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Apple is widely expected to launch four distinct iPhone 12 versions this year, which would be a first for the company.

All iPhone 12 models will support 5G connectivity, and they’ll all feature OLED screens — these are also firsts for Apple. And if recent leaks are correct, some of the four iPhone 12 versions could see significant launch delays. The novel coronavirus is responsible for that, as traveling delays supposedly made it harder for Apple to finish work on the prototypes on time.

Separately, a series of recent leaks showed purported iPhone 12 dummy units made with the leaked CAD designs. One of them indicates that the cheapest iPhone 12 model will be even smaller than the 2020 iPhone SE, which must be great news for iPhone buyers looking for a compact phone. However, the news itself that the 5.4-inch iPhone 12 will be smaller than the 4.7-inch iPhone SE should not surprise anyone familiar with Apple’s iPhone lineup.

When the iPhone X launched in 2017, it was almost the same size as the iPhone 8. But it featured a 5.8-inch display, which is 1.1-inch bigger than the iPhone 8’s 4.7-inch screen. That’s because the iPhone 8 features large, symmetrical top and bottom bezels. Apple reduced the top bezel to a notch for the iPhone X and removed the bottom bezel and the built-in Touch ID home button. That’s why two devices that have relatively the same overall footprint feature different screen sizes.

Size comparison between iPhone 8, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone SE (2nd-generation). Image source: Apple Inc.The 2020 iPhone SE is practically identical to the iPhone 8, as seen in the comparison above. The iPhone 11 Pro, which has the same 5.8-inch display size as the iPhone X, being the direct descendant of that handset, is almost as big as the iPhone 8 and new iPhone SE.

This brings us to EverythingApplePro’s video below, which tells us the 5.4-inch iPhone 12 will be smaller than the SE. The clip features an iPhone 12 mockup that is placed next to the iPhone SE.

Whether the mockup is genuine or not, it should be absolutely clear that the 5.4-inch new iPhone that will feature the same all-screen design that Apple used since 2017 will be smaller than the new iPhone SE. That’s because the 5.4-inch model will have the same design as the original iPhone X, complete with thin bezels and a notch at the top. The overall footprint of an all-screen iPhone featuring a display that measures 5.4 inches diagonally will be slightly smaller than the 5.8-inch iPhone 11, which is about the same size as the iPhone SE.

Those of you who already consider buying a new iPhone 12 this fall should know there won’t be a 5.8-inch iPhone 12 in stores this year. That particular size is going away if recent leaks are accurate. Aside from the 5.4-inch model, Apple will sell two 6.1-inch iPhone 12 versions, one of which is a Pro. The biggest iPhone 12 will have a 6.7-inch display. So if you’re upgrading from the iPhone X, XS, or 11 Pro and want a similarly sized device, you’ll have to choose between the 5.4-inch and 6.1-inch versions.

Microsoft on Wednesday began reversing actions it took earlier this year as the coronavirus pandemic spread and announced it would resume Windows 10 non-security updates.

Those updates, which Microsoft designated as Windows’ C and D updates in a nod to their third- and fourth-week release each month, were halted during May. “We have been evaluating the public health situation, and we understand this is impacting our customers,” Microsoft said in a March 24 message.

Microsoft will resume distribution of these non-security updates next month, the company said, but only to Windows 10 1809 and later, and to Windows Server. The Redmond, Wash. developer cited customer feedback and “the ongoing stabilization of business continuity” as the reasons for the restart.

“We will resume optional releases in July of 2020 … to once again provide you with the ability to test planned non-security fixes targeted for the next month’s Update Tuesday (or ‘B’) release,” wrote Chris Morrissey, part of the servicing and delivery team for Windows, in a June 17 post to a company blog.

Prior to the stoppage, the C and D updates were used to test non-security fixes that  were to be officially released the following month as part of the all-encompassing Patch Tuesday. (That second-Tuesday of the month, dubbed “Update Tuesday” by Microsoft, has long been the day when the firm issues security fixes for product vulnerabilities.) Essentially previews, the C and D updates had always been optional, and were, more than anything else, part of Microsoft’s efforts to shift as much testing as possible onto users’ shoulders.

Name change? Of course

Considering how much Microsoft has rearranged the furniture in the past month, it’s not surprising that Morrissey also ticked off changes to the updates that will go into effect next month when they return.

