Microsoft, which has not given up on pushing frequent function modifications to Windows 10 customers, this week launched the idea of Windows Feature Experience Packs as a way to improve the variety of instances throughout a yr when clients obtain new shiny issues.
On Monday, Microsoft launched a preview of a primary Windows Feature Experience Pack to individuals within the firm’s Windows Insider beta program. “By testing this course of first with Windows Insiders, we hope to develop the scope and the frequency of releases sooner or later,” Brandon LeBlanc, a senior program supervisor, wrote in a submit to an organization weblog. “Eventually, Windows Feature Experience Pack updates will get folded into the already present servicing course of for Windows 10 and delivered to clients that way by means of Windows Update.”
These function packs, for lack of a greater quick kind, have been effervescent in Redmond for a while: Two years in the past, a Windows 10 help doc talked about them. (ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, who reported Monday on LeBlanc’s submit, had additionally known as out the Windows Feature Experience Pack in June because it was being delivered to some customers.)
The thought behind the function packs, LeBlanc defined, is to ship “options and experiences” utilizing a mechanism outdoors the two-a-year function upgrade cycle already established for Windows 10. (Such options and functionalities might be put in independently of the OS as a result of they have been developed to be impartial of the working system, as, for instance, is the Edge browser.)
This debut included simply two minor enhancements to present options. The first permits customers to save screenshots or snippets of the display screen captured by the Snip & Sketch software to a delegated folder, reasonably than robotically to the Pictures/Screenshots folder. The different helps a cut up keyboard for the contact keyboard on 2-in-1 units.
Windows Feature Experience Packs might be served up to customers by means of Windows Update, as LeBlanc stated. They will thus depend on the identical servicing know-how used to deploy every month’s safety replace, the opposite month-to-month deliveries (together with the elective updates on the third or fourth Tuesday of every month) and notably, the “minor” function upgrades for Windows 10 shipped in November of each 2019 and 2020.
Okay, however why?
In 2019, Microsoft initiated a major-minor function upgrade cadence, the place the primary upgrade of the yr — the one launched within the spring — was adopted by one a lot smaller within the fall. The first contained quite a few function and performance additions or enhancements, and was delivered in the usual working system upgrade trend, necessitating a whole substitute of the OS. The second included all the fixes issued because the first in addition to a really restricted variety of function additions; due to its building, it might be processed and put in as was one of many a number of month-to-month updates. (In reality, everything of the second “upgrade” was embedded within the code of a type of month-to-month cumulative updates, then activated with a minute little bit of code obtained later.)
“Windows Feature Experience Pack updates might be delivered to Insiders by means of Windows Update identical to builds and cumulative updates are,” LeBlanc wrote.
That attribute implies that Microsoft intends these updates to be considerably quicker to course of than a real function upgrade, even when they are not unobtrusive. (LeBlanc famous {that a} function pack requires a tool restart, one thing a Patch Tuesday safety replace doesn’t.) It additionally means Microsoft envisions these updates occurring much more often than do function upgrades, maybe as typically as month-to-month.
The latter will possible concern business clients, their IT personnel, particularly. As a gaggle, IT hasn’t been keen about Microsoft’s Windows-as-a-service tempo; in a survey earlier this yr, practically six in each 10 admins polled stated the upgrades weren’t helpful or not often so. Further, solely 17% of the directors most well-liked the present two-per-year upgrade frequency, whereas 75% needed just one upgrade yearly or one upgrade each two years.
Microsoft’s upgrade tempo successfully slipped from twice yearly to simply as soon as every year beginning in 2019, when it went to the major-minor cadence. Now it is pondering of upping the frequency with Windows Feature Experience Packs?
Why?
Microsoft has by no means confirmed proof that clients clamored for its Windows 10-as-a-service mannequin, that they thought it made their wards safer or that these clients thought-about Windows 10 a greater OS because of frequent upgrades. In level of reality, since Windows 10’s debut 5 years in the past — even earlier than its launch — customers have complained about Microsoft’s upgrade follow, griping about every little thing from their velocity to disruptiveness, and questioning their worth and Microsoft’s motives. Customers have tailored to the new servicing technique as a result of they’ve had to, not as a result of they needed to.
The Windows Feature Experience Pack idea is extra of the identical. Almost as vital, the function packs contradict Microsoft’s shift towards fewer upgrades, exemplified by the 30 months of help for Windows 10 Enterprise’s upgrades and the once-a-year cadence for Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro. From that to, what, yet one more way to distribute updates? Again, why?
Microsoft ought to reply that — and for as soon as, earlier than it metes out the shift. Customers, notably the paying clients on the business aspect, deserve that.
Copyright © 2020 IDG Communications, Inc.
