10 Million Insiders Test And Use Windows 10 Every Day, Says Microsoft (zdnet.com)

When Microsoft made Windows 10 publicly available to all users in 2015, it said about five million people had signed up for Windows Insider program, and were using the OS every day. That number has grown to hit 10 million now, it said this week. From a report: Microsoft launched Windows Insider in October 2014 with its first public Windows 10 Technical Preview, and by that December the program counted 1.5 million members. It was a solid start, but the company now says that in just over two years numbers have grown 566 percent to 10 million fans. "We count over 10 million Windows Insiders today, many of them fans, who test and use the latest build of Windows 10 on a daily basis," wrote Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Windows and Devices Group. "Their feedback comes fast and furious, they have a relentless bar of what they expect, but it so inspires our team and drives our very focus on a daily basis."

Comments

Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

So then why isn't Windows 10 getting any better?

Make That 10 Million And 1

[dryriver]

My cat has fallen in love with Windows 10. It makes her litter box run far more efficiently than OS/2 Warp did.

How much do they get paid?

[HalAtWork]

Sounds like these people are providing valuable QA and focus testing

Re:How much do they get paid?

[swimboy]

Because everybody knows there's nothing like a self-selected sample to get accurate insights into your product.

Re:How much do they get paid?

[Voyager529]

Because everybody knows there's nothing like a self-selected sample to get accurate insights into your product.

This is what I find hypocritical of Microsoft. The people who are going to sign up to get prerelease versions of Windows are going to be the more tech savvy crowd who are going to articulate what they want, and then get summarily ignored...

"Provide a means to actually-disable telemetry!"
"No."
"Let me control my update cadence!"
"No."
"Provide a classic mode for the Start Menu, even if it's not by default!"
"No."
"...At least let me leave Classic Shell in after the different major updates?"
"No."
"Let me use Chrome without Edge acting like a clingy ex-girlfriend?"
"No."
"Stop auto-downloading apps I didn't ask for?"
"No."
"Can we use ZFS or at least ReFS in desktop Windows?"
"No."
"Could you stop changing my default PDF reader?"
"No."
"Could you make the control panel situation a bit more consistent?"
"No."
"Could you integrate more cloud storage providers, rather than plastering me with OneDrive ads?"
"No."
"Could we have our integrated backup tools back like we used to have in Windows 7?"
"No."
"Could my installed drivers be set to be excluded from auto-updates in Windows Update?"
"No."
"Then what feedback *do* you want?"
"The kind your computer provides to us automatically."
"So, you don't want actual human feedback, then?"
"No." ...Because that's what I think they seem to want.

Re:How much do they get paid?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Can you make a VPN connect one-click?"
"No." ... Because we interviews all 10 million, and most stated they wanted to right-click, left-click, search menu options, click-again, then click to Connect...
Which is obviously, much, much simpler... Keep up the good work there Micropenis.

inaccurate

[dejitaru]

10 million insiders does not equal actual testers. This is like the whole "number of registered users vs number of active users" that sites play. For example, i'm an insider because I was playing with windows 10 before it came out (10240). Once it reached RTM I refused to continue using insider builds because using windows 10 normally already has enough issues as it is.

10 Million hoping for the bugs to be ironed out

[Casandro]

... like the inability to remove Cortana, or the many bugs involving parts of the OS replicating OS features like the UI toolkit. Or the bug that the bitmaps of TrueType fonts are ignored so you'll always have those blurry characters. Or the longstanding Windows-Bug that the binary files of programs cannot be deleted when the program is running.... etc...

The feedback probably mostly goes to /dev/null, because many of the bugs either stem from decade old design decisions, or come straight from the marketing department. (which is apparently the most powerful department at Microsoft. Probably much more important than the sales department.)

Classic Stockholm Syndrome behavior

[JoeyRox]

They were all originally forced into a Windows 10 upgrade and now are showing empathy for their captors.

Really?

[PaoloAgati]

wow... 10 million blind people... or do they just try to login without doing anything? with so much tester the system should run without a glitch.... but I keep experiencing daily crashes, many times a day... I'm really thinking to switch definitely to Linux... even in an all Microsoft environment

How many know?

[Dins]

And of the 10 million, how many of them know they are "Windows Insiders"?

Amazing ...

[angel'o'sphere]

10M massochists volunteering to play with that?

I have to use it at work since 6 weeks ... you can not even properly grab the edge of the window with a mouse to resize it.

Dragging a window from one screen to the other or releasing it to close to the edge ... then it will go full screen automatically ... the search function in the explorer is not working properly ... since windows 7 I think. And people "volunteeringly" use this pile of crap?

I close my Dell Laptop, unplug it from the docking station.

Next morning I plug it in again.

All windows are now on the screen of the laptop and not where they have been before: a nice set of chat and mail tools on the laptop screen and all the programming tools on the "external/main" screen.

Helllllllllo? That worked 1987 on a Mac just fine!!

And it is impossible to have a window overlap screens, the sizes get distorted ... and trust me, the resolution of the laptop is just fine, bullshit like this never happened on a Mac.

So the 10M people have no clue how a computer should work but are masochist enough to beta test ...