What happens when the Windows 10 free upgrade timer runs out?

 

 

 When Microsoft launched Windows 10, it announced that all existing Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 customers could receive a free upgrade to Windows 10, provided they took advantage of it within one year. So far, that strategy has paid dividends. Earlier this month, Microsoft reported that more than 200 million users had upgraded to Windows 10, double the number of Windows 8 users that adopted that operating system over the same time frame.

Data from the Register suggests that home users are upgrading more quickly, which makes sense — businesses and government offices deploy new operating systems more slowly. The graph below shows each operating system’s relative market share for three months, ending on January 10. This data was gathered by measuring OS market share on systems used to access US government websites.



The regular dips are weekend periods when Windows 8.1 and 10 increase, while Windows 7 decreases. Interestingly enough, most of Windows 10 marketshare gains appear to be at the expense of Windows 8.1, not Windows 7.

Even at this relatively rapid pace, there will still be millions of Windows 7 and 8.1 users when Microsoft’s one year timer expires. Over at ZDNet, Ed Bott discusses what Microsoft might do next. The company could simply stop giving Windows 10 away and start charging for the privilege, it could simply extend the deadline indefinitely, or it could set a new deadline — say, the end-of-life deadline for Skylake systems we reported a few weeks back.

All of these are reasonable options, and I think Bott is right when he says Microsoft probably hasn’t decided what it’s going to do, yet. The one thing Ed doesn’t mention is what additional steps Microsoft might take to encourage users who don’t currently want to upgrade.

Our coverage of Windows 10 has often touched on privacy concerns, software controls, and the mandatory telemetry logging that Microsoft implemented with its latest operating system. The mandatory feature updates are another issue — security updates should be mandatory, but feature updates are a different story. Developers are vocally unhappy about the current state of the Windows 10 Store as well.

By next summer, most of the people who wanted to upgrade to Windows 10 will have done so, while less-technical users who left “Recommended” updates enabled will be upgraded whether they like it or not. The major holdouts at that point will be enterprise and business customers on their own refresh cycles and individual users who, for various reasons, don’t find Windows 10 attractive enough to switch.

Microsoft, of course, can choose any upgrade policy it wishes — but if it wants to actually move customers off earlier Windows versions, it could do worse than to give those customers more control over certain areas of the operating system.

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Rise of the Tomb Raider Coming to PC in January

 

According to Steam, Rise of the Tomb Raider will be available on the PC sometime in January.

Although this isn't an official release date, it does correspond with previous reports. Back in July, Square-Enix announced that the game would be released on PC in early 2016. Two weeks ago, a listing on Amazon France had the game set for release on January 29, 2016. The Baba Yaga DLC is also set to come out in January, which would coincide perfectly with a PC release date for that month.

Given all of this information, it's safe to assume the game will indeed be released on PC in January, though we don't have an exact day for its release yet.

Rise of the Tomb Raider was announced during Microsoft's Gamescom briefing in 2014 as a "2015 holiday exclusive" for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, though some were confused as to whether or not the game would be coming to other platforms. Shortly afterwards, Microsoft head Phil Spencer clarified that the game was in fact a timed exclusive, which meant that it would eventually be released on other platforms in the future.

In addition to revealing the PC launch window, Square-Enix also announced that the game would come to Sony's PlayStation 4 console sometime during the 2016 holiday season.

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The 10 most technically impressive games of 2015

After a series of severe disappointments last year, we were worried that the game industry was stuck in a major rut. But much to our delight, 2015 turned out to be an incredible year for video games. From the viewpoints of creativity and mechanics, we saw tiny indie studios and massive AAA devs deliver the goods over and over again.
My personal top ten list this year ranges wildly from a British FMV mystery to a completely bonkers creation suite out of Nintendo, but that’s not what we’re here to discuss. Today, let’s give credit to ten of the most technically impressive games of the year. For just a moment, let’s take story and gameplay mechanics out of the mix, and focus on what game developers were able to accomplish from a technical standpoint.
Keep in mind, this list isn’t designed to count frames and enumerate polygons. We’re highlighting technical accomplishments here, but there is inherent subjectivity in the list. And since this article would be outrageously long if we mentioned every impressive release, there isn’t even room for some personal favorites of my own like Yoshi’s Woolly World and Just Cause 3. By all means, feel free to call out your highlights of the year in the comment section. With all of that out of the way, let’s jump in.

