Microsoft today released the first build of Windows 10 Redstone to Insiders. The latest build of Windows 10 doesn’t bring any new features, however, it brings a lot of under the hood changes. However, the biggest thing about today’s build announcement was the fact that the company is preparing to release faster Fast ring builds in 2016. Microsoft’s Gabriel Aul:
One of the things that I have heard many times from Insiders in the Fast ring is that they want to see a faster pace of build availability. We’ve been considering how we want to respond to this feedback, and in January we expect to pick up the pace. To do this, we are re-evaluating the ring promotion criteria to allow more builds to reach Windows Insiders. The new criteria will be much closer to our criteria for flighting to our internal rings, which means more builds will pass it and be released externally to the Fast ring. This also means however that the builds we release to the Fast ring may include more bugs and other issues that could be slightly more painful for some people to live with. It’s a tradeoff – as the thing that throttles the rate of builds is the promotion criteria.
If you’re one of the many vocal Fast ring Insiders who’ve asked for this you’re probably excited right now. If you aren’t completely comfortable with this change then I encourage you to switch to the Slow ring to remain on more stable builds going forward. You can do this by going to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update > Advanced options and under “Get Insider Preview builds” moving the slider to the Slow ring. As always, we’ll listen to your feedback about this change and see how it goes so that we can learn and continue to evolve going forward.
Additionally, Microsoft states that the company will be listing known issues for the upcoming Insider builds in the Insider Hub, rather than the announcement blog post which isn’t a big problem, to be honest. With that being said, it’s very nice to see Microsoft listening to Insiders’ feedback.