Last year's Windows 10 release was unlike any Windows release I've ever used before, and I've used most of them.

Almost every Windows release to-date had a sort of unfinished vibe that reflected the product's history. Parts of the operating system developed long ago have almost fossilized, being preserved verbatim in each subsequent release, which gives the entire operating system an overall incomplete feel.

Take Control Panel as an example. The oldest parts of Control Panel use dialogs for each group of settings, as this mouse window exemplifies. Those tabs are extensible by third parties. That SetPoint Settings tab, for example, launches Logitech's mouse app for configuring the various buttons on my Performance MX mouse. New systems to this very day continue to use this extensibility; most Windows laptops will have a tab to configure their touchpad.

















While this dialog has been massaged and slightly updated over the years, it is taking a form that is more than 20 years old—it debuted with Windows 95.

A new approach to settings was introduced in Windows XP, with the control panels directly embedded into an Explorer Window. (Windows 10 uses this, too.) And then Windows 8 introduced the settings app, with yet another style and presentation for settings.





Windows 10 had that same mishmash—again, it's unfortunately something you now expect when you use Windows. This only increased the feeling that it was a work in progress: glitchier, buggier, less polished than any previous release. The system wasn't blue-screening all the time or anything like that, but the Start menu didn't show all my programs. Every browser I used crashed from time to time, and Edge crashed a little too frequently to be acceptable. Even the Store app would crash.

While I liked it, and the operating system certainly wasn't unusable, I felt that for many people it was too early to get on board. Waiting for the first update was a safer bet. With a steady stream of app updates and then the larger November Update, Windows 10 got better. Not only did the bugs start to go away, but the overall consistency of the operating system started to improve. Rough parts of the interface were polished. Windows 10 began feeling not just like a production-ready operating system, but like Microsoft was finally taking steps to make Windows feel like one operating system and not several.

Community feedback

The Anniversary Update, Windows 10 version 1607 (16 for 2016, 07 for July, when it was finalized) is the first "major" update to Windows 10 since its release. While the November Update added refinements, the Anniversary Update adds entirely new features. Important and oft-neglected parts of the core operating system have received attention, and valuable new capabilities have been added for developers. I'll focus on the new and updated aspects that the Anniversary Update offers, but much of the heart of Windows 10 remains the same from our review last year.

This is the first release driven by substantial feedback from Microsoft's "Insider" preview program. The company has released some 25 preview versions of the Anniversary Update, and the company says it has made more than 5,000 "enhancements" as a result of Insider feedback. "Enhancement" is undefined, and with a number that high almost all of the "enhancements" are likely to be the most minor of bug fixes. The company does point at some larger features that it says it owes to insiders: the work done to the Start menu, Action Center, and Taskbar was all shaped by Insider feedback. Insider responses also caused Microsoft to reject a new and really rather ugly Explorer icon.

In making these claims about the Insider program, Microsoft is deliberately creating more distance between the way Windows 10 is being developed and way Windows 8 was developed. Windows 8 generated complaints for the duration of its beta period; its approach to handling the different input modes that it supported (touch, mouse, pen) was too jarring and disjointed, and elements of its interface, in particular the way certain features were activated by putting the mouse cursor in the corner of the screen, were far too obscure and awkward to use.

Thus far, at least, the feedback seems to have made for a better product. But this kind of user-driven development has risks. Windows 8 may have been flawed, but it was also extraordinarily bold. The edge-based user interface, using swipes from the sides of the screen to bring up a system-wide menu or switch between tasks, was highly effective on touch machines. Windows 10, even on tablets, reverts to a more Taskbar-like arrangement. And just as I complained at the operating system's release, I don't think it's as good. Did Windows 8 need substantial work to make it more amenable to mouse and keyboard? Absolutely. But did that mean compromising on the really very effective edge-driven interface when used as a tablet? I don't think so.

An operating system that's guided heavily by user feedback is always going to tend to be more conservative than an operating system that's driven by a small design team. That's the nature of trying to please 7 million Insiders all at once; there'll be pushback against bold new ideas even if those ideas are sound. Winding the clock back and making Windows 10 work more like Windows 7 was always going to be the easiest option to get people on board, but I think it was an overreaction. More thought should have been given to ensuring that the parts of Windows 8 that worked well—especially in its tablet interface—were preserved.

Going forward, I hope Microsoft has the courage to continue to be bold. Use feedback to refine and enhance that vision, sure, but the company must not let the Windows 8 experience leave it gun-shy and afraid to try significant new things.