Wow. It's really has been a ridiculously slow news couple of days at AI, or we're at the start of a seemingly slow descent by AI into Verge-dom: Page 1 headlines so far this week include stories about Microsoft, Nokia, Intel, Yahoo, Micron, Stagefright, Motorola....
Has anyone installed the release version on a 5k iMac to see if they have graphics support for it yet? I installed the dev version a few months ago, and ATI hadn't released any drivers for the graphics cards in 5k iMacs yet, which made the whole OS an absolute bear. If anyone has given the release version a try, I would be curious to know how it went.
Thanks. Now to break it down a bit further. Commercial licensing would include all those server-based client licenses, correct? Device and Consumer licensing sounds like it would be Windows OEM income. Computing and Gaming Hardware is Xbox and other gaming products but does it also include the Surface? What else? I always like "Other" categories because they seem to include all the products that barely survived. Am I close?
In other words, licensing of non-Windows desktop products is what's keeping Microsoft afloat.
Commercial licensing includes volume licensing for enterprise deployments of desktop Windows.
A big improvement and some nice features that I love about my mac such as virtual desktops etc. They took some nice ideas from Apple. Apple no doubt took some windows ideas and made them better, now they are finding their way in Windows 10. Will be interesting to see how it performs from a speed perspective but the roll out is real slow.
Has anyone installed the release version on a 5k iMac to see if they have graphics support for it yet? I installed the dev version a few months ago, and ATI hadn't released any drivers for the graphics cards in 5k iMacs yet, which made the whole OS an absolute bear. If anyone has given the release version a try, I would be curious to know how it went.
I haven't but thanks for this post. I was thinking of upgrading my Bootcamp partition to Windows 10. I guess I'll wait a little longer to see how the graphics pan out on the 5K iMac.
Windows 10 has done a good job of continuing Windows 8's optimizations. This OS can run on all types of hardware and feels fluid. Edge browser is actually really well done and on the Surface 3, is probably the best tablet browser out there.
I didn't mind Windows 8. I just paid $5 for Start8 addon that removed the start screen and brought back the old one. It ended up just being a faster version of Windows 7 for me. Windows 8 however was just awful on mobile devices. Windows 10 fixes a lot of that.
And this should be their way to go. They have to offer a similar service over all devices. Apparently it is not so easy for them to get a considerably high percentage off the smartphone market.
Anyway Windows 8 was really crappy, we are using it at work and I had some problems. Of course if you only use it enough you get used to almost everything
check out mstone's chart. I think it justifies my statement.
As for Windows 10 being free, it's only free for the last two versions. They're trying to follow Apple's lead and will have a difficult time doing that because all Microsoft really sells is their software. If they had to justify their existence on hardware, they'd be bankrupt by now. Microsoft will survive on licensing fees for server, cloud and whatever other software they continue to rubber stamp. Apple sells hardware, that's where they make money. I would really like to know how many Macs are running Windows as their primary OS. From what I've read on many sites, a standard Mac runs Windows better than any non-Apple PC except for specially configured custom BYO PCs. Interesting that the best "PC" is a Mac and not a Dell, HP, or any of the thousand other Windows/linux-only boxes.
OK, I have missed chart.
Commercial licensing - accidentally part of my daily job - covers servers, various CALs (client access license), applications and Windows Enterprise Edition desktop OS licensing, which can be purchased only through Volume Licensing. In my experience, it is quite common for large environments (government and enterprises both) to adopt it - it has some useful benefits around deployment rollouts and others, compared to Pro.
Devices and consumer licensing should cover both OEM and Retail.... so basically, MS will lose retail chunk out of that, but even that not completely - people on XP and Vista will not get free upgrade.
Consider that many consumers don't upgrade their OS for the lifetime of their computers. They get new OS with new PC (which still puts money in MS pockets). MS is basically luring people who would not upgrade anyway, while loosing chunk of enthusiasts' money who, otherwise, would buy a copy. All in all, I think they'll still be making decent money out of Windows desktop.
