Internet Explorer is the oldest browser on the market, with a lineage dating back to 1995. And in that 20-year-old browser there’s a lot of 20-year-old code, supporting a lot of standards that are no longer in use. At the same time, new technologies and standards evolved for browsers, and IE has proved to be a laggard.
So it was high time for a clean-sheet redesign — a whole new browser from the bottom up. And with Windows 10, we get it, in the form ofMicrosoft Edge. (Yes, Microsoft wants us to keep that “Microsoft” in there, just as Google does with “Google Chrome.”) Here’s what we think you’ll find most exciting in Microsoft’s brand new browser.
Out with the old
First, here’s what’s not in Microsoft Edge: A slew of old technologies that are no longer common on the Web. They include:
ActiveX: HTML 5 replaces ActiveX controls. However, Microsoft Edge will still support Adobe Flash—which may or may not be good news.
Browser Helper Objects (BHOs): HTML and JavaScript replace BHOs, which date back to the COM object days of the 1990s.
VBScript: JavaScript replaces old Visual Basic code.
Vector Markup Language: Microsoft’s old XML language for 2D graphics has been replaced by Scalable Vector Graphics.
What’s all that mean to you? Faster load times (since the browser isn’t uselessly checking for instances of standards that aren’t there anymore). If for some reason you do need to load a page that uses any of these old technologies, you can still use IE; it’s still be there on your Windows 10 system.
New rendering engine
Microsoft Edge will come with a new rendering engine (Microsoft EdgeHTML) to replace the Trident engine that powered Internet Explorer for decades. The result should be that webpages appear on the screen a lot faster.
Better security
Microsoft Edge does a bunch of little, behind-the-scenes things to make browsing the Web safer. For example, it renders each individual page inside a “sandbox”—so if there happens to be malicious software on a page, it won’t be able to break out of that page’s browser process to do anything like access your hard drive.
Microsoft Edge also implements some new Internet security standards, including HTTP Strict Transport Security (to make Web connections more secure) and HTML 5 Content Security Policy (to protect against cross-site scripting attacks).
Bing and Cortana
Not surprisingly, Microsoft Edge is tightly integrated with Microsoft’s Bing search service and with Cortana, Windows 10’s new virtual assistant. That combination should make finding the information you need a lot faster and easier.
So, just as the URL bar in Google’s Chrome browser quickly connects you to Google‘s search tools, so isMicrosoft Edge optimized for finding online stuff with Bing. It’ll also improve search results by inferring what you may want or need based on previous searches and your browsing history.
And thanks to Cortana’s support for natural-language queries, you’ll be able to type questions into Microsoft Edge’s address bar and get back answers immediately, without having to perform a full Web search.
Easier extensions
Internet Explorer supported browser extensions, but Microsoft Edge improves that support. That’s because the new browser’s extensions can be built on the same JavaScript and HTML code that developers already use for extensions that work with Google Chrome and Firefox. Microsoft claims that extensions for those other browsers will be convertible to Microsoft Edge with only a few tweaks.
That should mean more/better extensions and add-ons for you.
The only bad news: Microsoft Edge won’t have this revamped extension support when Windows 10 initially launches. It will come via an update at a later date.
Annotations
Everybody shares links, but Microsoft Edge adds the ability to mark up those shared webpages with the electronic equivalent of sticky notes and highlights.
Tap the Make a Web Note button on the Microsoft Edge toolbar, and you can leave notes on a page for others. The Save button will allow you to save the note to Microsoft OneNote, your bookmarks, or your reading list; you can also use the Share button to share your marked up note.
Windows 10: This is how it starts over for Microsoft.James Martin/CNET
Microsoft's Joe Belfiore, head of the software operating systems group, is in Redmond, Washington, preparing to press a very important button.
Once pressed, it will send a notification around the world reminding hundreds of millions of people that Windows 10, Microsoft's flagship software, is ready to download and install -- for free.
"We want people to think about how they can move their PCs forward, but also move other things in their lives forward," Belfiore said in an interview Tuesday. Microsoft is treating the moment as a way to ask the world to join it in looking ahead, equipped with a global, yearlong advertising campaign dubbed "Upgrade Your World." The move to Windows 10 is being treated as a rebirth moment not just for customers, but for Microsoft as well.
Windows 10 is the full realization of a touch-based operating system capable of acting as both as tablet and a PC.James Martin/CNET
That Microsoft, which became the world's largest software maker selling Windows, is giving away what it once sold for about $120 reflects a company ready and willing to accept the reality of selling software in 2015. That means products given away for free with the hope customers will buy subscriptions to more lucrative online services. The Windows 10 giveaway is also a sign that Microsoft wants people to see it in a different way -- as a technology giant with eyes on the future instead of the stodgy seller of office software that missed the boat on smartphones and botched its attempt to design an operating system for touch-based devices.
