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Microsoft Introduces Build Cadence Selection With Windows 10 112

Posted by Soulskill from the putting-a-ring-on-it dept.
jones_supa writes: Microsoft has just released Windows 10 TP build 9860. Along with the new release, Microsoft is introducing an interesting cadence option for how quickly you will receive new builds. The "ring progression" goes from development, to testing, to release. By being in the slow cadence, you will get more stable builds, but they will arrive less often. By choosing the fast option, it allows you to receive the build on the same day that it is released. As a quick stats update, to date Microsoft has received over 250,000 pieces of feedback through the Windows Feedback tool, 25,381 community forum posts, and 641 suggestions in the Windows Suggestion Box.
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Microsoft Introduces Build Cadence Selection With Windows 10 More

Microsoft Introduces Build Cadence Selection With Windows 10

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  • It's great to see so much community feedback (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @06:30PM (#48200203)
    Hopefully all this community feedback translates into functional changes in the operating system. They made a huge mistake with Windows 8 by relying on the standard Windows 7 feedback mechanism (that seemingly most people turned off) so this looks like a much better solution with much broader participation.

    • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

      by ozmanjusri ( 601766 )

      It's great to see so much community feedback

      It's almost like they were inspired by somebody.

      Is there any other OS that uses a "cadence" release plan? Called unstable, testing and stable, maybe?

    • Re:It's great to see so much community feedback (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @09:19PM (#48200951)

      I think it's actually working, as they seem to actually be working on things that people are asking for. Testing on a very broad scale makes a lot of sense for a Windows release, since they obviously don't have that "Apple magic" which seems to be able to intuit what people want before they ask for it. You might as well instead let people give real feedback on small, incremental changes (and apparently they've been talking to their business customers very early in the process). It's a lot less sexy, but it's fundamentally pretty sound.

      Of course, they're still stubbornly refusing to bring back Aero, which a lot of people really want. I don't particularly need a specific theme back, but I still think the flat & square look is a ridiculous designer-forced fad, and hopefully we'll see the end of it soon. I'm not going to update my Mac mini to Yosemite until I have to because Apple is drinking the same damn Kool-Aid at the moment.

      I think backtracking on that particular theme is a bit dicey for them, though, because many of their internal applications bought into that ridiculous theme as well, so I think it would be problematic for too many egos to toss the "modern" theme too quickly. Microsoft Visual Studio is a good example where they jumped into that sort of theming whole hog, pissed off all their users, and are slowing backtracking away from their original designs and more towards VS2010, which most people seemed to really like.

      Make no mistake, Microsoft is the same old same old. The only reason they're listening to their users is because their users flipped them the bird, financially speaking, after seeing Windows 8, and they can't afford to piss people off too much or they'll really start looking seriously for alternatives. One good thing about corporations is that they're entirely predictable when faced with the threat of declining revenues: they suddenly become very customer-centric.

    • Hopefully all this community feedback translates into functional changes in the operating system. They made a huge mistake with Windows 8 by relying on the standard Windows 7 feedback mechanism (that seemingly most people turned off) so this looks like a much better solution with much broader participation.

      Because Microsoft has a great track record of paying atterntion to feedback.

      • Re:It's great to see so much community feedback (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @10:29PM (#48201221)

        Because Microsoft has a great track record of paying atterntion to feedback.

        They don't have a record of doing widespread public tech previews with extensive feedback programs either, but they're doing it now. While we're on the subject what's that operating system that does public tech previews, asks for feedback and *doesn't* listen to the torrent of complaints? Oh yeah, Debian!

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          You are apparently too young to remember the Windows 95 release process. Microsoft does have the capability of doing widespread public tech previews, they just didn't think it important for many years.

      • Because Microsoft has a great track record of paying atterntion to feedback.

        Microsoft is running scared. It doesn't look like it because they're so big, but they're seeing their business nibbled away so they're moving as fast as their massive bulk will allow. At this point, they're probably desperate enough to attempt serious measures like listening to their customers.

  • L-100,000,000.

  • As well as Yosemite does?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Well this is a preview release (not a Beta, RC or final release) and is intended solely for providing feedback to Microsoft (not for software or hardware testing as the underlying APIs are subject to change) and it is made very clear on the signup page in multiple places that this release does indeed report back to Microsoft.

      Yosemite is a final release and while it reports data back to Apple much of this can be turned off. I'm not sure if it has been confirmed exactly what (if anything) is reported back if

    • Re:Does it rape your privacy (Score:5, Funny)

      by Barlo_Mung_42 ( 411228 ) on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @06:49PM (#48200323) Homepage

      It's not rape when you are giving full consent.

  • This is a good approach from Microsoft, they finally listened to its users.

    • Windows 8 was my idea. Sorry guys, dropped the ball on that one.

