One of my biggest complaints about Windows 10 was that it was simply updated too often. I evenwrote a little rantabout it; two ‘major’ updates a year were simply too frequent and offered too little in the way of meaningful changes.
It turns out Microsoft had already decided on its update approach for Windows going forward. Although theannouncement is a few weeks old now, I thought it was worth highlighting: Windows 11 is moving to a yearly update model, much like Android, iOS, and macOS.
To be clear, this is for significant feature updates, not smaller security updates and fixes, which will surely come more often. These annual updates, meanwhile, will arrive “in the second half of the calendar year” and offer two years of support for most users (three years for enterprise and education).
This is a great thing. You can read more about why I think Microsoft’s old update model was broken inthis post, but here’s the gist of why a yearly system makes so much more sense:
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To be clear, I don’t know how Microsoft will go about naming these yearly updates. Perhaps we will get a Windows 12 next time around, or perhaps simply a Windows 11.1. But the move to an annual update cadence is without a doubt an improvement over Windows 10’s messy model.
Story byNapier Lopez
Napier Lopez is a writer based in New York City. He’s interested in all things tech, science, and photography related, and likes to yo-yo in(show all)Napier Lopez is a writer based in New York City. He’s interested in all things tech, science, and photography related, and likes to yo-yo in his free time. Follow himon Twitter.
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