Question of the Fortnight

Why is the next Windows 10 update so small?

Welcome to the story of the incredible shrinking updates. It’s a curious tale of how Windows 10 releases that once were packed with features and often broke your computer have shrivelled into tiny updates that are barely worth installing. It tells us a lot about Microsoft’s plans for the operating system.

So far the most notorious Windows 10 feature update has been version 1809, released on 2 October, 2018. It lasted just four days before Microsoft pulled it in order to fix a flaw that was deleting files from computers. Three weeks later Microsoft confirmed another flaw that damaged files when extracting them from a ZIP. It wasn’t until 13 November that 1809 was made available again, but by then it had become so tainted that many users did all they could to avoid installing it.

Now that we know Windows 11 is coming, you have to wonder whether that disastrous 1809 update was the beginning of the end for Windows 10. Microsoft’s response was that version 1903, released the following May, became the first feature update not to be installed automatically on computers.

Since then, updates have been optional unless you were running a version that Microsoft was about to end support for. They have also contained fewer new features and tweaks, as Microsoft tried to minimise the impact on your computer.

The company has just announced the smallest update yet – version 21H2, due this autumn. Its blog post announcing the release ( www.

snipca.com/38976) mentions just three tweaks, though they’re so meagre they hardly deserve that description – ‘tweaklets’, perhaps?

The only one that will affect you is a minor improvement to WPA3 Wi-fi security (welcome but not worldchanging). The others are an obscure tool for machine

learning in Linux, and the following – which we quote in full to illustrate Microsoft’s continuing mastery of impenetrable jargon: “Windows Hello for Business supports simplified passwordless deployment models for achieving a deploy-to-run state within a few minutes”.

21H2 will be the third successive update to merely scrape the surface of Windows 10, and that’s been a relief for those who dread the chaos that updates can cause. Even after installing 21H2 later this year, your version of Windows 10 will essentially be the same as it was 18 months ago.

The update wasn’t always going to be so small, though. Earlier this year Microsoft was

trying to get people excited about a radical redesign of Windows 10, codenamed ‘Sun Valley’, rumoured to arrive this autumn. That new look has now morphed into Windows 11.

This can only be bad news for Windows 10 and the 1.3 billion people who use it. Microsoft says support will last until October 2025, and we expect it to release security fixes up to then and probably beyond. However, it won’t be in a rush to add tools that improve the system. Why would it? It now has a new priority: get everyone on to Windows 11 as soon as possible. Any feature update that actually contained features would send mixed messages.

Microsoft would never be so crude as to say it’s abandoning Windows 10, but it will now be the poorer relation. We think differently though. Next issue’s Cover Feature (out Weds 11 August) will focus on ways to keep it running safely and effectively for longer than Microsoft wants you to. Yes, Windows 11 looks great, but that’s no reason to give up on Windows 10 just yet.

Microsoft now has a new priority – get everyone on to Windows 11 as soon as possible