Microsoft has announced that it will now be updating Windows 10 annually. This means that, when the company released the November 2021 update, the other will come later in 2022, roughly a year after. This follows Microsoft's decision to also introduce annual updates for Windows 11. The move was announced by John Cable, the head of Windows Servicing and Delivery at the company.
Despite this, it is not clear what kind of updates users should expect from Windows 10. It was largely expected during the launch of Windows 11 that the US tech giant will shed light on the direction it wants to take with Windows 10 in the future. But nothing was communicated, leaving people guessing.
Besides, the November update, which will now be part of the annual Windows 10 feature updates, looks very minor. The only stand-out feature here was the GPU computer support that will be included in the Windows Subsystem for Linux or WSL. We did also note that the company was in the process of rolling out the Microsoft Store for Windows 10 users.
Other than these two, there isn’t a lot to write home about the November update. Whether this could change in the future remains to be seen. But we must all wait for a whole year before the next major features update comes. Despite this, it wouldn't be wise to look forward too much. It is clear at the moment that Microsoft’s main focus right now is Windows 11.
Many experts have argued that the tech giant is looking to position Windows 11 as the next cornerstone for computers around the world. But even with that, there are still a lot of people that use Windows 10. As of now, the company promised to provide support for at least one version of Windows 10 until October 14th, 2025.
Based on the new annual update plan, this means that we could see at most four major feature updates before support for Windows 10 ends in 2025. However, we are not confident that these will be major updates.
We don't see Microsoft making any major changes to its Windows 10 product. So, whatever updates come over the years will more likely have very little impact on how the OS works and the kind of utility it delivers to its users. But this is not a surprise.
After all, Microsoft is simply trying to get Windows 11 adopted by as many users as possible. Just recently, the company has been accelerating the rollout of Windows 11. Microsoft notes that the initial rollout has attracted a lot of positive feedback from users.
For this reason, the tech giant sees it fit to accelerate the program to reach as many people as possible within the shortest time. Microsoft also added that they are making the Windows 11 upgrade more "broadly available” to all eligible devices that still run on Windows 10. How fast this will happen remains to be seen but the company seems to be on the right track.
