At Build, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said he gave Windows 10 21H2, codenamed Sun Valley, a few test drives over the past few months, and he’s excited for the public to try out the latest version of Windows.
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“Soon we will share one of the most significant updates of Windows of the past decade, to unlock greater economic opportunity for developers and creators,” Nadella said. “I’ve been self-hosting it over the past several months and I’m incredibly excited about the next generation of Windows.” We’ve known for some time now that Microsoft has been working on a transformation update that will effectively overhaul its entire desktop OS. The most important elements of the OS, the Start Menu, Action Center and File Explorer, will all be modernized with better animations and new features. More specifically, Icons and fly-out menus will reportedly have rounder corners; users will spot this “softer” look, based on the Fluent design language, throughout the OS. Moreover, Nadella said the OS would provide “greater economic opportunity” for developers through a rumored new Windows Store. The goal will be to make it easier and more profitable for developers to push apps onto Windows 10 so the platform can catch up to the likes of Chrome OS and macOS. We learned a few weeks ago that Microsoft had chosen to abandon Windows 10X, a formerly in-progress operating system designed as a lightweight rival to Chrome OS for portable laptops and those with unique form factors. Microsoft will instead take what it learned while building Windows 10X and integrate those findings into Windows 10. How exactly that might look remains a mystery. We will provide full coverage of the Windows 10 update reveal on June 24 and will report any new information that surfaces between now and then.
