Health Legal Technology

Microsoft has started to push the Chromium-based Edge browser to Windows 10 users through the Windows Update service, according to company support documents.

“This update will be downloaded and installed automatically from Windows Update,” stated one of three support documents, marked KB4541301, KB4541302 and KB4541309.

Those documents spelled out previous updates that were required for the Edge auto-download, the versions of Windows effected by the Edge download-and-install – 1809, 1903, 1909 and the latest 2004 – and what data is supposed to migrate from the old Edge to the new.

Ghacks reported earlier this week on the support documents and their signaling of a start to Edge’s automatic downloading.

Systems served by Windows Update will be offered Edge 83, the current version since May 21, when Microsoft restarted the browser’s numbering. Microsoft, like Chrome, paused updates for several weeks, from late March to early April, because of the coronavirus pandemic; to make up for lost time, both Chrome and Edge skipped version 82, upgrading from 81 to 83 directly.

The trio of support documents did not lay out whether enterprises will be subjected to the Edge auto-download, but linked to prior pieces Microsoft has posted that do. From those documents, it was clear that Microsoft’s original plans, first revealed in January, have not changed.

In summary, Microsoft will:

• Not auto-download-and-install Edge to PCs running Windows 10 Enterprise, Windows 10 Education or Windows 10 Workstation Pro.
• Not auto-download-and-install Edge to PCs running Windows 10 Home or Windows 10 Pro if that machine is managed by IT. The latter is defined as systems joined to an Active Directory (AD) or Azure Active Directory (AAD) domain, those updated using WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) or WUfB (Windows Update for Business), and those administered using tools like Intune and SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager).
• Not auto-download-and-install Edge to PCs running Windows 10 Home or Windows 10 Pro which have been excluded using Edge’s Blocker Toolkit. More information about the Toolkit can be found here.

Absent new information from Microsoft, those PCs should be immune from Chromium Edge’s auto-deployment.

Meanwhile, legacy Edge goes dark

Simultaneously, Microsoft also announced it has halted development of the legacy version of Edge as of the recently-released Windows 10 May 2020 Update.

“The legacy version of Microsoft Edge is no longer being developed,” Microsoft said in a support document last revised May 28. The statement was listed as “announced” in Windows 10 2004, the May 2020 Update which the Redmond, Wash. company released May 27.

The original Edge – the version bundled with Windows 10 at its July 2015 debut and the operating system’s long-time default – thus joins Internet Explorer (IE) in the still-around-but-not-evolving category. Microsoft stopped development of IE in 2016, but continues to serve security updates to the browser on Windows 10, 8.1, and 7.

Since January, Microsoft has been clear that the Chromium-based Edge would replace the original, so the development deprecation should not come as a surprise. The act should also be taken as the hint it is, that at some point, likely not long after Chromium-Edge has reached feature parity with the original, the company will do away with the legacy version entirely.

Microsoft spent years trying to entice Windows 10 users to open Edge, going so far as to push “warnings” about Chrome’s battery life usage. In the end, Microsoft threw in the towel and announced its move to Chromium in late 2018. The first developer builds of Edge came just a few months after the announcement. Roughly a year later, the browser was ready for prime time. 

Chromium Edge (Microsoft just calls it “Edge”) uses the same open-source engine behind Google’s Chrome browser. It even looks a bit like Chrome, but Microsoft has made some changes to bring it in-line with the Windows aesthetic and integrate custom features like collections, a dark theme, and tracking prevention. It’s also much faster and better at rendering pages than Microsoft’s EdgeHTML engine from the legacy Edge browser. 

Microsoft started pushing the Chromium Edge browser to some PCs in January 2020. There was also a manual download for those who wanted to run the latest and greatest right away. Only people running the April 2018 update (version 1803) got the browser automatically, allowing Microsoft to watch for any issues in the upgrade. Now, the new Edge is rolling out to anyone running version 1803 through the latest may 2020 update (version 2004).The new Edge is recognizable as Chromium, but it has Microsoft styling and services built-in.

