PC World – December 2015

then. With the release of the November Update, formerly known as
“Threshold 2,” both groups are on the same footing:
Microsoft’s update takes many of these features out of preview and
adds them to the “stable” build of Windows 10. And it’s not just the PC
that’s receiving an update; Microsoft is launching the New Xbox One
Experience (NXOE) (go.pcworld.com/nxoe) for its game console, too.
Windows 10’s
builds are so
advanced,
they’re from
the future.
Microsoft has released five previews since July. All but arguably the
first two have added notable features while also fixing bugs (and
introducing some, within the beta build environment) along the way.
(Microsoft told us right before the launch that the latest beta build
represents the “release candidate” for the update, essentially rolling
up the previous builds into a public release.)
We’ve picked five improvements we think you’ll like most, based on
what we’ve seen of them in the beta builds that Microsoft released
before the launch.
Why this matters: We expect updates to patch bugs—and Microsoft
has done so in subsequent patches since the public release. (One
irritating example: Mail’s habit of suddenly disappearing, which now
appears to be largely fixed.) But Microsoft’s November update release
can also be thought of as propaganda: For all of the 110 million people
who have upgraded to Windows 10, that’s less than 8 percent of the PC
market, according to Net Applications. Think of releases like “Threshold
2” as the carrot to lure users to upgrade, with next year’s”recommended”
upgrades to Windows 10 (go.pcworld.com/w10adoption) as the stick.
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