Although technically Microsoft could release builds to Windows Insiders on most any day of the week there does tend to be a fairly standard pattern for when we tend to see these builds.
It used to be considered a no-go situation to release any builds on a Friday for instance however, we have seen a new PC build released every Friday since the 24th of February. Even Windows 10 Mobile has had three Friday releases over that same period of time.
Another rarity when it comes to the release of Fast Ring builds from the Windows Insider team is to see new builds released on consecutive days.
Well as of today, the 17th of March, the streak of build releases on Friday's is now four in a row for PCs and today's release also marks the first time in the Redstone 2 development cycle that new builds have been shipped on consecutive days.
For Windows 10 Mobile fans the three Friday releases in a row come to a stop today and it is not clear when the next build might come out. It appears that there is a blocking issue preventing the release of the latest build on that platform for testers according to program head Dona Sarkar.
For those who like to keep a tab on the stats we monitor on our Redstone 2 Build Tracker for PCs, you will note that this is the 27th build released towards the development and testing of the Creators Update for PCs. That now exceeds the 26 total builds that were released for testing on the Anniversary Update last year. I have said it before and will say it again - quantity does not necessarily equal quality - but it is interesting to see how things work out overall with all of these builds we see over the development cycle.
The release of Windows 10 Creators Update Build 15061 comes less than 24 hours since the team sent out Build 15060 so there are not any dramatic changes to be seen. As I told someone on Twitter who asked about why we are not seeing new features in these builds - this late in the development cycle no new stuff is added to avoid the risk of introducing bugs. The focus is all about stabilizing the operating system by fixing bugs and tweaking performance.
Speaking of fixing bugs, if you compare the release notes between 15060 and 15061 you will notice there were six documented fixes for known issues in 15060 and four more in 15061.
As for known issues that have been resolved, the issue around apps and games crashing due to a misconfigured advertising ID has been cleared in 15061. The other five remaining known issues are still present in both of these builds.
The fact that these lists continue to shrink are good indications the team is focusing on these final issues leading up to the Creators Update and its General Availability sometime in the next few weeks.
Note: These fixes and known issues are just from those provided in the release notes. There are likely others that are being fixed in the background but do not have or necessarily need the visibility of being documented in the release notes themselves.
A couple of other observations about this build:
- The desktop watermark and expiration date for this build are still present.
- It appears they are still ABC testing possible replacements for the Microsoft Edge icon in the browser and I have all three on the three bare metal machines I am testing with the Creators Update.
Here they are:
Microsoft Edge Hub Icon Option A
Microsoft Edge Hub Icon Option B
Microsoft Edge Hub Icon Option C
I guess at some point in the near future we will learn which of these will become the new icon for the Hub.
In closing, there is no doubt we are getting very close to the final build that will become the Creators Update. One good sign in the next week would be to see this build move to the Windows Insider Slow Ring. If that happens you can then expect it to make its way to the Release Preview ring shortly after that happens. If Build 15061 does become that build then I would expect we would see an update for Insiders to test the final Day 1 fixes for this feature update before GA.
So hang on because we are definitely almost at the end of this Redstone 2 road.
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