14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has temporarily suspended the delivery of new Windows 10 builds to insiders enrolled in the Fast and Slow rings, as the Windows team is internally working on the new Unified Update Platform that the company announced earlier this year.
Dona Sarkar, head of the Windows Insider program, says they are planning to internally test the new UUP system internally before shipping it to users who are part of the Insider program, so it’s not clear how long this is going to take.
What’s important to know is that users can no longer download new builds in the Fast and Slow rings for PCs. Mobile users are not affected.
“We are getting ready to start releasing PC builds to Insiders using UUP. To prepare for this, we are going to pause all PC builds for both the Fast and Slow rings starting this evening (Friday 12/2). We will begin flighting the latest builds via UUP starting with our internal rings first then to Insiders based on each ring’s promotion criteria. We’re excited to be able to release builds for PC to Insiders using UUP! Mobile builds are not impacted by this,” Dona explained.
What’s UUP?
For those who missed Microsoft’s original announcement on the Unified Update Platform, this is a new updating system that speeds up update checks and dramatically cuts the size of updates by only downloading the bits that you need, and not full new builds.
The delivery of large OS updates would thus be significantly faster, Microsoft says, as your computer would have to get only the files that have changed since the previous version, and not a complete image of the OS. Furthermore, the update checking would be performed server-side, so it would be faster.
“Because more processing is being done by the service, this will lead to faster checks for update operations. It’s important to note that with UUP, nothing will look or behave differently on the surface, UUP is all underlying platform and service optimization that happens behind the scenes,” Microsoft says.
The UUP system would be tested with help from insiders in the coming months, while everyone else would get it with the Creators Update in early 2017.