In their recent "Build" conference, Microsoft revealed a host of new features coming to Windows 10 in an update planned for the first anniversary of its release in the summer.
As we have covered previously, unlike previous versions of Windows, Microsoft is planning to continually evolve Windows 10 rather than bundling years of changes in a completely new version. This approach is much like the one Apple adopt for their OS X operating system.
One of the key changes coming in this update is the ability for companies to sell desktop applications via the Windows Store. For example, one will be able to get the next version of the popular accounting tool "Sage" via this method.
For those running Windows 10 on tablet devices like Microsoft's "Surface" machine, pen support is going to be improved.
One feature for the future that is going to be included is "Windows Hello". This integrates with the Edge browser to allow websites to use facial recognition as a means of verifying your identity, rather than having to deal with passwords. We suspect there won't be much support for this upon release, but is probably an indication of where things are headed.
One technical, but significant new feature is a much greater integration with the Linux operating system. While the specifics of this out of the scope of this blog, it is interesting to see Microsoft relax their stance here and provide this access to developers.
It's probably worth a reminder at this point that Windows 10 is only free to Windows 7 and 8 users for another 4 months. After this time, upgrades will be charged for.