Windows 10 October 2018 Update (version 1809) is without a doubt one of the buggiest releases in a long time, and the way Microsoft handles its very own blunder shows the company still has a lot to learn both from its rivals and from customers who have been sending their feedback for so long.

Version 1809 was pulled a few days after its October 2 rollout due to an issue that potentially caused the removal of user files stored in libraries.

Technically, this was the right call given how critical the bug was, so since then, Microsoft has been working exclusively on resolving issues in the OS update. With more and more issues making the rounds in the meantime, Redmond has pushed back the re-release more and more, so here we are in November still not allowed to install the October update.

While the delay could make sense given that Microsoft wants to deliver a flawless update experience, the lack of fixes is worrying for those people who actually got to download the October update during the few days of availability.

According to our estimates, there are millions of them, and many have been waiting for more than a month for Microsoft to release patches for bugs in the OS.

The secrecy

Basically, Microsoft has already completed the development of fixes for many of the bugs that made the rounds lately, but all of them have only been shipped to insiders. As Ed Bott explains in an analysis on ZDNet, this approach leaves the millions of users mentioned above all alone in their attempt to resolve glitches in an operating system update released by Microsoft.

If there’s anything worse in this, it is definitely the way the software giant handles the whole saga. The company has refused to share any details about when it plans to begin the re-release or when more fixes would be published for the rest of the users out there.

For now, the only way for customers to get fixes is to join the Insider program, which for many is something that’s simply not possible.

But as it turns out, joining the Windows Insider program and running preview builds of Windows might not be too different from installing stable builds of the OS. Given how buggy Windows updates are these days, it just seems we’re all insiders now.