The 7 Things To Take Away From Microsoft’s Build 2015

Microsoft gave us high expectations for Wednesday’s Build 2015 conference, and they delivered.

 

1. Aero Glass is back

Re-adding back Aero Glass from Windows Vista and Windows 7 is probably a solid idea, because even Apple integrated it for OS X Yosemite.

2. Goodbye Project Spartan, hello Microsoft Edge

The new Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, is minimalistic and has been designed to prioritize websites before everything else, including icons and menus. The browser “built for doing”, it has “built-in note taking and sharing”.

3. Cortana - Cortana everywhere

Now launching apps with natural language, Microsoft’s digital voice assistance has been fully integrated into the Windows 10 system - including Microsoft Edge.

4. Visual Studio Code

A code-optimized editor that comes with built-in supports in tons of different languages and helps debugging is now available for Windows, Mac and Linux! (Exclamation mark necessary because hell has actually frozen over, now that Microsoft brings developer tools to Mac and Linux). Also, it’s free and can be downloaded at VisualStudio.com

5. HoloLens

Microsoft waited until the end of the conference for this one. Basically Windows 10 will integrated with the “Windows Holographic platform”. The demo showed how medical students can study the human anatomy holographically and

6. A wider range of apps  

While developers in the past had to package their apps as Windows Universal apps for the Windows Store, with Windows 10 Microsoft is now allowing for developers to package their Win32 and .NET apps and sell them to the Windows Store. Basically, more apps will finally be available on the Windows platform.

7. The Game Changer

Microsoft welcomes Java, C++ and Objective C to their development kits. The big take away was that soon Microsoft users will be able to run Android AND iOS apps on Windows 10 phones, tablets and computers, which means all non-Windows developers will get on board soon enough. This is the real game changer because Windows mobile owners have been disadvantaged in the past from the limited amount of native apps available on Windows.