In August last year, Microsoft revealed that it plans to switch back to its twice-a-year update cycle. And this piqued our expectation for the release of two major Windows 10 Redstone updates in 2017. But, the Redmond giant hadn’t shared details about the second update until date.
We are still awaiting the launch of Windows 10 Creators Update (codenamed Redstone 2), scheduled to be released in April this year. But, Microsoft has now dropped hints for the launch of the next major Redstone update, which we can finally confirm is also coming this very year. This development was shared at a recent session at Microsoft’s Ignite conference in Australia.
Initially reported by onMSFT, Microsoft displayed a rough timeline for the release of their second Window 10 update in 2017. In the slide attached underneath, the Redmond giant indicates that the said ‘Redstone 3’ update is expected to be made available later this year itself. This update is expected to be the follow-on release for the upcoming Creators Update.
And, the Microsoft representatives who were discussing the said lifecycle on stage further mentioned the same saying “plus the two [releases] that we intend in shipping in 2017.” The slide also reveals that Microsoft will start sourcing Insider preview for the said scheduled update just after the release of Windows 10 Creators Update. This means the Insider will start focusing on the next set of features for this update in the coming weeks, once the Creators Update is finalised.
Further, one can also notice that the next Redstone release has a “production” date of sometime in 2018. But, this conference was intended for enterprise and professional customers, thus, the general populace can expect to receive the said update sooner. This is, however, still an estimated timeline as compared to the actual release schedule.
There is currently no word what features exactly is Microsoft planning to push with the Redstone 3 update, but one can surely witness the addition of the People Bar. The said feature was scheduled to be released with the Creators Update but with the release of a preview build the company said that it needed more time to develop the feature. Thus, one should expect the same to pop up in the Windows 10 update coming towards the end of 2017. It might also bring along UI/UX changes defined under Project Neon and improved support for ARM devices.
