Build 2016 : Microsoft unveils the future of Windows 10

Satya Nadella, CEO de Microsoft, lors de la conférence développeurs Build 2016. (crédit : IDG News Service)

On the occasion of its Build 2016 event for developers, Microsoft is firing on all cylinders. Update anniversary of Windows 10, Skype Bot, Universal Platform, Cortana, Hololens ... Update on recent and key announcements.

Developers, developers, and developers! The shadow of Steve Ballmer lapped around the annual conference Build, the leading event dedicated to deMicrosoft encoders. Nevertheless, this year the conference also brought a lot of new about the future of Windows, Office and other key products from the Redmond company. This year was no exception made, even bringing her little surprises.

Nearly four months after announcing that Windows 10 was running on 200 million devices, Microsoft has just announced that the installed base of users of its latest OS now had just reached the milestone of 270 million. A thrust which owes a lot to the end of year celebrations and successful tactics upgrade - insistent even forced - implemented by the publisher. Anyway, the latest operating system shows the progress the fastest of all Windows OS in Microsoft history.

 

 Curves of adoption of various Microsoft OS in time. (Credit: IDG News Service)

La mise à jour Anniversaire de Windows 10

Updating Windows 10 Anniversary
Previously known as the "Redstone" the update of Windows 10 was finally renamed as "Anniversary Update." An upgrade will be available free for Windows users 10 from this summer, probably in late July a year after the release of the latest Microsoft OS. Among the announced upcoming features, Microsoft has especially emphasized those for annotating the desktop with a digital ink for interacting with applications and automatically create reminders notifications based on handwritten notes.

 

A new feature annotations in Windows 10 appeared. (Credit: IDG News Service) 

The anniversary update further extends the Windows Hello applications to the online store Microsoft browser function and the Edge, for using biometric authentication to connect to applications and services that support this function. Another innovation shown in Build 2016: the arrival of the famous Bash shell command line Linux for Windows 10. It is not a question here of a simple emulation, no more than a virtual machine: Microsoft has spent a partnership with Canonical to inject into Windows native binary Ubuntu Linux. A decision which once again demonstrates Microsoft's commitment to Linux and one of the pillars of its strategy to spread Windows 10 and facilitate adoption among developers.

 

Bash Shell, a command line for Windows 10 came straight in the Linux space. (Credit: IDG News Service)

The publisher also showed a conversion tool to convert Win32 software, historically designed to run on traditional desktops, applications Universal Windows Platform (UWP) with support for Live Tiles, the automatic updates through the Windows Store, and more. This is a big blow, and native apps importance UWP will start to happen. Microsoft has indicated that Facebook is working on apps for UWP Instagram, Messenger and also on behalf of American Express and Bank of America.

 

Universal Windows Platform is central to the strategy of unifying the application of Microsoft environments. (Credit: IDG News Service)

One of the strengths of apps UWP is to run on any Windows platform 10 (PCs, phones, Xbox ...), and another will be added to the list, namely the virtual reality mask Microsoft Hololens, including pre-orders were opened in the last few weeks to 3 000 for the version to developers.

 

The Hololens virtual reality mask is coming: he will surprise? (Credit: IDG News Service)

Cortana, the PDA appeared in Windows 10 is about to gain momentum and increase ease of use. Microsoft and works to incrementing contextual warnings in Cortana, including more proactive actions to perform tasks more effectively and better interpretation applications with the most powerful natural language tools.
Some demonstrations were conducted by Marcus Ash, product manager for Cortana Microsoft to realize improvements. For example, he asked Cortana send to a colleague PowerPoint on which he had worked last night or to indicate what toy store he went last year in the last Build and reminded him that it is located. Microsoft did not however specify when these new features will be available, probably for updating anniversary this summer.

 

Cortana comes with new features to Windows 10. (Credit: IDG News Service)

But Cortana is not an end in itself for Microsoft. Rather, it is the contrary of a beginning. Its CEO, Satya Nadella, has unveiled "Conversations as a platform," a bold vision of future personal assistants doped machine learning to help - somehow - to better organize the life of the user, all via conversations in natural language. A whole program. So Cortana could automatically connect the user with the booking system of a hotel via Skype and suggest by place a meeting with a friend who lives in this city. A vision of the future that could still call it scary, with auto-suggestion capabilities of computer systems taking precedence over those of humans (it is useless to think of the machine to the fact your place). To enable this amazing vision of the future of success, Microsoft has made available to developers its various frameworks, API and its « Cortana Intelligence Suite ».

 

Cortana Mobile was also honored at the Build 2016 (credit: IDG News Service)

We should not wait long to test the potential of oriented vision "Conversations" Microsoft. The company hopes to transcend Skype chats with machine learning and it comes to launching Skype Bots, the latest version of its messaging app ready to automatically connect to different computer systems and robots.

 

Microsoft opts for automated integration with third party systems or robots with Cortana (credit: IDG News Service)