Interesting question is, will MS keep giving future desktop OS for free, or is this one time only.
Has anyone installed the release version on a 5k iMac to see if they have graphics support for it yet? I installed the dev version a few months ago, and ATI hadn't released any drivers for the graphics cards in 5k iMacs yet, which made the whole OS an absolute bear. If anyone has given the release version a try, I would be curious to know how it went.
Unfortunately the R9 M295X that's in the iMac 5K is an Apple-only card. There are tons of threads about this on Apple's Support page and, MacRumors, etc. Their has been a couple of people who claimed success using ATI's Omega drivers, however others who tried these peoples solutions failed, so I wouldn't hold your breath. You will just have to wait for Apple to release a new driver. I always stay away from graphics hardware with none-standard resolutions just for this reason, really, if Apple released the iMac with a 4K monitor it would have been just as successful, not to mention a lot more compatible with standard drivers. Both the 4K monitors on my Mac Pro work just fine with the current crop of drivers available. Windows is important to me because I can use both graphics card in a CrossFire configuration, which greatly improves render times, especially for things like Blender and Premier. With games I get twice the FPS than with OSX, in a lot of cases like BattleField 3 it's even more than half, I get about 120FPS on Windows and on OSX it reaches about 40FPS. I have a 42" Panasonic flatscreen that is hanging on the wall above my desk in which I use for media and games, so the resolution I'm playing at is 1080p with everything set to Ultra and 4x MSAA. The reason why I mentioned this is because I understand the reason behind wanting to run Windows on your Mac.
I'm running Windows 10 in Fusion. While it is a huge improvement from Windows 8.1, I really don't see much of an improvement over Windows 7 other than a cleaner look.
Apparently Windows 10 is not just a facelift on top of the legacy code base. Our specialized medical imaging server (PACS) is not entirely compatible with it for some reason. The bad part in this case is that Windows 10 is free and a recent update to Win 7 and 8 installed a nag ware pop up which starts popping up today encouraging users to upgrade. Some of our customers may install it and break their system. We sent them several messages warning them to wait for our patch but you never know. They see the word FREE and they click it.
Hmmm. If you depend on something for an income then you really should have a preproduction system to prove it before you unleash it on your production environment. This is true of any update, on any system.
I installed it yesterday. The new Edge browser is noticeably faster than IE. The Mission Control thing works quite well. It's nice to not have ads in the Weather app any more like Windows 8 did. The Windows app store and music and video stores are all integrated in to a single app now just called the Store, same as iTunes on the Mac has them all together.
The worse thing about it is that the tablet-face and the desktop-face are both there side-by-side, for example there is Control Panel for the desktop and a Settings App for the tablet side, and there's a lot of overlap between them, and for the end user it's not obvious why there's 2 or which one to use. Having a single OS for all form factors might sound good on paper, but Apple's approach of having a separate mobile OS and desktop OS is definitely less confusing for the end user. In my opinion the thing you want to reuse is code, and developers can do that behind the scenes with libraries. Reusing distros is a minor thing compared to that, and not worth it if is lessens the user experience.
That is true. The reality is that MS's business model hasn't changed. They are:
1) Still charging PC OEM's for Windows licenses
2) They are still charging consumers for version upgrades
3) They are still charging for the retail copies of the OS
However, on this release they are allowing windows 7 and 8 users to upgrade for free - as long as it is done in the first year of Windows 10 availability. After that, you pay.
The reason MS is doing this is to meet their goal of getting Windows 10 on 1B device's within the next 2 - 3 years. In other words, they are taking a loss of revenue to obtain that goal. This probably does not equate to a huge amount really - since, not many people pay for upgrades anyway, they only get a new version of windows when they get a new PC.
The reason they want to hit that number is to make the Windows Store a more attractive proposition for developers. Remember, that's 1B devices - not just PC's. Devices include Xbox One, Band, Phones, tablets, 2-in-1's, and Hololens. Not to mention Windows 10 IoT. Hence the universal app platform. If a developer writes an application targeting windows 10, it's very minimal work to include support for all of the other device types. And to make it even sweeter - they are releasing tools that make it fairly simple to port IOS applications to windows universal apps.