For the Microsoft naysayers out there, Windows 10 may be a wake-up call. The software is already being touted in reviews as a much-needed refresh that puts Microsoft on par with -- and in some respects, far ahead of -- competing operating systems like Apple's Mac OS X Yosemite. CNET's Nate Ralph says "Windows 10 bridges the gap between PCs and tablets without alienating anyone."
Microsoft isn't competing with other companies so much as it's competing with itself. Windows runs on more than 90 percent of the world's PCs. But the most popular version of the software, running on three of every five devices, is Windows 7, which came out six years ago. Compare that to Apple's Yosemite operating system, which was released in September 2014 and four months later was running on nearly half of Apple's Macintosh computers.
The problem was clear as glass: Windows 8, which came out in 2012 and was a stark departure from traditional versions of Windows, was a step sideways. Windows 10, which will run on devices of all sizes and shapes, is the course correction. It's purpose is also to give life to Microsoft's mantra to "reinvent productivity."
Whether Microsoft's users are too shell-shocked from past experiences to upgrade to Windows 10 remains to be seen. And for Microsoft, the next step is selling the promise of Windows 10 in a world where everybody has been getting along just fine with a product that came out in 2009.
"The key challenge now is that, for a long time, Microsoft didn't really have to sell Windows. It just sort of was there. You had to take it," says Steve Kleynhans, an analyst at research firm Gartner. "Now they're in a situation where they're actually having to prove to you that there's some excellence, some value there ... that's a tough sell."
Windows as a service
To understand where Windows goes from here -- and how integral it will be to Microsoft's future -- look no further than the Windows Insider Program.
Belfiore, who has led the OS engineering and product design groups at Microsoft since 2013, is being joined today at Microsoft headquarters by these so-called "insiders," Windows fans who have spent the better part of the last year testing and tinkering with early versions of the software to help Microsoft get it just right.
The company invited members of the program to thank them for having transformed the development process for Windows into something collaborative, Belfiore said. By letting Microsoft peer into how machines running Windows 10 were being used, these PC users helped create Windows 10. The change in development approach has been one of the hallmarks of CEO Satya Nadella, who took charge last year and vowed to make Microsoft more consumer-friendly and transparent about its product roadmap.
"We don't sit around and speculate about what people want," Belfiore said. "We go and look at what's happening in the real world and we can make decisions based on real concrete facts."
Many of the 5 million insiders will be the first users of Windows 10, which began launching as soon as yesterday in Australia, due to the time difference, and is now making its way to the remaining 189 countries around the world. In that sense, pressing a button to "release" Windows 10 is symbolic. But it's also a way to nudge millions of PC users who don't obsessively check their computers for new updates or seek out ways to get software early rather than wait for it to be delivered to them through automatic updates.
The automatic update process is critical. Microsoft is no longer treating Windows as something that it ships and then forgets about until it needs to squash a software bug or do much-needed maintenance. Instead, Windows 10 is being treated as a service, Belfiore says, that will be changed frequently. An update will have collections of sometimes small, sometime large changes that will be sent out to Windows users during times of low traffic on the Internet, such as the middle of the night.
You'll wake up the next morning and realize that you now have the most up-to-date version of Windows without having to put in the effort.
"We do that in part to make sure that people have the best experience," Belfiore said, "But also so that if a developer is writing an application, a developer gets the benefit of knowing that the largest number of machines all have the latest version."
Features like Cortana, Microsoft's personal digital assistant, will be continuously and automatically updated as the company makes incremental changes to Windows over time.James Martin/CNET
Microsoft won't say yet whether there will be a Windows 11. Nor will Belfiore say if Microsoft will follow in the footsteps of Apple, which makes minor and sometimes major tweaks to its now free OS X software every year and slaps on a fun name. After naming numerous versions of OS X after cats (Snow Leopard, Jaguar, Puma and so on), the company switched to California place names in 2013 with Mavericks. Yosemite was released last year, and Apple plans to ship El Capitan sometime this fall.
Belfiore said Microsoft will likely take an approach that lets it communicate the Windows 10 changes to the broadest amount of users -- both pros and regular joes alike -- and explain how to get those updates without breaking anything critical you like to do in Windows, such as gaming.
For those worried Microsoft is turning Windows into a subscription service, fear not. The company says if you claim your free upgrade, which is available to the Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users running the software on 77 percent of all PCs in the world, you'll receive updates for the entirety of your device's lifespan.
