Windows Insider Fast Ring in January 2016
Well, this is a tough one to nail down. When I read the news in December, they really made it sound like "BEWARE!!!!! We will deliver new builds like mad!!! And shit WILL break!!!!".
They never used many of those words directly. But they seemed to urge people to move to the slow ring and talked about it as though it was some meaningful change. As usual though, I'm not really feeling like things are any faster. Sure, they are faster than they have been at times. And that is good. For PC at least. And thus far they have been consistent, but we're not even done January yet. The other disconcerting thing is that quality hasn't really gone down. That tells me that they really haven't changed their thinking on when a build is viable in a meaningful way.
Also, not a single phone build has shipped. And based on their insider news, it sounds an awful lot like future Insider mobile builds will focus first on the 950, 950XL and 550. So, not only are mobile builds (currently) just a slow as ever. But the availability is going to drop through the floor too. And, if you were part of the Insider program before the launch of those devices (and haven't picked one up) I'm getting the feeling that the slowdown may be terminal.
Aside from potentially shrinking the list of mobile devices that could see an Insider build, none of this is really shocking though.
I had noted back when they announced this that I didn't expect it to last if it ever happened to materialize. By not creating a new and faster ring to enroll in (potentially along with new constraints) they pigeon-holed themselves and/or gave themselves an excuse not too. There is no guarantee that all existing Fast Ring members "got the memo", so to speak. As such, there is a real risk of hurting people's perception of the product by relaxing the bar for letting new builds into that ring.
One hopes there is some legal or other mandate internally stopping this from happening. At this point there is simply no chance at all that they are unaware of why they keep falling back into the same groove nor are unaware of what real solutions would look like. They even proved that they have the capacity to add more rings by adding one to allow testers to point back to production servers to get official firmware updates.
They never used many of those words directly. But they seemed to urge people to move to the slow ring and talked about it as though it was some meaningful change. As usual though, I'm not really feeling like things are any faster. Sure, they are faster than they have been at times. And that is good. For PC at least. And thus far they have been consistent, but we're not even done January yet. The other disconcerting thing is that quality hasn't really gone down. That tells me that they really haven't changed their thinking on when a build is viable in a meaningful way.
Also, not a single phone build has shipped. And based on their insider news, it sounds an awful lot like future Insider mobile builds will focus first on the 950, 950XL and 550. So, not only are mobile builds (currently) just a slow as ever. But the availability is going to drop through the floor too. And, if you were part of the Insider program before the launch of those devices (and haven't picked one up) I'm getting the feeling that the slowdown may be terminal.
Aside from potentially shrinking the list of mobile devices that could see an Insider build, none of this is really shocking though.
I had noted back when they announced this that I didn't expect it to last if it ever happened to materialize. By not creating a new and faster ring to enroll in (potentially along with new constraints) they pigeon-holed themselves and/or gave themselves an excuse not too. There is no guarantee that all existing Fast Ring members "got the memo", so to speak. As such, there is a real risk of hurting people's perception of the product by relaxing the bar for letting new builds into that ring.
One hopes there is some legal or other mandate internally stopping this from happening. At this point there is simply no chance at all that they are unaware of why they keep falling back into the same groove nor are unaware of what real solutions would look like. They even proved that they have the capacity to add more rings by adding one to allow testers to point back to production servers to get official firmware updates.
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