Not surprisingly, perhaps, Microsoft will continue the cumulative approach with Windows 11. Griping about cumulative updates has virtually subsided, proving that some of Windows 10's changes were ultimately accepted. "They won't be able to handle exceptions anymore." "Enterprises will lose the control that they have had," said one patch expert at the time. Users and IT admins howled, saying that they would no longer be able to skip some patches those that had been proven to cripple an application or even PCs were cited most often. That was a huge departure from decades of practice, which let customers pick and choose which individual patches they would install or decline. "This means new feature upgrades and servicing updates will contain the payloads of all previous releases and installing the release on a device will bring it completely up to date," Microsoft said in August 2015. Nearly forgotten now, another change in how Microsoft updated Windows 10 devices once raised as loud a ruckus as the too-often feature upgrades. Concurrent with the launch of Windows 10, Microsoft said that quality updates, its name for the monthly security fixes issued for the OS, would henceforth be cumulative. It doesn't matter whether Microsoft did so to address customer complaints or for its own, unknown purposes the bottom line - annual feature upgrades - is what's important. So credit goes to Redmond for adapting to a slower release tempo. Those analysts also predicted that Microsoft would eventually reach an annual cadence.Īnd they were right. The servicing change was simply too great for most commercial customers to wrap their heads around, much less adopt ASAP.Īnalysts kept saying that Microsoft was finding its way to policies that both it and customers would accept as the months, then years, ticked by. The fast pace Microsoft set for Windows 10 - initially that three-times-a-year release schedule - suffered pushback from the get-go. (If it doesn't, we can't wait for the spin on this one.) Okay, annual it is then After all, other operating systems - macOS on the desktop, Android and iOS on mobile - refresh annually, and their makers don't tout them as being a service.Įxpect Microsoft to drop the WaaS concept, conceding defeat. With Windows 11 moving to a once-a-year release tempo, Windows-as-a-service is clearly in retreat. Without the change in release cadence, Windows 10 would have been just an improved Windows 7. Windows as a service will deliver smaller feature updates two times per year, around March and September, to help address these issues." That schedule also meant waiting long periods without new features - a scenario that doesn't work in today's rapidly changing world, a world in which new security, management, and deployment capabilities are necessary to address challenges. "This traditional deployment schedule imposed a training burden on users because the feature revisions were often significant. "Prior to Windows 10, Microsoft released new versions of Windows every few years," the company stated in a crucial support document. In fact, it also spells out why Windows 10 was a radicalized reimagining of what an OS should be. Rather than replace Windows 7 with another edition that would eventually age out of support and be supplanted in turn by Windows 10+x, Windows 10 would be constantly refreshed, with new features and functionality added to major updates released first three, then two times a year.Įven now, the company trumpets Windows-as-a-service with the same language it did when it unveiled the model, as well it should Windows 10 will continue until late 2025.Īlthough the following is lengthy, it's important in its entirety because it best explains how Windows 10 was different from everything that came before. The operating system would not be the next upgrade from Windows 7 but would be the final version for the rest of time.
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