Windows 10 is ten years old and it had some of the best and worst ideas ever

The fact that I’m writing my homage to Windows 10 on a MacBook Air speaks something about how well I’m getting along with Windows. Nevertheless, in the past, Windows 10 was a generally good version of Microsoft’s well-known platform and served as a demonstration of one of the company’s most ambitious projects, Cortana.

I spent decades studying every version of Windows, from 3.1 to 11, since Microsoft and Windows were my thing. However, Windows 10 was unique. It made numerous corrections while experimenting with a pretty large digital assistant and other things.

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However, as we commemorate the tenth anniversary of Windows 10, the threat of its demise looms in October. At that point, Microsoft will formally discontinue support for Windows 10. It was by far Microsoft’s most widely used version of Windows until recently. The strict TPM 2.0 security standards that many brand-new PCs could not meet hindered the adoption of Windows 11, but in recent months, the number of Windows 11 installations has risen to nearly equal that of Windows 10.

Some of the best stuff

One of the updates that brought striking new furniture without completely renovating the house was Windows 10. Although the platform seemed familiar, I recall running into a number of novel concepts—some of which persisted, while others were abandoned by the time Windows 11 came out.

The much-maligned Internet Explorer was eventually pushed aside by Microsoft in favor of Microsoft Edge in this release. Because of its stability, quickness, and vertical tabs, it eventually became my favorite web browser. Despite using the same Web engine, Chromium, as Chrome, it nevertheless has a significantly smaller market share than Safari and Chrome.

Windows Hello, a biometric security mechanism so novel that the majority of PCs at the time did not fully support it, was launched in Windows 10. The face ID system was based on 3D scanning, which mapped a face using both normal and infrared cameras. Although later Surfaces would all come with Windows Hello pre-installed, even the Surface Pro 3 laptop I used to test Windows 10 in 2015 was unable to properly support it. I adored how simple it was to unlock my computer and how hard it was to trick.

Other useful components included the Xbox App, which brought the console’s profile management and other gaming functions to the Windows platform, and the Action Center, which happily replaced Charms in the style of Windows 8.

The Printer menu, Device Manager, File Manager, File Folders, and Recycle Bin stayed remarkably recognizable in Windows 10, as they do in the majority of the finest platform updates. Some could contend—as I did at the time—that Microsoft was still having trouble updating Windows in a meaningful way. The mysterious Registry was still in existence, after all. To know and love Windows, however, is to realize that it remains the most popular platform in the world. Millions of consumers could have their Windows broken by fundamental changes to the operating system, which could also make some of their trusted devices and systems incompatible. I’ve always valued Microsoft’s caution in keeping these important ties intact.

Not all the great ideas

Continuum, which could turn Windows into a touch-first interface for tablets like the Surface Pro, was one of the anomalies of Windows 8 that persisted in Windows 10. Although I am aware that no one uses a Surface computer without a keyboard, Microsoft consistently positioned the convertibles as just that—convertibles. They believed that the iPad and MacBook Air might be effectively rivaled by the Surface Pro. All Surface devices, whether or not they have detachable keyboards, ultimately face competition from conventional laptops. Nobody laments the loss of Continuum in Windows 11.

This leads us to Microsoft’s most ambitious Windows 10 concept, Cortana.

In terms of itself, cortana was nothing novel. After all, Microsoft based the digital voice assistant’s name and design on Master Chief’s useful (and sometimes lethal) AI companion from the company’s well-known Halo video game franchise.

Cortana took up valuable space next to the start button in Windows 10. It basically took the place of Search. You may speak with it and request that it handle certain system functions. In fact, it was somewhat conversational. It’s true that Microsoft had us communicating with our computers for years before ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini.

In 2015, I detailed an initial encounter with Cortana as follows:

“Cortana is able to be snarky and intelligent. She accurately understood my words when I instructed her to “turn on Bluetooth,” and since she had access to system-level capabilities, she informed me (in her Halo-esque Cortana voice) that she had done so. Additionally, Cortana properly deciphered my question, “Flights in Denver,” and opened a webpage with MSN Travel’s travel results. In response to my later question about whether or not she would marry me, she said, “Among a handful of challenges, I don’t think the Supreme Court would approve just yet.” What a card she is.

There are some things that never change.

Ironically, Bing’s large ChatGPT-powered AI glow-up signaled the end of the line for Cortana, but she was just as good at written questions as she was at spoken ones, and she could even start a Bing search for web-based searches. In 2023, Microsoft discontinued Cortana as a stand-alone software, about the same time it unveiled Bing AI, which was based on ChatGPT and later evolved into Copilot.

What Windows 11 got wrong

With its controversial, centered task bar, finally redesigned core app icons, and a deeply integrated Copilot that is riding the AI interest wave to a prominence Cortana could only imagine, Windows 11, which came out about six years after Windows 10, is undoubtedly a better version of Windows.

However, the old Windows big-tent strategy—support everyone, make everyone happy—was the antithesis of Microsoft’s insistence on mandating TPM 2.0 compliance when it knew that a large portion of customers possessed PCs without that. Just to be fair. Everyone benefits from increased security, but if Microsoft knew it was going to do that, it ought to have notified its customers five years in advance and partnered with Windows system partners to sell them all PCs that were TPM 2.0 ready.

I rejoice, yet I will eventually miss Windows 10. It serves as a link between the classic Windows that many of us grew up with and everything that the 21st century would bring. It demonstrated Microsoft’s willingness to experiment with bold concepts while remaining open to embracing all Windows PC owners. It never seemed that way with Windows 11, and now that everyone is moving on to Windows 11 and soon to Windows 12, it’s worth taking a final look at what may have been the greatest Windows ever or will be.