Opinion: Controlled Feature Rollout and A/B Testing Defeat The Purpose Of The Entire Program

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Remember, in the early days, a decade ago, when being a Windows Insider in the Fast Ring meant you would always get new features to test and provide feedback on?
More importantly, every new feature that was announced in a build's release notes would be there immediately, available and enabled, by default.
No need to use a 3rd party tool to force enable a feature.

Fast forward to 2025, being a Windows Insider in the Dev Channel no longer means you'll be able to test any of the announced features, you may get the feature(s) or you may not (most likely not).

Mind you, the Dev Channel is according to Microsoft, the place to be if you want to test new features early.

It bums me out and honestly irritates me a bit when I read a Dev Channel build's release notes, there's a cool new feature (such as the redesigned start menu), but its "gradually rolling out..."



What is the point of having an Insider Program if all Insiders can't test the features and therefore are unable to provide feedback on them?

It kind of defeats the purpose of the whole thing IMHO.

Not to mention the Canary Channel... which gets new features, but several weeks or months after Dev and Beta.


This post is just an opinion of mine.