24 PCWorld MARCH 2020NEWS MICROSOFT’S WINDOWS 10X
foreground, another one downloading in the
background, and the reboot will simply swap
between the two.APP UPDATES WILL BE
INCREMENTAL
You’ll see some improvements in app
updates, too. John Vintzel, the program
manager lead for Microsoft, said that one
advantage of a new MSIX app packaging
container will be that all of the app’s resources
will be contained within it, each with its own
unique software hash. In fact, there will be
three containers: native containers for UWP
apps, which will offer the best performance as
well as battery life; the MSIX containers,
which will offer high compatibility with
existing apps and a robust installation /
uninstallation procedure; and the new Win32
container, which we’ll discuss in a bit.When a new
app is downloaded,
the hashes of each
of the components
will be compared
against the update.
If a particular
component (say the
app icon) is left
unchanged, it won’t
be downloaded
and updated,
saving bandwidth.
But even if a
component is downloaded, it will be divided
up into blocks, and only those blocks that have
been changed will be downloaded. Even
better, those blocks can be downloaded and
then merged with the app later on, taking care
of the process in the background.
It sounds like this same approach will be
used to patch the Windows 10X OS, too. The
secondary patched OS will be constructed from
just what’s new, saving you from re-downloading
the entire OS every time a patch is released.FAREWELL, REGISTRY
CLEANERS
The UWP apps within Windows 10X,
incidentally, will only be able to access certain
libraries. Photos would just be able to access
your Photo library, for instance, just as UWP
apps behave within Windows 10. “Apps can
interact with the OS, but only via a clear set ofDevelopers will be able to try out this Windows 10X emulator from Microsoft.