Windows 10’s secret ingredient was that we believed in it

Windows 10, 10 years past. Looking back, I think that the one thing Windows 10 offered more than anything else was: optimism.

Ten years ago today, Windows 10 launched. My review of Windows 10 still feels familiar, just like the operating system. And if you rank all of Microsoft’s Windows operating systems, I still say that Windows 10 comes out on top.

Why? Because Windows 10 retained a sense of warmth while simultaneously ushering in the future. Microsoft could have added a feature called Windows Biometric Identification 1.0 to Windows. Instead, it added Windows Hello, a feature where your PC recognizes you, like an old friend. The Start menu was bold, bright, and informative. Cortana may have startled you out of your chair while setting up your PC, but SHE WAS HERE TO HELP — and could author a quick email or set a task while you were busy working on other things. Continuum shared a workspace with your phone.

So much of today’s entertainment media focuses on the past, precisely because the good old days feel behind us. The whole retrofuturist aesthetic in the Fantastic Four movie reminds of when humanity felt, collectively, that we could accomplish anything.

That collective enthusiasm was also the foundation of the Windows Insider program. For a time, especially before Windows 10 launched a decade ago, Microsoft and its community worked hand in hand to try and make Windows 10 as good is it could be. Users would submit feedback. Microsoft would read it. Small groups of Windows engineers would show off preview builds of Windows 10, and it felt — at least from my perspective — that both the community and Microsoft were eager to talk about what worked, what didn’t, and how to improve it. And it paid off.

Mark Hachman / Foundry

Today? Today sucks. We’re all worried about keeping our jobs, while dealing with the looming effects of tariffs. Our government is being slowly dismantled. AI, which was once the future, now feels like Damocles’ sword: Do we use it to preserve our own livelihoods, or discard it in what could be an ultimately futile bid to protect human creativity? And if we do use it, do we try to make a free version work or submit to another subscription service that could siphon hundreds of dollars out of our monthly paychecks?

Windows 10 certainly wasn’t perfect. Windows 10 ushered in Microsoft’s mixed-reality debacle, and I dedicated an entire article to what Microsoft promised us in its numerous updates, and yet failed to deliver. Windows Phone, RIP. But those were the days when Microsoft invited everyone to launches with names like the Windows 10 Creators Update, showed us its vision of the future, and asked us to join in.

Now, Windows 11 increasingly feels like a software shell surrounding Copilot. Maybe that is the future, where the “operating system” fades away behind some sort of assistant that simply does things for you. Science fiction has certainly trod that path several times, going back to the “Computer” in Star Trek and elsewhere.

Today, we’re all concerned about Windows 10’s end of life this October: What will happen if you don’t upgrade? Tips, tricks, and hacks to prolong the inevitable.

I’m not here to bury Windows 11; I’ve moved on and embraced it, and I think you should, too. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t look back, even through the gauzy filter of nostalgia. Those were better times, and Windows 10 powered our lives.