Thurrott Daily: November 18

Good morning from Manchester, England. Well, actually it’s the middle of the afternoon here. You get the idea.

11/18/2015 3:12:23 PM

Microsoft to address ongoing Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 issues this week

Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 users have been suffering from a variety of issues, including power management and display driver problems. The good news? A fix could be coming as soon as this week, according to a Microsoft post to its support forums.

We will be publishing another Surface update later this week.

When you go to check for this update in Windows Update you will also notice a Windows 10 November Update being available. This is another update for the Windows 10 OS itself and adds more improvements and new features. For more information on this update, check Windows 10 November update: FAQ.

Cross your fingers. It’s not so much that the devices are unusable—far from it, and I’m relying on Surface Book as my only PC during my UK trip this week—but these are premium devices. And Microsoft needs to get them right.

Microsoft: The free Windows 10 upgrade is all about security

So I don’t actually buy the premise of this article—security is part of it, sure, but not the only major reason for free Windows 10 upgrades–but the WSJ has an interesting take.

Microsoft has already made its most significant contribution to cyber security: free Windows 10 upgrades.

The company made moving from an old version of Windows to the latest edition a free upgrade, at least for some users. Mr. Nadella has gone out of his way to shift Windows from a product to a service. In the new scheme, bug fixes are part of the deal, installed automatically in the background. Windows 10 also has core changes that make the system much harder to attack; features like Device Guard, which blocks untrusted software installed on a computer.

Nonetheless, an astounding number of users still don’t yet run the latest version of Windows. Some 1.5 billion people use Windows worldwide, by Microsoft’s count, but just 110 million of them have moved to Windows 10. Many of the laggards run archaic versions such as Windows XP.

Windows phone users switching to iPhone and Android in record numbers

OK, that’s not really the premise of the latest Ericsson mobility report, which offers some interesting insights into smart phone platform switching. But when you look at the recent news about Windows phone market share falling to 1.7 percent, it kind of makes sense.

And this is bad news: While “the majority of smartphone users remain loyal to their operating system,” Windows phone is the exception, with just 20 percent of users upgrading to a new Windows phone. The figures for Android and iPhone are 82 percent and 73 percent, respectively.

Sigh.

Google neuters Google+ yet again

I suppose if Google changes Google+ enough it could eventually be successful. Actually, that’s never going to happen. But give them credit for trying.

If you head over to Google+ today, you’ll see that things look a little different.

Since we last posted, we’ve spent a lot of time listening to what people using Google+ had to say. There were two features they kept coming back to: Communities, which now average 1.2 million new joins per day, and Collections, which launched just five months ago and is growing even faster.

And so we’ve reimagined Google+ to help them do that. Today, we’re starting to introduce a fully redesigned Google+ that puts Communities and Collections front and center.

Two things.

I love the word reimagined. And I really like Google’s photos service, so I’m ecstatic it’s no longer bogged down by Google+, which is an unnecessary atrocity.