It’s been a decade since Windows 10 was first announced in October. That first build of the brand-new Windows Insider Program was pretty much Windows 8 with a Start Menu, and in fact, much of what was to become Windows 10 wasn’t even announced until January.
Between October 1, 2014 and July 29, 2015, the Windows Insider Program released a whole bunch of preview builds, and every single one was big news.
Windows Phone was failing, Windows 8 was a flop, and no one was making new apps for Windows anymore despite the new touchscreen interface. Moreover, the end of life for Windows 7 was around the corner, and Microsoft was due to face the same issues with the Windows XP EOL — people weren’t likely to upgrade their existing PCs, which still worked fine.
Windows 10 was going to be a revolution. First of all, it would roll back the changes in Windows 8 while keeping some of the touch-friendly elements. That meant the Start Menu returned and full-screen apps were going away. Those Metro apps, which were succeeded by UWP, would run in windows like any other app.
And UWP was a big change as well. Microsoft was going to leverage its strength in the desktop market by having developers convert their apps into “universal” apps, which would have a responsive design that scaled across different interfaces. In other words, a desktop app would work on phones too.
Bridges were another way to close the app gap. Windows 10 was going to be able to run Android apps, and iOS developers would be able to recompile their code to turn their iOS apps into Windows apps. The part about Android apps was called Project Astoria, and that was scrapped before the public release of Windows 10. It worked in Windows 10 Mobile previews though.
Windows 10 launched on July 29, 2015 as a free upgrade for anyone running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. A free upgrade for Windows Phone 8.1 was promised to arrive later. It didn’t go too well.
First of all, Microsoft was pushing the free upgrade hard. After all, one of the goals was to stop competing with itself. It truly wanted all Windows users on the same platform.