Sets Could Be Just the Fix That Windows Needs (Premium)

News about a coming Windows 10 feature called Sets suggests that Microsoft hasn’t run out of good ideas.

I’ve spent much of 2017 considering the future of Windows and debating whether Microsoft is on the right path. But this week’s announcement about a coming feature called Sets suggests that the software giant hasn’t run out of good ideas. And while it is far too early to get excited about this direction, sorry, but I’m getting excited about this direction.

There’s so much to discuss here that I’m worried this is going to come out as a jumble of incoherent thoughts. So let me stick the basics.

Windows has a problem. And that problem is the rise of mobile devices like smartphones, especially, but also tablets and hybrid 2-in-1 devices like Chromebooks. This has led to two obvious changes: A slowly falling user base and a lack of interest from developers, who see bigger opportunities in mobile and web apps.

Microsoft’s solution to this problem—and to be clear, this solution can only slow the inevitable decline, not turn it around—is Windows 10. And Windows 10 takes many forms, even on the PC. There’s the Windows as a Service model, through which Microsoft hopes to keep updating this system on the same schedule as mobile platforms. There’s Windows 10 S, which may be the future of the core platform, which seeks to finally sever the link to legacy desktop technologies. And there’s Windows 10 on ARM, which is bringing the platform to the same chipsets used by rival mobile devices.

These things are all happening in parallel, of course. And there will be future Windows 10 PCs that are a combination of all three of those things. But linked to all this, too, is another fundamental issue with Windows. Its user experience is, if not obsolete, at least out of date.

Microsoft is taking steps to fix this. The Fluent Design System is an obvious example, and that it has successfully brought UX elements from 3D/VR/AR systems into the more traditional 2D space used by Windows is very interesting. But that’s just a surface-level sheen. What Windows really needs, I think, is a rethinking of the core interface model. The desktop metaphor, the mouse/keyboard thing, is getting tired.

Sets could be the answer. Or at least part of the answer. It could be a user interface that provides the flexibility that power users demand, and get today through interfaces like virtual desktops. And a user interface that makes sense to the more voluminous base of normal users who would only be confused by virtual desktops.

Better, Sets solves one of my issues with virtual desktops, which is that they’re not persistent. You can organize windows onto whatever desktops you want, but it doesn’t support saving those things as a collection or whatever, and when you reboot, they’re gone forever.

But thanks, I bet, to the “pick up where you left off” thinking that Microsoft is apply to Windows 10, Sets lets you, literally, pick up where you left off. This is a key piece to the puzzle, and it will benefit both normal and power users.

Sets is also somewhat intuitive, in the sense that virtually all Windows users are now very comfortable with tabs, thanks to this feature’s inclusion in all web browsers for many years. Applying this concept to the whole of Windows is genius.

What’s less genius, of course, is that Sets has also arrived as part of the Windows 10 continuum that includes that Windows 10 S bit, and while Microsoft does not say this (yet), my sources tell me that Sets will only work with Store apps. You’ll note in Microsoft’s promo video that the one non-Store app shown, File Explorer, is the only one not grouped into a single window with the others apps. That’s why: File Explorer is a legacy desktop application and cannot be used with Sets.

(Guessing here, but I bet Microsoft releases a Store app version of File Explorer within the next 12 months to solve this issue.)

Look, it’s understandable that any Windows fan would be nervous or even upset about what’s happening to their favorite platform. But that decline is inevitable. What is perhaps more interesting, and more hopeful, is that Microsoft isn’t giving up on it, is, in fact, really improving it in ways that make sense. And Sets give me hope for the future, for sure.