Microsoft calls time on new features to ready Windows 10 Anniversary Update

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With the latest preview build to be released for Windows 10 (version 14366), Microsoft has said that it's now fully focusing on ensuring the big Anniversary Update ships on time.

In other words, there will be no new features added to preview builds of the OS for some time, as Redmond's Windows team and testers concentrate on fixing bugs and generally smoothing things out for said major update.

You can expect builds in the near future to simply chuck in a load of fixes and tweaks for better performance.

In a blog post, Microsoft also announced that the 'June Bug Bash' is now underway, the second such event which aims to squash even more bugs as work on the OS intensifies.

Give me a quest

Redmond has gamified the bug hunting process, meaning that over the next few days, Insiders will see a number of 'quests' appearing in the Feedback Hub. Some of these quests will be labelled as advanced affairs, meaning they may require messing with the system configuration and they shouldn't be attempted by more novice testers (as if things go wrong, it may be a task to get your machine running normally again).

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Redmond is certainly stressing the importance of user feedback in honing Windows 10, which has been a big theme since the OS was first conceived, and is all part of the drive to make folks forget about Windows 8 (many people felt Microsoft definitely wasn't listening to users when it conceived and implemented this predecessor).

Dona Sarkar, Software Engineer, Windows and Devices Group, who took over from Gabe Aul as Windows Insider chief, commented: "As I've been talking to our engineering team all week, I keep seeing big smiles and lots of excitement as people talk about how awesome it is to include Insiders as part of our team activities because you *are* a part of our team. We're shipping this product together and I again stress how valuable your feedback is."

There were a couple of changes in build 14366, by the way, including implementing the Office Online extension in the Edge browser, and an update to the Windows Store which has streamlined its resource usage and made the store more stable.

The Anniversary Update should arrive at the end of July, most likely on the one-year anniversary of the launch of Windows 10.

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