Ori and the Blind Forest

When you think about technically impressive games, it’s easy to forget about the 2D releases. Typical big budget 3D worlds are definitely flashier, but that shouldn’t overshadow what Moon Studios was able to achieve here. The quality of the art is undeniable, but the technical chops of this dev studio is what really turns this download-only game into something of a marvel.

The sheer elegance of the character animation and lighting elevates Ori and the Blind Forest to a higher plane. There are countless stylish side-scrollers on the market, but Moon Studios provides a level of excellence here that is only matched by the likes of Ubisoft Montpellier and Nintendo. Even though the Metroidvania genre holds little personal interest, I just can’t stop looking at this game in motion.

• Platforms: Windows, Xbox One
• Buy on Amazon

Until Dawn

What L.A. Noire was to film noir, Until Dawn is to teen slasher flicks. It’s dumb, over-the-top, and cringe-inducing at times, but it’s just so much fun to play and watch. But truth be told, what makes this B-movie game work so well is how the developers at Supermassive Games nail the slasher aesthetic in every way imaginable.
Until Dawn has numerous problems — especially in the frame rate department. But the game wouldn’t work at all if the dramatic lighting and the facial capture weren’t so superb. The underlying tech here serves the storytelling in a major way, and that’s why it deserves a spot on this list.

• Platform: PlayStation 4
• Buy on Amazon

Xenoblade Chronicles X

In most ways, the Wii U is a last-gen console. It simply doesn’t have the same kind of horsepower as a PS4 and Xbox One, so the fact that Monolith Soft was able to deliver such an incredible open world RPG on this underpowered hardware is impressive in and of itself.
That’s not to say that Xenoblade Chronicles X is only impressive “for a Wii U game,” though. It’s legitimately spectacular regardless of platform. Obviously, better hardware would make for a higher resolution and more polygons, but the product as it exists is kind of mind boggling in terms of scope and scale.

• Platform: Wii U
• Buy on Amazon

Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture

As a follow up to Dear Esther, Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture doesn’t possess the same level of novelty and unsettling atmosphere as its predecessor. However, it does one-up Dear Esther in one vital aspect: the fidelity of the environment. Set in a lovingly rendered fictional village, the folks over at The Chinese Room expertly showcase both the sweet and creepy aspects of the English countryside.
While it falls short of photorealism on the whole, the outdoor environments come pretty damn close on multiple occasions. And even with the added development resources from Sony Santa Monica on this project, it’s impressive that a relatively small indie studio can deliver one of the best looking games of the year.

• Platform: PlayStation 4
• Buy on Amazon

Halo 5: Guardians

The concessions that 343 Industries made to allow Halo 5: Guardians to run at 60 frames per second were substantial. Not only was local co-op axed, but some aspects of the graphical fidelity suffered as well. But now that I’ve had some time to consider the final result, I think 343 made the right decision. 60fps Halo looks incredible, and helps to make the experience tighter than ever.
Obviously, it would be preferable if there weren’t any sacrifices made, but that’s just not possible on the Xbox One. If we ever get to see a PC port of Halo 5: Guardians, there’s no doubt in my mind that it will be one of the best looking shooters ever released.

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Drake will now help make your app designs bling with this Sketch plugin

Popular Design tool Sketch can now make your app designs bling.
A new plugin will automatically pull images of Drake that you can plug into your apps. If you want, it’ll even snag lyrics for you. Here’s how it’s done:


There are plenty of plugins for Sketch that do things like pull sunsets or other boring imagery into your app as a placeholder, but not many that are as fun and cheeky as this.
If you want to go from zero to 100 real quick on putting Drake into your wireframe, the plugin can be downloaded from GitHub.

