Hands-On Windows 192 transcript

Please be advised that this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word-for-word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-free version of the show.

Paul Thurrott [00:00:00]:
Coming up next on Hands on Windows, we're going to take a look at some major changes to the Windows Insider program and why you might want to join again. Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is twit. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Hands on Windows. I'm Paul Thurat, and back in Pennsylvania, which I'm super excited about. There's been a lot going on with Windows this year. We had that pain points memo that Pavan Davaluri wrote and presented to the world, and now we're seeing changes. And so I think a big focus we're going to have on this podcast throughout the year, but especially the next few months, is going to be on the changes that Microsoft is implementing.

Paul Thurrott [00:00:45]:
And we've seen a few of those things already, obviously, but we're going to look at a few more. So starting with changes to the Windows Insider program, which is what that pain points memo was targeted at, by the way. Right. So when he wrote this, he put it out not just to Windows users generally, but to the Insider program. So if you are familiar with this program, you know that it started back in the Windows 10 time frame. In fact, the day after they announced Windows 10, they announced, or they released the Windows Insider program as a new way for people, enthusiasts, but anyone really, to test future versions of the operating system and see new features early, et cetera. You know, back in the day before this, we used to have formal beta tests, you know, private closed betas, and also then public betas for various versions of Windows and other Microsoft software. Obviously, things were very logical back then.

Paul Thurrott [00:01:37]:
We had, you know, beta one, beta two, sometimes beta three. Right. Release candidates of various kinds, and then it would rtm, it would be released to manufacturing, and it would be generally available. That was the path that we had. And so Microsoft kind of broke with this. In Windows 7, Windows 8, they still had a beta program, but they weren't really paying attention to feedback. So when Windows 10 started, they began this Windows Insider program as a way to get people more involved again. And it was great.

Paul Thurrott [00:02:05]:
Until it wasn't right. So the whole history of this is not super important. We used to have rings, but then we went to channels. We've had many, many more channels than we started with. They've really confused what those channels mean. But, you know, there you go. So I'm going to just show some screenshots. I've.

Paul Thurrott [00:02:24]:
I've updated this computer with the latest version of what this stuff is. But the way this has looked since Windows 10, really, but certainly since the beginning of Windows 11 is this. And so you would go into the Settings app, Windows Update, Windows Insider program. You'd have to turn on diagnostics and feedback. So you're going to give up all your privacy to join the Insider program. And then you get started, sign in with your Microsoft account, and then you had this choice. So until. Well, actually, as of this recording, these are still available.

Paul Thurrott [00:02:55]:
But these are going away, right? A lot of these are going away. So we had the Canary channel, which no one ever explained adequately that if you're familiar with software development, you know, Canary should be where things happen first. So if you're looking for the latest features or potential new features, they should appear here first. If they meet this bar of quality, whatever, maybe they move on to the dev channel, the dev channel, the beta channel, at one point were tied to specific versions of Windows that stopped and then restarted. It's very confusing, you know, make its way through the system, right Beta channel and then to release Preview. And yeah, that's not how it's worked. So Microsoft announced a couple of months ago that they were going to fix this along with a bunch of other things in Windows 11. And for people who want to test new features now, we have a different system or we will soon have a different system, but you can check it out now if you want to.

Paul Thurrott [00:03:49]:
And so the way that you do this is the same as before. So you go into Windows Update and then the Windows Insider program. And I've already done that process. And so as of the time of this recording, the way that this has worked is you choose a channel, I chose dev, which is going away and rebooted, and then you install whatever the latest build is and then you reboot and then maybe you will, or maybe you will not see new features. That's one of the problems because Microsoft does A B testing. They don't call it that, but they have controlled feature releases, which means they release new features randomly. Even in the Insider program, which was one of the pain points, Right. So people complain, people dropped out of the Insider program and Microsoft has decided to redo this.

Paul Thurrott [00:04:34]:
It's simpler at a high level. It's still a little complex because as you'll see, we'll get into this in a bit, but there are basically two high level channels now. So experimental, as it says, are features that may or may not happen. Right. This is not tied to a particular Windows version, except it is, and I'll get to that in a moment. And then beta is for features you're testing features that have Past the bar, they are going to come to Windows probably sometime in the next weeks or months at most. And then the release preview channel works as it did before. Although Microsoft is kind of backing off from this a little bit in the sense that they don't expect individuals to get into this.