Rather than letter the updates, Microsoft will acknowledge what they are by switching to “Preview” as a nameplate, as in Cumulative Update Preview when listed in Windows Update.

Such updates will be delivered just once a month, on the third Tuesday (so on the schedule of former “C” updates). That will be different than before: Microsoft rarely filled the C-week slot, instead focusing on the week following for the optional updates.

And the Previews won’t be shown to administrators who rely on WSUS (Windows Server Update Services); the implication is that the beta updates will be offered only to those using Windows Update or its spinoff, Windows Update for Business (WUfB). “This ensures a consistent update management experience across all supported versions of Windows in your environment,” Morrissey said.

Admins who use WSUS can import these previews from the Microsoft Update Catalog if they want to test upcoming non-security fixes.

The changes to the non-security updates distribution and naming are in concert with broad revisions of Office 365 and Windows 10’s servicing over the past several weeks. In April, the company swept out Office 365 and dropped in Microsoft 365 as the brand for numerous subscription plans. And earlier this week, Microsoft revamped the nomenclature for the Windows 10 previews shared with Insider participants.

For years, Windows and Mac users alike have been complaining about Chrome’s RAM usage. Chrome is one of the most egregious memory hogs you can install on your computer, and it can lead to a sluggish experience, especially if your computer is underpowered. This has been an issue for as long as Chrome has existed, especially for Windows, but thanks to Microsoft’s latest software update, a solution is finally in sight.

As spotted by Windows Latest, the Windows 10 May 2020 Update (version 2004) introduces segment heap memory improvements that should reduce the memory usage of Win32 apps, including Chrome. According to Microsoft’s Kim Denny, the change has already had a significant impact on the Edge browser:

With the Windows 10 May 2020 Update, Microsoft Edge has leveraged the Windows segment heap memory improvements now available for Win32 applications to manage memory more efficiently. Early internal testing results of devices on the May 2020 Update are showing a memory usage reduction of up to 27% when browsing with Microsoft Edge. Individual device performance will vary based upon configuration and usage, but the lower memory usage is expected to create a better experience.

Based on a recent commit from a Chrome engineer, it sounds like Google will take advantage of these improvements for its own browser as well on Windows 10 at some point in the future.

“Experiments with per-machine opting-in to the segment heap for chrome.exe suggests that this could save hundreds of MB in the browser and Network Service utility processes, among others, on some machines. Actual results will vary widely, with the greatest savings coming on many-core machines,” said Google’s Bruce Dawson.

Windows 10 version 2004 has plenty of issues that still need to be resolved, including one that has actually broken Chrome for some people, but once Microsoft irons out all the bugs, the May 2020 Update might end up being one of the best yet, especially when Google gets around to implementing whatever changes Microsoft made so that Chrome stops hogging all of our RAM. Unfortunately, there’s no timeframe for that quite yet.

It’s too early for the villagers to haul out their rusty pitchforks and oft-hoisted torches, but it looks like another Windows version upgrade has another data-eating bug.

The bug infects Storage Spaces, Microsoft’s way of implementing RAID-like data redundancy by using standard hard drives.

Yesterday, Microsoft posted Knowledge Base article 4568129, which says in part:

Devices using Storage Spaces might have issues using or accessing their Storage Spaces after updating to Windows 10, version 2004 (the May 2020 Update) and Windows Server, version 2004.  When using some configurations, partition for Storage Spaces might show as RAW in Disk Manager.

Within a few hours, Microsoft clamped down on distribution of the Win10 version 2004 upgrade to some affected PCs, showing the message:

This PC can’t upgrade to Windows 10. Your PC isn’t supported yet on this version of Windows 10. No action is needed. Windows Update will offer this version of Windows 10 automatically once the issue has been resolved.

Presumably the block appears on Win10 1809, 1903 and 1909 machines running Storage Spaces.

Attribute it to the “artificial” part of Microsoft’s vaunted rollout AI.

The scary part comes later in the announcement, which says:

Important

We do not recommend running the chkdsk command on any device affected by this issue.

Of course, any experienced Windows user who encounters a suddenly faltering disk will crank up chkdsk.exe. Checkdisk has been around since the Days of DOS. And now we’re being told not to use it. There’s no explanation why, it’s just not recommended.