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Why is it called Windows 10 and not Windows 9?

 

 Windows 10 is finally here — and it’s been a long and winding road. Let’s step back for a moment and address one of the most confusing things about the latest ersion of Windows. When Microsoft announced its newest operating system last year, the surprise was not that it was coming, but that Windows would be skipping version 9 and heading straight to 10. When asked about Windows 10’s name, Microsoft never really gave a clear answer. So why, exactly, did Windows 10 get the nod instead of 9?

Version numbers, schmersion numbers

You may remember that between Windows 3 and Windows 7, Microsoft designated each version with a name instead of a number: 95, 98, NT, Me, 2000, Vista, and so on. When the company announced Windows 7, there was actually a similar amount of disbelief; after a series of named versions of Windows, it seemed odd to switch back to numbers.

Windows 8.1: Actually version 6.3, build 9600.

There’s also the fact that the name of each Windows release doesn’t actually match the real version number. For example, Windows 8.1 is actually version 6.3 of Windows. Windows 10 is version 6.4. The last time the release name actually matched the version number was the enterprise-focused Windows NT 4.0, which was released back in 1996. Windows 2000, which was called NT 5.0 during development, was actually version 5.0. Windows XP was version 5.1. Windows Vista was 6.0, Windows 7 was 6.1, Windows 8 was 6.2, and Windows 8.1 is version 6.3.
Windows RT, which only ran Metro apps, was a new and separate beast, but it still sat on top of the core Windows NT kernel. That one is dead now.
Modern versions of Windows are still based on the Vista kernel and code base — including Windows 10, which is actually Windows 6.4. There will be some confusion if (or when) we eventually reach internal version 7.0, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

Alternative theories for skipping Windows 9

An ExtremeTech reader called Benny sent us an email to say that the number 9 is considered unlucky in Japan. Microsoft has a big enough presence in Japan that it may have skipped Windows 9 to avoid any weirdness or ill will. Benny says that Trend Micro — a Japanese company — did the same thing a few years ago when it skipped version 9 of its antivirus software.
Second, someone purporting to be a Microsoft developer posted this comment on Reddit:

As insane as that hack sounds, it’s feasible that there are still plenty of legacy Desktop apps that use this method (or something similar) to check for Windows 95 or 98. Bear in mind that this is just an example piece of code — some developers will check for the OS name (“Windows…”), some will check for the version number (as discussed in the previous section of this story), and some may use other methods entirely to find out what OS the app is running on.

What’s in a name?

Ultimately, Windows 10 is just a name. Windows 9 probably would’ve made more sense — and it’s always going to cause some grief with novice users who just don’t understand what happened to Windows 9. But Windows 10 isn’t any more right or wrong than calling Vista’s successor Windows 7.

Why Windows 10 wasn’t called Windows One: “It has been done before” (by Bill Gates)

Perhaps a better question to ask is why did Microsoft call it Windows 10 specifically, and not something else? During the launch event (video embedded above) Myerson gives us a few clues. Starting at around the 2:10 mark, he said the following: “We know, based on the product that’s coming, and just how different our approach will be overall, it wouldn’t be right to call it Windows 9.” He then talks about how Windows One would make sense with Xbox One, OneDrive, and OneNote, “but unfortunately Windows 1 has been done by the giants that came before us.” And so it seems the only other viable option was Windows 10.

Microsoft’s seemingly arbitrary naming convention of Windows 10 is an interesting one. It’s a strong-sounding version number — and it’s also a neat way of distancing it from Windows 8, which Microsoft really wants to bury in the living room couch cushions when no one is looking. In fact, this may even be the same trick that Microsoft used to make us forget about Vista: “Hey, with a name like Windows 7, it must be very different from Vista.”

