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Microsoft has decided to return to the traditional three-year Windows development cycle that it used before moving to Windows as a Service with Windows 10. At the same time, the company intends to release more new features for already released versions of Windows. This is reported Windows Central portal.
According to Zach Bowden, the next major Windows client release is slated for 2024, three years after Windows 11 was released. The 2023 update, codenamed Sun Valley 3, has been cancelled.
Windows 11 version 22H2 (Sun Valley 2) will launch a new engineering program called “Moments” that will allow Microsoft to implement new features and functionality without being tied to full releases of the operating system. According to rumors, from 2023 the company intends to add innovations to the release version of Windows every few months, but no more than four times a year.
It’s worth noting that this system has already been tried out this year when Microsoft introduced the Weather button to the taskbar in Windows 11. The same approach will be used as part of the Moments program. Engineers will bundle several features ready for public release into a special package and deploy them to the current version of Windows. For example, many of the features planned for the canceled Sun Valley 3 will be released for Sun Valley 2 in 2023.
In the past, most development teams had to wait until the annual fall release of Windows to release new features. “Moments” will allow them to release innovations at the moment when they are ready for release. Note that the term “Moments” is used internally by Microsoft to refer to these planned updates with new features. It is not known if the term will be used publicly. There is also no information on whether Microsoft plans to increase the version number of Windows 11 to 23H2 after installing such an update.
There is little information about the next major release of Windows yet, as it is in the early stages of design and development. Inside Microsoft, this project is called “Next Valley”, although this is unlikely to be the final code name for the project. As mentioned earlier, the system is planned to be released in 2024. It is possible that the changes will also affect the Windows version numbering system, so that in two years the company may well release Windows 12.
These are certainly major changes to the Windows roadmap that will allow Microsoft to release new versions of the Windows client every few years, as it has done in the past, and to keep the current version of Windows on the market up to date with new features and changes that are regularly and frequently distributed to the world. users.