To understand what little has appeared online, you need to realize that Storage Spaces, a feature introduced in Win7, supports four levels of protection. When you set up a Storage Space, you tell Windows what level of backup protection (“resiliency”) you want. A Parity Storage Space setup, which protects you from complete destruction of a single drive, requires at least three hard drives. With a Parity setup, one of your drives can grind to dust, and you’ll still have full, uninterrupted access to all of your data.

The details I’ve seen (thx, skippy on Reddit) point to corruption in Windows PCs with the Parity version of Storage Spaces. JohnHagan, posting on a different Reddit thread, describes it this way:

I have had a Storage Spaces Parity storage space consisting of 4 WD Red 6TB NAS hard disk drives, formatted as NTFS, on a Windows 10 Pro workstation, for several years. After upgrading to Windows 10 Version 2004, within a day or two, I noticed the contents of some files were corrupt. A CHKDSK resulted in finding thousands of problems, such as “Attribute list entry with type code 80 in file 5E711 is corrupt” and “File record segment 67C08 is an orphan”. When CHKDSK completed, the file system was again consistent, but hundreds of files had incorrect content, despite their other attributes being correct (file size and change dates).

I restored the corrupt files manually from backup, and continued on for another week. Then, a Cumulative Update for Version 2004 was installed and the workstation was rebooted. Almost immediately after the reboot, I noticed corrupt files again. This time, CHKDSK (run in read-only mode) detected hundreds of issues. I haven’t tried to repair it with CHKDSK, as I’m afraid I’ll corrupt it further.

Based on the few posts I’ve seen, the bug only shows up on machines running the Parity variant of Storage Spaces.

In my experience, Storage Spaces isn’t common – and Parity Storage Spaces aren’t common at all. But that’s not much solace to someone who’s trusting Microsoft to support its own feature.

Microsoft has had all sorts of problems with hard drive and SSD management in Win10 version 2004 – Mayank Parmar on Windows Latest lists problems with creating Storage Spaces. He also shows that the Drive Optimizer defrag tool doesn’t keep track of dates and thus prompts you to run it too frequently. Günter Born, quoting Karl Wester-Ebbinghaus, reports that old problems with freeing data still haunt Storage Spaces; and that Microsoft has known about these bugs for a long time. 

I haven’t yet seen any reports of Win10 2004 upgraders permanently losing data. But given the published warning about using chkdsk, it looks like we have another data-eating upgrade bug on our hands.

The last time a new version of Win10 inexplicably started chewing up data, with version 1809, Microsoft pushed the upgrade for four days before yanking it. Version 1809 went into the shop for four months, with the “oops, final final” version shipping in March 2019.

Given the likely severity of the problem, Microsoft should yank version 2004 now, and hope that more people don’t lose their data. It isn’t enough to hide behind an upgrade block.

Microsoft shouldn’t have shipped Win10 version 2004. Delaying the ship date is the first item in my list of Five steps Microsoft should take RIGHT NOW to help us through the pandemic, published two months ago. There are no feature upgrades worthy of the term – version 2004 primarily re-arranges the chairs on the deck. In the “tick-tock” new Win10 scheme of version upgrades every six months, this one doesn’t tick. It thuds.

After fives months of testing the final version of Win10 version 2004, we get this.

Have a beef with 2004? Join us on AskWoody.com.

Microsoft will repeat last year’s major-minor cadence for Windows 10’s upgrades, the company said Tuesday.

“We will again deliver Windows 10, version 20H2 using servicing technology (like that used for the monthly update process) for customers running the May 2020 Update who choose to update to the new release,” wrote John Cable, director of program management for the Windows Servicing and Delivery group, in a June 16 post to a Microsoft blog.

Cable’s description of the coming process echoed what he had said in July 2019, when he announced a sweeping departure from Windows 10’s previous twice-a-year-upgrade model. He even used phrasing almost identical to last year’s.

“We will deliver this feature update in a new way, using servicing technology (like the monthly update process) for customers running the May 2019 Update who choose to update to the new release,” he said at the time.

The end result this year will be a return to 2019’s cadence, with a feature-rich upgrade released in the spring followed by a Service Pack-like refresh in the fall that will be little more than a bugs-now-fixed retread of its predecessor.