Apple’s OS X has been OS X for 14 years now — and shows no sign of being retired

What about any similarity to Apple’s Mac OS X? Apple did a similar thing, after all: Its operating system versions steadily increased from System 1 through 7, then switched to Mac OS 8 and 9, and when it got to OS 10 (X) in 2001, it stopped altogether. We don’t think Microsoft is intentionally copying Apple with Windows 10. But the marketing department has to be aware of both the positive and negative repercussions of wanting to ride on Apple’s coattails.
Finally, given how Windows 10 is meant to be a single platform for just about every form factor, plus the massive weight and importance that Microsoft is lending to this release, we wouldn’t be surprised if it sticks around for a long time — and Microsoft has made noises indicating it wants to move to an ongoing, evolving OS without specific version numbers.
So that’s it: Windows 10 is called Windows 10 because Microsoft says so — even if “Windows” or “Windows X” would’ve been better. Check out our continuing Windows 10 coverage for more information.

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Why AI still sucks in video games — and how DirectX 12 could change it for the better

 

 One of the most common user complaints about gaming is the AI. It’s been this way for decades, which doesn’t seem to make sense — computers today are vastly more powerful than systems built 30 years ago. We recently sat down with Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock and the author of the AI in Galactic Civilizations II about this problem — and how DirectX 12 and improved multi-threading support offer hope of improvement.
The underpinnings of RPG AI emerged relatively quickly. Games like Ultima IV (1985) offered comprehensive conversation trees that allowed players to query NPCs (non-player characters) on specific topics. A major part of Ultima IV’s gameplay involve traveling the world and learning from its various denizens. The approach feels deep, even today, despite the fact that U4 shipped on two double-sided floppy disks.

We had day/night cycles when these graphics were cutting-edge

Ultima V (1988) added a day / night cycle, which means that two of the fundamental building blocks of RPG gaming — robust NPC conversations and realistic life cycles — were shipping nearly 30 years ago, in games of less than 1MB. That doesn’t mean we’ve made no improvements since, but according to Wardell, AI has actually become worse in some respects. There are several interlocking reasons why this is the case.

Scale, cost, and complexity

The first problem, Wardell explained, is that good AI doesn’t really sell games. Gamers may value good AI, but it’s not the determining factor in whether people buy a title. At the same time, AI is now tightly coupled to graphics and must be communicated visually. It’s no longer enough to tell the player, “The shopkeeper looks frightened,” as players want to see that the shopkeeper is frightened.

Yes, this guard is attempting to arrest a fish

Virtually all of what we call AI in games relies on scripted sequences, either hand-written or procedurally generated. Bethesda’s Radiant AI, for example, uses procedurally generated scripts to create goals and tasks for NPCs, then allows them to determine how best to fulfill their needs. The company famously had to tone down how the system functioned in The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion after it became clear its original approach produced unintended consequences. In one case, NPCs addicted to a drug called skooma would buy the drug until they ran out of money, then kill the dealer and steal his supply. Players would arrive to talk to the dealer as part of a quest chain, and find he was already dead.

Multithreading and the AI-vs-graphics tug of war

Unlike graphics workloads, which can be easily parallelized and scale well, artificial intelligence processing is difficult to multithread. The job-based systems that many games use for multithreading don’t tend to work well for AI processing, Wardell explained, because the AI is constantly asking questions and must receive immediate answers. Job-based systems are designed to launch and process workloads, not facilitate constant communication between the job and the host CPU.
To understand this better, consider interactions between the player and an NPC shop owner. Bethesda games typically offer you the option to steal goods without penalty, provided no one else sees you doing it. This means the game is constantly calculating the shopkeeper’s line of sight. If you’re trying to sneak around a camp full of bandits, the AI is checking to see how much noise you made and whether the bandits heard it. In both cases, the AI is asking a question and receiving an answer many times a second.
A critical part of the reason why AI doesn’t seem to have advanced much, even though computers today are orders of magnitude more powerful than their predecessors, is because the overwhelming majority of that compute capability has been devoted to making games prettier, not smarter.

Dogmeat in FO3 vs. FO4. He responds to your actions and emotes various states in Fallout 4

Because AI actions and reactions are synched to graphics, AI workloads need to be completed in time for an NPC to react to what’s going on in the world around them. That means AI processing needs to happen within a 10-20ms timeframe — and since AI workloads don’t thread well, the AI is probably running on a CPU core that’s also handling other tasks. Most games display more than one NPC at a time, so all of their collective AI calculations must be handled simultaneously.