None of this might work - but, it seems like a reasonable strategy to me.
There's nothing wrong with Windows 8.1. Most of the complaints seemed to revolve around the Start menu. I personally preferred the New Start menu to the older one but I guess enough people longed for the old one that Windows 10 seems to have some kind of hybrid.
It's not as though people have no misgivings about the Finder and the Dock in OSX. In addition there's that strange Launch screen which is incomprehensible. No one knows what to do when it comes to merging mobile and desktop. Microsoft's Surface seems to strike a pretty good balance in that it is at least possible to have handwritten documents without worrying about the palm issue. An iPad Pro, as nice as the iPad is, makes no sense given the poor handwriting capabilities of OSX and iOS.
In any case people are resistant to change. Windows 8 was a bit of a shock to Windows users still reeling from the attempt to do in MS-DOS/Win XP.
Windows 10 is yet another attempt to drag text based foundations into a more visual and universal environment.
Thanks all who let a "Photos" sub-thread slip into this O/S thread, and provided some great advice. The best part was learning that iPhoto -> Photos isn't immediately mandatory.
I'll study what all have said and I appreciate the effort to respond.
Not sure why this "feature" isn't getting more attention, it seems Microsoft is flipping the bird at user privacy with this latest release. The new "agreement" goes into effect starting 1 August.
Quote:
Summing up these 45 pages [Microsoft Privacy Statement and the Services Agreement], one can say that Microsoft basically grants itself very broad rights to collect everything you do, say and write with and on your devices in order to sell more targeted advertising or to sell your data to third parties. The company appears to be granting itself the right to share your data either with your consent “or as necessary”.
And there you have the cost of "free."
European Digital Rights (EDRi) has an article discussing some of the details of it, here.
Mozilla ain't happy about the default Win10 settings either.
"Mozilla CEO Chris Beard has blasted Microsoft in a pair of posts to the organization's blog, arguing that Windows 10's default browser settings are a "dramatic step backwards" for respecting user choice. When people update their devices to Microsoft's new operating system, their default browsers are automatically changed to Microsoft Edge, the successor to Internet Explorer that's included with Windows 10. People who had a different default browser then have to go into Windows 10's settings menu and change the default from there.
In an open letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Beard said that's no good, since doing so from Firefox requires three or four mouse clicks (roughly twice as many as before) and scrolling to the bottom of a seven-item list. In a blog post accompanying the letter, the Mozilla CEO said it was "bewildering" that Microsoft made that choice, especially after the company's antitrust troubles." http://www.networkworld.com/article/2955453/microsoft-subnet/mozilla-ceo-blasts-microsoft-over-windows-10-defaults.html
Comments
:rolleyes:
Thanks. Now to break it down a bit further. Commercial licensing would include all those server-based client licenses, correct? Device and Consumer licensing sounds like it would be Windows OEM income. Computing and Gaming Hardware is Xbox and other gaming products but does it also include the Surface? What else? I always like "Other" categories because they seem to include all the products that barely survived. Am I close?
In other words, licensing of non-Windows desktop products is what's keeping Microsoft afloat.
Commercial licensing includes volume licensing for enterprise deployments of desktop Windows.
Has anyone installed the release version on a 5k iMac to see if they have graphics support for it yet? I installed the dev version a few months ago, and ATI hadn't released any drivers for the graphics cards in 5k iMacs yet, which made the whole OS an absolute bear. If anyone has given the release version a try, I would be curious to know how it went.
I haven't but thanks for this post. I was thinking of upgrading my Bootcamp partition to Windows 10. I guess I'll wait a little longer to see how the graphics pan out on the 5K iMac.
Windows 10 has done a good job of continuing Windows 8's optimizations. This OS can run on all types of hardware and feels fluid. Edge browser is actually really well done and on the Surface 3, is probably the best tablet browser out there.
