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Microsoft Announces Windows 10 October 2018 Update, the Next Free Major Update To Its Desktop OS (venturebeat.com) 138

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Microsoft today revealed that the next free Windows 10 update is called the Windows 10 October 2018 Update ... and it will arrive in that month. From a report: For those keeping track, this is Windows 10 version 1809. Although the company had not announced this update before today, Windows Insiders have been getting builds from Windows 10's RS5 branch since February. Windows 10 October 2018 Update includes a dark theme for File Explorer, a new snipping experience, a cloud-powered clipboard, support for extended line endings in Notepad, integration with the Your Phone app, new web sign-in and fast sign-in features, a mixed reality flashlight feature, SwiftKey in the touch keyboard, and many other improvements. The highly anticipated Sets feature did not make the cut. Windows 10 is being developed as a service, meaning it receives new features on a regular basis. Microsoft has released five major updates so far: November Update, Anniversary Update, Creators Update, Fall Creators Update, and April 2018 Update.
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Microsoft Announces Windows 10 October 2018 Update, the Next Free Major Update To Its Desktop OS More

Microsoft Announces Windows 10 October 2018 Update, the Next Free Major Update To Its Desktop OS

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  • "Free" as in your data for sale (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Still might be worth it to some.

    • Re:"Free" as in your data for sale (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ichthus ( 72442 ) on Friday August 31, 2018 @11:40AM (#57231926) Homepage
      Aren't all Windows updates free? Why did they go out of their way to call this one "free"? Are future updates not going to be free?

      (I'm a Linux user, in an all-Linux household, so I admit I could be mistaken/ignorant.)

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The actual Microsoft announcement doesn't say it's free. Tech journalism is just infested with amateur journalists who re-write press releases and often add stupidly irrelevant details.

      • From the parent comment: Why did they go out of their way to call this one "free"?

        Microsoft has, apparently deliberately, been releasing Windows 10 updates that cause problems.

        Apparently, if you pay a monthly fee, in the future Microsoft will remove the problems. Three of the articles:

        Microsoft's got a new plan for managing Windows 10 devices for a monthly fee. [zdnet.com] (July 27, 2018)

        Windows 10 Leak Exposes Microsoft's New Monthly Charge [forbes.com]. (Aug. 4, 2018) Quote: "Ever since its creation, M

  • Call it the Halloween update (Score:3)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Friday August 31, 2018 @11:20AM (#57231786)
    And release it in time for the 20th anniversary of the Halloween documents.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zmobie ( 2478450 )

      The dark theme for file explorer is the most excited I think I've ever been for anything from Microsoft ever. I feel like on that basis alone the Halloween name would be appropriate.

      • I would like windows 10 with a light theme.
        1. Older Apps were designed for a lighter themed UI, so they look out of place.
        2. I am already in a room with no windows, I want some light.
        3. There is less glow of the text making seem bury.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Zmobie ( 2478450 )

          I'm all for multiple themes and options. However, like many others that I'm sure have been asking for a dark theme, I suffer from a lot of eye strain and severe migraines often quickly worsened by light exposure. Now this probably is because I spend anywhere from 8 to 14 hours a day looking at screens since I write software at work and then do software/IT stuff at home a lot, but it is still nice to have things like dark themes that can help me reduce the impact and frequency of issues significantly. It

          • We *did* start with dark themes. It was the text on the green screen terminals that was illuminated; the background was black.

            Glad to see we're finally coming full circle. The engineers who designed these systems wold have inverted the color scheme if more light were better; I don't think today's engineers realize that was actually a design consideration back then, so our finally getting back to it is purely by way of newbies wanting to be different, but that's fine, so long as we get back to it.
            • They where monochrome CRT display. If they would have inverted the color scheme that would mean full phosphor activation 24x7 which those old screens wouldn't live long under. That said I agree with you that the good old black background and light green text where far better than today:s blinding light themes.
              • Actually, they cod have run them at a much lower intensity if inverted, leaving more headroom to brighten them up as the phosphors faded. Phosphors begin fade at a higher-than-linear rate relative to intensity, which is a problem modern OLED displays still face. That said, I'd have to get hold of the spec sheet for an old green mono CRT and the phosphor within, and do some math to determine how much better or worse it might actually be. Theorecitcally, though...
                • Could be. My kid brother bought a used monochrome green screen from a flea sale some 20 years ago and when we turned it on without it being connected to anything there was a 100% crisp green directory listing from a cp/m system :-)

            • Very true. I meant more that newer applications should be dark by default but everything somehow is now standardized to light colors with lots of light output when left on default settings. I'd have been completely fine to leave things in the old style.