Microsoft says the KB4559309 update will add Edge to your PC. The upgrade process will move your favorites, passwords, and other personal data from the old browser to the new one. However, there is no way to go back to the legacy version of Edge after upgrading. You can avoid the update for a bit longer if you really want the old browser for some reason, but its days are numbered. 

The new Edge helped Microsoft pass Firefox’s usage share back in April. Rolling the browser out to most Windows 10 installs should boost it even more. However, Microsoft probably isn’t going to get anywhere close to Google, which owns nearly 70 percent of the desktop browser market, according to NetMarketShare.

All right, so that last one might be a bit of an exaggeration (though only a little). But that aside, these are all shockingly common sentiments you hear not only from tech enthusiasts but also from people who write about this stuff for a living.

And I’m here to tell you they’re all equally misguided. Now, don’t get me wrong: There’s a nugget of truth to every one of those statements (even the last one; hey, we’re all proud nerds here, right?). Lots of folks using Android genuinely don’t have the most optimal privacy scenario or the most secure setup imaginable on their phones. A depressingly high number of Android phone-owners don’t get timely and reliable software updates. And, yes, a huge amount of Android users have horrible user experiences (whether they actively realize it or not).

But treating all of those issues as blanket condemnations of Android itself — as inherent and unavoidable flaws with the platform — overlooks one key point. It’s a foundational reality of Android that’s been at the system’s core since the start, and keeping it front of mind changes the entire view of what Android represents.

The best way to sum it up is with two complementary words: choice and control.

Choice and control: Two platforms, two approaches

For people accustomed to the Apple universe, the notion of choice and control within a smartphone environment can be a funny concept to grasp. When you buy an iPhone, for better or sometimes for worse, you get The Apple Way™ — the Apple way of balancing privacy with function, the Apple way of providing Apple-controlled software updates to Apple-made devices, the Apple way of forcing you to see a static grid of all your app’s icons on your home screen all the time, and the Apple way of having to use Apple apps as your default browser, email service, mapping service, and so on.

Like I said, some good, some…not so good. But it’s always The Apple Way™.

And so when people who are accustomed to that sort of approach think about Android, they frequently assume Android operates in a similar manner — that whatever they read about or see on, say, a Samsung phone is The Android Way. The problem is that there isn’t an “Android way” — not in any Apple-esque, platform-wide level.

Instead, Android allows for a fair amount of — yep, you guessed it — choice and control. Sometimes, that choice and control lands in the hands of you, the user. Other times, it’s in the arms of the company that made the device. Either way, just like in the Apple universe, the result is a mix of positives and negatives.

Critically, that same level of choice and control is a huge part of what allowed Android to catch on initially and then grow into its position as the world’s most widely used operating system. In the early days of Android, it was the fact that phone-makers and carriers alike could bring their own unique flavors and business interests into the software that convinced so many players to sign on. And still today, that flexibility is a powerful part of what makes Android appealing to companies like Samsung, which want to push their own profit-turning services and to handle software the way they see fit just as much as they want to hawk hardware.

Again: It’s a mix of pros and cons, particularly from the perspective of someone who actually uses these products. But that brings us back to the statements we went over at the start of this story — the misleading generalities about areas like privacy, security, upgrades, and user experience on Android.

The problem with those statements is the way they overlook the key factors of choice and control — because even in a situation where the device-maker is the one with the ultimate control, you as the user are always the one with the choice.

Choice and control within Android

We’ll start with privacy — an area where Apple really likes to act superior (at least, when the narrative fits). But despite what the casual sweater-wearing executives on stages keep saying, the reality isn’t actually that it’s impossible to have dialed-up privacy on Android. It’s simply that Google’s business model and the services Google provides rely upon the responsible use of a certain amount of data in order to operate. And if you don’t want your data used in that way, you can make an educated decision to change it — at a certain cost, of course, when it comes to functionality.

Now, the flip side is that most Android privacy matters operate via a system of defaults — and most people aren’t gonna take the time to navigate the labyrinth of related settings. What’s more, most people would probably pick the functionality they get as a result of their data being used over the lower-functionality, higher-privacy alternative, anyway. But the choice is there, as I lay out in my new Android privacy guide; it’s just up to you to embrace it.

