Micrsoft's Gabe Aul is a busy guy, and that isn't going to get any better when he's getting constant questions from Windows fans asking about when the next build of Windows 10 is coming. It's never fast enough for some of the excited fans out there, and honestly, it'll always come when Microsoft is good and ready to push it out.
Today, in a post on the Windows blog, he's offered a good degree of transparency on how the process works internally and how the team decides when and what to release.
"Let's play that out hypothetically for the next build coming out. Today is 3/9 and we want to ensure we get a build out in March. If we communicated a target date, to be sure we could meet our commitment we'd likely pick a date like 3/26. It gives us time to stabilize and it's on a Thursday (we usually like to avoid Mondays and Fridays.) Between now and then we'd still be getting new feature payloads, but we'd fork to a stabilization branch somewhere around 3/17 or so and only take selective changes. It's easier to stabilize without a lot of additional new code, so we'd cherry pick key fixes. On 3/23 we'd have a candidate build, and we'd flight that out broadly within MS to make sure we could find any gotchas and meet our date with confidence. Hey, that doesn't sound too bad does it? Except in the 'worst case scenario' where we miss the date and people are let down, it means a predictable date about once per month with kind of up to date code."
Ultimately Windows 10 is a continuing work in progress. Microsoft is probably handling it in the best way it could right now, by not talking about dates and instead using the ring promotion process to push out when ready. Ultimately dates work both for and against in a situation like this. Fans would be happy, because they'd have something to mark on their calendars. But, if Microsoft for some reason couldn't meet that date (highly possible, we are talking about preview code here) then there's the inevitable backlash that happens when people feel "let down."
It's a really good, detailed post, and it's great to see Microsoft offering this level of transparency on how the Windows 10 process is being dealt with. It's well worth your time to read, and maybe take into consideration while being oh so (im)patient for new things to push out.
Source: Windows Blog
