Windows 10 Beta Release Cadence Thoughts
Many are complaining that the "fast" ring for Windows 10 builds isn't so fast and that promises to ramp up speeds aren't generating results. I get the position Microsoft is in though. People aren't using builds responsibly. I'd wager that virtually everyone who knows where to find out how to change which ring they are in is in the fast ring.
This is great from a crash report perspective... but terrible from a PR perspective. The team got REAMED in the media for one bad build earlier already. Despite the fact that MS has said time and again that these are beta builds and that you should expect them to not be stable. In other words, people's expectations are higher than they should be, even for fast ring builds.
On the other side, they are working in a vacuum now. It is almost 2 months now since a new build hit either ring. Windows 10 on phones hasn't opened up new devices. Feedback becomes more and more limited and they miss out on both positive and negative feedback.
I think that the "fast" ring is too slow for sure. While I think it is being abused with too many people without the appropriate skills to fix a broken PC putting themselves in the fast ring, the truly inept users likely haven't even found the setting to change the build speed. And, as long as the networking stack and update system are working, fast ring PC's could still get hotfixes to resolve serious issues. In other words, there are areas of the OS where, if there are no significant changes, it won't be devastating if a build ships which breaks.
Obviously, the first thing that they need to fix is that there needs to be a difference in the speed between fast and slow builds, and the difference needs to be meaningful, otherwise there is no reason to have 2 separate rings. I think the current fast ring needs to become the outermost ring that they use internally or they need to relax their metrics for deciding when to release to the fast ring.
I also think that they need a faster speed ring, but that the ring needs to come with constraints. And some logical constraints might be requiring a certain number of feedback items submitted, or even requiring that a user have at least 2 computers registered for the program and limiting the fastest ring(s) to a single computer in case a back up machine is required for burning an image or downloading drivers should a build break a PC. I think both are fair.
The feedback related constraint doesn't guarantee technical proficiency, but those providing feedback are likely more technical AND the team gets more value out of their participation. Those who ignore the feedback prompts and don't use the hub likely are most likely using the preview builds as their daily machine with no intent of helping out. In fact, I think all rings outside the slow ring should have some barrier to participation.
Forcing a user to have multiple registered PC's and making sure that they can't put the most dangerous builds on all PC's means that the user has a means of finding help articles or downloads to restore any hosed installs.
Another thing to do is the barrage of warnings. If there is a 3rd ring, a good deterrent for the less technical is bombarding them with warnings about how dangerous this option can be. It does nothing to actually stop people, but the ignorant are also typically scared off by any warnings. Combined with a required level of participation and a requirement for a second registered PC this would deter a great many people.
Honestly, I would be fine with just two rings and having the fast ring adopt some constraints if the fast ring would get builds at and average ratio of 3:1 or higher. The added hoops should help keep bloggers and journalists from blowing failed builds out of proportion.
This is great from a crash report perspective... but terrible from a PR perspective. The team got REAMED in the media for one bad build earlier already. Despite the fact that MS has said time and again that these are beta builds and that you should expect them to not be stable. In other words, people's expectations are higher than they should be, even for fast ring builds.
On the other side, they are working in a vacuum now. It is almost 2 months now since a new build hit either ring. Windows 10 on phones hasn't opened up new devices. Feedback becomes more and more limited and they miss out on both positive and negative feedback.
I think that the "fast" ring is too slow for sure. While I think it is being abused with too many people without the appropriate skills to fix a broken PC putting themselves in the fast ring, the truly inept users likely haven't even found the setting to change the build speed. And, as long as the networking stack and update system are working, fast ring PC's could still get hotfixes to resolve serious issues. In other words, there are areas of the OS where, if there are no significant changes, it won't be devastating if a build ships which breaks.
Obviously, the first thing that they need to fix is that there needs to be a difference in the speed between fast and slow builds, and the difference needs to be meaningful, otherwise there is no reason to have 2 separate rings. I think the current fast ring needs to become the outermost ring that they use internally or they need to relax their metrics for deciding when to release to the fast ring.
I also think that they need a faster speed ring, but that the ring needs to come with constraints. And some logical constraints might be requiring a certain number of feedback items submitted, or even requiring that a user have at least 2 computers registered for the program and limiting the fastest ring(s) to a single computer in case a back up machine is required for burning an image or downloading drivers should a build break a PC. I think both are fair.
The feedback related constraint doesn't guarantee technical proficiency, but those providing feedback are likely more technical AND the team gets more value out of their participation. Those who ignore the feedback prompts and don't use the hub likely are most likely using the preview builds as their daily machine with no intent of helping out. In fact, I think all rings outside the slow ring should have some barrier to participation.
Forcing a user to have multiple registered PC's and making sure that they can't put the most dangerous builds on all PC's means that the user has a means of finding help articles or downloads to restore any hosed installs.
Another thing to do is the barrage of warnings. If there is a 3rd ring, a good deterrent for the less technical is bombarding them with warnings about how dangerous this option can be. It does nothing to actually stop people, but the ignorant are also typically scared off by any warnings. Combined with a required level of participation and a requirement for a second registered PC this would deter a great many people.
Honestly, I would be fine with just two rings and having the fast ring adopt some constraints if the fast ring would get builds at and average ratio of 3:1 or higher. The added hoops should help keep bloggers and journalists from blowing failed builds out of proportion.
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