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Best Mac Apps

Buying a MacBook is like getting a ticket to a land of fantastic new software. In addition to all the free apps that Apple gives to every buyer, both the Mac App Store and independent developers provide tools that make using your computer easier — and a little more fun. Our updated, must-have list includes an app that remembers your passwords, apps to keep track of your notes and to-dos, and apps to follow your package deliveries.

1Password

1Password to rule them all: Given how many accounts we have, it's getting harder to keep these username and password combos straight, let alone differentiated (you are using a different password for every account, right?). AgileBits' secure app lets you keep all of your passwords in one place, so you can create a single master login password with the maximum security. The app lets you store credit card information to auto-fill forms, and it keeps track of your security questions for different sites. You get Dropbox and iCloud syncing support, and for a few extra bucks, mobile apps to take your passwords on the go.

From $49.99

Evernote

This Retina display-optimized app provides a front face for accessing Evernote's popular note-taking and storage service. While the app's design lacks some finesse, it does simplify note-taking, capturing quick tasks and saving documents as Web pages. The process of searching through notes is now simplified, so all you need to do is tell it what you want in plain language — for instance, you can tell the app you want to search for "notes with PDF." All of this info is then synced to the cloud, so all of your devices have access to the same data. Step up to the premium version to add annotations and markup ($45 per year). If you're stuck in the Microsoft camp, the company's OneNote software offers similar functionality, also for free.

From $0.00

Clear

Task management apps are a dime a dozen these days, but few match the sheer simplicity of Realmac's Clear. There's not a million options to get lost in; you start it, type in your tasks and swipe them away as you complete them. Clear lets you rearrange them in order of importance — indicated by that handy red-yellow gradient — and set due dates for time-specific tasks. iCloud syncing, as well as iPhone and iPad apps, give you the same easy access on the go.

From $4.99

Fantastical

Flexibits, the developer of Fantastical, calls the app "the Mac calendar you'll actually enjoy using," and darned if it isn't right. In a lot of ways, this calendar replacement reminds us of Siri. For instance, you don't click specific days and times to set appointments. Instead, you just type your sentence in plain English, and the program figures out what you're trying to schedule. Fantastical can work with Calendar, iCal, BusyCal, Entourage or Outlook. While Fantastical's functionality somewhat overlaps with that of Clear, we preferred Clear for simple daily tasks, and Fantastical as a robust appointment system.

From $4.99

Caffeine

If you find yourself needing to leave your Mac's screen on for an extended period of time, but you're tired of messing with your screensaver or turn-off-display options, then you need some Caffeine. This tiny little app runs in OS X's menu bar (and can even start automatically when the operating system launches). Tap the coffee icon to "fill" the cup, and your Mac's screen will stay on indefinitely — no screensaver, no dimming, no turning off. When you're done, tap the icon again to flip back to your normal display settings.

From $0.00

Chrome Remote Desktop

We've messed around with a lot of VNC services, and Google's Chrome Remote Desktop is the best and easiest tool for accessing your computer from afar. If you're sitting at work and need to do something on your home desktop or laptop — assuming its on — then Chrome Remote Desktop makes it very, very easy to interact with your remote system as if you were sitting right in front of it. You don't have to memorize your home system's IP address or any of that; a simple PIN authentication is all you need to gain access to your remote system's mouse, keyboard and desktop.

From $0.00

Keypad

You can now make and receive phone calls via OS X. However, you don't have a great keypad in the operating system with which to do that. While you don't really need one, assuming you're calling your contacts, having some kind of keypad makes it super-easy to call everyone else's numbers. This $1 app drops a little keypad on your screen that you'd use just like the keypad on your iPhone. You can click on the numbers, copy and paste them in, or just start typing the name of the person in your contacts list who you want to reach.

