The Windows 10 April Update (1803): The Littlest Big Update
by Brett Howse on May 25, 2018 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Software
- Operating Systems
- Windows
- Microsoft
- Windows 10
Nearby Share
One feature that should be very useful to certain people is Nearby Share. This lets you quickly and easily share files between people from PC to PC, without having to send an email or use a messaging app as the transfer tool. Nearby Share works over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, and will use Wi-Fi as the preference. In an office, this was something done via a USB drive most recently, but with wireless and Bluetooth in all modern laptops, it makes sense to leverage that to avoid a step.
It should be very useful in certain situations, and isn’t tied to an account so you can send to any nearby device. The receiver will have the option of accepting the file. It’s not on by default, but can be toggled on when needed. It’s definitely something you’d not want to leave on.
Easy Bluetooth
Windows 10 now supports a simpler Bluetooth pairing process for some devices which lets you pair devices with a single click. You’ll get a pop-up notification asking if you want to pair a device, and if you say yes, it’s all setup. Devices have to support this though, and ones that require PINs are not going to work with a single click setup.
Windows 10 S Mode
Windows 10 S launched with the Surface Laptop as its first device to offer the constrained version of Windows 10 that restricts users to only running apps from the Store. The idea was to keep people from harming themselves, and to keep performance levels where they should be, by not allowing people to just install whatever they want, and to keep apps in packages that allow for easy removal and less items running at startup. This is pretty much how any modern smartphone works of course, but the downside to it on Windows 10 was that the Microsoft Store is not known as one of the key selling features, so uptake and usuage of Windows 10 S had to be pretty small. With the April Update, this is replaced by Windows 10 in S Mode, which is just a setting that can be enabled on any PC to make it like Window 10 S was. It'll still likely never get used, but it's a much better solution than another version of the OS just for this purpose. There's reasons you'd want this of course - education being a great example - but the average consumer is choosing Windows for the legacy application support, so this new model is definitely the better way to handle it.
The drawback is that S Mode is a one-way setting at the moment. A machine can be set in S mode when imaged using an unattended.xml file and dism, but if it's set back to regular Windows 10, there's not a way to switch back and forth.
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brshoemak - Friday, May 25, 2018 - link
"but that’s really a bad thing" - I assume you're missing a 'not' there. Not trying to be that guy but some people don't get context.Brett Howse - Friday, May 25, 2018 - link
If you don't want to be "that guy" you can always send me an email, but either way thanks for the feedback :)BenJeremy - Friday, May 25, 2018 - link
I tried to update this weekend, and it was a disaster. About an hour into the new update, everything on my system started hanging/freezing for minutes at a time. Simply emptying the recycle bin took agonizing minutes. My system is a monster system (64GB RAM, i7-6700K, 2xNVMe in RAID-0 for boot). It's probably a driver issue, but it was inexcusable that this was released into the public. After rolling back, my system was once again usable.IdBuRnS - Friday, May 25, 2018 - link
It's a bit much that you think it's "inexcusable" that they released it because you happened to have an issue. I updated last night and it went perfectly fine.Holliday75 - Friday, May 25, 2018 - link
Its inexcusable that Microsoft did not account for the 325,643,324,962,789 hardware, software, driver, firmware and bios combos. Damn them!nico_mach - Friday, May 25, 2018 - link
Some updates are better than others. Our IT dept actually sent instructions to delay Windows updates on home machines because they considered this so shaky. I didn't see it in time, updated and have been fine. You never know. I do have very recent hardware, ryzen, though.basroil - Friday, May 25, 2018 - link
No issues with 3 machines, haswell, kaby, and sandy bridge (yup, good old 2600k is still a beast!)Samus - Monday, May 28, 2018 - link
The last update I had issued with was the anniversary update two years ago. It broke Asus AI Suite for the Z97 motherboard I have so I just uninstalled it and set the fan cooking curves in the bios. But I know people who also had issues with anniversary update breaking other software that used drivers, specifically monitor software controls (really common on HP professional monitors)hansmuff - Saturday, May 26, 2018 - link
Any IT should have set the update frequency to "Semi-Annual Channel", not "Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted)", in which case no PC would have updated yet. That setting is specifically for organizations.leexgx - Sunday, May 27, 2018 - link
or more specifically for windows 10 Pro and enterprise (windows 10 home users cant easy limit unless they buy a windows 10 pro key for £$ 3-5)