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ZDNET’s key takeaways:
- The Windows Insider Program has evolved tremendously in the last 11 years.
- For enterprise customers, those changes have been a source of confusion.
- Recent key leadership shifts suggest more unwelcome changes are on the way.
When the Windows Insider Program launched on Sept. 30, 2014, it was a game-changer. The new initiative was a way for Microsoft engineers and product managers to hear from customers about “how they are using and deploying Windows, and what they need from us,” said the then-leader of the Windows division.
With the Insider program, we’re inviting our most enthusiastic Windows customers to shape Windows 10 with us. We know they’re a vocal bunch – and we’re looking forward to hearing from them.
The Windows Insider Program is intended for PC experts and IT pros who are comfortable using pre-release software with variable quality. Insiders will receive a steady stream of early builds from us with the latest features we’re experimenting with.
More than a decade later, the Windows Insider Program is still chugging along, but it’s changed tremendously in that time – and not necessarily for the better.
How it started
The original concept was to give Windows users, and especially enterprise customers, a heads-up on what they could expect from upcoming releases. That early access would allow them to plan for deployment, support, and training in their organization.
Also: Microsoft has lost its way
Each new build was a milestone for what would eventually be the public release. The job of testers was to report bugs and offer feedback on features as they evolved. In rare cases, a feature might get dropped because of bugs or other issues as the ship date approached, but with those exceptions, pretty much everything you saw in a preview build would be in the final release.
For the first two years, Insiders could choose between two “rings” – a Fast ring, with weekly updates, and a Slow ring, with monthly updates that were more stable. A Release Preview ring debuted later, for those who wanted a little advance notice with minimal chance of hitting bugs and crashes.
In June 2020, those rings turned into “channels.” The Dev channel replaced the Fast ring for “highly technical users.”
Insiders in the Dev Channel will receive builds that is [sic] earliest in a development cycle and will contain the latest work-in-progress code from our engineers. These builds will have rough edges and some instability that could block key activities or require workarounds.
These builds are not matched to a specific Windows 10 release. New features and OS improvements in this channel will show up in future Windows 10 releases when they’re ready and may be delivered as full OS build updates or servicing releases. Insider feedback here will help our engineers with major fixes and changes to the latest code.
The Beta channel, meanwhile, stuck with the old model, delivering builds that were a preview of the next scheduled release:
Ideal for early adopters. Insiders and IT Professionals in the Beta Channel can check out upcoming Windows 10 features, while still getting relatively reliable updates that are validated by Microsoft.
As a part of the Beta Channel, Insiders will see builds that will be tied to a specific upcoming release, like 20H1 previously. Your feedback will be especially important here, since it will help our engineers make sure that key issues are identified and fixed before a major release.
The concept behind the Release Preview Channel remained unchanged – stability and release validation before an upcoming version was released to the public. “The Release Preview Channel is where we recommend companies preview and validate upcoming Windows 10 releases before broad deployment within their organization.” (A new Canary Channel, offering “unstable” builds from early in the development cycle, with little or no documentation, launched in 2023. I’ll ignore it here.)
Where things began going wrong
For the first six years of the Insider program, participants in the Beta Channel could count on about six months’ worth of a head start for new stuff that would be appearing in the next feature update. Those in the Dev Channel had an even longer preview window.
Also: How to upgrade your ‘incompatible’ Windows 10 PC to Windows 11 – for free today
That all changed in 2021 with the announcement of Windows 11. It had the most compressed preview cycle of any version in years – the interval between the first Beta Channel build and the public release was just over 60 days, offering little time for substantive feedback.
There was an even bigger change at the start of 2022, with Microsoft announcing plans to turn the Dev Channel into an experimental platform where it could try out different concepts for features and services, untethered from future releases:
This allows us to experiment in a few ways by rolling features in stages to monitor quality and your feedback (which we’ve been doing a lot of already) and testing variations of features (often referred to as “A/B testing”). Features and experiences from these builds could show up in future Windows releases when they’re ready. In some cases, these concepts will never ship, but by experimenting more, we can better refine experiences, and deliver solutions in Windows that truly empower our customers to achieve more.
[…]
We also recognize that some of our more technical Insiders have discovered that some features are intentionally disabled in the builds we have flighted. This is by design, and in those cases, we will only communicate about features that we are purposefully enabling for Insiders to try out and give feedback on. [emphasis in original]
The result? These days, navigating the Insider program is like stumbling through a maze built inside a house of mirrors. That feature that was documented in the release notes for the latest build? It will come to your PC one of these days, but who knows when?
And to make things worse, the release notes for builds in the Beta Channel started to include a new disclaimer: “The Beta Channel will be the place we preview experiences that are closer to what we will ship to our general customers. However, this does not mean every feature we try out in the Beta Channel will ship.”
Also: Microsoft is packing more AI into Windows, ready or not – here’s what’s new
If you were a corporate customer or a third-party support/training expert who relied on preview releases as a way to prepare for what your users would be asking about when they received the next release, this was not welcome news. Not only is your preview build possibly missing features that other people in your Insider channel are seeing, those features you do see might not make it to the final release.
But at least you could count on the Release Preview Channel, which gave you a head start of a few weeks ahead of the stable and predictable public release.
