With 2016 now behind us, we can take a look at how far Windows 10 has come thanks to usage-share with statistics from Net Marketshare. At the end of December for 2016, Windows 10 is installed on roughly 24.5% of devices

Windows 10 Gains 14% Desktop Market Share in 2016, Edge Continues to Struggle
https://www.petri.com/windows-10-gains-14-desktop-market-share-2016-edge-continues-struggle

Microsoft has been investing heavily in Windows 10, not only for a development point of view but also with marketing as well. The company is pushing the OS at every opportunity and occasionally crossed the boundary of forcing it on to machines even when a user does not want the OS.

With 2016 now behind us, we can take a look at how far the OS has come thanks to usage-share with statistics from Net Marketshare.

At the end of December for 2016, Windows 10 is installed on ~24.5% of devices whereas, at the end of 2015, the OS was only installed on around 10% of machines. During the same period, Windows 7 declined from 55.68% to 48.34%, Windows 8.1 usage dropped from 10.3% to 6.9% and XP dropped slightly from 11% to about 9%.

The last figure Microsoft publicly stated was that there are now 400 million devices running Windows 10 but this figure was released in late September.

Microsoft: Windows 10 won’t hit 1 billion devices by mid-2018
http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-windows-10-wont-hit-1-billion-devices-by-mid-2018/

Microsoft isn’t going to make its self-imposed deadline of having Windows 10 installed on 1 billion devices by mid-2018, company officials have conceded.

A little over a year ago, with much fanfare, Microsoft execs drew a line in the sand, predicting that Windows 10 would be installed on 1 billion devices by mid-2018.

But Microsoft officials conceded today, July 15, that they likely won’t make that deadline.

My ZDNet colleague Ed Bott noted at the end of a blog post Friday that Microsoft officials still think they can hit the 1 billion Windows 10 market, but that “it’s unlikely to happen by 2018 as originally projected”.

“Windows 10 is off to the hottest start in history with over 350m monthly active devices, with record customer satisfaction and engagement.”

Microsoft Windows and Devices chief Terry Myerson made the original claim at Build 2015, noting the 1 billion would encompass all kinds of devices that would run Windows 10 in some variant, including desktops, PCs, laptops, tablets, Windows Phones, Xbox One gaming consoles, Surface Hub conferencing systems, HoloLens augmented reality glasses, and various Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Officials said at that time the majority of those 1 billion devices would be PCs and tablets.

But Windows Phones running Windows 10 Mobile were also expected to help Microsoft reach that total by mid-2018. Since April 2015, the bottom has fallen out of the Windows Phone market, with Microsoft officials conceding that Windows Phone isn’t much of a focus for Microsoft in calendar 2016.

After one year, 10 lessons learned for Windows 10
http://www.zdnet.com/article/after-one-year-10-lessons-learned-for-windows-10/

It’s been a busy year in Redmond, with Windows 10 delivering three major releases to 350 million active users. Here’s a look back at some major milestones and stumbles along the way, and new predictions about when Windows 10 will hit its ambitious goal of a billion devices.

We’re pleased to see Windows 10 become one of the largest online services in less than a year.

These Windows 10 services are getting better and better each month, with significant new innovations shipped in November, and many more coming in the upcoming Windows 10 Anniversary Update this summer. Of course, as part of delivering Windows 10 as a service – any Windows 10 customer can enjoy these innovations – for free.

And, today, we want to remind you that if you haven’t taken advantage of the free upgrade offer, now is the time. The free upgrade offer to Windows 10 was a first for Microsoft, helping people upgrade faster than ever before. And time is running out. The free upgrade offer will end on July 29 and we want to make sure you don’t miss out. After July 29th, you’ll be able to continue to get Windows 10 on a new device, or purchase a full version of Windows 10 Home for $119.
Read more at https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/05/05/windows-10-now-on-300-million-active-devices-free-upgrade-offer-to-end-soon/#HkoLDFstCG7KV2gE.99

Microsoft adds QR codes to Windows 10 ‘Blue Screen of Death’ to help troubleshoot crashes
http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-adds-qr-codes-to-windows-10-blue-screen-of-death-to-help-troubleshoot-crashes

But of course, the most noticeable addition there is the QR code, which is ostensibly intended to offer users a fast-track solution to get the support they need on a secondary device like a smartphone or tablet.

In both of these examples, the QR code simply directs the user to the same windows.com/stopcode URL, which resolves to this page, a generic resource for ‘troubleshooting blue screen errors’.

Build 2016 “There are 16 million Win32 or .NET apps in the world. When we built the Universal Windows Platform, we left them behind. And that was dumb,” said Microsoft Distinguished Engineer John Sheehan, speaking at the Build conference last week in San Francisco.

Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform (UWP) is based on the Windows Runtime, the environment once known as Metro, which was introduced with Windows 8 in an attempt to reinvent the operating system.

The Windows Runtime had several goals. One was to bring Windows into the world of tablets, with a user interface designed with touch in mind. Another was to enable users to install and remove applications easily and cleanly, via the Windows Store or custom business portals. Thirdly, the Windows Runtime was intended to be secure, with each application sandboxed both from the operating system and from other applications. Only a safe subset of the Windows API was available, and access to the file system was restricted to an isolated app-specific area, or to standard locations for things like documents and pictures – subject to the user’s consent.

