Microsoft stopped giving away Windows 10 last week, but consumers didn’t exactly rush to install it before the deadline, data from NetMarketShare.com suggests.
Windows 10 jumped up 1.73 percent in July, according to these figures, going from from 19.4 percent of the overall desktop market to 21.13 percent. That’s in line with June’s gain of 1.71 percent, suggesting the deadline didn’t prompt a bunch of procrastinators to install the latest Microsoft operating system. Adoption rates are expected to slow in August as the giveaway ends, Betanews is reporting.
Windows 7 still dominate the desktop browser market, with half of all users still using the seven-year-old operating system.
On one level, these results make sense. After a year of constant prompts and reminders — and cases where some users even ended up with Windows 10 against their will — it’s hard to imagine there were many people left who wanted Windows 10 but simply hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
And yet, a nearly 2 percent uptick in market share in just a month is nothing to sneeze at. That would be a monumental month of growth for Linux, which currently holds 2.3 percent of the desktop market. Windows 10 gained more users in June and July than Linux’s current total, by these numbers. And there are already more Windows 10 users than Mac and Linux users combined.
Windows 10 probably can’t count on 2 percent growth now that the free update is over, but growth won’t stop completely. Most users don’t upgrade operating systems: they buy computers, and use whatever operating system comes with it. This, combined with Enterprise users’ preference for familiarity and stability, explains why Windows 7 still makes up the bulk of the PC market.
But a year after release, there’s a chance the Enterprise market will slowly start adopting Windows 10. The U.S. Department of Defense has already committed to installing Windows 10 on 4 million PCs, for example. Big organizations like this switching over could keep Windows 10 growing.
It’s hard to imagine that type of growth matching the pace of a free download with constant pop-ups, though. For now, like most Microsoft operating systems after one year, Windows 10 has less than half the user base of a previous version of Windows.
Speech-to-text apps have flooded the App Store, making it easier than ever to type on our Macs with just our voice. I have previously covered one such app called TypeWhisper. However, there has been a dearth of good text-to-speech models, and most of the good ones are locked behind a subscription.
Ollama, an open-source app that lets you run local AI models on your computer, wants to change that. It works on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and your prompts are never stored or used for training.
Did you think hitting delete on your AI chatbot conversation actually makes it disappear? Georgia Tech researchers just proved that's not entirely true. They have built a forensic tool called ORISA that can dig deleted conversations from your phone and even rebuild them into a working chatbot session you can keep talking to.
How can ORISA bring deleted AI conversations back?
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).