              • Indeed. But it has to look pretty. In snowflakeland, that's more important than being useful or efficient.

              • Re: (Score:1)

                by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )

                Very true. I meant more that newer applications should be dark by default but everything somehow is now standardized to light colors with lots of light output when left on default settings. I'd have been completely fine to leave things in the old style.

                You can 100% blame MS for that. When windows came out, they went WYSIWYG and since paper is white, text black, voila. Once Word and Excel had those themes, they just expanded them to every other app with no easy means of converting to the "dark" theme. Another one of MS's half-assed approaches to GUIs. I can't recall if Apple's GUIs were bright white or dark back then. I know SGI had configurability, as did Sun and DEC, because I wasn't blinded when using those.

        • Dark theme is good for one thing - OLED. And in that case, you don't really need to worry about how it looks so much as the battery savings.

  • At least the naming is better but would it kill them to call the main name windows 10.X?

    • For something released that often I actually think the year/month naming is better than a version number.

      • Even when the "month" portion is meaningless and they're actually explicitly calling 1809 the "October" update. It's still much easier to remember than when OS X releases came out.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by bn-7bc ( 909819 )

        Or what about YYYY.MM ie 2018.10 for compleetness you could add a build number on the end, pesonally infid that much more infarmative then the corrent nomering/naminfg scheme

        • Better idea: last digit of Year, two digits of Month, and one digit for a Variable in case of name collision. YMMV.

  • It's not free. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 31, 2018 @11:23AM (#57231800)

    You pay the price by not being able to control or own your PC anymore.

  • What is going to break this time? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TheDarkMaster ( 1292526 ) on Friday August 31, 2018 @11:32AM (#57231876)
    Windows 10 version 1809 broke most of my games in DX9, making me have to go back to Windows 7. What will they break this time, the sound support? Or the support for PS/2 keyboards?
    • Maybe this time they will break your spirit.

    • Wow, I thought I was the only one.

      I have been running Win10 on my gaming PC since the free upgrade from Win7. I later joined the Insider fast ring.

      Everything was going great until 1809 when my games slowed wayyyy down.

      Driver updates helped a little but didn't solve it.

      I finally decided to go back to Win7. Everything is working great again.

      • That's what happened here too. Some games lost performance considerably, others started to have graphic problems (for example a strange black screen effect flashing at high frequency) and some simply did not work anymore.
    • You are missing the point ... the breakage will be free!
    • CORRECTION: I meant version 1803 , not 1809
    • That really sucks. I hope Windows games work fine in Wine/Whatever-the-name-of-the-Valve-compatibility-layer-is by the time is no longer feasible to stay on Win 7

  • "Cloud powered clipboard"? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Unknown User ( 4795349 ) on Friday August 31, 2018 @11:34AM (#57231886)
    Does that mean that when I copy&paste a password it will be put "in the cloud"? :/

    • It is good to see that the fine upstanding people at One Microsoft Way are taking a stab at properly labeling their malware now.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Does that mean that when I copy&paste a password it will be put "in the cloud"? :/

      If copy&paste is in the cloud, I imagine it would not be overly difficult to break the Internet by having everyone in the world highlight a 500gb file and hit CTRL-C.

      • You can imagine that if you want to, but the internet doesn't work that way. You might DOS the server farm but the rest of the internet will go on just fine regardless.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xack ( 5304745 )
      credit card numbers, product keys, cryptocurrency wallets all in the cloud for hackers to harvest. This will be fun.

    • Yes. Allow me to show you how bad this is:

      ey^Kqd

      ^^ My actual password I just used. Go forth and hack my stuff.

  • The end goal is to slow down your computers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by alternative_right ( 4678499 ) on Friday August 31, 2018 @11:41AM (#57231942) Homepage Journal

    Microsoft has one highly functional business model, which is selling new operating systems with new computers.

    If you do not upgrade your computer, they do not sell more product. Most people have not been upgrading because our desktop/laptop tech is stable enough and fast enough that you can keep your iron for a decade.

    Solution: force everyone to switch to Windows 10, add crap to it until it runs as slowly as Congress, then watch everyone run out to buy new machines because the old ones are unusable at their vermicular speeds.

  • Microsoft fiddling again while the OS burns (Score:5, Informative)

    by hackertourist ( 2202674 ) on Friday August 31, 2018 @12:03PM (#57232118)

    File Explorer is worse than ever. The last major update fucked up file associations for images (to promote their crappy new image program). A few weeks ago I got upgrade nags even though I'm running the corporate edition where you're supposed to be able to set time blocks where nagging doesn't happen. Windows 10 is a pile of shit and Microsoft is playing around with themes.

