Insiders are constantly wondering and asking about when the next exciting new Technical Preview build will arrive, and what it may include. Microsoft’s Gabriel Aul does his best to answer all the questions on Twitter, but tweets move fast, and answers end up getting lost in the Twitterverse, so Aul took to the Windows blog instead.
In the blog post, Aul talks about two of the main questions that he simply cannot answer well enough in 140 characters. The first question is about build availability, the dilemma Microsoft faces here revolves around stability. As we progress towards the imminent launch of Windows 10, one would naturally expect to see builds becoming more and more stable, but if Microsoft pushes out builds at a faster rate, they would include more bugs, and Microsoft has been cautious about pushing out builds to the fast ring. With some of the new functionality added to the builds, Microsoft simply needs more time to polish them before releasing the build to the public. The company has even considered an even faster than fast ring for Insiders which you can read about here.
The second question Aul gets asked a lot on Twitter is about Microsoft being more transparent with Insiders. People like to ask for precise release dates of new builds and are instead given a general time frame, i.e. “soon”. But it’s not that simple for Microsoft. In fact, the software giant claims that revealing a fixed date is counter-intuitive and would result in builds getting released slower and with less new content. The reasons being that announcing a fixed date would mean the company is confident in hitting it, but should they fail to be ready to do so, it would be frustrating and distracting.
“I’ve said on Twitter previously that we expect that you’ll get a build “roughly monthly” since we can typically expect that a build will come out every 30 days or so, though sometimes (as now) it may take a little longer.” – Gabriel Aul
Builds would also come out at a slower rate because the company would include the extra time needed to test and fix bugs before release. And should they complete the build and fix bugs before they hit the announced release date, they would then hold on to the build instead of ship it immediately. Without announcing a fixed date, build simply come out as soon as they’re ready.
You know by now that Windows 10 has found its way to millions of PCs, and should a build come out that hasn’t been tested sufficiently, millions of PC’s would crash and burn. Yes, people were warned that the builds aren’t finalized, and could lead to possible data loss and at worst case, hardware failure, but obviously that wasn’t enough to deter millions of people from installing the builds. So Microsoft still has to be cautious about what they put out.
Just in case you were wondering, no release date for the next Technical Preview build has been unveiled in the blog post. It will ship when it ships.
