The newest release of Windows 10 and Surface computers are already known. What has Microsoft got up its sleeve for its developer conference?
Microsoft Build has been moving away from big consumer announcements, instead focusing on business and cloud services. The company may, however, have some surprises in store for us when the developer conference kicks off on Monday in Seattle.
Microsoft has already published much of the breakout session titles, though it usually leaves a few unnamed until after the big keynote reveals. The ones we know about are heavy on AI, Azure cloud services, partner services, and developer tools.
In fact, Microsoft’s own blog post about the conference states: «This year’s event is focused on empowering developers of all kinds, from experienced computer scientists to tech beginners with big ideas we have so much in store!» This year, there’s just one, 90-minute keynote from CEO Satya Nadella, so it seems there will be more vision than actual news.
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I had hoped that, unlike last year, Microsoft would time the release of its next feature update to Windows 10, the May 2019 Update, with the conference, but that seems unlikely. The company is being very careful about the release, which it intends to keep in the preview testing channel longer than usual, until late May.
No doubt this is a response to the update hiccups encountered by some users with the October 2018 Update. Another new precaution is that, starting with May 2019, updates will no longer be pushed on users until their version goes out of support. Instead, the OS will pop up a notification that their PC is ready for the update.
Microsoft has teased partner news, and we’ll certainly hear more about HoloLens applications and new Office capabilities. Read on for what else we may expect to hear about at the show. Next for Windows
We know that Microsoft is hard at work getting Windows to integrate with smartphones. Android has benefitted most from this effort, but I’d love to see more functionality with iPhones, which Microsoft has previously said its working on.
We’re likely to see more reveals of what’s coming next for the OS, including things like Android screen mirroring, and we may find out the status of the postponed Sets feature.