Major-minor it is, then

Last year, Computerworld parsed multiple Microsoft announcements in July to explain what the Redmond, Wash. developer was actually saying when it stated it would deliver a fall update with “a scoped set of features for select performance improvements, enterprise features and quality enhancements.”

The deconstruction of Microsoft’s messaging was necessary both because of the marketing-speak it used for the news but also because the firm was describing a dramatic change in one of the foundational concepts of the “Windows as a service” (WaaS) strategy: It was going to release only one true feature upgrade for Windows 10 that year, while the second would be but a shadow of the first.

That won’t need to be duplicated this year; customers have seen the major-minor cadence in action. But Cable made sure to hit some highlights to assure users there would be no real change to 2020’s deliveries.

The fall refresh will be delivered as a monthly update to those who have adopted Windows 10 May 2020 Update, aka 2004. As customers found out last year, migrating from spring to fall took very little time for a number of reasons, primarily because the actual changes had been delivered the month prior. For more information on what this entails, read Microsoft (finally) delivers service pack-like Windows 10 1909 and Microsoft goes very small for Windows 10 1909’s ‘On’ switch from last year.

The fall “upgrade” will come with 30 months of support for Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows 10 Education customers. If there’s one reason Microsoft doesn’t just bag the idea of a second refresh each year, the support lifecycle is it. Microsoft must hold to the 30-month cycle for its most important customers, either by retaining the fall update or changing the spring’s lifespan (which is 18 months for all versions, including Enterprise and Education). The company seems hesitant to do the latter. (Why, we’re not sure. Computerworld has argued several times for just one upgrade annually.)

Users who have not deployed Windows 10 2004 can roll out the fall refresh in the standard fashion. “For consumer or commercial users coming from versions of Windows 10 earlier than … version 2004, the process of updating to the new release will be the same as it has been and will work in a similar manner to previous Windows 10 feature updates, using the same tools and processes,” Cable said.

What, another name change?

While a repeat of 2019’s major-minor tempo was expected by many, including Computerworld, Microsoft had one rabbit to pull out of a metaphorical top hat.

Microsoft is dumping the yymm naming format it’s used since Windows 10’s debut five years ago, the convention that has resulted in feature upgrade identifiers such as 1511, 1607, 1803, 1909 and, most recently, 2004.

Instead, Microsoft will use the code-naming convention yyH1 and yyH2 familiar to Windows Insider participants. The H1 and H2 refer to the year’s first half and second half, respectively.

“We will … move to a format that represents the half of the calendar year in which the release becomes available in retail and commercial channels,” Cable said. He also contended that the change was “designed to provide consistency in our version names across releases for our commercial customers and partners.”

Yet Microsoft will retain descriptive names – like last month’s “Windows 10 May 2020 Update” – for use when it communicates with consumers.

In short, Microsoft reduced the number of different identifiers for any given Windows 10 refresh from three to two. Previously, the trio was composed of a descriptive name (May 2020 Update) and a four-character moniker (1903, say, for last year’s spring feature upgrade), which were used interchangeably; and a different four-character nameplate (like 20H1) as a code-name of sorts during preview testing by Insiders. The last label was dropped upon release.

Now, Windows 10 has two identifiers remaining, which will not be used interchangeably, but separately for different audiences.

Yeah, that’s not confusing.

Beyond the claim that it’s dropping the yymm-formatted names “to provide consistency” – a weak argument, at best – Microsoft did not elaborate on why it made yet another naming change after recently upending both Office 365 and Windows release nomenclatures.

It might be because Microsoft has had difficulty matching the numeric labels with actual date stamps of its Windows 10 upgrades. Although it settled on 03 and 09 as the last two characters – pointing to March and September, respectively – increasingly the upgrades missed those marks. Last year’s 1909, for example, debuted in mid-November, and this year’s 2004 began its release in late May. The yyH1 and yyH2 will account for a much broader release window, from just one month to any of six.

For instance, Cable could say that “broad availability of Windows 10, version 20H2, will begin later this calendar year,” without worrying whether the identifier would be accurate.

Insider participants who want to preview 20H2 must register with the Beta Channel (formerly called the Slow Ring, and then opt in by choosing the “Download and install” option, as detailed here.