Surviving in a 'freemium' world
While Microsoft may begin earning back the goodwill of customers with the free upgrade and aesthetic appeal of Windows 10, that doesn't address its more pressing issue: making money.
Under the stewardship of Nadella, Microsoft has spent the past 18 months transforming its products and its approach to customers. The company is moving away from selling licensed software at flat (and high) rates -- like more than $150 for an Office license -- and now offers subscriptions to its cloud-based apps and services like Office 365, which is priced starting at $100 a year of consumers and as little as $5 a month per user for businesses. Mobile versions of its software, including the popular Office suite of productivity apps, are available free of charge on devices made even by competitors including Apple.
It's a big change and intended to get millions of users begin using Microsoft products again, including the Word document editing software and Outlook email app.
"They can't sell software like they used to," said Roger Kay, an analyst at Endpoint Technologies Associates. "If all they do is make software and give it away, what's their business model?"
Competitors have largely figured that part out. Google gives away software and services, including free online storage and online tools that replicate the core functions of Microsoft's Office app suite, but makes money through advertising on its search engine. Apple, which used to sell OS X and its other software, moved away from that business model in October 2013 and opted to give it away instead. It now makes most of its money from its popular hardware including the iPhone and iPad.
Microsoft has placed its bets on helping consumers and companies maneuver data living online, where it sells access to full desktop versions of Office as part of its Office 365 subscription service and powerful tools that tap into its Azure cloud computing platform.
"They have to find other sources of real revenue," said Gartner's Kleynhans. "They've identified subscription services and cloud services as being real targets."
The company's commercial cloud business -- which includes Office 365, Azure and software for helping businesses manage their data in the cloud -- grew 88 percent in fiscal 2015 and Microsoft said the division is now on track to pull in more than $8 billion in annual sales. Nadella has said he wants the cloud division, which he oversaw before becoming chief executive in February 2014, to be a $20 billion-a-year business by 2018.
But those revenue streams won't last forever and Microsoft has made it clear that resting on its laurels is both what lost it the smartphone race and forced it into blundering with Windows 8. If the company is to succeed, it has to continue to bridge the wants and needs of the businesses it serves with the desires of the average computer user.Microsoft can afford to wait since it can continue to rely somewhat on traditional sales. It still charges PC makers like Acer and Lenovo a fee to install new versions of Windows on the computers they sell to consumers. And businesses still pay Microsoft to help maintain older versions of Office and Windows for large numbers of employees running those programs on their PCs at work everyday.
"Microsoft is arguably one of the few companies that can mix your personal and work life," said Jan Dawson, an analyst at Jackdaw Research. "Microsoft can bridge that gap in a way that Google can't."
The challenge, Dawson added, is convincing the world that Windows 10 can truly be everything to everybody -- the software that sits at the center of "your whole life."
For Belfiore, Windows 10 is not a risk that could sink the company, but the proper evolution of Microsoft's marquee product.
"We've talked about this notion of getting 1 billion devices on Windows 10," he said. "I think this is a big opportunity."
There are more options than ever for getting a good, cheap smartphone, and last year’s OnePlus One was a standout. For $300, you got a well-made, nice-looking phone with cutting-edge hardware and few compromises to be found (assuming its 5.5-inch size didn’t put you off). The just-announced, heavily-leaked OnePlus 2 doesn’t deviate strongly from the formula that made the One such an intriguing phone, but there are some notable differences to be found once you dig into the new device.
From a specs perspective, the OnePlus 2 features a 5.5-inch, 1080p screen, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor, and either 16GB of storage with 3GB of RAM or 64GB of storage with 4GB of RAM. The back-facing camera has a 13-megapixel sensor with optical image stabilization, while the front camera lets you shoot selfies at 5 megapixels. That back camera also includes a two-tone flash and a laser focusing system. While most of these specs are pretty standard fare for a high-end smartphone, the price remains anything but: the 16GB model will retail for $329, while the 64GB version will go for $389. That’s more than last year’s model, but after spending some time with the phone, I feel like the price increase is justified for what you get.
On the surface, the OnePlus 2 is very similar to its predecessor. It’s still the same 5.5-inch device, but the body material is significantly nicer this time — most of the frame is made of aluminum, but the back keeps the textured, grippy material featured on last year’s phone. That back is easier to replace this time; OnePlus showed me a handful of new backs including two wooden options and a kevlar back that brings to mind Verizon’s never-ending parade of Droids. The combo of the unusual textured back with the shiny metal frame looked great to me, and the Moto X-like contour of the phone meant that it nestled into my hand and felt a bit smaller than such a large phone should feel.