  • from debian stable/testing/sid, or firefox esr/standard/beta/nightly or any one of the other software products with similar release schemes?

  • Aero yet (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @07:15PM (#48200441) Journal

    I am waiting for it's return and more sane not all blinding white and borderless pastel colors. Tabs in explorer not implemented yet either.

    • Hell even Caja in Mate has tabs, and it's just a workaround.

    • Re:Aero yet (Score:5, Insightful)

      by lgw ( 121541 ) on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @08:28PM (#48200753) Journal

      Tabs suck - switching between explorers using the task bar (when set up properly to not combine windows on the taskbar) is good.

      What explorer has lacked since Windows 3.1 is two panes in explorer, to simplify moving/sorting stuff between directories. Yeah, you can snap an explorer to each side of the desktop these days but that only works properly if you have just 1 monitor. If I could easily tile explorers on one monitor in a multi-mon setup, that would be far less annoying.

      • but that only works properly if you have just 1 monitor. If I could easily tile explorers on one monitor in a multi-mon setup, that would be far less annoying.

        Lies.

        Windows Key + Arrow Left/Right will snap the focused window to the next "pane".

        Windows Key + Arrow Up/Down will Minimize/Maximize.

      • Tabs suck - switching between explorers using the task bar (when set up properly to not combine windows on the taskbar) is good.

        What explorer has lacked since Windows 3.1 is two panes in explorer, to simplify moving/sorting stuff between directories. Yeah, you can snap an explorer to each side of the desktop these days but that only works properly if you have just 1 monitor. If I could easily tile explorers on one monitor in a multi-mon setup, that would be far less annoying.

        Winkey+left, Winkey+Right to snap to edges of the current monitor in a multimonitor setup. Press it again and the window will jump over to the next monitor.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by lgw ( 121541 )

          Ah, this sort of Linux-inspired "you'll never figure it out, a friend has to tell you" stuff annoys me. Well, thanks for telling me!

          • Keyboard shortcuts are hidden by design. I don't know how you expect to intuit Ctrl+V is Paste or F3 is Search.

            • Because it's been displayed prominently in every Windows "Edit" menu for the past twenty years or so?

              In fairness to Microsoft, I'm not sure how one would convey those particular shortcuts to users visually. Maybe they should be shown as part of the right click context menus from the title bar?

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by karnal ( 22275 )

                What's even MORE AWESOME is that control-f in Outlook "forwards" emails; yet you use Control-E (what??) to "find". That frustrates me to no end every day.

          • I won't pretend to make any excuses.

            Another hidden gem on Windows 8/8.1 is the "Winkey+X" shortcut. It opens a menu with all sorts of power user goodies.

        • Thanks for the tip. And Winkey+Up = Maximize (+Down can be deduced, expect the app loses focus at that point).

      • I'd like to see native virtual monitor display splitting. Large, high-resolution displays often beg to be subdivided into smaller displays but treated as if there were separate monitors. I feel like a lot of screen space is wasted with wide displays, especially with applications and web sites that don't take advantage of it well.

        I've tried several utilities that do this, but none were all that usable or useful. Display Fusion will do it well, but only even divisions. Uneven splits are coming but it's be

        • Large, high-resolution displays often beg to be subdivided into smaller displays but treated as if there were separate monitors.

          That's only useful if you have a bunch of applications which force full screen. The solution there is to unfuck those apps, not to goof around with weird screen-splitting ideas. An idea which might be useful and perform the same function, though, would be to give new ways to resize windows. For example, when I resize a window, maybe I could merge its border with a neighboring window by dragging and hovering. Then they'd have a shared border (reflected by drawing them appropriately) and moving the shared bor

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by swb ( 14022 )

            The solution there is to unfuck those apps, not to goof around with weird screen-splitting ideas.

            Yeah, but it's a reasonable one-size-fits-all solution to do screen splitting versus trying to unfuck a lot of applications which will never be unfucked.

            Windowing is great, but somewhere down the road window management got lost. Manually sizing and positioning windows is tedious and the Windows UI provides very little in terms of tools for managing windows. Snapping is of limited value and not configurable AFAIK.

            Making regions of a single display act like separate monitors may be a kludge, but it's a klud

      • Naturally Explorer lacked those features in Windows 3.1 since that version used WINFILE.EXE, or File Manager, and you could easily set up to panes, Norton Commander style, then hold Shift and "EXIT" to save the configuration.
      • I will correct what you said by saying 'It only works properly if you dont EXTEND the desktop to another monitor'. It will snap mirrored monitors just fine.
      • Windows Explorer lacks a proper "orthodox file manager" view. I miss the File Manager that came with Norton Navigator and NT Tools (it doesn't work with Vista/7). I haven't had a chance to try the Windows port of DirectoryOpus yet. It certainly makes life easier on an Amiga though!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Xipher ( 868293 )

        Use "Win+arrow keys" to snap in multi-monitor situations.

