New Apps

The build 10074 is actually recoverable for several days on the Windows Update servers, and many have used this trick to install in advance.

It obviously contains the latest revisions of integrated applications including Photos, Outlook Calendar and Mail. This is a reminder of universal applications, which thus found as is on smartphones.

This new pre-release brings a lot of aesthetic changes, including a Start menu that becomes slightly translucent Aero Glass and resumes, the late transparent frosted effect of Windows 7. The dynamic tiles renew their content in 3D with a pivot which one request for Furthermore it is consistent with the rest of the interface, very flat. Cortana has a facelift and now integrates the Start menu. If you open it and you start to write the name of a program, so the wizard will take over. Also note the appearance of a "hamburger" menu (split view) to provide access to parameters and other basic functions.

Despite advances, it remains on a pre-release

Other new features may be mentioned in particular:

- New default sounds

- The ability to close a window from the multitasking view

- Closing a tablet mode under back to the Home screen and not on the desktop

The Video regains its subtitles and help download its contents as many times as desired, three devices (the number will increase)

- The application supports Xbox sharing real name, screenshots, user profiles and has a dynamic tile. The pilots of Xbox controllers are also integrated directly into Windows 10. These items were announced last week.

- The new Store manages again Xbox Live games, integrated shopping (in-app) as well as applications already purchased or downloaded from Windows 8.1.

As usual, the download will be from Windows Update, which may take some time. For a 64-bit machine, the file weighs in fact 2GB, and users are now many want it back.

Also note that while some issues were fixed (including crash Win32 applications launched from the Start menu), others have appeared or still clinging. The Contacts application continues to plant at launch, while a problem may prevent some games run in full screen. For the latter, Microsoft promises a fix "as soon as possible" in Windows Update. Recall that in all cases this is still a pre-release and that there is still about two months of work.