There are a few other hardware tricks you’ll see on this phone that you won’t find on most other devices, perhaps most importantly the USB-C connector on the bottom. We knew this would be the case, but it’s still nice to see a company moving people over to the new port as soon as possible. There’s also a three-position switch on the side of the phone that lets you cycle through the three default notification settings in Android Lollipop (all, priority, and none). I use an iPhone pretty frequently and am very used to using the side switch to silence sounds, so having a more granular hardware switch on the OnePlus 2 is a very welcome addition.
THOUGHTFUL SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE TWEAKS ABOUND
Another new addition is the front-facing fingerprint unlock sensor, and it does indeed work as advertised. With the phone locked, it only took barely a second of laying my finger on the sensor to get the phone open and ready for use. Much like the iPhone, you have to back up the fingerprint sensor with a traditional on-screen lock, but whatever sensor and software OnePlus are using here seem like a very reliable combo.
Once you’ve unlocked the phone, you’ll see the very familiar stylings of Android 5.1 — but this time, OnePlus has added its own in-house software (called OxygenOS) over the top, rather than using Cyanogenmod as it did last year. Fortunately, it’s a very clean skin, with minimal extra features — there are some new options included in the settings, like a menu that lets you enable gestures to tap the screen to wake it, or draw a circle on the screen to launch the camera.
YOU'LL HAVE TO GO THROUGH THE NOTORIOUS ONEPLUS INVITE SYSTEM AGAIN, BUT THE PHONES WILL AT LEAST SHIP FASTER THIS TIME
But the biggest addition is something OnePlus calls the "shelf." When you swipe to the left from your home screen, you’ll see an area that collects your favorite contacts and most used apps (Google Now can still be accessed by long-pressing on the home button). OnePlus says it’ll extend the functionality of the shelf over time, but right now it doesn’t really do much worth noting. Hopefully that’ll change by the time this phone gets into consumers’ hands, because right now I’d rather just have Google Now in its default spot.
By and large, though, OnePlus’ software implementation is graceful and minimalist, with thoughtful additions like the ability to swap between on-screen navigation buttons versus using the capacitive buttons below the screen. OnePlus also included its own camera software, which is fast and minimalist; we’ll have to wait until we get to spend more time with the phone to judge the picture quality.
Unfortunately, just like last year, the OnePlus 2 will be available online through an "invite" system — you’ll only be able to preorder it if you get an invite. The good news is that getting an invite will hopefully be easier this time around, as anyone can sign up to receive one on the OnePlus website (among other places, like OnePlus's social media accounts). There’s no telling how long it’ll take to get an invite once you've signed up, but OnePlus knows it needs to move faster than it did last year: the phone will start shipping to the US, Europe, and India by the middle of August.
"Important changes" coming to Google+ in the months ahead will include users no longer needing an account at the social network to post videos or comments at YouTube.
SAN FRANCISCO: Google has said that it is throttling back on its vision of having profiles at its social network serve as people's identities across its range of online offerings.
"Important changes" coming to Google+ in the months ahead will include users no longer needing an account at the social network to post videos or comments at YouTube.
"When we launched Google+, we set out to help people discover, share and connect across Google like they do in real life," vice president of streams, photos and sharing Bradley Horowitz said in a blog post.
"While we got certain things right, we made a few choices that, in hindsight, we've needed to rethink."
Google+ launched four years ago as a social network that could provide users a single identity to use across the California-based internet firm's popular online services.
"People have told us that accessing all of their Google stuff with one account makes life a whole lot easier," Horowitz said.
"But, we also heard that it doesn't make sense for your Google+ profile to be your identity in all the other Google products you use."
YouTube will be among the first products to uncouple itself from Google+ profiles.
Google has slowly been backing away from linking services to the social network.
Google recently moved popular picture handling features into a separate Google Photos apps for mobile devices, and said it is putting location sharing into other applications such as Hangouts "where it really belongs."
Horowitz said Google+ will live on in a more focused form, with enhancements including a "Collections" feature for organizing posts by topic.
Google+ launched in June of 2011 in a challenge to Facebook, but still has a small fraction of its rival's huge user base.
I, Aditya Kumar Saroj, express deep condolences to the whole nation and the world. We have lost one of the greatest and profound humans on the planet. A great scientist and the greatest President. Miss you #KalamSir #RIPKalam
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
Former President of India
Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen "A. P. J." Abdul Kalam was the 11th President of India from 2002 to 2007. A career scientist turned reluctant politician, Kalam was born and raised in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu and studied physics and aerospace engineering. Wikipedia