  • Is this anything like Ubuntu Long Term Support [ubuntu.com] as compared to the standard release [ubuntu.com] schedule?

  • The amount of feedback isn't surprising, but I would be surprised if anyone in the Redmond bubble ever made any changes (even slight) in response to any of that feedback. By the time they have a public release they're too far along in their big-company release process to accomodate changes.

    • That was under Sinofsky. He was fired.

      He wanted to take advantage of old middle aged users afraid of change to get used to it so they will all stick with Windows Phone after being broken in.

      MS is on the right step. The feedback tool and not re leasing isos and instead forcing updates to as many users as possible shows they are listening.

      Returning the start menu and un-fullscreening applets shows it is paying attention. Tablet and hybrid users get a metroized big left start menu and screen which you can turn

    • Well at least in theory they are in a faster release cadence/no more big release mode: so "too far along" is now 6 months rather than 6 years: a big improvement.

    • Re:So much feedback and yet Microsoft ignores it a (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Wednesday October 22, 2014 @02:58AM (#48201899)

      Not surprising about this post, or that it's modded insightful. After all, if anyone bother to read TFA, they'd see that Microsoft is already implementing user-requested changes. But hey, don't let facts ruin a good MS bashing.

      Animation for switching desktops. One of the pieces of feedback that you gave us was that it was hard to know when you were switching desktops. We addressed your feedback by adding an animation to make it clear that you are switching. Check it out by creating some new desktops and moving between them.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        But animation is bad! I always make sure my computer has 16+GB of RAM and top of the line processor and video cards, but am very angry if any of it gets used.

      • Really -- THAT's how you interpret that sentence?

        Me, I figure the process is this;
        1) Top Exec gets "vision"
        2) Worker drones in various departments feverishly compete for solution.
        3) Solution is not compatible with other departments.
        4) Hapless new guy gets Vision Solution and the rest implement a generic version that is compatible.
        5) Least common denominator patch solution gets implemented.
        6) Marketing figures out a way to describe the moderate and stable change as "Visionary".
        7) Someone digs up a customer e

        • As long as the issue gets fixed, I don't care if the master plan for Windows 10 was handed down to them by the Freemasons in a bid to tip the balance of power in the ongoing secret war against the Illuminati, both of whom the Catholic Church are quite cleverly pitting against each other in order to weaken and ultimately topple it's centuries old rivals in an epic bid for world domination.

          Or maybe Microsoft just got a lot of feedback and decided to fix the problem.

          Either one is totally plausible.

  • oh boy (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Sticking with windows for software compatibility, full blown and rich feature drivers(video, audio, tv adapter, printer), productive suits(adobe creative suit and autodesk), VS 2013, office 2013, gaming, media center for tv adapter, easy installing software no dependency issues.

    I'm not a big fan of the flat color look but I do like the Metro experience. I just hope MS gets rid of the app title bar and context menu for the Metro since the old desktop is coming back and there is no more need trying to turn t

    • VS and app availability are the winners for me. Sure they are FOSS alternatives to almost everything. But how much time do I need to spend to find them versus going for the known (and easily pirated or paid for by the employer so who cares) brand name product? How many snarky "well if you don't like it get the source and make it do what you want" comments do you need to take before you use the product that was designed by people that gave half a damn and have a financial incentive to make it better? VS for

    • From your list there, I have more issues with windows than I do Linux Mint for drivers, I have tv tuners, printers, SLI Nvidia cards all working fine, just plug and go (tv tuner is a huappage (sp?) 500 dual digital and a hauppage (sp?) analogue). For example I have a lexmark multi-function and it works fine with linux but causes the print spooler to crash in windows. As for media center I can't get past XBMC as the best one I have used and it's OS agnostic. (I will say if you have an optimus chipset or a

    • MS have always done things half-ass, windows 7 no second taskbar for dual monitor.

      This is actually fixed in Windows 8. I was a bit surprised to see that Windows 8 (and 8.1) in the desktop mode are better than Windows 7 when it comes to multiple displays.

  • As a quick stats update, to date Microsoft has received over 250,000 pieces of feedback through the Windows Feedback tool, 25,381 community forum posts, and 641 suggestions in the Windows Suggestion Box.

    And like and good corp they will ignore every single one and do whatever the fuck they want anyway.

  • I use a rolling Distro (PCLinuxOS) that doesn't use the bleeding edge, all the apps are put in to "testing" and me and others test the crap out of it before it's put in to the repository proper for the ordinary folks (for want of a better phrase). this way there are a lot less issues to fix, but we still have limited testers, not the Millions Microsoft have and still have a very stable and nice working environment regardless of the DM used, KDE, Mate etc. For some reason Microsoft still haven't fixed the US
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • And that is "upgrade only when I tell you to."

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