Last week, after nearly a month's delay, Microsoft launched Redstone 4 -- otherwise known as Windows 10 version 1803 (the spring Creators update). This version has new features. There are even new features for command line users. And some features have been removed. Let's look.
I'll start with the most important new features: Timeline, typography, settings, and command line. Then we'll take a look at what's missing. This update is one that Microsoft refers to as a "feature update", meaning that it's more than just patches and security updates. A lot more.
When your computer starts, several background processes and applications also start. Each has an effect on how fast the computer becomes available for use. The Control Panel now has an option (Control Panel > Apps > Startup) that lets you specify which applications start with Windows.
Before disabling a startup application, make sure that you've confirmed that you don't need it at startup time. Disabling an on-line file storage link or a backup service could have serious implications.
Dedicated applications such as Startup Delayer offer more flexibility. Instead of just turning applications on or off, Startup Delayer allows some or all of the startup applications to be delayed for a specific period or until CPU usage has dropped below a certain threshold. The improved control offered natively by Windows is welcome.
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By default, you'll be partially opted in to using the Timeline. To opt in all the way or to opt out, open Settings > Privacy > Activity History. Then select or deselct one or both of the options: "Let Windows collect my activity from this PC" and "Let Windows sync my activities from this PC to the cloud." Then you can specify any of the accounts on the computer to share information with the timeline.
The Timeline is a feature that has been added to Task view. Open Task view by clicking the icon that looks like a film strip. It will be near the Windows menu icon if you've enabled it. Or press the Windows key and tab.
When Task view is open scroll all the way down if you'd like to allow Timeline to look back more than a few days.
Timeline is similar to the history feature of web browsers. It tracks most applications and the documents that you opened in them. Timeline collects documents you've used together into "Activities". So if you used several applications and various websites while working on a project, you'll find them in an Activity. This is, at best, a work in process. Activities and the Timeline in general do a fine job of tracking Microsoft applications, but they're less robust with non-Microsoft browsers and other applications.
I consider this to be one of the most important additions to Windows, but more for its promise of what it might be than for what it is. Now might be a good time to start using it, but keep your expectations low.
This is a topic that is dear to me because typefaces affect the tone of a publication, email, or website. One of the best designers I ever had the opportunity to learn from, Jan White, liked to say that the best typography was invisible. In other words, he felt that good typography did its job without being obvious. The same is true of overall design: If what you notice is the "beautiful typeface" or the "outstanding design", the designer has failed.
Although some people think that I'm old enough to remember when Gutenberg developed movable type, that's not something I recall. But I do remember when typesetting was done by typographers as part of a multi-step process: (1) I send typed copy that I estimated to fit the space available. (2) The typesetter typed my copy into a typesetting machine, eliminating my errors and introducing his errors. Yes, typesetters were almost always male. (3) I would mark up the galley proofs provided by the typesetter and send the galleys back for an update. (4) After repeating steps 2 and 3 several times, I would be given a final galley for use in pasting up the publication. From beginning to end, the process took a week or more.
In the mid 1980s, Ventura Publisher and Aldus PageMaker began the trend that would put typesetters out of business, but the available typefaces were still limited. Adobe created an expensive set of Postscript typefaces that were eventually replaced by "Type 1" typefaces and finally by TrueType (created in association with Microsoft and Apple) and OpenType (Microsoft) faces. You might say that by the mid 1990s it was a mess and, if you said that, you would be exactly right.
Currently, anyone who uses Adobe Creative Cloud automatically has access to dozens (maybe hundreds) of typefaces. That's fine so long as your subscription is current. If it lapses, your typefaces will disappear. Presumably, Windows users will continue to be Windows users so maybe the typefaces that come with Windows might be a bit more permanent. And now you can buy typefaces from the Windows store.
Not many. In fact, when I put this report together, the Windows store offered just 11 typefaces and 9 of those were free. In some cases, the offerings expand what's already present on the computer. Windows comes with Georgia, and the free offering from the Windows store adds light, condensed, and black variants. Georgia was designed for Microsoft in the mid-1990s and is optimized for screen viewing and installing the Georgia Pro typeface expands your choices from 4 variants to 20.
That's not all, though. The Control Panel's font preview function has been improved to display either the typeface name or text the user specifies at any size from 8 to 72 points.
Additionally, if you have any OpenType Variable typefaces installed, you can vary the preview weight and width in addition to the size. If you want to use the variable functions, the application you're using must support OpenType Variable technology.
Windows still has a command line. The DOS command line became the Command Shell and, while the Command Shell is still present, Windows PowerShell is recommended as a replacement. PowerShell uses more verbose commands, but it also understands the old DOS/CMD syntax as well as many BASH (Bourne Again Shell) commands familiar to Linux users.
So if you want a directory of files in a PowerShell window, the following commands are identical: dir (DOS and CMD), ls (BASH), and get-childitem (PowerShell).
But Windows also offers a full Linux command line and that's where the enhancements are. The Microsoft blog describes the changes and, because they'll mainly be of interest to developers, I'll just mention them briefly.
It's now possible to share environment variables between Windows and the Linux command line. File permissions can be set using BASH commands on Windows file system files. It's now easier to create virtual machines for use with Linux instances under Windows. In addition to Ubuntu Linux, the Debian distro and Kali distro are now available.
One of the most significant features eliminated is HomeGroup. Although it was a well intentioned effort to make it easier for users to share files and printers across a home network, it never really caught on -- in part because it wasn't really much easier than using standard network techniques.
