Historic build ready, unlikely to launch publicly

Dec 24, 2016 08:15 GMT  ·  By

​Microsoft has temporarily paused the Windows Insider program during the holiday season, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone stopped working on Windows 10 at the company.

In fact, the engineers who are still compiling builds these days had reached an important milestone, as Windows 10 build 15000 officially saw daylight a few days ago when it was released internally.

WindowsCentral writes that this build doesn’t come with huge changes, and it makes sense, mostly because it’s born at a time when the Insider program itself is on pause and most of the engineers working on the Creators Update are on holiday for Christmas.

So although it’s quite a historic build, it doesn’t bring anything worth mentioning, with Microsoft most likely paying particular attention to fixes and performance improvements.

Windows Insider to restart in January

Additionally, it’s very unlikely to see Windows 10 build 15000 launching for insiders even after the testing program resumes in January, mostly because Microsoft is expected to compile some other builds in the meantime.

January will be quite a busy day for Microsoft and its insiders, as the company is expected to complete work on new features that are supposed to be part of the final Creators Update build. Beyond that point, Microsoft will focus entirely on fixing bugs and improving performance, while at the same time preparing the groundwork for the third major OS update codenamed Redstone 3.

Windows 10 Creators Update is due to launch in the spring, and according to unconfirmed reports, the target month is March. Windows 10 Creators Update will be version 1703 and will bring a series of improvements for both smartphones and PCs.

The next few builds are likely to bring some other refinements here and there, and new features are still possible, but it goes without saying that Microsoft is also super-focused on improving performance. The next build should ship in the first weeks of 2017.