Continuous Innovation (Premium)

When it comes to adding features to Windows 11, Microsoft is like Darth Vader and all we can do is pray it does not alter the deal any further. It’s hard to not feel hoodwinked by this subterfuge. But given the state of Windows 11, maybe this is a necessary evil.

Yes, I’m rationalizing. But bear with me for a moment.

As a long-time Windows watcher, I was taken aback by how quickly Microsoft shipped Windows 11 after it announced this major upgrade in June 2021. And the next year did little to assuage my fears: Microsoft addressed just a few of the complaints that its user base raised about Windows 11, and it took an awful lot of time to make just a handful of small improvements.

But when Windows 11 version 22H2 arrived a year later, Microsoft’s tune had changed. Now, the software giant was talking about “continuous innovation,” noting that while it would stay true to its promise to release just one major Feature Update (version upgrade) each year, it also reserved the right to add new features to the product as often as it wanted. In other words, there would only be one Feature Update (capital F) but there would be many feature updates (small f).

This seemed like a bait and switch, the return of Windows as a Service under a new name, and it probably still does to many. But leaving aside the quality of the ensuing updates—which has admittedly been problematic—there’s the germ of a good idea buried in there. Continuous innovation lets Microsoft keep Windows fresh by adding new features and making other improvements over time. And this only impacts individuals by default, the same individuals who likely think nothing of regular updates like this to their smartphones. But businesses with managed environments needn’t worry about these feature updates (small f): they will simply get all those new features when they upgrade to the next Feature Update (capital F) on a slower schedule. So it’s the best of both worlds.

Or, it would be if Microsoft could get quality under control. Instead, the software giant has made some critical errors that undermine the process. It ignores the important role that the Windows Insider Program and its multiple channels of testing can bring to the table by introducing new features in what often feels like an arbitrary fashion instead of logically progressing them through the channels from Dev to Beta to Release Preview to stable. And in some cases, it has simply ignored the Insider Program and released new features to stable without any testing at all. The most infamous example of this was the introduction of the Search “pill” in November/December 2022: this new take on the Search icon on the Taskbar introduced a major functional regression that wasn’t addressed until March 2023. This would have been uncovered by those in the Insider Program.

Internally, Microsoft refers to its continuous innovation deliverables—that is, the new features it ships almost every month between Feature Updates—as “moments.” It has never used this term publicly, but the name is catchy, and it’s stuck. Initially, we thought that moments would work much like the very few updates that Microsoft released between the original release of Windows 11 (version 21H2) and Windows 11 version 22H2. But it is now obvious that Microsoft intends to ship something new every single month. And while it has remained silent on the moment branding, it took the curious step of publicizing its plans to ship these monthly feature updates. And those plans include another unprecedented addition to the servicing pipeline: two weeks before Patch Tuesday, in the so-called Week D of the previous month, Microsoft now ships a preview version of next month’s moment. This gives those on stable the opportunity to take an early look, while allowing those who couldn’t care less to simply ignore the preview. (Preview updates are optional and require a user to explicitly accept the download.)

That’s good, of course. But the question remains whether Windows 11 needs monthly feature updates (small f). Especially when, as noted, some of them have had reliability or functional issues. Worse, it’s pretty clear that Microsoft is making this up as they go along.

Here’s the evidence.

Microsoft has historically shipped its “H2” release of Windows 10 (and now 11) in October each year, and now that this is the only Feature Update (capital F), we know to look to October for our big annual upgrade. Windows 11 version 21H2, for example, arrived on October 5, 2021. And Windows 11 version 22H2 arrived on October 11, 2022. Except, of course, that it didn’t: Microsoft first shipped 22H2 on September 20, 2022, three weeks before that October date. And in what Microsoft calls “Week C” for that month, since it was the third Tuesday of September. (Patch Tuesday always occurs in Week B of any given month.) Week C was when Microsoft typically released optional and preview updates.

So was that initial release of Windows 11 22H2 delivered via an optional or preview update? No, it wasn’t. Instead, that initial release was incomplete: some key 22H2 features, including File Explorer tabs, wouldn’t arrive until a month later, Microsoft said at the time. So instead of just waiting, it staggered the release. And maybe more than is obvious: because this was a major upgrade, Microsoft only offered 22H2 to a subset of compatible PCs at first. Put simply, 22H2 didn’t “really” ship until October.

