Technology Ramblings

Today, MS released Windows 10 Build 15046 to Fast Ring Insiders - this was a PC only build. From a new features/capabilities standpoint - the one that is most prominent is what folks have been calling Windows 10 Cloud - or the ability in the Apps settings to limited app installation to only the MS store.  Otherwise the there were some small changes to icons, Cortana colors, etc as well as another round of about 30 or so fixes. The build downloaded and installed fine on desktop, laptop and tablet.  Like 15042 before it the evaluation watermark has been removed.   So is the 15046 build another "escrow build" or possibly even the actual Creators Update release ?  While the build was announced in the Windows 10 blog, it was not announced in the feedback hub.  Does that mean that MS has stopped taking feedback on the Creators Update or just a snafu in content deployment. What I can say it that it is stable and fast.   If this was the release build for ins...

On Feb 24, MS released Windows 10 Builds 15042 for PC and 15043 for Mobile to Fast Ring Insiders.   It had been 2 weeks since the release of 15031 - and the launch of a Bug Bash cycle.  These builds are the result. While there a few minor "feature" updates like a new OOBE icon for Cortana and some improvements to Flash and ePub support in Edge.  The focus obviously was on bug fixes with nearly 35 listed for PC and over a dozen for Mobile. The "evaluation" branding has been removed with 15042 - so that is the big indicator that we are very close to the end of the Redstone II branch and release of the Creators Update.    The update process was smooth and relatively quick across all my platforms so it looks as though MS has addressed that major issue.   So now the focus turns to two things - final build and release date.   It is entirely possible that we will only get one more in early March that will be the "insiders" production release followe...

While I hate to "age myself" by referring to older things, I've been hacking on PCs since their introduction in the mid 70's.   And while over the years there have been various attempts by other manufactures to influence PC makers to move away from Intel, no one has ever really come close.  From Motorola, to PowerPC and AMD, while all had their "benefits" - the overwhelming majority of PCs come with "Intel Inside".   But in the Mobile and Tablet space, that is not the case.  ARM manufactures like Qualcomm, Apple and Samsung are king.  And while Intel tried with the Atom processor to influence that space - they eventually dropped the line. So why am I talking about this ? Recently there have been two points that may influence what a PC is and uses. First is Windows on ARM.  Announced at the WinHEC Conference in China - a new Microsoft/Qualcomm partnership is changing the approach to ARM based CPU with a full version of Windows 10 being abl...

On Feb 8, MS released Windows 10 build 15031 to Fast Ring Insiders - this was a PC only build.  [Update] MS released the mobile build of 15031 on Feb 9. Several new features are in 15031. First is what some are calling "Picture in Picture" or Compact Overlay.  The capability allows UWP developers to allow a small "window" of an app - like a movie or video chat to stay "on top" while you open another app to check email or do some other work.   Also in this build is a Dynamic Lock capability which will lock your PC automatically if for example your phone moves out of Bluetooth range.  So if you grab your phone and walk away - your PC would auto-magically lock.  Kinda cool. There is also a large number of games that now support full screen mode in Game Bar - around 50 or so.   15031 also includes about two dozen fixes.   [Update] None of the features described above are in the Mobile build and the fix list is much smaller.  You can certainly ...

Back in March of 2016, Netmarketshare - an internet monitoring company showed that Google's Chrome browser and Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) both held an almost identical marketshare of around 39.1% each - with Firefox, Edge, Safari a very distant 3rd, 4th and 5th.  Fast forward to today and the market dominance that Microsoft once held in browser has effectively vanished.  As of the end of January 2017 - so just 10 months from that tie - Chrome now holds a nearly 58% market share while IE has dropped to just under 20%.  IE's replacement - Edge has barely moved - from 4.3% last March to 5.48% now.   To put this in perspective.  In March of 2016 Windows 7 - an IE based OS had a nearly 52% market share and Windows 10 - an Edge based OS was at 14%.  Today Windows 7 has dropped slightly to 47.2% and Windows 10 increased to 25.3%.  So those two OS's alone count for nearly 73% of the total desktop OS market.  So for the combination of IE...

On Feb 1, MS released Windows 10 build 15025 to Fast Ring Insiders.  Just as with 15019 this was a PC only release.  Phones are still at 15014 and MS stated today that they were seeing some deployment issues so held off on releasing 15025 for phone. The focus of 15025 was Ease of Use features like a Braille reader for Narrator that works with 3rd party braille displays as well as Mono Audio.  The update also included some 25 bug fixes, many focused on the new Game mode capabilities. Unfortunately, the one big area that did not improve was the update process.  On my PC I experienced an almost identical situation as I did with 15019.  I launched Windows update about 3 hours after the release announcement and I received an Initializing Update notice.  To complete the download and preparation phase took about 2.5 hrs with another 30 minutes or so to actually install 15025. My tablet does not even see the 15025 build at all.  MS found issues with th...

On Feb 1 IDC published their most recent Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker data  for 2016 Q4.  Overall some 1.47B smartphones were sold Worldwide in 2016 - a 2.3% increase over the 1.43B sold in 2015. Samsung still remains the overall market leader with 311M units sold and a 21.2% market share.  This is a 3.0% drop from 2015's 320.9M units which was reflective of impact of the Galaxy Note 7 battery problems. Apple is #2 with a 14.6% market share on volume of 215M units.  Even with a monster calendar Q4 (Apple's Q1) - of some 78.3M units - Apple saw a 7% drop in total units compared to 2015's 231.5M units. The next three vendors all saw tremendous growth in 2016 and combined would exceed both Samsung and Apple.  These three Chinese vendors - #3 Huawei, #4 Oppo and #5 vivo sold 139.3M, 99.4M and 77.3M units respectively with growth rates of 30.2%, 132.9% and 103.2%.    If these growth rates continue - Oppo will pass both Huawei and ...