Paul Thurrott [00:05:15]:
This is mostly for businesses that want to test features right before they come out. So the natural progression now is this logical path experimental to beta to release Preview. And then it would go to the. If you're familiar with the update, the update schedule, the week D Preview update which seekers can get. You know, if you go into Windows Update here, there's this switch that's been around for a while now. But if you have this checked, you will get the preview update before it goes out into what I think of as stable. If you don't do this, then you'll get that update on patch Tuesday. So the idea here, when it's the right thing is that you will or it will Microsoft test new features, they'll go make its way through these paths and then it will get out into the world.

Paul Thurrott [00:06:03]:
Okay, so that's useful, it's better. But there are little asterisks here, right? So I did chose, I chose experimental. So the first thing I did was actually just choose to get into this new system. Eventually this will just be the system experimental essentially replaces the dev channel. If you go into advanced options this is where it gets a little complicated. And when you see this, it's a little strange, but you'll see this for each of the channels. So there are sub channels essentially. Windows 11 version 25H2 in this case, which is the currently shipping version of Windows for most people.

Paul Thurrott [00:06:39]:
Windows 11 version 26H1 is for people that have a new Snapdragon X based computer. But you can can even on intel or AMD test that if you wanted to for some reason. And then this future platform switch, which is essentially the new canary, right. These are low level changes. Usually it may not be as stable as the other two choices. The important thing to remember here is that all supported versions of Windows have the same features now. So if you're in 24H2, which at the time of this recording is still available, 25H2 or 26H1, which is brand new, the feature set should almost completely align. It technically doesn't but it's.

Paul Thurrott [00:07:20]:
That's roughly, that's roughly true. This is off by default. I turn it on just so I could. You could see it and I could see it, but I'm not going to go into the release preview. So that's good. The path through the system is solid. It makes sense. These are what Microsoft calls kind of the core version of Windows.

Paul Thurrott [00:07:40]:
So you can go and do that. It will choose the right. The one you're on currently automatically. But if you want to change it, you can. That's okay. I mean, I think for most people, you just don't even worry about this. You just pick the one you want, you move on. But there is one more thing going on here that is super important and is, to my mind, like the biggest change.

Paul Thurrott [00:08:04]:
A couple of things just up front, you know, again, you have to sign in with a Microsoft account, you have to give up all your privacy, you choose your channel and you're testing. But the thing is, unless you make a change in here, it's going to work as it did before. You know, you get new builds, you can install them, you can reboot, you can run the new build, but you're not going to get all the new features right away because they're still right now on cfrs. But the thing they've done to address that complaint, because people that enroll their computer in the Insider program, by nature, want to test new features, you can go in here and see what those features are and just enable them immediately. Right. I would prefer for this to be one switch, because I want them all on. Right. But I went through this list.

Paul Thurrott [00:08:49]:
If you look at the choices here, they were all on no override, meaning the default behavior, which is cfr. You could just disable it. I don't want this feature regardless. Or you can enable it. And this is kind of the key to the Insider program making sense to me. If you follow along with whatever announcements Microsoft makes about different builds and the different things that are coming, you'll see some things in here that map to those things. Right. They've talked about touchpad enhancements, they talked about this taskbar feature, which we're going to look at in a future episode, et cetera.

Paul Thurrott [00:09:27]:
They've talked about all these things, basically. And so it's nice that you can go in and make this happen. Right? So to me, this is the big. This is the biggest one. But that's for Windows Insider program specifically. The reason you get into the Insider program is so you can see what's coming down the pike. And this year, especially after a slow start, what we're starting to see is some really good quality updates to Windows 11, a couple of new features, including some major ones which we've talked about in the past. And we'll continue talking about as they occur.

Paul Thurrott [00:10:02]:
But this is how you can look at those things early and not six months, nine months early, but maybe a couple of months early. So it, like I said, I think this to me is logical in that it's a progression from us testing this thing in a pre release form. Here it goes to release Preview at the end, it then goes to the preview update and then goes out to stable, as I call it. That's not really the right term, but you know, the general release. And so there will be a future patch Tuesday, June, July, August, whatever month coming down the pike where all of the features you see here and more will appear for everybody. But we get to test them first and inside a program like God intended. So this is finally starting to make sense. So there's a lot of new things coming.

Paul Thurrott [00:10:45]:
You can see some of them here, alternate taskbar positions. And where is this the, the smaller taskbar that's going to be in a coming episode. There are changes to Windows Update that will be in a coming episode, etc. So there's a lot more to look at and we'll cover that in a future episode. So I'll see you next week. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you especially to our Club Twit members. You can find out more about Club Twit at Twit tv Club Twit.

Paul Thurrott [00:11:14]:
You can find out more about this podcast at Twitt tv how we have a new episode every Thursday. So I'll see you next Thursday. Thank you.