A number of the developers who worked on the newly released Windows 10 Insider Preview build 16299 have taken the stage at this year’s Microsoft Ignite conference to answer questions from the audience. There can’t have been too many about this particular release though, as its list of changes and improvements is much shorter than normal.
In the build-up to the release of Microsoft’s Fall Creators Update for Windows 10, the company has been releasing more and more build previews to Windows Insiders to help get everything ready for the general public. That has meant a distinct lack of new features and more of a press for bug fixes and performance improvements. Although some chose to skip ahead, for the rest of the fast ring residents, the most common changes in recent months have been bug fixes.
That is what dominated preview build 16299 as well. Listed in the developmental blog, Microsoft detailed fixing an issue with optical drives disappearing from “This PC,” a Microsoft Edge crash issue, and automatic file-download blocking not working in some Universal Windows Platform apps.
It also fixed a problem with some Insiders seeing an error when trying to upgrade to the latest releases and one with Windows Defender that saw it downloading files which were selected to be online-only.
That’s about it for this release, which makes it a minor update compared to some of its predecessors, but it’s still an important step on the road to the Fall Creators Update release. Insiders on the fast and slow rings have been invaluable to Microsoft since their creation, helping to publicly test new features and fixes to make the overall Windows experience much more pleasant for the wider audience.
Microsoft showed its appreciation for that at the Ignite conference, stating in the preview blog how pleased the team of developers was to meet everyone.
“Thank you for everything you do — even getting on planes to come see us. We love you,” said Dona Sarka, software engineer of Windows and Devices Group. “It’s been such an honor and a privilege to have gotten a chance to meet you all online all these years and this week it’s been simply magical to meet face to face.”
Considering how well the event seems to have gone, it will be interesting to see whether Microsoft makes more of a point of increasing its developers’ exposure to the public in the future.