I didn't mind Windows 8. I just paid $5 for Start8 addon that removed the start screen and brought back the old one. It ended up just being a faster version of Windows 7 for me. Windows 8 however was just awful on mobile devices. Windows 10 fixes a lot of that.
And this should be their way to go. They have to offer a similar service over all devices. Apparently it is not so easy for them to get a considerably high percentage off the smartphone market.
Anyway Windows 8 was really crappy, we are using it at work and I had some problems. Of course if you only use it enough you get used to almost everything
OK, I have missed chart.
Commercial licensing - accidentally part of my daily job - covers servers, various CALs (client access license), applications and Windows Enterprise Edition desktop OS licensing, which can be purchased only through Volume Licensing. In my experience, it is quite common for large environments (government and enterprises both) to adopt it - it has some useful benefits around deployment rollouts and others, compared to Pro.
Devices and consumer licensing should cover both OEM and Retail.... so basically, MS will lose retail chunk out of that, but even that not completely - people on XP and Vista will not get free upgrade.
Consider that many consumers don't upgrade their OS for the lifetime of their computers. They get new OS with new PC (which still puts money in MS pockets). MS is basically luring people who would not upgrade anyway, while loosing chunk of enthusiasts' money who, otherwise, would buy a copy. All in all, I think they'll still be making decent money out of Windows desktop.
Interesting question is, will MS keep giving future desktop OS for free, or is this one time only.
Has anyone installed the release version on a 5k iMac to see if they have graphics support for it yet? I installed the dev version a few months ago, and ATI hadn't released any drivers for the graphics cards in 5k iMacs yet, which made the whole OS an absolute bear. If anyone has given the release version a try, I would be curious to know how it went.
Unfortunately the R9 M295X that's in the iMac 5K is an Apple-only card. There are tons of threads about this on Apple's Support page and, MacRumors, etc. Their has been a couple of people who claimed success using ATI's Omega drivers, however others who tried these peoples solutions failed, so I wouldn't hold your breath. You will just have to wait for Apple to release a new driver. I always stay away from graphics hardware with none-standard resolutions just for this reason, really, if Apple released the iMac with a 4K monitor it would have been just as successful, not to mention a lot more compatible with standard drivers. Both the 4K monitors on my Mac Pro work just fine with the current crop of drivers available. Windows is important to me because I can use both graphics card in a CrossFire configuration, which greatly improves render times, especially for things like Blender and Premier. With games I get twice the FPS than with OSX, in a lot of cases like BattleField 3 it's even more than half, I get about 120FPS on Windows and on OSX it reaches about 40FPS. I have a 42" Panasonic flatscreen that is hanging on the wall above my desk in which I use for media and games, so the resolution I'm playing at is 1080p with everything set to Ultra and 4x MSAA. The reason why I mentioned this is because I understand the reason behind wanting to run Windows on your Mac.
Apparently Windows 10 is not just a facelift on top of the legacy code base. Our specialized medical imaging server (PACS) is not entirely compatible with it for some reason. The bad part in this case is that Windows 10 is free and a recent update to Win 7 and 8 installed a nag ware pop up which starts popping up today encouraging users to upgrade. Some of our customers may install it and break their system. We sent them several messages warning them to wait for our patch but you never know. They see the word FREE and they click it.
Hmmm. If you depend on something for an income then you really should have a preproduction system to prove it before you unleash it on your production environment. This is true of any update, on any system.
Yeah, it's called Vista.
I installed it yesterday. The new Edge browser is noticeably faster than IE. The Mission Control thing works quite well. It's nice to not have ads in the Weather app any more like Windows 8 did. The Windows app store and music and video stores are all integrated in to a single app now just called the Store, same as iTunes on the Mac has them all together.
The worse thing about it is that the tablet-face and the desktop-face are both there side-by-side, for example there is Control Panel for the desktop and a Settings App for the tablet side, and there's a lot of overlap between them, and for the end user it's not obvious why there's 2 or which one to use. Having a single OS for all form factors might sound good on paper, but Apple's approach of having a separate mobile OS and desktop OS is definitely less confusing for the end user. In my opinion the thing you want to reuse is code, and developers can do that behind the scenes with libraries. Reusing distros is a minor thing compared to that, and not worth it if is lessens the user experience.
