Not sure Windows 10 is ready for prime time yet...
And maybe that is the REAL reason behind the staggered release.
The OS itself is fairly stable for most people at this point. It runs perfectly well on all of my PC's which includes a desktop with AMD graphics, and Lenovo Yoga with integrated Intel graphics and a Surface Pro 3. That is all good news.
The bad news is that many of the apps are ridiculously unstable and still in flux. And we are talking either first party apps or important 3rd party apps. Edge rarely crashes on me these days. But the Start menu can take forever to be responsive, the News app crashes regularly, as do important apps like Twitter and Facebook.
If those last 4 experiences were things that the average user would never touch, that would be OK. But the reality is that just about everyone will use one of those, and many will use multiple. And, perhaps much more critically, I've not really spent a ton of time on a bunch of the 1st party apps, so this is by no means an exhaustive list. The photos app when I most recently tested it was painfully slow and crashed as well. Many are reporting issues with OneDrive. Admittedly, some of these gripes go back to Windows 8.1 as well. But the point of Windows 10 was largely to "fix" the damage caused by Windows 8, and apps that crash at every turn aren't going to do that.
I haven't bothered with any of this previously because I understand that this is pre-release software and I'm effectively choosing to be a free beta tester for Microsoft. And, as far as I care, the software is perfectly fine. I don't really mind intermittent crashes in those programs. They aren't important ones for me, despite the fact that I use them regularly. I'm not the typical user.
I'm choosing to point this out now however because we got a new build yesterday and MS was hoping to have their RTM release ready by about this point. So, the build I'm on now is either an RTM candidate, a build not far behind the RTM candidate(s) or issues were found and this is actually a higher version than any RTM candidate, and those sorts of issues are the sort that will ruin the experience for a typical consumer.
Next I'll talk quickly about the phone OS in case anyone is interested. Firstly, the phone OS is NOT the desktop OS. They share more code than ever before, but there are definitely some underpinnings, and important ones at that, which are different (and have to be, remember that WP devices are not x86/64 devices). And, the phone version of the OS isn't as close to RTM. So, right now, version for version, the Phone OS is nowhere near as stable and polished as the desktop. Guessing a lot of the bugs are in the runtime itself. But, if you're interested in running Windows 10 on your phone, and you have a compatible device, here is what I have to say.
It is getting there slowly. I'm running it on a Lumia 1020, so dual core, with mid range processor speed and 2GB of RAM. It runs SLLLLOOOOOWWWWW. But, that being said, it is much more stable and usable than even the version prior. If you're an enthusiast and willing to flash back to WP8 if things aren't good enough, this is the first build I think I would recommend to enthusiasts, but not really anyone beyond that who doesn't have a second phone to load it on.
But it is far enough along that basically everything works some of the time :)
This far from RTM for these devices, insider builds are much less frequent. Also, a lot more changes between builds and quality improves at a much faster pace. Still, I wish that they'd lower their criteria for releasing fast ring builds. It hurts the feedback loop and for most people using this on Phones who haven't bailed back to WP8, even incremental changes would probably be welcome. The performance and stability of apps at this moment are quite painful. I think the criteria should be, if there is a candidate which doesn't show any risk of making a phone unable to be recovered and the OS itself is generally stable, then the best such candidate should be released every 2 weeks.
Another problem with the program right now is that the Fast and Slow rings should never be on the same build. Unless, as with the desktop versions, it is unlikely that the two will be on the same build for more than a day or two.
Basically, to me that says that the current build in the fast ring is stable enough to be in the slow ring, but that there are no candidates since then even remotely close to that level stability. Since the fast ring should have a lower bar to meet, the only time this should happen is the builds are becoming more unstable with time.
So yeah... not ideal, but getting there.
The OS itself is fairly stable for most people at this point. It runs perfectly well on all of my PC's which includes a desktop with AMD graphics, and Lenovo Yoga with integrated Intel graphics and a Surface Pro 3. That is all good news.
The bad news is that many of the apps are ridiculously unstable and still in flux. And we are talking either first party apps or important 3rd party apps. Edge rarely crashes on me these days. But the Start menu can take forever to be responsive, the News app crashes regularly, as do important apps like Twitter and Facebook.
If those last 4 experiences were things that the average user would never touch, that would be OK. But the reality is that just about everyone will use one of those, and many will use multiple. And, perhaps much more critically, I've not really spent a ton of time on a bunch of the 1st party apps, so this is by no means an exhaustive list. The photos app when I most recently tested it was painfully slow and crashed as well. Many are reporting issues with OneDrive. Admittedly, some of these gripes go back to Windows 8.1 as well. But the point of Windows 10 was largely to "fix" the damage caused by Windows 8, and apps that crash at every turn aren't going to do that.
I haven't bothered with any of this previously because I understand that this is pre-release software and I'm effectively choosing to be a free beta tester for Microsoft. And, as far as I care, the software is perfectly fine. I don't really mind intermittent crashes in those programs. They aren't important ones for me, despite the fact that I use them regularly. I'm not the typical user.
I'm choosing to point this out now however because we got a new build yesterday and MS was hoping to have their RTM release ready by about this point. So, the build I'm on now is either an RTM candidate, a build not far behind the RTM candidate(s) or issues were found and this is actually a higher version than any RTM candidate, and those sorts of issues are the sort that will ruin the experience for a typical consumer.
Next I'll talk quickly about the phone OS in case anyone is interested. Firstly, the phone OS is NOT the desktop OS. They share more code than ever before, but there are definitely some underpinnings, and important ones at that, which are different (and have to be, remember that WP devices are not x86/64 devices). And, the phone version of the OS isn't as close to RTM. So, right now, version for version, the Phone OS is nowhere near as stable and polished as the desktop. Guessing a lot of the bugs are in the runtime itself. But, if you're interested in running Windows 10 on your phone, and you have a compatible device, here is what I have to say.
It is getting there slowly. I'm running it on a Lumia 1020, so dual core, with mid range processor speed and 2GB of RAM. It runs SLLLLOOOOOWWWWW. But, that being said, it is much more stable and usable than even the version prior. If you're an enthusiast and willing to flash back to WP8 if things aren't good enough, this is the first build I think I would recommend to enthusiasts, but not really anyone beyond that who doesn't have a second phone to load it on.
But it is far enough along that basically everything works some of the time :)
This far from RTM for these devices, insider builds are much less frequent. Also, a lot more changes between builds and quality improves at a much faster pace. Still, I wish that they'd lower their criteria for releasing fast ring builds. It hurts the feedback loop and for most people using this on Phones who haven't bailed back to WP8, even incremental changes would probably be welcome. The performance and stability of apps at this moment are quite painful. I think the criteria should be, if there is a candidate which doesn't show any risk of making a phone unable to be recovered and the OS itself is generally stable, then the best such candidate should be released every 2 weeks.
Another problem with the program right now is that the Fast and Slow rings should never be on the same build. Unless, as with the desktop versions, it is unlikely that the two will be on the same build for more than a day or two.
Basically, to me that says that the current build in the fast ring is stable enough to be in the slow ring, but that there are no candidates since then even remotely close to that level stability. Since the fast ring should have a lower bar to meet, the only time this should happen is the builds are becoming more unstable with time.
So yeah... not ideal, but getting there.
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