Channeling the Windows Insider Program (Premium)

As a Windows enthusiast, I cheered the arrival of the Windows Insider Program, which made beta testing transparent and open. And I of course rued its decline in the years since, as Microsoft broke its promises to Insiders by ignoring feedback and forcing unwanted A/B testing on us. There used to be an understanding that when you enrolled a PC into a particular Insider channel, you were testing a particular thing, a specific version of Windows. But those days are long gone, and the Insider Program has clearly suffered a massive decline in engagement. It’s a horrible thing for the company to have done to its biggest fans.

I clearly explained my distress with the state of the Insider Program back in December, when I formally observed---I had been discussing this problem for months before that in podcasts---that the Windows Insider Program was now, for many, a one-way, dead-end street. That is, because the Dev and Beta channels no longer map to a specific Windows version, as they had in the past, it was no longer possible to use the mechanism in Windows Settings to automatically unenroll a PC from the program as is the case when you are testing a specific Windows version: because Dev and Beta never line up with stable, there was no way out.

Well, you could always nuke the PC from orbit, so to speak, by creating Windows install media and doing a clean install. But even that fairly radical solution was---and still is---denied to the hardy few using Windows on Arm, because Microsoft doesn’t make Windows on Arm ISOs available publicly, so you can’t create install media. (Yes, you can use unofficial ISOs, if you can find them.)

Microsoft did recently offer some Windows Insiders an out when it announced a so-called “off-ramp” for those in the Beta channel only: between February 23 and March 8, Insiders with PCs in the Beta channel can use the built-in mechanism in Windows 11 to get back on stable. That’s nice, but temporary solutions are just that, temporary. And those on Dev are still in the lurch.

With all that as a backdrop, I viewed today’s news---the addition of yet another Windows Insider Program channel, Canary---with what I think of as pragmatic skepticism. I cannot for the life of me imagine why the program needs another channel. And I find it hard to believe that the mismanagement that led to the program’s downfall is in any way fixed with its addition.

But I want to be fair. And with that in mind, let’s really think about what’s happening here.

Last year, Microsoft instituted the changes that I complained about above, disconnecting the Dev and Beta channels from a shipping release of Windows. Instead, these channels are now used to test features that may or may not make it into a future version of Windows. Features added to the Dev channel are ostensibly the furthest away from fruition and could be canceled. Features added to Beta are a bit further along, and their appearance in this channel ostensibl...