Microsoft Reveals More Details About Windows 10

Microsoft held a “Windows 10: The Next Chapter” event on January 21, 2015 in Redmond, revealing major features of Windows 10 in detail for the first time since the Technical Preview had launched in October 2014. The most visible reversal of Windows 8’s decisions was the return of the Start menu — not the Windows 7 style menu (a list of programs), but a hybrid: a left panel listing recently used and all apps alphabetically, and a right panel with the Windows 8 live tiles resizable in a grid. Live tiles remained optional — users could remove them entirely or populate the right panel with a traditional app grid, giving both the visual dashboard of Windows 8 and the familiar Start menu feel of Windows 7. The Start button on the taskbar was restored as a permanent fixture (Windows 8 had removed it; Windows 8.1 had restored the button but sent it to the full-screen Start Screen).

Cortana was announced as a desktop assistant integrated into the Windows taskbar — the first time Cortana (launched on Windows Phone in April 2014) appeared on the desktop, competing with Apple’s Siri (mobile-only until macOS Sierra in 2016) and Google Now (Android and Chrome). Cortana on Windows 10 launched in the US, UK, China, France, Italy, Germany, and Spain and could answer natural-language queries, set reminders and calendar events, search the web via Bing, play music, and search local files. A new browser project codenamed “Spartan” was previewed — a departure from Internet Explorer built on a new rendering engine (EdgeHTML) with a simpler interface, a built-in reading mode, web page annotation (handwriting and typed notes saved with the URL), and Cortana integration to surface contextual information about selected text. Project Spartan became Microsoft Edge when Windows 10 shipped in July 2015. Continuum addressed Windows 8’s interface mismatch on hybrid PCs (the Surface Pro being the leading example): attaching or detaching a keyboard triggered a prompt asking whether to switch between “Tablet Mode” (full-screen apps and hidden taskbar, designed for touch) and desktop mode, allowing the same device to adapt its interface to its current use case rather than forcing one mode across all input contexts.

Microsoft also announced at the January event that DirectX 12 would ship with Windows 10 — supporting explicit GPU management (command queues, command lists, descriptor heaps) that reduced driver overhead and allowed developers to manage GPU resource lifetimes and synchronization manually rather than relying on the driver to infer intent. Microsoft HoloLens was unveiled at the same event: a self-contained holographic computing device with see-through displays, spatial mapping, and gesture recognition, running a version of Windows 10 with a custom HPU (holographic processing unit). The free upgrade offer for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users (for one year after launch) was announced March 18, 2015. Windows 10 launched July 29, 2015 and reached 75 million installs within the first month, making it the fastest-adopting Windows version, benefiting heavily from the free upgrade and the automatic download of the installer to eligible PCs.