What about security? Well, it’s true that Android does allow you to install apps from external sources — the horror! — but, y’know, it’s also a choice. Most typical phone-owners will never wander into a shady-looking forum in some dusty corner of the web and download an app posted by a guy named Ned. Even if they do attempt to do that, they’ll have to go through multiple layers of warnings and overrides before their phone will let them. And still then, their system will scan the file to look for any known issues and identify any red flags. It’s essentially an enhanced and significantly lower-risk version of the same thing you get when using a regular computer. And just like in that environment, a little common sense goes a long way.

That brings us to the realm of updates — both OS-level and the monthly security patch complements (both of which are equally important when it comes to optimal privacy and security protection, by the way). It’s true that most Android device-makers do an embarrassingly bad job at providing software updates to their devices and that you as the user are the one who suffers from that negligence, even with the way Google has made OS updates themselves less all-important on Android than they are on iOS. We talk about that constantly in these quarters.

But what often gets lost in that conversation is the fact that if timely and reliable software updates are important to you — and by golly, they oughta be, especially if you’re a business user — you absolutely can have them; you just have to choose a phone that provides that type of experience. And in the Android ecosystem right now, that basically means choosing one of Google’s self-made Pixel phones.

And that leads us to the biggest point of all in this discussion: The Pixel, as I’ve put it before, is essentially the closest thing to an iPhone-like equivalent within the Android world. It’s a device made by the company responsible for the operating system; supported directly by that same company, with no middlemen or mitigating forces involved; and with an unmeddled version of that company’s widely lauded vision for what the user experience should be — a vision that eschews confusing redundant apps competing for your attention and creates an ecosystem-wide consistency in design.

Unlike with iOS, though, on Android, that isn’t the only choice. You can have it if you want it, but it’s a decision for you to make. There’s no shortage of diversity within the platform, and if you find another phone’s size, style, or stamina to be more appealing, you can have that, too. It ultimately just comes down to a matter of priorities — and a matter of educating yourself about the possibilities.

Android and iOS have grown increasingly similar over the years, but the foundational difference of choice and control continues to be a significant factor that separates ’em. Neither platform’s approach is inherently better, but they are strikingly different. And the sooner we can all internalize that, the sooner we can stop having silly discussions that revolve around an inaccurate assumption.

Android allows users to install apps from any source, not just the official Google Play Store. Sideloading apps can be a risky procedure if you don’t know what you’re doing, as you may end up installing malware on your device, thinking you’re getting a different type of app.

Some developers could choose this way of offering popular apps to users, and that’s what Epic Games did with Fortnite until not too long ago. Developers can use the feature to beta test their apps before they hit the Play Store or installing custom apps they don’t necessarily want to share with others. Android users from regions where Google services might be banned could attempt to sideload apps from other sources. In short, there are plenty of reasons to want to install APK that don’t involve accessing the Play Store, and those Android users who feel comfortable doing it will not want the feature to go away. The good news is that Android 11 will keep supporting the functionality. The bad news is that it’s slightly more annoying than before.

The way it works right now, Android will ask you to grant an APK file install permissions. Once you do that, you can go back to the app in question and start the install process without losing any data.

The behavior has changed in Android 11, however. The install dialog will still pop up after you grant permission, but the app is gone from view as the system force quits it. Testers discovered the matter and reported it via the Google issue tracker. As Android Police explains, it all works as it’s supposed to. It’s not a bug, but rather a security feature. Upon restart, the sideloaded app is fully reloaded but may miss some data as it was shut down.

Downloading apps from unknown sources on Android 11 will crash the app during install. Image Source: Android PoliceThe animation above shows the problem in action. A Googler explained the new behavior as the new normal for sideloading apps:

The way the filesystem and storage mounts are setup in Android R has changed significantly. When an app starts without this permission, it gets a view of the filesystem that doesn’t allow writing to certain directories (eg Android/obb). Once the app has been granted this permission, that view is no longer accurate, and needs to be updated to a view that allows the app to write to certain directories. With the way the filesystem has been setup in R, changing that view on the fly is not possible. As mentioned in comment #16, we’re evaluating internally. I’m just providing additional details why this doesn’t work the way it did on Q.

