The (10)X Factor (Premium)

I spent much of the weekend examining the leaked Windows 10X build, which appears to be a near-final version of Microsoft’s coming Chrome OS competitor. I have some observations, of course. But more to the point, I also have questions. Lots of questions.

I asked these questions, semi-rhetorically, to Windows internals expert Rafael Rivera yesterday, too. He’s not a fan of the word “leak,” for starters, since Microsoft put this build on a publicly facing server that it knows is monitored by enthusiasts. We joked about the term, but the short version is that, semantics and intentions aside, we now have a clearer look at the latest in a long line of Windows offshoots. And it verifies many of the opinions and guesses we’ve made along the way.

First and most important, Windows 10X is very clearly aimed at Google’s Chrome OS, which has seen dominant growth in the education sector, and not just in the U.S., for several years. Defeating Chrome OS and the Chromebooks on which it runs has long been a focus for the Windows team. The last major public push was four years ago, when Terry Myerson introduced Surface Laptop and Windows 10 S alongside other education-related initiatives at a May event in New York City. But there have been annual momentum updates as well, usually tied to BETT, an education-focused trade show that is usually held each January in London.

Where Windows 10 S was a relatively simple approach to solving the Chrome OS problem—it is basically just Windows 10 modified to use policy to prevent users from running Win32 desktop applications—Windows 10X is a more complete reimagining of Windows into a new platform that is lighter, simpler, and less capable. It’s also a lot more like Chrome OS as a result.

And that’s true at every level. Chrome OS is basically just a very lightweight version of Linux running the Chrome web browser, and more recently it has picked up the ability to run both Android and Linux apps too. Windows 10X is basically just a very lightweight version of Windows 10 running the Edge web browser, and it can also run what I’ll call “pure” Microsoft Store apps.

The similarities extend to the respective look and feel and user experiences as well. When Chrome OS first debuted almost 10 years ago—and yes, it’s really been a decade already—it was very much modeled on the Windows 7 desktop user experience. That made sense then, but to Google’s credit, Chrome OS has since evolved into its own thing. It still has a desktop and taskbar, of sorts, and a Start-like experience for finding and launching apps. And there’s a system tray/Action Center-like interface. But just as macOS shares some commonality to Windows and vice versa, so too does Chrome OS, and each has its own peculiarities and unique touches.

With Windows 10X, Microsoft has indeed started its photocopiers, but this time it’s focused them on Google, not Apple. Windows 10X features a taskbar, Start experience, and system tray/Action Center-like interface that have much more in common with Chrome OS than with mainstream Windows 10. The Start and Task View buttons, and icons for running and pinned apps, are centered on the taskbar. Start is a pane that extends up—and can be expanded further—from the center of the taskbar. The Action Center interface is modular and provides access to system functions like shutting down, Settings, quick actions, and more. All just like Chrome OS.

Oddly, Windows 10X is also less than Chrome OS in far too many ways. Where Chrome OS supports windowed applications, 10X does not: All apps are displayed full screen. 10X supports Snap, a feature that debuted in Windows 8 in 2012, but it’s even more limited now than it was then: Snap offers only a 50-50 horizontal split between two applications, that’s it. Chrome OS can run web, Android, and Linux apps, but 10X can only run web apps and a very limited selection of Store apps; even Microsoft Office is not available.

I often joke, ruefully, about Microsoft creating versions of Windows that can’t run Windows applications, and that such things can’t logically be called Windows 10X. And yet here we are again, with another thing called Windows that can’t run Windows applications: 10X doesn’t run most Store apps, and it can’t run any Windows applications downloaded from the web. Is this … Windows?

It might not matter: Rumor has it that a v2 version of Windows 10X will add back the Win32 container technology that is currently missing in v1, allowing this system—perhaps slowly and/or poorly, we’ll see—run Windows 10 desktop applications.

We’ll deal with that when and if it happens. For now, the most logical question is why. Why even make this thing? Were some customers asking for this? Some important customers?

We can only speculate. And on that note, my guess is that, yes, some customers—some important customers—were asking for this. Those customers are in the education market that Microsoft is allegedly targeting for this first release of 10X. And I think what they wanted was something that was as simple, inexpensive, locked down, and agile as Chrome OS, but not from Google. From a company they trust. From Microsoft.

I think often to that moment at Microsoft’s May 2017 education event in which Terry walked from PC to PC with a USB key, describing how this simplified approach to wiping out education PCs would enable schools to use Windows instead of Chrome OS and thinking how silly it all was. I think about it now because I believe that this was just a holding pattern aimed at stalling its education customers while Microsoft could get to the point where it actually had a platform that was as simple, inexpensive, locked down, and agile as is/was Chrome OS. And that platform, very clearly, is Windows 10X.

And ever since Microsoft adopted Chromium for the new Edge, I have been writing about a concept I think of as the EdgeBook, a Chromebook-like PC that would run a stripped-down, Microsoft-made Chrome OS alternative. In April 2019, for example, I noted that the then-new Chromium-based Edge gave Microsoft “the basis of a system that can compete in the same part of the market in which Chromebooks are now seeing great success [education].”

