Why Windows 10 Build Release Dates Are So Unpredictable

The technical preview for Windows 10 includes a “fast track” for people who want access to the latest builds quickly, but that process doesn’t always seem to deliver builds much faster than the regular releases for more cautious folks. Why is that?

Microsoft’s Gabe Aul addresses that question in a recent blog post. During the January Windows 10 announcements in January, Microsoft said builds would be appearing more quickly, but that hasn’t happened in an obvious way. “The reality is that faster builds to you will include more bugs, and so far we’ve erred on the side of stability. In the process though we’ve not had as much distinction between Fast and Slow,” Aul wrote.

Aul also explains why the team has resisted setting fixed dates for releasing updates: “If we announce a date, we’ll want to have a very high confidence of hitting it. It’s frustrating for you to hear a date and be let down if we miss it, and it’s frustrating and distracting for us too. Not only that, but it slows down our engineering since many of the same people who are scrambling after a missed date would otherwise have been making more forward progress on the product.”

The full post is an interesting read, and includes a detailed discussion of how the timing for candidate builds works; check it out at the link below.

Frequency and predictability of builds for Windows Insiders [Blogging Windows]


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