Welcome back to our weekly “Windows 10 news recap” series where we go over the top stories of the past week in the world of Microsoft’s latest operating system. Let’s get started.
The Anniversary Update nears, with TWO new builds
Build 14371 greeted us on Wednesday, bringing numerous fixes for bugs that have been reported by Windows Insiders – with this build, Insider’s now see an improved activation flow when attempting to activate Windows 10 on devices where the hardware has changed. This build was quickly succeeded by build 14372, which brought fixes for a few undisclosed issues, as well as a new Microsoft Edge extension: Evernote Web Clipper. Now you can clip web pages to your notes straight from Edge.
Finally, Dona Sakar left a thank-you message to all of those Insider’s who took part in the July 2016 Bug Bash: “congrats to everyone for reporting so many bugs!”
Codeless game development comes to the Universal Windows Platform
Codeless game creator, Buildbox, this week announced that it is bringing support for the Universal Windows Platform to its game engine, allowing people around the world to create games for Windows 10 devices without writing a single line of code. The tool creates packageable apps that can be published straight to the Windows Store, too. We’ll have to wait and see for the creations that come out of this new integration. Currently, the tool only supports Windows 10 PCs, but the company states that mobile support is on the way.
Project Centennial in action – Microsoft brings several of its Win32 programs over to the app store
In an expected move, Microsoft has begun bringing several of its classic Win32 programs over to the Windows Store in the form of a packaged app. The apps it has ported includes: WordPad, Fax and Scan, XPS Viewer and Microsoft Character Map. These apps behave exactly as you would have expected their Win32 variants to work, so you’re not receiving a watered-down experience.
Several apps release improved experiences on Windows 10 – and a newcomer, for you artists out there
Over the week, several apps have released updates to offer users improved experiences, as well as add some new features, let’s take a look:
- Facebook fixes slow loading issues on Windows 10
- Audible by Amazon gets social with Audible Channels
- Movies & TV brings maturity ratings to help you make an educated decision
- Maps delivers interface improvements and some new features such as minimising content and searching for 3D cities
- FamilyNotes shows off the possibilities of the UWP
- MSN News now lets you control where your news comes from
- Roku and SiriusXM release their own apps for Windows 10
- Realarm updates to a Universal App, with voice commands being added next
- Autodesk pushes its SketchBook app to Windows 10 users, offering a full drawing experience for artists
- Microsoft teams up with Nascar to build a Race Management app
In more recent news, users of both Windows 10 PC and Windows 10 Mobile have shown their support for a Universal Imgur app on Windows 10, with one of their community moderators opening up a poll to vote on the possibility.
That’s it for this week – but if you’ve got a few minutes to spare, why not check out our own Dave Shanahan as he takes a closer look at the new Windows 10 Activation Troubleshooter?