“And it’s not the low-end of the market,” I wrote. “It’s education, of course. But it’s also business, where a simple, easily-manageable system is of equal worth. And it’s good for individuals of all kinds: In this era of mobile computing, a full-sized laptop with a hardware keyboard and a big screen is only required sometimes by many. Why wouldn’t you choose something that worked great but was more secure and protected your privacy? This EdgeBook, which could be the logical conclusion of the Windows Lite/Lite OS/Core OS rumors we’ve been hearing about for years, isn’t just a Chromebook clone. Instead, it is to Chromebooks what the new Edge is to Chrome: A version of that system that is stripped of all the Google nonsense. A version that uses your trusted Microsoft account—or, soon, Azure Active Directory—account for sync. A Chromebook that would actually appeal to schools, businesses, and individuals who are, perhaps, a bit leery of Google’s intentions. I think that’s most of them, by the way.”

Windows 10X is, of course, the literal conclusion of those Windows Lite/Lite OS/Core OS rumors we’d been hearing about for years, so there’s that. But by 2020, we understood that Microsoft intended to move past just web and Store apps and add Win32 desktop application compatibility via a container-based architecture. This is what would/could put Windows 10X over the top, and not just in education.

“It’s not possible today to truly understand how good the compatibility and performance of Windows 10X is using just an emulator,” I wrote in March 2020. “That emulator inhibits performance, of course—honestly, it’s pretty terrible—so there are still a lot of unknowns, and if history is any guide, what we don’t know—the true story on compatibility and performance—could be debilitating.”

That certainly proved to be true: Later in 2020, Microsoft canceled plans to release the Windows 10X-based Surface Neo and delayed the release of 10X so that it could ship a simpler version without the Win32 container first. (It also re-aimed 10X at single-screen PCs/devices, but that was the original plan anyway.) The reason? Debilitating compatibility and performance issues.

This has all been swirling through my mind as I evaluate the recent Windows 10X leak. (Sorry, Raf.) It’s the most complete look we’ve gotten yet, but it’s also lacking in context and is missing some features, too, I think. It seems horribly limited, and not just because of the full-screen app thing.

But I have some theories about that, too. And to be clear, this is the type of thing that only occurs after the fact, and because of what happened: I would never have imagined or advised that Microsoft reduce the user experience to full-screen app views before actually seeing it. Again, Chrome OS can run windowed apps.

So why the full-screen only requirement? Three reasons come to mind.

First, Windows 10X will exclusively (or almost exclusively) target education with its first release, and most education PCs are little pieces of crap, with tiny displays and little in the way of system resources.

Second, full-screen apps are common, are in the fact the standard, on the one device that everyone has, a smartphone, so kids will be used to that. Mobile platforms like iOS, iPadOS, and Android are designed specifically for full-screen apps.

Third, thanks to Microsoft’s silly sidetracking of Windows 10X to work initially on dual-screen devices/PCs like Neo, it did a lot of work to make apps seamlessly move between those displays, and that work is easier if the apps are only displayed full-screen. Snap works the same on a single display as it does with two.

But I also believe that this requirement will disappear, at least optionally, as 10X evolves into a more sophisticated v2 product that supports Win32 desktop applications and, as important, more impressive (and expensive) hardware.

And I wonder, too, if rumors about Microsoft bringing Android app compatibility to Windows 10 aren’t tied to Windows 10X and the need for a real Chrome OS competitor to actually do everything that Chrome OS can do. Android apps would make even more sense on Windows 10X than they would on mainstream Windows 10 versions running on traditional PCs.

Many have observed that Windows 10X is Microsoft’s third try at simplifying Windows in the modern era, and that the software giant often takes three tries before it gets things right. As I noted in the past, however, that three tries thing is more apocryphal than fact. And Windows 10X is arguably the fourth try, after Windows RT, Windows 10 S/S Mode, and Windows 10 on ARM. Whatever. I do agree that Microsoft needs to get this one right, and if releasing a limited version only on new hardware that targets a very specific market will help it deliver a post-Windows platform of sorts that actually sticks, I’m all for it.

And there are things to really like about Windows 10X, so let’s not lose sight of that. The system is simple almost to the point of being overly simplistic, but it also gets out of the way, a key benefit for a productivity-focused platform. It is literally smaller and lighter than mainstream Windows, and it should thus be more secure and reliable. It’s familiar enough that experienced Windows users should have little trouble getting up and running, especially if they’ve already embraced the cloud for data storage as I’ve long recommended. And it’s simple enough that anyone coming from a phone or other mobile platform will find it almost intuitive.

I actually … kind of like it. There are some key issues that would prevent me from using it today, including the too-limited file system access, the inability to access network shares, and of course, the application compatibility issues; even if I embraced the web-based Office applications, there are a handful of desktop applications—Notepad, Paint, and Affinity Photo, for example—that I rely on every day. (And others, like Visual Studio and the Hyper-V platform I’m using to access the Windows 10X leak, that I use occasionally.)

But Windows 10X isn’t aimed at me, let alone most mainstream Windows users. Not yet. It will be, I think, in the future. And by the time that happens, I may be ready—like many of you—to make this shift. Perhaps first on mobile PCs that I travel with. There are ideas here that are not terrible, in part because they weren’t terrible when Google figured them out first with Chrome OS.

But good ideas are good ideas, and if Microsoft can bring them to an even bigger audience, well. I’m all for that.