Once version 1803 is in place, HomeGroup will no longer appear in the File Explorer, Control Panel, or network troubleshooter. However, any files, folders, or printers that had previously been shared via HomeGroup will still be available by using the name of the computer, folder, and file in the usual network format: \\ComputerName\Folder\File.txt Also, printers that had been shared via HomeGroup will still appear in the Print dialog box.
The option on a mobile device to connect to suggested open hotspots has been removed. Users will still be able to connect to these non-secure locations, but will have to do so manually.
The XPS viewer is no longer enabled by default. XPS was a short-sighted, illogical attempt to replace Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) with a new format nobody knew anything about. You can still create and view XPS files if you enable the technology, but why would you want to?
Several features will remain in place, but have been deprecated. No further development will be done. One example is IPv4/6 Transition Technologies. IP addresses are being converted from IPv4 format to IPv6 format to allow for a larger range of addresses. IPv6 is now supported, so the translation is no longer needed. Both Windows Contacts and the Contacts API have been deprecated and Microsoft is pushing users and developers to convert to the People app.
Of the removed and deprecated features, HomeGroup is likely to be the one that causes the most concern. Generally, though, these are features that won't be missed.
These are challenging days for magazine publishers. Besides being expensive to produce, the cost of paper, printing, and postage make them expensive to deliver. For subscribers, there's the cost of the subscription itself and the environmental concern about what to do with old magazines. Texture will change some of that.
For $10 per month, subscribers can read any of the 175 magazines offered -- from Ad Week and Alure to Woman's Day and Yoga Journal. Vanity Fair, Texas Monthly, The New Yorker, National Review, Newsweek, Time, and even a few Canadian magazines such as Maclean's if you'd like a slightly different perspective on the news. PC World, PC Magazine, Macworld, Fast Company, Car and Driver, and even Entertainment Weekly.
There are magazines that I wouldn't subscribe to because I wouldn't get much out of them, but a Texture subscription lets me read an article or two from an occasional issue. There's also nothing to throw away or recycle at the end of the month.
One of the view options Texture offers is a highlights page that shows articles that might be of interest to you based on what you've read previously, articles that are popular on Texture, longer articles that are good for weekend reading, daily news articles, and the top stories in various categories.
You'll see articles listed here even from magazines that you haven't selected as one of your favorites.
The second view is the one that I use most frequently. It's called My Library and consists of the magazines that I read most frequently.
Clicking one of the magazine covers will take you to that magazine's page, where you'll have access to the current issue and back issues as far back as they've been part of the Texture plan.
When you open an issue, you'll have the opportunity to download it or read it on-line.
The third initial option is viewing all magazines, whether you've specified them as favorites or not. You can choose to view all of the magazines in a long, long list or examine them by category.
The settings pane is where you can specify whether magazines are downloaded automatically when you open them. Downloading makes the issue available when you don't have an internet connection but consumes storage space on the device.
The application has 4 choices for managing storage: Minimal space (if you already have a lot of photos and music on the device), standard (recommended for most readers), more space (for those who like to read a lot when they're off-line), and maximum space.
There's an option on the settings page to delete downloaded magazines, but Texture manages space by deleting older issues to conform with your storage decisions.
Texture has few shortcomings: First, the free trial period is uncommonly short, just 7 days. Most companies choose 15 or 30 days and it seems to me that Texture would attract more subscribers with a longer trial period -- one that's long enough for people to become used to having it.
Second, it runs only on Android and IOS devices, so you can't install it on your MacOS or Windows computer. You can, however, use it on up to 5 devices -- so I have it on an Ipad, an Android tablet, and my Android phone. Reading on the phone is, as you'd expect, a problem because of the small screen size.
Third, sharing information is somewhat difficult. In the past, sending a link from an article provided only a link to the Texture website. Now the recipient will also be given a readable screen shot of the page. This can be a problem if the article is more than a single page. It's also not possible to save the article as a PDF (and this is understandable) or to copy and paste text from an article to an email message or a social media site (and that it annoying).
Will this help publishers? That's impossible even to guess. Electronic distribution means no more expenditures for paper, ink, press time, and postage -- but it's likely that print versions will still be produced and the only real savings will be the incremental costs. Meanwhile, the subscription income will drop.
If you're a magazine reader, this is an app you'll like.Not every magazine published is included, but the choice is broad at nearly 200 magazines. If you read 10 different subscription publications per month and the average subscription price is $20 per year, the cost would be $200. You'll pay $120 per year for a Texture subscription. Possibly the most serious problem with Texture is finding time to read all the articles that you'd like to read.
Additional details are available on the Texture website.
Bots can be useful, but many are used to cause trouble. We're all familiar with the bots from Russia that continue to cause problems on social media sites, but bat bots are widespread and affect far more than social media sites.
A report from cybersecurity firm Distil Networks says that bot traffic increased 10% in 2017 and now accounts for more than 20% of all internet traffic. Some industries, the report says, see more than half of their website traffic coming from bots that attempt to scrape data from sites without permission in order to reuse it as well as those that are actively engaged in fraud and theft.
These bad bots can steal credentials, create denial of service attacks, create fake accounts, extract content from the victimized site, engage in credit card fraud, and place fake orders that result in real orders being denied because inventory has been allocated to the phony orders.
The report differentiates between good bots and bad bots: Good bots attempt to provide a site's information to others. For example, a search engine's indexing bot. Bad bots attempt to cause harm, but even good bots can be problematic because they can cause ad click data to be misrepresented and inflate site visitor data.
Most of the commercial bad bots don't originate from foreign countries, though. About half of the malicious bot traffic originates from data centers in the United States. The report lists the 10 most severely affected industries:
To read the full report (registration required), visit the Distil Networks website.
