Microsoft's upcoming 20H1 release of Windows 10 will be the company's first version of the OS to be finalized in December, three months earlier than usual, as a result of Windows moving under Azure and adopting the "semester" based development cycle that Azure is already using. Mary-Jo Foley was first to reveal that the Windows dev cycle was being changed up earlier this year, but here's what this all means for Insiders.

In the past, Windows 10 feature updates were typically finalized in March and September, but now, these OS releases are expected to be done in December and June instead. This doesn't mean Microsoft is giving feature updates less development time; this is just a result of Microsoft outright shifting the development cycle of Windows 10 updates by two to three months. Each release still gets the usual seven to nine months in development.

Microsoft was able to make this change thanks to a decision it made when first moving Windows under Azure. To allow the Azure and Windows development schedules to align, it needed to skip a feature release. Windows 10's 19H2 release is the result of this, being an update that isn't a proper OS release like previous ones before it.

This means Windows 10's 20H1 release is just about done. It was marked as feature-complete internally back in August, and Microsoft has been mostly focused on fixing up bugs and polishing the OS for release ever since. This is why Insiders have not seen any substantial new features in 20H1 builds for a couple of months, because the 20H1 release is done. We've got a month or so left of development before Microsoft signs-off on 20H1 in mid-December.

Windows 10 20H2