We caught the first Windows 8.1 (aka Blue) news back in March, and after several betas and a preview, it's been bundled off to manufacturers. That's a mere five months from alpha code to gold master, a feat that Microsoft trumpeted as "an unparalleled level of collaboration" between customers and Windows product teams. Now, manufacturers will be able to ramp up their production lines with the new version in time for the holidays, as Redmond emphasized in its Blogging Windows post. Current Windows 8 owners will get the update for free, but all end users will have to hang on until the official October 18th release date. With a month and change left, though, it looks like all the ducks are in a row to herald the return of the tech world's most infamous button.
Microsoft announced on August 27 that Windows 8.1 and Windows RT 8.1 have been released to manufacturing (RTM'd) and are now being delivered to its OEM partners.
Company officials also confirmed, as I blogged earlier this month, that there will be no early access to the Windows 8.1 RTM bits by subscribers to MSDN, TechNet and its volume-license customers. They will have to wait for Windows 8.1's launch, October 18, to get the gold code.
Put down the pitchforks -- at least for a minute -- and consider this:
Point 1: Yes, it's true: This is not how Microsoft has rolled out the final Windows bits in the past. With previous Windows releases -- even Windows 8 -- Microsoft RTM'd the bits, handed them off to OEMs, and made them available to MSDN/TechNet and volume licensees a couple weeks later. These groups got the gold bits a month or more before Microsoft "launched" the new release and made it available at retail. Starting with Windows 8.1, this changes and everyone gets the gold bits at the same time.
Point 2: RTM doesn't mean what it used to. Microsoft technically RTM'd Windows 8.1 on Friday, August 23 (though today's blog post makes no mention of this fact). That was the day that the Windows team, internally, decided that Windows 8.1 was good enough to be declared done enough to send to OEMs. Today's announcement marks the next phase of RTM: Microsoft is starting to release the Windows 8.1 and Windows RT 8.1 bits to its OEMs. (We need a new word to replace "RTM," in my opinion. But for now, we are stuck with RTM.)
Point 3: Microsoft doesn't "make" Windows like it used to. Instead of spending 2.5 to 3 years planning, developing and testing a new Windows build, Microsoft did all that in 10 months this time around. Consequently, the company will be patching and updating Windows 8.1 and all the bundled apps that come with it (Mail, Calendar, the core Office apps, the Bing consumer apps, IE 11) right up until the launch. Microsoft will push updates to the whole shebang just before customers can get their hands on the final bits.
Point 4: Because of Point 3, things are different for developers, too. At Build this year, Microsoft told developers who wanted to build apps for Windows 8.1 to use the Visual Studio 2013 preview and the Windows 8.1 consumer preview to update their apps to take advantage of the new features in Windows 8.1. Officials detailed the application programming interface (API) changes that Windows 8.1 will bring. And they also noted that all existing Windows Store/Metro-Style apps that run on Windows 8 will run on Windows 8.1.
Point 5: The decision to withhold the RTM bits until launch probably does mean more folks will be downloading non-official RTM builds that will likely leak between now and October 18. Microsoft's advice is, unsurprisingly, users should wait for the "official" RTM bits and expect possible patches and updates to the consumer preview builds that the company released in late June in the interim.
In case you are wondering, we still don't know how much Windows 8.1 will cost. Windows 8.1 will be free for existing Windows 8 users, but Microsoft still hasn't said what it will cost at retail for those looking to upgrade from previous versions of Windows.
Developers and volume-license customers: Do you see delaying availability of the gold Windows 8.1 bits hurting you in any way (after reading the points above)? And remember: I am just the messenger here.