    • File Explorer is worse than ever.

      Old news. Every new windows since Win2000 has had a file explorer slightly worse than its predecessor.

      [IRONY=ON]
      Look, in Windows you don't have files: you have "Apps" and "Data". All you need is a way to open the apps, they will load data for you automagically. If you are really so jurassic, you can always open "data folders" like Images, Audio, Music and every other stupid useless crap you have in your computer. File Explorer is just a remnant, for compatibility... I really can't fathom why anyone could w

      • If you are really so jurassic, you can always open "data folders" like Images, Audio, Music and every other stupid useless crap you have in your computer. File Explorer is just a remnant, for compatibility... I really can't fathom why anyone could want to open a disc with it. Heck, you shouldn't even KNOW what a disc is.

        That would be a better joke if they actually went ahead with their database-based file system (WinFS) from Vista development.

  • Do people have a choice here? Forgive me if I am asking something silly; I haven't used Windows for a long, long time.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Do people have a choice here? Forgive me if I am asking something silly; I haven't used Windows for a long, long time.

      Average people? No. They'll get nags and eventually it'll reboot on its own. You can play various tricks with metered connection, disabling the update service etc. but most tricks only work for a little while then Microsoft force-installs it anyway. Mostly because critical patches ignore your settings and eventually a critical patch will require you upgrade the base system first. There's apparently some very obscure ways to really block it for machines where the upgrade fails and such, but they've hidden it

    • They do not. windows is end of life'ing OS versions after two years. Meaning any of the 15xx releases (from 2015) are EOL now and will not receive updates.

      So you can wait a bit, but not more than 2 years. And then you have 3 or 4 updates to apply at that time so its best to just download the 1803 (current release) ISO and upgrade directly instead of going through windows update.

      It sucks. I have to make 3 new corporate images every 6 months. Its not hard with vms and such but you have to update your deployme

    • Yes, it is called an airgap.

  • I swear that each time they release things, it breaks all kinds of software.

  • Why (Score:3)

    by fred6666 ( 4718031 ) on Friday August 31, 2018 @01:04PM (#57232682)

    Why can't they just update individual apps like Notepad (to add unix line ending support) without having to update the entire OS and set back Edge as the default browser and scrap my firewall settings?

    • Why can't they just update individual apps like Notepad (to add unix line ending support) without having to update the entire OS and set back Edge as the default browser and scrap my firewall settings?

      Better question: Why would they bother maintaining them separately? The primary purpose is OS patches and fixes. Changes to the tools that come with it are secondary. There's no reason to update those on their own. Technically there's no reason to update those at all.

      It's not a question of Why can't they, as much as why would they bother doing what you suggest?

      • because this way I could chose to install say, the new notepad and security fixes without having to install Paint 3D and other useless craps.

        • And someone else somewhere needs to maintain separate repos, needs to test against different software stacks, and your system state will not be the same from a clean install across different devices.

          There are definitely reasons as a consumer to want this. There are no reasons for *the developer* to do it. So when you ask why you always need to remember to frame your answer in terms why a developer would put effort into edge cases for users.

          Also TIL I had a program called Paint 3D on my computer. Interesting

          • there are applications distributed through the windows store. Why can't Paint 3D be distributed through that channel? By your logic, shouldn't all applications from the store be included in Windows and be updated only with large OS updates?

            • No by my logic the tradeoff is decided entirely by the vendor into the grouping of applications, that is all. Everything has tradeoffs, and you can gauge vendor priorities based on their bundling practices.

              • What you don't seem to get is that it is not a technical decision but a marketing one. Microsoft knew it's Paint 3D application had no chance of success unless they they force it down our throat. Same thing for Edge.

                Bundled crapware exist for a reason. And it's not a technical one.

                • What you don't seem to get is that it is not a technical decision but a marketing one.

                  No I get this just fine and that has been my point from the very beginning. What benefit is there for Microsoft? The "Why" on your end is entirely irrelevant. You're just a silly consumer, why would anyone listen to you? They know what's best and they'll claim to have telemetry data or UX research or some other garbage to prove it.

                  If you want what you propose you need to provide a justification that makes it worthwhile for them. I'll requote the very first part of my first reply: "Better question: Why would

                  • I know Windows is still a near monopoly so market forces don't apply here. But otherwise the answer to your question would be to please users and sell more copies. And also to break less things during OS updates.