The long-term strategy seemed to be that users would gradually use more Store apps and fewer legacy desktop apps, until the moment came when most Windows apps used the new model and Microsoft would be able to lock down the operating system to be more like Apple’s iOS, which is less vulnerable to malware and to intrusive third-party software that damages the user experience.

f you’re looking to grab Windows 10, there are a lot of versions to choose from: Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Enterprise, Windows 10 Pro, Windows 10 Mobile, etc. Now it looks like we can add a new one to the list: Windows 10 Chinese Government Edition.

That’s not the real name – it’s called Windows 10 Zhuangongban, or “Windows 10 Specially-provided Edition” – but Microsoft really has made a version of Windows 10 for the Chinese government, according to a report in Chinese magazine Caixin.

This shouldn’t come as a major surprise, of course. Microsoft announced the deal and its intention to develop the China-specific software back in December.

So what’s different about the Chinese government version of Windows? Haupter told Caixin that it features fewer of Microsoft’s consumer-targeted apps and services, while including more management and security controls, in accordance with the needs of China’s government.

Microsoft’s new Chinese-government-specific Windows 10 isn’t the only Chinese-security-focused OS on the market. For years, China’s government has itself been funding and pushing the development of what is now called NeoKylin, a partially-Chinese-developed Linux fork.

Microsoft built a special government-approved version of Windows 10 for China
http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2016/03/28/microsoft-windows-10-china/

Being notoriously strict about censorship, China makes it difficult for companies to launch their products there. It’s a major stumbling block for businesses that want to take a stab at the largest market in the world.

Often, companies will have to bend to suit the requirements of China’s government and that’s exactly what Microsoft has done. Ralph Haupter, Microsoft’s CEO for the Greater China region has revealed that the company’s made a Chinese government-approved version of Windows 10.

Partnering with a state-run technology and defense company, CETC, Microsoft created its specialized version of Windows, officially called Zhuangongban, to comply with governmental standards.

What does that entail? Well, Microsoft isn’t giving away much.

Whether those controls will allow the users to control or at least see the level of surveillance they’re being subjected to or not isn’t confirmed.

Back in November Microsoft confirmed Windows 10’s worst kept secret: its extensive telemetry (or ‘spying’ as it has been labelled) cannot be stopped. What no-one realised until now, however, is just how staggering the extent of this tracking really is…

Blowing the lid on it this week is Voat user CheesusCrust whose extensive investigation found Windows 10 contacts Microsoft to report data thousands of times per day. And the kicker? This happens after choosing a custom Windows 10 installation and disabling all three pages of tracking options which are all enabled by default.

The raw numbers come out as follows: in an eight hour period Windows 10 tried to send data back to 51 different Microsoft IP addresses over 5500 times. After 30 hours of use, Windows 10 expanded that data reporting to 113 non-private IP addresses. Being non-private means there is the potential for hackers to intercept this data. I’d argue this is the greatest cost to owning Windows 10.

Windows 10 telemetry network traffic analysis, part 1: (v/technology)
submitted 7 days ago by CheesusCrust
https://voat.co/v/technology/comments/835741

Microsoft aims to supply Chinese government with customized Windows 10
http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/17/10362638/microsoft-windows-10-custom-china-government

After signing a deal with China’s answer to Google in September, Microsoft is again strengthening its position in the country, this time by providing Windows 10 directly to the Chinese government. The company today announced a new joint venture that will license, deploy, manage and optimize a custom version of the operating system for government agencies. The Beijing-based joint venture — provisionally called C&M Technologies — is still subject to regulatory approval, but Microsoft says in addition to government agencies, it will serve “state-owned enterprises in key infrastructure fields such as energy, telecommunications, and transportation.”

We have published a new version of our Windows 10 app to the Windows Store. This update features an updated user experience that is powered by an entirely new implementation on the Universal Windows Platform.

Using the Universal Windows Platform
Over the last few years we have launched several applications for Windows and Windows Phone. The applications were built from a few code bases that span several technologies including Silverlight, XAML, C#. Bringing new features to our members on Windows platforms has required us to make changes in several code bases and ship multiple application updates.

With the Universal Windows Platform, we’re able to build an application from a single code base and run on many Windows 10 devices. Although the initial release of this application supports desktops, laptops and tablets running Windows 10, we have run our application on other Windows 10 devices and we will be adding support for phones running Windows 10 in the near future.

Over the past few months, a number of companies and designers have started picking up the newest Intel SoCs. Intel has to kill ARM somehow, right? The latest of these single board x86 computers is the Lattepanda. It’s a tiny board that can run everything a 5-year-old desktop computer can run, including a full version of Windows 10.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a tiny x86 board in recent months. Last October, an x86 board that takes design cues from the Raspberry Pi 2 hit Kickstarter. These are proper PCs, with the ability to run Windows 10, Linux, and just about every other environment under the sun.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/139108638/lattepanda-a-45-win10-computer-for-everything

LattePanda is featured with quad-core 1.8Ghz, 2/4G RAM, 32/64 GB eMMC, WIFI, Bluetooth 4.0 and USB 3.0, plus onboard Arduino processor!

It includes everything a regular PC has and can do anything that a regular PC does, all at a low price of 69 USD.

LattePanda runs perfectly on the go. Creating documents with Microsoft Office, playing HD videos and running Windows apps on LattePanda is exactly the same experience as using a regular PC.

LattePanda comes pre-installed with a full edition of Windows 10, including powerful tools such as Visual Studio, NodeJS, Java, Processing, and more!