So the latest major update to Windows 10 has arrived.
It's 21H2, so 2021 second half.
And you can get it optionally right now if you go into the Windows Update settings.
And it should be there as an option to download and install, or it will
be rolled out automatically at some point, probably over the next couple
of weeks or so.
But I think Microsoft has accelerated that.
Now, even though this is a "major" update technically, which happens about
every six months as a feature update.
This one doesn't really have as many as you may have come to expect, especially
in the Fall, mostly because a lot of the features that were meant to go
into Windows 10 21H2, you may remember this was going to be
called the Sun Valley update.
Those just ended up in Windows 11 and they didn't really get added into this
update for Windows 10 unfortunately.
That being said, there were obviously changes where we can go over them, which
ones the biggest are, even though a lot
of them are kind of behind the scenes still worth talking about.
Now, first of all, the first big change doesn't really have to do
with the operating system itself, but rather the update cadence.
Now, I actually thought that with the release of Windows 11, that Windows
10 would stop getting feature updates
after this one, it would be the last one, but that's not actually the case.
It turns out that Windows 10 will still be getting feature updates, just not
every six months, but once a year.
Which will also be the same cadence as Windows 11.
So it kind of is because, every six months the updates weren't
that big, so they probably figure.
"Eh why not just once a year release a slightly bigger one".
So that's actually kind of a nice surprise if you still are
going to be using Windows 10.
They're not going to be completely neglecting it.
Of course, some of the best features that they add might only be going into Windows
11, but still you might get something.
And specifically, Windows 10 support will extend until October 14th, 2025.
Anyway, let's get into the actual big changes and updates to the operating
system itself in this update.
So the first one is a new Microsoft Store.
You may know that as part of Windows 11, Microsoft redesigned the Microsoft
Store, which is basically the Windows Store with apps and stuff.
Now, technically if you're splitting hairs, this isn't
exactly part of the 21H2 update.
However, it is starting to roll out at the same time as it.
So even though you might not get the exact same time, they're rolling
out at the same time, so I'm still going to consider part of it.
I actually do think that the new Microsoft Store does look nice.
You can see here the general layout.
Now mine is a little bit glitched right now, probably because I'm in
the preview channel, but it's not showing all the images, but you
can still get a general idea of the layout here and look up some pictures.
I can put here of what it's supposed to look like.
And also another big change that is supposed to be coming with this new
Microsoft Store eventually, is actually it will support not just Universal
Windows Platform apps, but also Win32, you know, regular kind of programs.
So you might start seeing a lot of your favorite apps showing up on the Microsoft
Store that weren't available before.
Though apparently for some reason, the Microsoft Store won't be allowing Win32
apps to be automatically updated through the Microsoft Store, which kind of would
be, I think, the biggest draw for it.
But maybe they'll add that later or it's not compatible.
Maybe in Windows 11, they'll do it.
I don't know, we'll see.
Now the rest of the main changes in this update are more behind the scenes things,
so I won't be able to show you much, but hopefully I can still describe it.
One of these is that Windows 10 will now support the WPA3 "Hash
to Element" protocol for Wi-Fi.
So you may know WPA2 is the security protocol where, you type
a password to encrypt your Wi-Fi.
And then there's now the WPA3, which is not super universally supported,
it's still rolling out.
And then now it also got an update to WPA3 called H2E, Hash to Element.
Which basically just adds some security against certain types of attacks.
So if you're using WPA3, it should be more secure.
Next, the Microsoft Blog said there were security updates for the following.
They weren't specific on what these are, but it's for Windows AI
platform, Windows app platform and frameworks, Windows apps, Windows
Cryptography, Windows Fundamentals, Windows Input and Composition, Windows
Kernel, Windows Media, Windows Office Media and Windows virtualization.
So security updates across the board, it seems like.
Also they added GPU compute support in the Windows Subsystem for Linux and
Azure IoT Edge for Linux on Windows deployments for machine learning and
other compute intensive workflows.
Not sure I fully understand that myself, but I know that Linux is popular
for machine learning tasks and now a
lot of that apparently will be also supported in the Windows Subsystem for
Linux, or at least improved so, for using GPUs for calculations and stuff, I guess.
And the rest of these changes are mostly enterprise level stuff,
but I'll still talk about them.
So what they say is Windows Hello for Business introduces a new
deployment method called Cloud Trust to support simplified password list
deployments and achieve a deploy to run state within a few minutes.
Now, I again had no idea what that means, but I did look it up,
and someone on Reddit basically described it as just an improved
way of handling a certain type of authentication protocol called
FIDO I know there's the one FIDO U2F which are security keys.
Not sure if that's exactly related to this.
But apparently whenever this authentication method is, it's
going to be a lot faster instead of potentially being hours before.
Now here's a change that might actually be relevant to you.
They say that Universal Print now supports print jobs of up to one
gigabyte or a series of print jobs from an individual user that add up to one
gigabyte within any 15 minute period. Now again that does
Apply to enterprise level systems, but if your work does use windows,
Enterprise products and Universal Print specifically, then it might be easier
to print massive, large documents now.
And another enterprise level update that seems actually significant,
if you are going to use this, is that the Mobile Device Management
system now has over 1,400 settings that were previously not accessible.
So if your IT department uses Mobile Device Management, then apparently
they have a lot more to work with now.
Now those are all features that were added, but there is actually one feature
that was removed, which is syncing the Timeline feature across devices.
I've never actually really used the Timeline feature, let alone
syncing it across devices.
The Timeline feature is still there, but apparently now it
won't sync across devices.
So that's just the thing.
And also some notable things that were not added, apparently.
One is DNS over HTTPS.
This is a really disappointing one because this is one that was actually
in a lot of preview builds, which basically would allow native windows to
support encrypted DNS queries, which is kind of important I think for security.
A lot of web browsers already support it, and I did make a video talking
about how to enable it in web browsers.
But it would have been nice to have Windows natively
support it for all requests.
But they didn't even add that, apparently.
That's really disappointing.
I believe it was added to Windows 11, but apparently it just didn't make it into
Windows 10, even though it's supposed to.
And the final one, which I'm not really sure if it was added because
they weren't clear yet, is TLS 1.3.
That's the latest version of TLS, which is an encryption protocol, which if you
see HTTPS in the browser, that's TLS.
It's basically the successor to SSL, which you might know.
Anyway TLS 1.3 was supposed to be added in 21H2, but they haven't
updated the table that shows it, and they have not mentioned it anywhere.
So I'm assuming it wasn't added.
And actually, most web browsers already have it built in.
So just because Windows natively doesn't support it, the individual software might.
Still, again, it would have been nice to have latest version, but it's not
really going to affect many things.
So anyway, that's kind of it.
Yeah, not exactly a "major" major update, but a major update nonetheless.
And also, I always forget to mention, but if you guys want to become a channel
member, there's a couple of perk levels.
If you want to just help out for two bucks a month, you can get cool emojis
that are custom for the channel you can use in my comment section, as well
as a cool badge next to your name.
Or if you want to help out even more for five bucks a month, you can get
videos early as soon as I finish them.
Usually the day before at least, or if you want to subscribe and you haven't already.
Also, be sure to click the bell next to the Subscribe button and enable
all notifications because I only post about twice a week tops, so
you don't want those getting lost in the rest of your subscriptions.
Now, if you guys want to keep watching, the next video I'd recommend is the one
I mentioned earlier talking about how
to enable HTTPS Over DNS, or encrypted DNS in your browser.
I go over a few different ways in different browsers over there.
So definitely check that out.
And thanks so much for watching guys.
I'll see you in the next video.