Microsoft says it, too, will alert users when they are beset by state-sponsored cyber attacks, following the lead of Google, Facebook and Yahoo.
Windows 10's uptake pace has -- at least for now -- lost its lead over the adoption rate of Windows 7 six years ago.
Chrome in October reached another major milestone in user share as Internet Explorer and Firefox again shed fans at ruinous rates.
Microsoft today confirmed it has been pre-loading the Windows 10 installation bits onto devices whose owners have not "reserved" a copy or expressed interest in the new OS.
Apple will host its yearly iPhone event on Wednesday, September 9, where it will unveil new smartphones and perhaps a revamped Apple TV, according to a report.
In a revival tent-like speech, Microsoft's chief operations officer, Kevin Turner, urged the company's partners to forget the past - an allusion to the failure of its smartphone business to gain meaningful share - but defended the decision to keep making handsets.
Microsoft's top operating system executive has confirmed that the two main Windows 10 update and upgrade "branches" will offer customers multiple "rings," or tempos, that they can select to receive changes quickly or after they've been tested by others.
Microsoft's Windows 10 will not have a fragmentation problem, analysts argued, even though its rapid development tempo and a host of update cadences will spin off so many versions that not everyone will be running the same code, or even have the same features, at any one time.
Windows 7 has approached the user share numbers set by Windows XP six years ago, hinting that unless Microsoft executes its Windows 10 upgrade plans to perfection, Windows 7 will persist on devices long after its 2020 retirement.
Microsoft has confirmed that it will use security updates - or more accurately, the refusal to serve them to customers - as the stick to keep businesses in line with Windows 10's accelerated tempo of feature and functionality upgrades.
Rather than follow Microsoft's mandate to update older editions of Internet Explorer (IE) by January, a significant chunk of IE's users switched to Google's Chrome browser instead, data released Monday showed.
Nervous about the FREAK flaw? Freakin' out?
Microsoft on Friday said consumers would become coal mine canaries who turn up bugs and problems in each Windows 10 update months before businesses have to commit to the fixes.
Google on Friday defended its decision to stop patching WebView, a core component of Android, on versions older than 4.4, aka "KitKat," saying that the huge code base is unsafe to fix.
Microsoft has showed off more of its still-under-construction Windows 10, focusing on features like the voice-activated Cortana digital assistant and its "universal" app model that aims to put the same apps on PCs, tablets, smartphones and hybrid 2-in-1s.