Now, even public releases are unpredictable
The whole point of having a Windows Insider Program is to draw a bright line between features that are still in development and those that have been released to the public. If you choose not to install those test builds and just stick with the General Availability (GA) releases, you’ll get a nice, predictable package, the same as every other customer. Right?
Sorry, that’s no longer the way things work. Allow me to share an actual conversation I overheard recently among some very smart Microsoft employees discussing a feature in the just-released Windows 11, version 25H2. (Names and a few details have been changed to protect the innocent.)
Windows Product Manager: That feature you’ve been asking for is rolling out to the public now.
Microsoft engineer #1: Hmmm, I have the right updates installed, but I don’t seem to have that feature.
Windows PM: It’s still rolling out so not everyone has it yet.
Microsoft engineer #1: The way Windows rolls out features is an absolute mystery to me.
Microsoft engineer #2: Not knowing when features are going to be flipped on for one of my machines makes it a bit anticlimactic when it’s finally there weeks or months after I read about it online.
And I remind you, these are people who are on the teams that are writing and testing and shipping and documenting these features! As someone who writes about this stuff for a living, I can testify that that conversation is infuriatingly accurate. I am still waiting for the new Start menu to arrive on any of my Windows 11 PCs, despite my having installed the requisite update four weeks ago.
Also: Microsoft’s new recovery tools rebuild Windows when it glitches – here’s how
So, what’s going on? Blame Controlled Feature Rollout, part of Microsoft’s “continuous innovation” initiative.
Microsoft is committed to delivering continuous innovation by releasing new features and enhancements into Windows 11 more frequently … using the existing Windows monthly update process. Our phased and measured approach may introduce new features using Controlled Feature Rollout (CFR) technology¹, which is also used in the Windows Insider Program and with Microsoft Edge.
Follow that footnote, and you get this explanation:
¹Using CFR, features may be gradually rolled out, starting with devices that install the monthly optional non-security preview release. When we’ve validated that each feature is ready, we’ll gradually roll it out to new devices, and eventually include it enabled-by-default in a subsequent monthly security update.
Sure enough, those changes are now documented in release notes for the monthly preview updates. Those updates, delivered on the fourth Tuesday of each month, are supposed to give administrators an advanced look at what changes to expect on the following month’s Patch Tuesday release. But that preview might be incomplete.
This update is available through two release phases: gradual rollout and normal rollout. A gradual rollout delivers an update in phases, so features reach devices over time instead of all at once, meaning availability varies by device. A normal rollout is the broad release to all eligible devices at the same time, usually when it reaches general availability (GA). [emphasis in original]
There’s a worthy goal behind Controlled Feature Rollout – making sure changes don’t disrupt work for people running released versions of Windows. But isn’t that the point of the entire Insider program? Doesn’t Controlled Feature Rollout mean that every customer running a released version of Windows is now a member of yet another test channel?
Who’s running the Windows Insider Program, anyway?
One constant that Insiders have come to rely on over the past decade-plus is a human touch from the team releasing those builds, documenting their changes, and processing feedback.
Then, over the course of less than two months, three key members of that team abruptly announced they were leaving. In September, Brandon LeBlanc said it’s “time for a change“; in early November, program leader Amanda Langowski announced she’s “transitioning to a new position within Microsoft“; a few days later, Jason Howard announced he’s “onward to my next role” at Microsoft. Brandon and Jason have been part of the Insider program since the beginning, and Amanda has led the team for more than six years. Suddenly, within a few weeks of each other, they all decide to take other roles in the company?
Also: Microsoft said my PC was ‘too old’ to run Windows 11 – how I upgraded in 5 minutes anyway
Aside from those posts on Twitter, I haven’t seen any public announcement of the changes, which strikes me as odd. (Previous management changes were announced in congratulatory posts on the Windows Insider blog.)
On Oct. 22, Amanda published a post on the Windows Insider blog celebrating 11 years of the Windows Insider Program. “Here’s to the next 11 years of innovation, collaboration, and Insider inspiration!” she wrote, without the slightest hint that she would be leaving that role less than two weeks later. Does all of that seem strange to you? It seems strange to me. But maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.
The release notes for recent builds, which used to be signed by Amanda, are now signed by the “Windows Insider Program Team” and read like they were generated by Copilot, although I have been assured by sources close to Microsoft that there are still humans at work in that group.
The job posting for the Principal Product Manager in the Windows Insider Program position is still open. And it seems like a pretty important role! That person “will own the strategy and execution for how Windows ships new experiences and devices, influencing critical engineering decisions and collaborating across engineering, marketing, legal, and leadership.”
Also: Why Windows sucks and how to fix it, according to a former Microsoft engineer
Meanwhile, Microsoft isn’t exactly making users happy with its flawed September and October cumulative updates for Windows 11. Just look at this list of serious issues that were finally resolved in the November updates. If a robust test program is supposed to catch serious bugs before they’re publicly released, it’s not working. As a result, the company had to issue a rare “out of band” emergency patch to fix a bug that made the Windows recovery environment essentially unusable. And that was just one of several serious bugs
Whoever takes over that leadership role at the Windows Insider Program has a big job ahead of them. With Windows 11 heading toward its fifth anniversary, don’t be surprised to see wholesale changes to the program – including a greatly expanded role for AI and a shift in focus to boosting revenue – as Microsoft begins work on the next version of Windows.
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