After many promises, Microsoft accelerates Windows 10 preview delivery
Build 11102 of Windows 10 was delivered Thursday to Insider participants on the "Fast" ring release track. The new build followed its predecessor by just eight days.
The eight-day interval was significantly shorter than the averages in both the first and second halves of 2015, according to Computerworld's records. In the first six months of last year, the average stretch between Insider builds was 27 days, or nearly a month. During the second half of 2015, Microsoft reduced that average to 17 days.
Microsoft has been promising an acceleration of Insider deliveries for nearly a year, broaching the subject in March 2015, then repeating the pledge a month ago.
"The new [ring promotion] 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," said Gabriel Aul, engineering general manager for Microsoft's operating systems group, in mid-December.
As with the last several builds, 11102 includes only a few visible changes, with most of the differences between it and its forerunners in background code optimization.
However, Microsoft did add access to previously-visited websites to Edge's forward and back arrows, a common feature in all browsers but something that Windows 10's default initially lacked.
Aul also pointed out a number of known problems with build 11102 that will affect PC game players most of all.
Microsoft has not pulled the trigger on another promise made last year: That it would stop publishing each build's known issues on the website that announces build availability. Instead, Aul said in December, those problems would appear only in the Hub app, which the company uses to keep Windows 10 testers in the loop.
Microsoft has continued to broadcast identified problems to the general public on its website since then, including in Aul's Thursday post.