From $0.99

Deliveries

If you're a big online shopper, you know that tracking deliveries can be a bit of a mess. How are you supposed to know when you need to be home to collect certain packages? The $5 Deliveries app tracks shipments from a number of different services (including Amazon and Apple itself, as well as FedEx, UPS and the USPS). 

From $4.99

Handbrake

If you're a big video connoisseur, or if you're always finding that you have to convert your videos to make them playable (or streamable) to all of your devices, then you're going to want Handbrake on your Mac, pronto. This is one of the best OS X apps for video conversion, period. It's detailed enough to give power users plenty of options to play with, but it's also simple enough in its core functionality that even newbies will be able to figure out how to convert a video file from one type to another. Best of all, it's completely free.

From $0.00

Dropbox

We'd be surprised if you haven't heard of this super-popular cloud storage service. Here's the gist: Install Dropbox, and you'll get a free 2GB of cloud storage to play with. The app dumps a simple Dropbox folder onto your Mac, and anything you drag into there will be synchronized with the cloud. You can head over to Dropbox's website to access these files remotely (or download them to a separate device manually). Or, if you have multiple computers, anything in your Dropbox folder will be synchronized across all the other systems the app runs on. It's as easy as that — and cross-platform, too.

From $0.00

VLC media player (Free)

VLC media player is a powerful media playback app from the nonprofit VideoLAN group. Resolutely open source, the team has ported VLC to OS X, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS and more. What sets this media player apart is its ability to play — or stream — almost any non-DRM file you throw at it, all without requiring the installation of various codec packages. Have an old audio file, camera footage or other piece of arcane media? VLC can get the job done.

From $0.00

Mailbox

If you still don't like the thought of switching to all Web-based email, then you should give Mailbox a try. This handy little app, created by Dropbox, is currently in beta for OS X. We love its accessibility and simplicity. It's easy to archive or delete incoming messages, and it's even easier to have the app remind you to follow-up with particular messages whenever you need the friendly nudge. The app synchronizes perfectly with its iOS or Android variant, and it works with both Gmail and iCloud accounts.

From $0.00

AppCleaner

Sometimes, downloaded applications dump stuff all over your hard drive, and the standard uninstallation routine (deleting the apps out of your Finder) doesn't get rid of all the extra stuff that came with them. Install AppCleaner and it'll find these extra bits of data and delete them for you. When you want to uninstall an application, just pull up AppCleaner first, then drag the application you're removing into the AppCleaner window. It's as easy as that. AppCleaner finds any and all related files, and it'll give you a prompt to delete them when it's done searching.

From $0.00

BetterTouchTool

For absolutely nothing, BetterTouchTool enhances your Mac desktop or MacBook laptop with two powerful features. First, you can greatly customize gestures and apply them to various actions on your laptop. So, if you want to open up your favorite game by spelling the first letter of its name with your finger, you can do so. You can even trigger multiple actions in a sequence, so tapping a certain way can start a chain reaction of actions on your system. Cough up $2, and you'll even be able to use your iOS device as a remote for your computer.

From $0.00

Spectacle

If you're more productive keeping your hands on your keyboard at all times, then you need a quick and convenient way to move the windows around your desktop or laptop screen. Spectacle lets you shoot your open windows around your desktop (or to other monitors) using simple keyboard shortcuts. You can send the windows to pre-defined areas, like the four quadrants of your main screen or your screen's horizontal or vertical thirds. You can also shrink and expand windows as you see fit, all without touching your trackpad or mouse.

From $0.00

Bartender 2

If you have just a few applications installed, you're probably already feeling a bit overwhelmed. Take one glance at your Mac's menu bar, and it probably looks like a smorgasbord of icons. Yuck. Bartender helps you fix that by giving you a lot more control over this otherwise hands-off area of OS X. Though this app is expensive, it's worth every penny: You can take a bunch of the icons on your menu bar and hide them under a single icon, which keeps the top of your screen clutter-free (until you need to access those apps for something). If you have some must-use icons, keep them on your menu bar; hide everything else for less of a visual headache.

From $15.00

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