14 DAY TRIAL // While Windows 10 is the desktop operating system that everybody seems to be talking about these days (aside from the moments when Linux is praised for the growth it recorded in 2020), it’s another Windows-branded product that seems to be generating much more excitement these days.
It’s Windows 10X, the operating system that Microsoft announced last year and which is supposed to power the company’s dual-screen device strategy.
Originally launched as the operating system installed on the dual-screen Surface Neo due this year, Windows 10X has impressed with some of its features and overall design, with many calling for Microsoft to bring certain features, including the Start menu, to full Windows 10 too.
However, as Microsoft continued its work on Windows 10X, the company came across various issues, including some that eventually convinced it to push back the launch of the operating system.
Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that Windows 10X wouldn’t remain exclusive to dual-screen devices but power single-screen models too.
“With Windows 10X, we designed for flexibility, and that flexibility has enabled us to pivot our focus toward single-screen Windows 10X devices that leverage the power of the cloud to help our customers work, learn and play in new ways. These single-screen devices will be the first expression of Windows 10X that we deliver to our customers, and we will continue to look for the right moment, in conjunction with our OEM partners, to bring dual-screen devices to market,” Panos Panay, the man who turned the Surface brand into what it is today, said earlier this year.
In other words, Microsoft’s dual-screen device strategy needs more time, so the Surface Neo wouldn’t arrive on the market at the date the company announced originally. And now it looks like Windows 10X has a similar fate as well, with the release date pushed back to early 2021.
According to a new report, Windows 10X is now scheduled to go live in the spring of 2021 on single-screen devices. These first models wouldn’t just be aimed at the consumer market, but mostly at businesses and education, something that continues Microsoft’s focus on these categories of customers.
The rollout of Windows 10X will continue a year later, according to these unconfirmed reports, with the debut on dual-screen devices to happen in the spring of 2022.
So technically, Windows 10X will receive a major update every year in the spring as part of a strategy that’s also changing how Windows 10 itself is being updated. You can read more about the impact on Windows 10’s update schedule here.
Windows 10X is getting further tweaks for the way it runs Win32 apps. In essence a platform that’s limited to “modern” apps, also known as UWP apps, Windows 10X will launch without support for Win32 software at first. This means the single-screen devices going live in the spring of 2021 will just run UWP apps, something that many potential buyers might consider a deal-breaker.
On the other hand, despite Microsoft encountering many struggles with Win32, it still wants to bring such programs to Windows 10X. And now the target is the spring of 2022, the same year when Microsoft is projected to launch this operating system for dual-screen devices.
Win32 programs will run in containers, but for now, Microsoft is yet to get this implementation right. It’s believed the whole thing would run in the cloud, and the recently-spotted Cloud PC could help power the whole thing.
Certainly, Windows 10X will still launch at some point, but on the other hand, Microsoft knows it must get everything right from the very beginning. If the first launch on single-screen devices doesn’t go according to the plan, the dual-screen launch could be dead on arrival as well.