14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 8.1 Preview is already here, so many users head over to the official community forums to report bugs and request features in the stable version of the operating system.
As far as the features to be implemented in Windows 8.1 RTM are concerned, Microsoft can’t make any promises, a company employee explained in a post on the company’s support forums.
What if all developers catch the flu just before Windows 8.1 RTM goes live? he asked in his post, trying to explain that Microsoft is actually struggling to work on features with higher priority and all then deal with all requests.
“For obvious reasons, we simply can't promise future features. They may be harder to implement that expected. Some EVEN HIGHER priority issue might arise and steal our developer time until the next release. We may all contract the flu and be out during the push to the final release. Or any other of a dozen reasons why we can't provide some particular feature that you are asking for,” he said.
The post then goes on with details on a dedicated Windows 8.1 feature that would allow users to change the root folder location.
“Believe me that we aware of the demand for the feature where you can set or change the location of the SkyDrive folder. To everyone who is struggling with the fact that you could set the file location in Window 8, but not in Windows 8.1 Preview: The expected behavior is that when you upgraded to Windows 8.1, the integrated SkyDrive would pick up the settings from the desktop client,” he added.
CEO Steve Ballmer said during the BUILD developer conference that Windows 8.1 was specifically designed to be more user-friendly and to address issues reported by users.
So in case all developers indeed catch the flu just before the public debut of the operating system, this could ruin the whole plan. Tamiflu, anyone?