(electronic music)
- Hey everyone, Daniel Rubino here
and this is your Microsoft and Windows news roundup.
Let's get to it.
All right, first up Microsoft Paint, it's staying.
That may sound weird.
As many of you know, Microsoft Paint has been around for,
I believe something like 30 years.
I don't know it's been a very long time.
I personally use it every single day.
It's just a really good app.
And I only mention that because Microsoft was planning
to get rid of it, or rather, shovel it off to the store,
instead strip out all these legacy apps
and just keep them there for people who actually need it.
As it turns out that's probably not a good idea.
My guess is telemetry shows
a lot of people still use Microsoft Paint.
And Microsoft recently announced on Twitter
through Brandon LebLanc of the Insider Program
that indeed Microsoft is now going to keep it in Windows 10.
This brings up the whole thing with Paint 3D
which was supposed to sort of replace Microsoft Paint
and just never has.
That's not to say that Paint 3D isn't good.
It's a really nice app.
It's just not quite as, well,
basic and fun as Microsoft Paint.
But good news, it's staying in there
for the foreseeable future.
Microsoft has no plans now to remove it.
All right, next up is Windows Core OS.
We've been talking about this for almost two years now
and well you can finally kind of see it
in action a little bit.
As we mentioned HoloLens 2 was going
to ship with Windows Core OS.
In fact it's going to be one the first devices to have it.
And although we don't have HoloLens 2 yet,
it's due out later this summer,
you can now download the emulator for HoloLens 2
and, well, run your apps on it.
Our own senior Windows reporter, Zac Bowden,
did a walkthrough of what this looks like
on our channel here.
And you can go check it out.
In short, well it looks a lot like Windows Holographic
but there are some substantial UI changes.
These are only important to note
because we're gonna see a lot of these UI changes
coming to the rest of Windows devices in the coming future.
In fact, we expect at Build, Microsoft to detail more
of the fluent design system and updates there.
One of those changes is going to be
with the tabs and squares.
Basically we're not kind of squares anymore.
They'll be kind of rounded corners on them.
I know that seems trivial and all,
but this is UI design and that's what they do.
I actually like this look a lot.
You can even see it right now in the new
Edge Chromium browser that's out there with its tabs.
Anyway, go check out Zac's video.
He does a much better job of explaining this stuff.
Next up is gaming news, specifically gaming laptops.
April's been a very busy month for a lot of companies
to announce new laptops, including Acer, Asus, and Razer,
will announce the new 9th-generation core i7-9750 processor.
And we haven't really gotten our hands on it
so it's too early to say
what's the big deal here of this chip.
It is a little bit faster
with a clock speed of 4.5 gigahertz.
However, this is still the 14-nanometer chipset
that we've been using since Coffee Lake
in the 8th generation series
so doesn't seem to be a major revamp.
Now what we're all waiting on is those 10-nanometer chips
but as far as we know those are going to be for Ultrabooks,
that is the U-series chips due later this fall.
That's going to usher in a new era of ultra-thin laptops
and I've already seen some prototypes of these
and they do look promising.
But if you're looking for a 10-nanometer stuff,
well you have to wait a few more months.
All right, speaking of gaming news,
Microsoft has announced the Xbox E3 2019 presentation at E3.
So it's going to happen on June 9th,
that's a Sunday again, and yes,
we'll be there of course on hand to report everything live,
although you could just watch the stream at home
on your TV or Xbox, specifically.
So what are we expecting?
Microsoft should talk about
its next generation Xbox, of course.
Now I expect this to be the same ramp-up
that we had to Scorpio.
That is, they're not gonna show you the Xbox.
They're not gonna even name it.
They're just going to talk about
the next generation specifications, its chipset,
and what its going to be capable of.
Specifically, we expect them now to be able to hit 4K
and 60 frames per second for all games
versus just the few that can do it now.
So tune in on June 9th for Microsoft's news
on the next Xbox as well as new games
that are coming to the console.
Fingers crossed for Gears of War 4.
Next up, Microsoft recently announced the Surface Hub 2S.
In fact, they showed it in public.
We were here in New York City and got our hands on it
so make sure you go check out that video.
What's the big deal about this thing?
It costs $9,000, so you're not gonna get it for your home,
and if you are, leave me a comment below
'cause you're pretty awesome.
But this is gonna be a really important device
for a lot of businesses, enterprise, schools, engineers,
and anyone who needs a giant collaborative display.
Now, we got to see it in person
and try out the inking and pen
and the display is really phenomenal.
It's a matte display, it supports full 4K.
That means you can run four videos at the same time
in full HD in each of those corners
which is really ideal for teleconferencing.
It also rolls around on wheels now
and has a battery pack so it can last
for nearly two hours without being plugged in,
which makes this a very different experience
versus the previous version,
which you literally had to have people come in
and professionally install on your wall
and you never moved it again.
Moreover, it's one of the first modular computers
we've seen from Microsoft
so you can pull out the computer from the back
and it can be upgraded later on.
That makes that $9,000 investment quite nice.
The other news that was announced
was that there's going to be an 85-inch version coming
but not until 2020.
So that's gonna be a super expensive one
but it sure looks awesome.
Anyways, go check out
our hands-on video for more information.
Finally, the big news this week
was Sets is canceled from Microsoft.
If you don't know, Microsoft experimented last year
with this concept called Sets.
It was the idea of a tabbed experience
through the all the apps on Windows 10.
Insiders got to try it out.
It's based around the Edge browser.
That is, if you opened a new tab
it defaulted to the Edge homepage and allowed you to browse.
One of the more interesting aspects
of this was a Set Aside feature
where you could open up a bunch of apps
that have a bunch of windows
and then later save it as a project.
This is really awesome for people who do a lot of research
and you have a bunch of windows open.
You could save it locally, but I would sync to the cloud.
That means you could open it up on any PC later
to continue your work.
Now, as good as this experience was
a lot of people actually didn't like it
and Microsoft later pulled it.
Now the question is, is it coming back?
For a while, we heard it was gonna be coming
in Windows Lite OS, that is Microsoft's next generation
light computing operating system.
But now we're hearing that's not even the case.
Instead the team is focusing on Edge
and the Chromium experience.
In fact, once Microsoft announced
that they were switching to Chromium
this threw a wrench into the whole thing.
Since Sets is built off of Microsoft Edge experience,
if you're gonna swap out the browser,
well, you swap out the whole thing.
So they could refocus their efforts
and make it with Chromium and Edge
but that doesn't seem to be the case.
While conceptually the idea of Sets is really interesting
it seems like from feedback a lot of people
did not like the experience, or rather,
there were some problems around it.
That's not to say that Microsoft has dropped it completely,
they're still looking to bring it back in some form.
And perhaps later we will see in Windows Lite OS,
it's just not too clear.
Maybe we'll find out more at Build though
in the coming weeks so pay attention to that.
That happens in early May.
We'll be there of course to cover it
and we'll be sure to ask Microsoft.
All right, so that does it for this
Windows and Microsoft news roundup.
Now let me know below if you liked Sets
and you want to see Microsoft bring it back,
or you thought it was a bad idea.
If you want more information about this
make sure you tune in to our podcast every Friday
at 2:30 p.m., Eastern Time, on this channel,
as Zac Bowden and I talk about all these issues
and we take your questions as well.
Now if you like this video give us a thumbs up
and don't forget to subscribe.
Thanks for watching, take care everyone.
(electronic music)