How's it going guys, by now everyone knows about Windows 11 coming out.
But what you might not have heard about is a now scrapped version of Windows,
which was known as Windows 10X.
And even if you have heard of it, like when I made a video talking about windows
10X back in November 2019, there is a lot more to the story because it
evolved quite a bit from that point after
it was initially announced.
In fact, what it was supposed to be changed a few times.
So that's what we're going to be talking about.
All the things windows 10X was supposed to be and how that changed
over time and what features did, and didn't make it into windows 10 and 11.
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Alright.
So like I said, when Windows 10 was first announced back in 2019, that was alongside
the announcement of Microsoft Surface Neo, which was a dual screen device
that still hasn't been released yet.
And at that time, this version of windows 10X was specifically being custom
designed for use on dual screen devices.
Therefore it had some unique features they showed off such as spanning where
one program could take advantage of both screens, not just by stretching
across them, but by actually showing different info on each, like your
list of emails on the left, then it would open one individual email on the
right, or if you're using a program on the left and open a link, it would
open the browser on the right, that sort of thing.
Also, it could go top to bottom and fold a keyboard onto the bottom screen,
but the OS would adapt the layout, so information was shown above the
keyboard and not just blocked by it.
The OS was also very simplified and lightweight with much less bloated
software compared to the full Windows 10.
This is also where we saw the new design of the start menu.
That's now in windows 11.
But then 2020 happened.
And in May 2020 Microsoft decided that with so much new demand, now and
probably going forward, for portable computers people could use while
working from home, that it made sense to expand the scope of windows 10X.
Now, instead of being for dual screen devices, Microsoft said in a blog
post, they would now "focus towards single screen Windows 10X devices
that leverage the power of the cloud".
Whatever that second part means.
You might be wondering if there's already Windows 10, then what's
the point of windows 10X?
Well, the main idea is that Windows 10X would be made as an extremely lightweight
and slim lined version of windows, sort of similar to Chrome OS on Chromebooks.
It was built right from Windows Core, which is well, the core of Windows
instead of being built on top of Windows 10 and all its bloat, so it
was like starting from the bare basics.
Only adding really essential stuff.
And it was reportedly even called Windows Lite OS internally for awhile.
To be clear, it wasn't meant to ever replace Windows 10, but be another
separate OS used on a subset of devices made specifically for it.
So it wouldn't even be for existing computers.
I think the reason Microsoft went this direction is because Chromebooks are
super popular in educational environments like schools, mostly because they are
very simple and easy to manage and lock down, when students use them.
And with a new pandemic that potentially means millions of people or schools
are going to need affordable devices to work from home, it probably made sense.
Some features of this evolution of Windows 10X included seamless updates that were
invisible and done in the background and didn't require interruptions,
and a totally remade File Explorer
that was again, simplified.
And supposedly while they were focusing on single screen devices,
it still would work for dual screen.
And actually we can see for ourselves because Microsoft released an emulator
preview of Windows 10X that is still available on the Microsoft store.
If you download the Microsoft Emulator app and then the Windows 10
X Emulator image to run on it, you can still try out what 10X would
have looked like in a virtual machine.
As you can see, this one only seems to allow a dual screen device.
So I'm not sure when during the development this occurred, but
it's obviously extremely bare bones compared to regular Windows 10 and
more akin to something like iOS.
Poking around, we can see it doesn't seem to have any kind of desktop icons.
Instead, you just launch everything through the start menu, which
made it's way into Windows 11.
It looks like here, all apps you installed would show up in the start menu, similar
to how iOS and iPad OS, you used to just have every installed app on home screen.
The File Explorer looks way different than Windows 10 and even Windows 11.
This is clearly unique to 10X.
It's not even obvious if you can access the rest of the hard drive besides
just the different library folders.
It's extremely basic.
Of course, who knows what might've been added if they had finished it.
But finally it looking at the action center, it looks a lot
closer to the new one in Windows 11.
So obviously that was migrated over as well, at least in part.
So obviously with this version of windows, 10X being so simplified,
it's not something most people would want to run on their main computer,
but that wasn't its purpose anyway.
I think on the right device, where you just want a super basic affordable,
dead simple computer for basic productivity stuff like email, web
browsing and some word processing,
it could probably be good.
Assuming you have your expectations set right on what
the computer would be capable.
For a while after this, though, we still didn't hear too much about Windows 10X.
Though it was rumored to be released sometime in early 2021.
Instead around May 2021, there was talk that some evidence that at least
a few features from Windows 10X were being added to regular Windows 10 and
some even started to appear in certain preview builds of Windows 10, this
included parts of the action center, like
how they added a grabby handle instead of taking up the whole side of the screen.
And those builds also had rounded corners in certain places like windows
and menus, again which were used in Windows 10X though, at this point,
it was still assumed that Windows 10 X was still being worked on though,
apparently more on the back burner,
and they were just adding some of the features from it, because why not?
However, on May 18th, 2021, a blog post by Microsoft revealed that
Windows 10X was indeed fully canceled.
It said that the technology they developed for Windows 10X was useful
beyond just what they originally envisioned and would be rolling
many of the features directly into Windows 10.
Some specific features they mentioned were app container technology for use in
Microsoft defender, enhanced voice typing, and more modernized touch keyboard.
Also for a while, and even right up to the announcement of Windows 11, there
was a ton of talk about a massive update to Windows, 10 code named Sun Valley,
you might've heard of it.
This was apparently going to be the 21H2 (2021 second half) feature update
to Windows 10 and would include many new features, including a UI redesign.
So it made complete sense that a lot of these updates were a result of development
on Windows 10X and ported it over.
And though, while it's nice that regular desktop Windows would get all that stuff,
it's still sort of disappointing that there wouldn't be a super lightweight
version of Windows to expect anymore.
Now, of course, we also not too long ago, found out that actually
turns out that Windows 10 is sun valley update is actually an entire
new operating system, Windows 11.
There's are still apparently going to be a Windows 10 feature update 21H2
this year, but it's going to possibly be the last feature update for Windows 10.
And it's not even clear what features will be included, considering most of the ones
we were expecting, like the UI design, we're actually going to Windows 11.
I don't need to go into all the details about Windows 11 itself.
That's beyond the scope of this video, and I've already made videos about it,
but clearly a lot of features from 10X
did finally end up in Windows 11, like the look of the action center,
the start menu obviously, the rounded corners and arguably just
the general feel of it overall.
So at the end of the day, Windows 10X, wasn't just one thing, but several things.
First, it was meant as a super lightweight and specialized OS
just for dual screen devices.
Then it was expanded to still be super lightweight, but for single screen
devices as well though, those devices would still be specifically designed
with Windows 10X in mind.
And finally, microsoft decided to just scrap it and just use the best bits and
pieces in Windows 10 and Windows 11.
So while Windows 10X itself is dead, many parts of it will live on.
Thanks again to Bitdefender for sponsoring this video.
Again, be sure to check out the link in the description to get a
super extended 120 day free trial of Bitdefender Total Security.
Now I want to hear what you guys think.
Would you have used a computer that ran a super simplified version of Windows 10X?
We can talk about that down in the comments.
Also be sure to like the video and subscribe, because I make
a couple of new videos a week.
And if you want to keep watching the next video I'd recommend is one
where I talk about the new Windows 365 cloud PC service from Microsoft.
You can just click that right here.
So thanks so much for watching guys and I'll see you in the next one..