Windows 10 1809 Timeout Lets ARM Vendors Ship Unsupported Software

Microsoft's decision to download the Windows 10 1809 update in October after a serious file deletion bug was incorporated into the quality assurance process and the shipping software was undoubtedly the right one, since given that the company had distributed a flaw that had erased hundreds of GB of data. on consumer systems without warning or recovery options. The fact that a second deletion bug was discovered later and that the operating system remains in test is only cautious. But since Intel's 10-nm delay has impacted the entire industry, Microsoft's decision to extract the October 1809 update indefinitely has implications for OEMs.

The problem, in this case, is that the previous edition of Windows was only certified to run Snapdragon 835 devices, and not the Snapdragon 850 products that companies such as Samsung are delivering now. With the 1809 update, the only option these companies had – seven weeks before Christmas – was to place ARM products on shelves in unsupported configurations or not in stores. For companies trying to ship ARM-equipped equipment for the Christmas season, it's not really a choice. Petri.com has published a survey on this behavior as well as a list of certified devices to be delivered with which solutions:

Image by Petri.com

Companies that have created marketing material around 1809 can not even use it for the moment. With publication, there is nothing to market. Microsoft has chosen to allow the delivery of these devices from 1803, but this version of Windows has not been tested with the Snapdragon 850 hardware. It is true that 1803 should not cause any problems but remember, we're here first, because a Windows flaw lasted throughout the test process and was delivered to consumer systems. It's not the right time for Microsoft to ask everyone to trust its quality assurance process or to find that the 1803 / Snapdragon 850 combination has no flaws, especially when these ARM products often do not compare very well with x86 platforms. , at least not in terms of performance.

But we would not even dispute more It is important to ensure that all the latest aspects of the device experience relate to these ARM products rather than x86 hardware, as this is Microsoft's second attempt to bring Windows to non-x86 systems. So far, what we have seen in this regard has not been great and the provision of unsupported hardware configurations is also not a win-win solution. And, as Paul Thurrott noted, it's been a month since Microsoft released the October update. During this period, he managed to ship four versions of the future Windows 10 to Insider Ring, with no fixed version of 1809.

An article published several weeks ago on Ars Technica has highlighted major problems related to the way Microsoft builds Windows in recent times and suggests that the problems of society are not related to the speed with which it deploys the bets. up to date, but the way it develops and tests them. The full article definitely deserves to be read, but the bottom line is this: Microsoft allows embedding code with known bugs in its main development business, for the purpose of getting them correct later. This choice partly explains why Window Insider versions are not suitable for everyday drivers, and the fact that a large part of the quality assurance team has been fired does not help. Instead of waiting for SP1, companies are now waiting for the biannual updates to stabilize before installing them.

As a Windows user, I really do not feel that the new rapid fire rate has solved the problems of instability. I will not deny that Microsoft has integrated a number of useful features into Windows 10 over time – the operating system is better in 2018 than it was at launch in many ways – but as far as possible. stable? No, I had no problem with my original AU installation, but I had to cancel the Spring Creators update when it destabilized my system. The FCU worked quite well, but it introduced a notification bug: my notification windows never contain the text of a message I sent with Slack. They simply repeat the last notification text I received until I look at the window again. I upgraded the 1809 update to test and see if my files would be deleted. Even though it did not happen, my ability to search the Start menu was interrupted by the update. The keyboard entry was simply not recognized and the SearchUI.exe file crashed each time you attempted to load. I had to install Classic Start (Windows 10 does not display all the applications installed on your PC in its alphabetical lists) to be able to load programs.

It's not entirely clear to me that the new Windows 10 development cycle had the slightest positive impact on stability. In fact, overall, the trends seem worst that & # 39; before.

Now read: Microsoft stops deploying the Windows 10 October update, Windows 10 October 2018 update, and restores the 10-bug bug of some Windows Pro users to Windows Home