Windows 10

The Windows Insider Program might still be fun for some members, but for others it is getting to be a confusing chore. Don't get me wrong, it is cool that Microsoft lets fans try these pre-release builds of Windows 10, but lately there have been too many builds, requiring too much user effort, with little to no payoff. Remember folks, the operating system should never be the star of the show -- it should fade into the background as you do things with it.

Today, Microsoft releases yet another Windows 10 Insider Preview Build -- 16278 for PC. Sorry Windows 10 Mobile users -- you are being left out of this party. Unfortunately for PC users, this new build is quite bland, once again focusing on fixes. This shouldn't be surprising, however, as the company is now focusing on making things stable for an upcoming gold version of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. To make things worse, the company has also removed yet another feature from the upcoming version of the OS -- taking HDR screenshots with the Xbox app.

Microsoft's Groove Music Pass is an exceptional streaming music service. If you spend a lot of time on Windows 10, it is the best music experience on the platform. The app is well designed, and it fits in with the overall Windows 10 motif. It can even be used on Xbox One. Groove offers a really good selection of tunes too -- right up there with its competitors.

Believe it it not, Microsoft's service is cross-platform, also working natively on Android and iOS. The mobile apps are decent, but not fantastic. Fans of macOS and Linux-based desktop operating systems, such as Ubuntu and Chrome OS, can also use the service thanks to the brilliant web-based player. If this all sounds good to you, I have some great news. As part of a Labor Day promotion, Microsoft is offering an insane seven months of the service for the price of just one month. Yes, really.

Windows 10 Mobile is dead -- everyone knows it. Well, everyone except a small number of delusional people clutching their precious Lumia devices. Sigh. One day these unfortunate folks will switch to Android or iPhone so they can experience happiness.

For now, Microsoft is still keeping hope alive for these few loyal Windows Phone fans. In fact, today, the company released a new Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview Build, version 15245. More importantly, the company released Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 16275 for PC -- yes, yet another such build for the desktop operating system. Don't get too excited, however, as both of these builds are primarily bug fixes.

Two-hundred-and-forty-five in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 on the Windows Store in the past seven days.

Microsoft promised this week that it would never again force Windows upgrade downloads on users. Microsoft announced furthermore that it would pull creation support for ReFS from Windows 10 Pro.

The star of today is undoubtedly Galaxy Note8, but Samsung's new smartphone is not the only thing to get excited about. For those enrolled in Microsoft's Insiders program, there is a new Windows 10 build to install.

Microsoft just pushed out Preview Build 16273. This is just one day after releasing a new Windows Server Insider build. While the server build had literally zero new features, the new Windows 10 build does have some; there is a new font and emoji notifications. Unfortunately, the Insiders Program is getting quite confusing. Dona Sarkar tries to explain it all, but you might be left with smoke coming out of your ears. What was once a fun way to test early builds of Windows is beginning to get very convoluted.

There have been various controversies with Windows 10, from issues with privacy and telemetry, to ads and forced upgrades. Following a court case, Microsoft has vowed to never force upgrade files onto users again.

Windows users in Germany were particularly unimpressed when Microsoft forcibly downloaded many gigabytes of files to upgrade from Windows 7 and 8 to Windows 10. Having held out for 18 months, and losing its case twice, Microsoft has finally agreed to stop its nefarious tactics.

Two-hundred-and-forty-four in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 on the Windows Store in the past seven days.

Microsoft announced a new high-end edition of Windows 10 last week. Windows 10 Pro for Workstations expands hardware support among a handful of other changes.

Newton is my favorite email app, not least because I can use it on all my devices -- no matter if they run Android, iOS, macOS or Windows, the last of which arrived in private beta in early-May. Now, after four months of testing, it is ready for prime time.

The Windows version of Newton arrives today in Windows Store, and it's designed with Windows 10 users in mind. CloudMagic, the company behind the app, has included pretty much every feature that Newton has on other platforms, meaning the experience should be pretty similar to Android, iOS and macOS.

Two-hundred-and-forty-three in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 on the Windows Store in the past seven days.

This week saw only a couple of new releases for Windows 10. Noteworthy ones include the new Telltale adventure game about Batman, Enjoy Brick, an app to browse all Lego sets and models, and Reddit Slideshow, an interesting app to create image slideshows from images posted to Reddit.

Two months ago, Microsoft accidentally pushed out a buggy Windows 10 build to Insiders that caused chaos but also revealed something interesting -- the company's plans for a new version of Windows 10 aimed specifically at power users.

The leak is now official as Microsoft announces Windows 10 Pro for Workstations, a high-end version of its new operating system.

Two months ago, Russian security software firm Kaspersky Labs filed antitrust complaints against Microsoft in Europe, alleging that the software giant was favoring its own Windows Defender over third-party anti-virus software in Windows 10.

In response to that lawsuit, Microsoft has made changes to how the forthcoming Windows 10 Fall Creators Update works with anti-virus software, and an appeased Kaspersky has dropped its complaint.

One of the big complaints people had about Windows 10 when it first launched was how the new operating system spied on its users.

Microsoft has since reigned in this spying and introduced controls to give users greater management over their privacy, and now the software company has issued a lovely piece of spin, with an equally lovely headline -- Your feedback is helping shape Windows privacy -- to convince Windows 10 doubters the problems of the past are rapidly receding.

It’s a good time to be a Windows Insider. Microsoft is busy cramming in last minute features and changes to the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (also known as Redstone 3), including rather unexpected surprises, and the builds are a lot more stable now.

A week ago, Microsoft introduced the option to bypass any future Fall Creators Updates builds and skip ahead to the Redstone 4 branch. If that sounds like something you would have liked to have done, there’s some bad news -- it’s now too late.

Two-hundred-and-forty-two in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 on the Windows Store in the past seven days.

Microsoft released a build of Windows 10 S, a new version of Windows 10 designed specifically for Education, which you can now download and install.

Last month I reported how, according to NetMarketShare’s figures, Windows 10 had managed to grow its usage share by just 5 percentage points in an entire year. That's a shocking state of affairs for a relatively new -- and regularly updated -- operating system, especially given that Windows 7 enjoyed a 2 percentage overall increase in the same time frame.

In July, perhaps buoyed by the news that the Windows 10 Creators Update was finally going to be offered to (nearly) all, Windows 10 posted its largest usage increase for three months, although still nothing for Microsoft to get excited about.