This is How-To Geek's take on it.

That's a very useful article. Thanks .

Basically the Gold version is the Release Candidate version. Just a play on words. That was the process when I was involved some 15 years ago. Can't see why it would have changed that much.

things have changed a lot in 15 years, generally there is a lot less patience in terms of development to release.

Insiders were not testing RC because RC = feature and design frozen yet microsoft were still making feature changes.

RC is now what we have on the market.

Edited by Chrysalis (Fri 14-Aug-15 05:45:27)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

RC is now what we have on the market.

Which is why the upgrade is free (for 1 year).

Software is getting more complex, selling software is more complex+harder, selling software is more complex+harder+comes with greater degree of responsibility, selling software is more complex+harder+comes with greater degree of responsibility+sanctions. Everybody+his/her dog will be criticising it for everything including, lack of freedom+intrusion of freedom+everything.

Some of these things will have their basis in justice and others will be un-justified, Live with it Microsoft! If you can prove yourself to be justifiably morally and socially orientated you will succeed and if not you will become a dinosaur.

Edited by Nervous (Sat 15-Aug-15 12:24:58)

the upgrade is free because the user is now the product.

if windows 10 is going to be getting continuous feature changes, it may effectively never become stable, but end up like android.

New features will become in-store purchases. See my post here.

Android has releases - the latest is called Lollipop. It just happens to be free. The monetisation come from in-store purchases (apps).

Microsoft's update strategy is extremely aggressive, much more so than Apple's or Google's. You are right, though. They must either be more flexible or wither away. Corporate customers won't mind, though. They can pick and choose which updates are rolled out to their employees.

Edited by micksharpe (Sat 15-Aug-15 14:21:34)

If upgrades get too costly, perhaps we might see people migrating to other operating systems like Linux or RISC OS

In reply to a post by MrTAToad2:

If upgrades get too costly, perhaps we might see 0.0001% - 0.0003% of people migrating to other operating systems like Linux or RISC OS

Fixed that for you .