Avid readers of our blog may have noticed that we haven't yet created an article detailing what new features will be rolling out in what would usually be the next big twice-annual update that is due in early Autumn. Microsoft have recently announced that while there will be an update around September / October, it won't actually contain any features. It will instead just be a series of performance and stability improvements - much like the old Service Packs that were released for older versions of Windows.
To further underline the fact that this falls outside of the usual feature update pattern, unlike previous feature updates, this one will just install itself via the same mechanism as the security updates that are installed much more frequently. It's likely that you won't even realise it has happened.
Many may breathe a sigh of relief at this - especially business users. While a never-ending parade of new features is a nice idea on paper, in a business environment, it can be counter productive. While there haven't been any radical changes in any of the previous updates, it does mean having to constantly adapt to little differences.
Additionally, some of the previous updates have had significant bugs upon release. For instance, the update released last October had to be temporarily pulled when it transpired it could delete users' files in a certain set of specific circumstances. Hopefully, a less frantic release schedule should provide more time to test major changes before they're released into the wild.
A normal feature update has already been confirmed for next Spring, and we'll outline what you can expect to see in this in a future blog. It hasn't yet been confirmed whether this is a permanent adjustment to the release schedule, or whether it is a one-off for this Autumn only.