The Last Version of Windows?
It looks like Windows 10 might very well be the last version of the operating system. Does this mean Microsoft is closing its doors? No – not by a longshot. It actually means the opposite – we can expect to see more updates to Windows than in any operating system Microsoft has previously released. Why is this? Well, it’s actually pretty simple.
Goodbye new OS releases, hello perpetual update model
Instead of releasing an entirely new version of Windows every 3 – 5 years, Microsoft wants Windows 10 to be the final version. They’ll push updates to the OS on a regular basis, meaning that even 10 years from now, Windows 10 could be the the standard Microsoft OS, but with the latest and greatest technology.
The announcement came Friday morning at the Ignite 2015 conference, and was a shock to the technology community as a whole. Previously, we’d had no reason to suspect that Windows 10 was anything other than a knee-jerk reaction to the abject failure that was Windows 8 (and even 8.1). However, it’s looking more and more like Microsoft is going for the long haul with 10, since the OS (or at least versions of it) will be found across all of their platforms.
Keen PC users will know that Microsoft has always pushed service packs to their operating systems, so the idea that an OS might survive long past its original release’s shelf life shouldn’t be anything new. However, Microsoft has never considered doing something quite like this before, so it’ll be interesting to see how they handle it. One question that seems obvious is how they’ll expect to continue generating revenue – will they start charging for updates?
It’s likely that we’ll see paid service packs in the future, some of which may even drastically change the OS as a whole. Who knows – we may even see some type of a subscription model to the Microsoft ecosystem in the future. Only one thing is certain at this point – Microsoft has a plan for us. What that plan may be, however, is something we’ll just have to wait to see.