I'll stick to my Windows 7. When Windows 10 becomes a stable environment, then I'll consider it.
Interesting question is, will MS keep giving future desktop OS for free, or is this one time only.
I guess that depends on if this is truly the "last version of Windows"....
Interesting question is, will MS keep giving future desktop OS for free, or is this one time only.
I guess that depends on if this is truly the "last version of Windows"....
It's only a free upgrade for 1 year last I read.
It's only a free upgrade for 1 year last I read.
?
That is true. The reality is that MS's business model hasn't changed. They are:
1) Still charging PC OEM's for Windows licenses
2) They are still charging consumers for version upgrades
3) They are still charging for the retail copies of the OS
However, on this release they are allowing windows 7 and 8 users to upgrade for free - as long as it is done in the first year of Windows 10 availability. After that, you pay.
The reason MS is doing this is to meet their goal of getting Windows 10 on 1B device's within the next 2 - 3 years. In other words, they are taking a loss of revenue to obtain that goal. This probably does not equate to a huge amount really - since, not many people pay for upgrades anyway, they only get a new version of windows when they get a new PC.
The reason they want to hit that number is to make the Windows Store a more attractive proposition for developers. Remember, that's 1B devices - not just PC's. Devices include Xbox One, Band, Phones, tablets, 2-in-1's, and Hololens. Not to mention Windows 10 IoT. Hence the universal app platform. If a developer writes an application targeting windows 10, it's very minimal work to include support for all of the other device types. And to make it even sweeter - they are releasing tools that make it fairly simple to port IOS applications to windows universal apps.
None of this might work - but, it seems like a reasonable strategy to me.
There's nothing wrong with Windows 8.1. Most of the complaints seemed to revolve around the Start menu. I personally preferred the New Start menu to the older one but I guess enough people longed for the old one that Windows 10 seems to have some kind of hybrid.
It's not as though people have no misgivings about the Finder and the Dock in OSX. In addition there's that strange Launch screen which is incomprehensible. No one knows what to do when it comes to merging mobile and desktop. Microsoft's Surface seems to strike a pretty good balance in that it is at least possible to have handwritten documents without worrying about the palm issue. An iPad Pro, as nice as the iPad is, makes no sense given the poor handwriting capabilities of OSX and iOS.
In any case people are resistant to change. Windows 8 was a bit of a shock to Windows users still reeling from the attempt to do in MS-DOS/Win XP.
Windows 10 is yet another attempt to drag text based foundations into a more visual and universal environment.
Thanks all who let a "Photos" sub-thread slip into this O/S thread, and provided some great advice. The best part was learning that iPhoto -> Photos isn't immediately mandatory.
I'll study what all have said and I appreciate the effort to respond.
Not sure why this "feature" isn't getting more attention, it seems Microsoft is flipping the bird at user privacy with this latest release. The new "agreement" goes into effect starting 1 August.
And there you have the cost of "free."
European Digital Rights (EDRi) has an article discussing some of the details of it, here.
"Mozilla CEO Chris Beard has blasted Microsoft in a pair of posts to the organization's blog, arguing that Windows 10's default browser settings are a "dramatic step backwards" for respecting user choice. When people update their devices to Microsoft's new operating system, their default browsers are automatically changed to Microsoft Edge, the successor to Internet Explorer that's included with Windows 10. People who had a different default browser then have to go into Windows 10's settings menu and change the default from there.
In an open letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Beard said that's no good, since doing so from Firefox requires three or four mouse clicks (roughly twice as many as before) and scrolling to the bottom of a seven-item list. In a blog post accompanying the letter, the Mozilla CEO said it was "bewildering" that Microsoft made that choice, especially after the company's antitrust troubles."
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2955453/microsoft-subnet/mozilla-ceo-blasts-microsoft-over-windows-10-defaults.html