And even then, it wasn’t complete. On October 18, 2022, Microsoft announced a major update to 22H2 that added several new features, including File Explorer tabs, Suggested Actions, and more. But that still wasn’t the “final” release of 22H2, as it was an optional update: users would need to get 22H2 first—and many were still not being offered the release—and then explicitly choose to install this update next. Note, too, that October 18 was a Week C for Microsoft. The week that’s reserved for optional and preview updates.

Then the November Patch Tuesday (Week B) arrived. That week, Microsoft shipped the previous optional update from October 18 to stable, making it non-optional. And in doing so, it also revealed that it was adding another unexpected—and untested—change: “search visual treatments” on the Taskbar that users would only see “on some devices.” This was the dreaded Search pill that Microsoft never tested in the Insider Program, an oblong new Search icon that lost the prior search jump list pop-up that the previous icon provided, a functional regression. That was bad, but Microsoft was easing into a new schedule it would soon alter and then formalize: ship an optional/preview version of a feature update (small F) in the second half of one month and then ship it to stable on Patch Tuesday (Week B) the next month.

On November 29, Microsoft released its final preview update of 2022 for Windows 11, and it even announced that that was the case. This update added three new features: Windows Spotlight integrated into themes, storage alerts for OneDrive, and storage capacity reporting for OneDrive. November 29 was not week C—indeed, it was “Week E,” or that rare fifth Tuesday of the month. I assume the delay was related to the Thanksgiving holiday, but Microsoft never explained itself.

The features from that optional update arrived in stable for everyone on Patch Tuesday, December 13. But by then, things were getting weird. That Search “pill” update wasn’t appearing everywhere yet, for some reason. And then Microsoft quietly issued a major OneDrive user interface and functional update without ever testing that in the Insider Program either.

The first Patch Tuesday of 2023 arrived with no new features, as there was no preview/optional update the month before. That’s been our only break since the initial release of 22H2, and I think it’s notable that it was telegraphed in advance. And by late January, we received word that 22H2, ostensibly “released” back in September, would finally be pushed to all eligible PCs. One wonders what took so long, but then the post-22H2 updates that completed 22H2 were, of course, a mess.

On February 28—a Week D—Microsoft issued a “major update” to Windows 11 22H2 in preview form. This release was notable for a number of reasons. It features an “AI-powered” search box in the Taskbar (sort of fixing the Search pill issue Microsoft had previously caused), and various other changes. And it was released in Week D, not Week C. As noted above, we later learned that Microsoft had formally changed the schedule so that optional and preview releases would ship in Week D instead of Week C, putting them neatly in the middle of each Patch Tuesday. But at the time, this was confusing.

Then, Microsoft issued this supposed Moment 2 release on March 14, on Patch Tuesday of Week B as expected. This was followed by a preview update in Week D, on March 28, that included more new features: Microsoft account notifications in Start, Search box improvements for custom color mode, and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint improvements. The stable version of that update arrived on April 11, Patch Tuesday, or April’s Week B.

So here’s the thing. Since last fall, we’ve been talking about these Moment updates, and the consensus seems to be that the first arrived in October and the second arrived in March. But looking over this timeline, I see new features every single month from September through April, aside from January. And I expect this schedule to continue. Given this, we’re either seeing a new Moment every month, or Microsoft somehow differentiates between Feature Updates (capital F), Moments, and what I’ll call mini-moments.

And you know what? It doesn’t matter. The reality is that we’re getting new features all the time. And that’s not including the updates that ship via the Microsoft Store. For example, Microsoft added tabs to Notepad earlier this year, just as it had added tabs to File Explorer in late 2022. On and on it goes: this is what continuous innovation means.

To return to my original premise, Windows 11 shipped in a highly incomplete state in October 2021, and we complained. Microsoft then barely updated Windows 11 in 2022 and shipped an improved Windows 11 22H2 in 2023, albeit still with functional regressions, and we complained. Since then, Microsoft has issued a steady stream of updates to Windows 11 22H2, and … we complained. But really, this platform needs these updates, just as it needs the updates we’re going to get in the coming months, like the return of Taskbar grouping and app labels. Or the inclusion of iPhone compatibility in the Phone Link app, which literally just started appearing in stable today.

The trick, of course, is to deliver these updates correctly. And that means testing them first in each channel in the Insider Program and then delivering them in error-free form to users in stable. If Microsoft can achieve that, I can embrace this continuous innovation. And, I think, so can many of you. After all, Windows 11 can only get better. And it is getting better.