It’s Not Just Windows 11 (Premium)

I've spent a lot of time in recent months trying to figure out Microsoft's new updating strategy for Windows 11. But this strategy isn't unique to Windows. Indeed, it's highly likely that Microsoft's "continuous innovation" efforts were inspired by the evolution of the mobile systems of which it is so jealous.

And let's give Microsoft some credit here: when it unveiled the first version of "continuous innovation," then called Windows as a Service (WaaS), I argued that updating a legacy desktop platform as if it was an online service was a fool's errand. And the next few years supported this view, with multiple reliability issues undermining the quality of the product.

But there's another side to this story, where Microsoft also worked to further componentize not just Windows itself but the myriad ways in which different parts of the system can be kept up to date. A big part of the reason that it was able to move from two Feature Updates (version upgrades) per year to just one is that it no longer needs to wait that long to update most system components. It can do so continuously instead.

And as important, the processes have gotten more reliable: where the first several Windows 10 Feature Updates were notable for their problems, the most recent several Windows 10 and 11 Feature Updates had no major issues at all. This, too, is partially due to Microsoft spreading out the updates: with fewer updates to deliver, Feature Updates just don't have the same potential to cause inadvertent harm. (And we can't pretend that quality is universally high: Microsoft's silly desire to ship untested updates via Controlled Feature Releases, or CFRs, has led to functional regressions and, as bad, multiple versions of the same products out in the world. OneDrive is a great example: on some PCs, I can back up five folders to the service, but on others, it's just three.)

Put simply, I'm not completely OK with continuous innovation for many reasons: Windows doesn't warrant a steady stream of feature updates, some people will find it confusing, and untested CFRs will almost definitely introduce stability, reliability, or other issues over time among them. But after being pummeled by nearly non-stop updates over the past several years, Microsoft has at least gotten the system to the point where it sort of works. I can concede that.

But it's always interesting to me when I see other Big Tech firms behaving similarly to Microsoft, a company I understand and care about more than the others. And I saw such a thing in the wake of last week's Google I/O 2023 conference, where Google and Android-focused publications were issuing complaints that rang very familiar to me. That is, where I used to bemoan that Microsoft's developer conference, Build, had come up short for Windows in recent years, these guys were complaining that their pet products---the next version of Android and Google Assistant---were virtually ignored at I/O despite having figured prominent...