The reason this happens is because of the Scoped Storage feature that Google will implement in Android 11. Scoped Storage will force apps to access its own isolated storage rather than getting access to the entire Android filesystem. It’s a security and privacy feature that Google wanted to implement Scoped Storage in Android 10 but postponed it to give developers time to adapt their apps to support the change.

In other words, you’ll still be able to sideload apps in Android 11 just like before. It’ll just be a little more annoying, as the app will crash during the install process.

The Developer Preview version of Android 11 has been available to developers for months, with a proper Android 11 beta release coming to all users in the following weeks.

Windows resumed a more-or-less normal pattern in May as Windows 7 shed share while Windows 10 added to its account, bucking the March-April trend where roles had flipped – perhaps because of businesses and governments urging people to work at home during the coronavirus pandemic.

According to analytics company Net Applications, Windows 10 grew by 1.8 percentage points to reach 57.8% of global OS share last month, representing 66.7% of all flavors of Windows. Both of those numbers were records for Windows 10, with the latter marking the first time that the operating system accounted for two-thirds of all existent Windows.

Windows 10’s percentage of only Windows PCs was significantly larger than the percentage of all personal computers because Windows does not power every system. In May, Windows was the OS of 86.7% of the world’s personal computers, a decrease of two-tenths of a percentage point and a new low for Microsoft’s operating system. Of the rest, all but a miniscule six-hundredths of a point ran macOS, Linux or Chrome OS, in decreasing order.

At the same time, Windows 7, whose long-term decline stalled in March and only half-heartedly resumed in April, picked up the downward pace, losing 1.3 percentage points to slip to 24.3% of all PCs. When expressed as a portion of just Windows, Windows 7 fell by the same amount, ending at 28% for May.

Windows 8/8.1 dipped to 3.5% of all operating systems and to 4.1% of only Windows, losing three-tenths of a point in both measurements.

A pandemic rebound for 10?

The restart of Windows share normalcy – Windows 7 down, 10 up – was difficult to explain in the face of the pandemic situation of May. Although some parts of the U.S. slowly retreated from the stay-home/work-at-home mandates of the months before, in most cases large businesses and organizations continued to stress remote work. It’s hard to see how large migrations from 7 to 10 could be conducted in that environment.

One possible explanation: Industry analysts at Gartner said, “[the] work from home trend saved [the] PC market from collapse [in the first five months of 2020]” because “COVID-19 forced businesses and schools to enable millions of people to work from home and increase spending on new notebooks, Chromebooks and tablets for those workers.”

Since new PCs ship with Windows 10, it’s possible, if Gartner is correct, that company-and-school efforts to equip workers, students and staff with remote-capable devices caused the uptick in 10 and a corresponding decline in 7.

Possible? Sure. Likely? Hard to say.

The changes of May also shifted the Computerworld forecast – based on the 12-month average – for Windows 7 and 10. The former should slide below 20% of just Windows not long after 2020’s end and a year from now, dip to around 15%. Meanwhile, Windows 10 will pass 70% (of Windows only) by the end of August, and within a year, reach 80%, perhaps 82%.

Elsewhere in Net Applications’ OS data, May saw another unexplained advance by Linux. The category, which lumps together all distributions, scratched out another three-tenths of a percentage point to hit 3.2%, its second highest ever. (The record holder was the suspicious 3.4% in August 2017, just months before Net Applications purged bogus traffic originating from criminals’ “bots” and rejiggered virtually everything.)

The declines of both Windows (two-tenths of a point) and macOS (one-tenth) fed the boost to Linux (three-tenths), showing the zero-sum nature of share; when one operating system slumps, another has to shinny up.

Of the overall Linux, Ubuntu again led the way, accounting for more than two-thirds of the three-tenths of a point increase.

It remained puzzling why Linux experienced a growth spurt and more specifically, why now? Frankly, Computerworld has no reasonable answer.

Net Applications calculates operating system share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers used to reach the websites of Net Applications’ clients. The firm tallies visitor sessions to measure operating system activity.