support for both image and text editing

Here's another app that looks awfully like Microsoft Office, and once again that's no bad thing. Nitro PDF Reader has a feature set that shames some paid-for apps: despite a price tag of zero it offers document to PDF conversion, annotation and highlighting, image extraction, text editing and e-signatures. It's definitely one to try before you consider paying for a PDF app.

6. PDF-XChange Editor

A free PDF editor with OCR for converting image-based PDFs

Tracker's PDF-XChange Editor comes in three and a half flavours: a free Lite version for non-commercial use, two paid-for versions at US$43.50 (about £33, AU$58) and US$54.50 (about £41.38, AU$72.60) respectively and a free version of the $43.50 app that removes some of its advanced features.

The Lite version doesn't do much - it's a print-to-PDF app to create searchable PDFs from pretty much any Windows app - but it also has has OCR scanning, Google Drive and Office 365 support, commenting and annotation, markup and file conversion. Paying for a license adds the ability to create forms, more advanced organizational tools and more extensive editing options.

7. SlimPDF Reader

A tiny tool that's lacking features, but won't stress underpowered PCs

The name should set expectations here: SlimPDF Reader promises to be "10% of the size of Adobe Reader but views 100% of PDFs". It's microscopic by app standards - just 1.43MB - and that's largely because it doesn't really do anything other than view PDFs.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, though: its tiny footprint means it doesn't drag your system down like more advanced PDF apps often do, and it's ridiculously fast on even the most modest PCs.

8. Icecream PDF Converter

Split hefty documents into manageable sections before conversion

Icecream PDF Converter comes from the same developer as the useful Icecream Ebook Reader (which also doubles as a good-looking PDF viewer). This app's all about the file formats, though. You can drag and drop PDFs onto the app and convert them to JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, GIF, EPS, HTML or WMF format, and you can also convert ebooks and Microsoft Office documents to PDF.

It can also run batch conversions and partial conversions for when you only need a few pages of a huge document. That's the good news. The bad news is that you're limited to 10 page PDFs when you export and five files per conversion to PDF unless you buy the Pro version for £14.95 (about US$19.69, AU$26.21).

9. AbleWord

Convert documents from text format to PDF, and vice versa

Here's a blast from the past: AbleWord looks very like an old version of Microsoft Word or a recent OpenOffice.org app. It works like those apps too, but the unique selling point here is that it supports PDF files as well as the usual DOC, DOCX and RTF formats, and that means it's a handy tool for anybody who needs to create documents in PDF format or convert between Word and PDF formats.

OpenOffice can export PDFs too, but reading them requires installing an extension: AbleWord has PDF import built-in.

10. PDFsam Basic

A versatile tool for merging and splitting PDFs in multiple configurations

PDFsam is an acronym of PDF Split and Merge, so you can probably guess what it does. Yep, it splits and merges PDF files.

You can use it to combine multiple documents or break a single document into multiples, you can merge alternate pages - handy if you're trying to turn single-sided scans of double-sided documents into something readable - and you can split by size, which is useful if you're splitting a huge document across USB drives or other small storage options. There's also a handy tool for rotating pages across multiple documents.

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