From point release to pointless release
Column A new version of Windows was once a big deal. Upgrading was expensive for everyone, with warehouses-worth of physical media being pushed into retail channels to displace the old. It couldn’t happen very often, so version numbers became signifiers of great importance. That hasn’t been true for more than a decade. What has been true for years is that we no longer need « new » Windows. Windows 10 is so much better than its antecedents that it has stopped being a problem. Not being a problem is the highest accolade an operating system should aim for. An OS exists to let other things do their jobs reliably, swiftly and painlessly. Even the bits the user has to frob with – sound, video, filing systems, network config – should be the minimal necessary. And compared to Windows 7 and 8, let alone Vista, Windows 10 has won hearts – well, grudging acceptance – for not breaking. As a result, the rules for updates now are: « Don’t tell me you’re updating » and « Don’t break anything when you’re done. » As users, we’re long past the point where basic OS functionality needed improving. Driver architectures are stable and mature. Memory management, file systems, connectivity, all sorted. So what in the name of Bill Gates’ divorce attorney’s second yacht justifies a new number for Windows? Almost nothing. A grab-bag of randomness – taskbar tweaks, a faint murmur of new window management functions, and some UI mucking about – including one new feature, curved corners, that was forcibly hammered by Steve Jobs into the original Macintosh 40 years ago.