                    But if they shouldn't bother maintaining them separately, which according to you seem to imply a lot of work, then they should also include many other applications starting with Office and many from the Windows store.
                    Why should you have the option to upgrade Office to a new version when you can upda

                    • which according to you seem to imply a lot of work

                      I never said "a lot of work", I just listed some differences. It's not completely free from work. As you said there's also marketing at play.

                      hen they should also include many other applications starting with Office and many from the Windows store.

                      Negative. You're missing the cost benefit again. What functionality is available in the windows store that is completely free by Microsoft that is fundamentally missing? Office can be sold for actual cash so bundling makes zero sense. Here's a test: Go to the Microsoft store and look for Microsoft published apps. See how many of them are already bundled with the system

                    • As you said there's also marketing at play.

                      Marketing seems to be the only consideration here. Certainly not user satisfaction.

                    • Marketing is just one function of a cost benefit analysis.

                      But agreed, MS if anything has shown that the user isn't at all considered in any windows 10 design decisions.

  • Yay another broken RSAT instance (Score:4, Informative)

    by Rob MacDonald ( 3394145 ) on Friday August 31, 2018 @01:05PM (#57232696)
    Seriously, stop breaking RSAT, we kinda rely on that shit to maintain our fucking shit, it's getting old having you break it with each feature build, that brings zero changes to RSAT. fuck off.

    • well, I guess I'll undo my mod points on this thread because this comment is worth responding to.

      https://docs.microsoft.com/en-... [microsoft.com]

      Once you get on RS5 (coming out this year), you can install RSAT as an option feature of windows and it'll persist across upgrades.

      Now... get back to pushing out those policyDefinitions!

  • How I look forward to this new update... I just finished the week of install of the last upgrade. I need Win10 for exactly ONE program which doesn't run on Linux, so I run Win10 in a VM. I installed it on a 20Gb VM. Then each upgrade asked for more disk, I gave it to them. That last upgrade managed to ask for a fucking 70Gb ! And then it crashed after working for 20 hours that I couldn't use the VM. And proved impossible to repair (after a day trying). And I stupidly had forgotten to do a snapshot. So I had
    • Sure, but at least the TCO for Windows is lower!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bn-7bc ( 909819 )

        Hmm correct me if I’m wrong pu if each windows yodate (at keast the sesonaly nsmed ones) keep preaking things, that keads to losy productivety and other costs would thst not raise windowses TCO, or has that term been rediffibed, I mustvadmit thst keeping ot top of all thr TLAs ar nor axactly at the top of my list

  • and without the built in spyware and corporate adware, no thanks, go be big brother somewhere else

  • Did M$ filed a patent for rolling update ? Obviously the best innovation they brought to us these few last years. Oh, wait ! Where did I see something similar ?...

  • I just want to point out that everyone should try to get their hands on Windows 10 LTSB edition - it is the corporate super slimmed down version of Win10, with seemingly all the spyware and a lot of other superfluous things removed.

  • How about they fix the absolute core issues of the OS before releasing more "features" no body wants?

    The horrific stability of explorer, task manager not having any power at all, wireless is still heavily broken, updates taking half an hour or more, the constant resetting of file associations, the broken offline files feature, airplane mode doesn't work (i have a picture of a surface in airplane mode, connected to a wifi access point and having working internet access with teamviewer)

    They are skipping the t

  • Now explain to me what could "possibly" go wrong with that idea.

    Here's a few:
    Use a password manager that you cut and paste your passwords?
    Personal information between documents?
    Etc.

    Just give up Microsoft, clearly the only thing you care about now is monetizing user data to sell to others.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

      I know, it's almost as if they want people to drop windows in droves. Cloud, which cloud? The one Microsoft runs and rents out to the CIA/FBI/Chinese? Cloud is really just another name for some else's server. So why do we need to put clipboard contents on a server some place? Sounds *STUPID*! Why can't it work the way its always worked.

      Is it archived, indexed? So when someone is writing a response, cuts and pastes it and it says "I'll shove sausages down your throat and put starving dogs up your butt!" (Moe

  • All I want from Microsoft is a single toggle switch, labelled "Privacy?" with yes/no options.

    If you choose yes, it shuts down all telemetry to Microsoft.

    If you choose no, then you can individually pick and choose your settings, same as before.

    Windows 10, contrary to rumor, is not actually a free OS, and so they shouldn't be able to get away with all of this freemium Google-esque spying.

    Oh, that, and the ability to actually control updates again in Home.

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