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What to Expect from the Windows 10 ‘1909’ Update this Fall

September 19th, 2019 by admin

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The next Windows 10 update is anticipated in September or October and is known as version 1909. It is supposed to be the smallest yet most practical update this year. Because this update is focused on performance improvements, enterprise features, and quality enhancements with no real structural changes, it should be a less disruptive update with fewer changes overall. It should be a small download with a fast installation time, no long reboot, and no need to purge old Windows installations. It is essentially a service pack. Here’s a rundown of the changes to expect in this next update.

  1. Bye Cortana. Since Microsoft’s Cortana AI has not been very popular, this update will now allow you to use your Amazon Alexa as your PCs voice assistant instead of Cortana if you so choose. It can hear you even on the lock screen and offer an answer.
  2. Windows 10 calendar app just got better. The Windows 10 calendar app can now help you create events directly from the taskbar. Just click the time on the taskbar and open the calendar to view.
  3. Notifications changes. When configuring notifications for an application, there are now images that show exactly what “notification banners’ and “notifications in action center” are. This lets you disable the sounds that play when a notification appears – this setting is available in the Settings > System >Notifications & Actions pane. This pane will not be the default to sort applications by most recently shown rather than by name also.
  4. Performance improvements include battery life improvements, better scheduling of CPU resources, and lower-latency digital linking. Learn more about digital linking here. They also implemented a rotation policy that distributes work more fairly among multiple “favored” cores in a multi-core CPU setup.
  5. Additional minor changes also include an updated search in File Explorer to show web-powered suggestions in addition to files locally indexed on the PC. And they added the ability for Narrator and other assistive technologies to read and learn where the FN key is located on keyboards and what state it is in (locked vs unlocked).
  6. Enterprise changes from the Microsoft blog post:
    • Windows containers require a matched host and container version. This restricts customers and limits Windows containers from supporting mixed-version container pod scenarios This update includes five fixes to address this and allow the host to run down-level containers on up-level for process (Argon) isolation.
    • Key-rolling or Key-rotation feature enables secure rolling of Recovery passwords on MDM managed AAD devices upon on-demand request from Microsoft Intune/MDM tools or upon every time recovery password is used to unlock the BitLocker protected drive. This feature will help prevent accidental recovery password disclosure as part of manual BitLocker drive unlock by users.
    • We have added additional debugging capabilities for newer Intel processors. This is only relevant for hardware manufacturers.
    • We have enabled Windows Defender Credential Guard for ARM64 devices for additional protection against credential theft for enterprises deploying ARM64 devices in their organizations.
    • We have enabled the ability for enterprises to supplement the Windows 10 in S Mode policy to allow traditional Win32 (desktop) apps from Microsoft Intune.
  7. Lastly, Microsoft has made some improvements to Windows 10 that haven’t been part of huge updates. For example, Android phone users with a Windows 10 PC can now use the Your Phone app to mirror your Android notifications to your PC.
  8. Computers with the May 2019 Update (also known as 19H1) installed will get a small patch via Windows Update and quickly update themselves to 19H2. This will likely arrive sometime in September or October 2019.

    With Windows 7’s end of life looming on January 14, 2020, Microsoft clearly wants to avoid a repeat of last year’s buggy October 2018 Update.

    Stay tuned for more updates and changes! We are always on-top-of the latest news in tech, applications updates, and cybersecurity. Make sure you get our weekly blog distribution email every Wednesday! If not, sign-up now in the footer!

    Posted in: Solutions


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