This week in Microsoft news, Windows 11 Dev channel users start testing a new branch of early development builds, the company announces a hardware event for new Surface devices, and more.
The first week of September is almost over and a lot has happened in the world of Microsoft. The most significant one is that the Redmond firm has put an official date on the release of Windows 11. In addition to information on the release of the next generation of the OS, the Dev channel has begun testing the version slated to come after the one releasing this fall. However, not all is good as some users are being kicked out of the program due to running unsupported devices. There is more news relating to gaming, security, an upcoming hardware event later this month, and a benign ad that crippled users’ taskbars on Windows 11. Check everything out in our Microsoft digest for the week of August 29 – September 4. Microsoft finally announced that the official release date for Windows 11 is October 5. This is when the firm will begin rolling out the OS to eligible devices – albeit in a staggered fashion – and OEMs will start shipping devices running Windows 11 out of the box. Of course, while this news has been great for many, there are a bunch of Windows Insiders running Dev channel builds on unsupported hardware that haven’t had a good experience as they were kicked out of receiving Dev channel builds, in line with the firm’s promise from June. The firm even clarified its stance on Twitter, justifying its move. For those that were still in the program, the firm released new builds for both Dev and Beta channel Insiders. While Beta channel users were treated to build 22000.176 that brought bug fixes, it’s the Dev channel that got more love in the way of a major build number bump. The first build from the ‘rs_prelease’ branch, build 22449, brought a ton of fixes and a simple yet modern startup animation, among other improvements to the overall UI. This build comes from a branch that is not tied to any Windows 11 release, which means they will eventually become more unstable. Those running Beta channel builds, which are expected to be the more stable of the two channels, were surprised to see that a weird bug that broke the taskbar. While the firm quickly identified the issue and posted a workaround, it was later discovered that a small JSON blob from the IrisService component that was used tasked at serving an ad for Windows 11’s Teams integration is what broke the Start and Taskbar. Thankfully, the bug was not significant enough to cause much trouble. Business users weren’t left out either, this week. Windows Insider Program for business users running Release Preview builds can start testing Windows 11 or Windows 10 version 21H2, available for download across all the usual distribution channels. This hints at Windows 11 OS being closer to completion than ever since the firm wants commercial customers to begin validation testing for the new OS. However, it is not forcing those that want to continue running Windows 10, with the firm promising free support and AppAssure support for customers running previews of both versions.
