How’s Windows 10 May 2019 Update So Far?

[The AchieVer]

How’s Windows 10 May 2019 Update So Far? 

Microsoft officially kicked off the rollout of Windows 10 May 2019 Update, or version 1903, earlier this month, and despite only a small subset of devices getting it on Windows Update, the majority of users installed it using the Media Creation Tool.

The software giant obviously doesn’t recommend this method unless you are a power user, in which case you’re supposed to know how to deal with small bugs and compatibility issues in the first place.

Microsoft said it would release the May update to users as part of a more cautious process, as it wants to prevent the blunder that happened in late 2018 from taking place once again.

Back in October, Microsoft released Windows 10 October 2018 Update only to pull it a few days later after discovering a critical bug causing the removal of user files stored in libraries.

The re-released version wasn’t more reliable either, because despite the aforementioned issue being fixed, the update itself came with a plethora of other problems, significantly affecting the user experience.

After using the May 2019 Update for more than a week, I can tell you that everything seems to be much smoother now than it was in the first week on the October update. While the data removal bug did not exist on my device, the October update overall didn’t feel as refined as the new version, and this makes me think that Microsoft indeed learns from its own mistakes.

This makes sense given the update spent nearly one month in the Release Preview ring of the Windows Insider program. For comparison, Windows 10 October 2018 Update, which I still think was the biggest flop in Microsoft’s Windows 10 adventure, skipped the Release Preview ring altogether, as Microsoft considered it pretty reliable when it hit the Slow ring of the Insider program.

Microsoft explained in early April why it decided to perform more thorough testing with the Release Preview ring:

“The final May 2019 Update build will spend increased time in the Release Preview Ring of the Windows Insider Program, allowing us to gather more feedback and insights on compatibility and performance at scale before making the update more broadly available. During this period, we are significantly expanding interaction with our ecosystem partners, including original equipment makers (OEMs) and independent software vendors (ISVs), which should help improve initial quality across a variety of devices, hardware and software configurations.”

And this approach seems to be paying off already, as there are just minor bugs here and there in the May update, and I’m pretty sure Microsoft will fix them as soon as possible.

One such issue, and which I detailed in a separate article earlier this week, causes a delay in the rendering of the transparency effect in the Start menu and Action Center. This is something that’s happening on more devices, so Microsoft is probably aware of it already and working on a fix.

At the same time, the bugs that forced Microsoft to set upgrade blocks for Windows devices, and thus prevent them from installing the May update, aren’t as critical as the ones that hit the October 2018 Update. Many of them are related to drivers, so simply installing the latest release should technically resolve these bugs.

At the time of writing this article, there are just four bugs that Microsoft is investigating, and another one that was acknowledged a few days ago.

While all of these seem to be pointing to a much more refined experience in Windows 10, how’s the May 2019 Update for you so far? Are there any bugs that haven’t yet been acknowledged by Microsoft?
Let us know what you think in the comment box after the jump.

 

 

 

 

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