Microsoft yesterday declared[1] the Windows 10 April 2018 Update fit for business and now running on 250 million PCs. But despite the rocky upgrade for some users, the Redmond company insists its AI made the record fast roll out a responsible one.
Microsoft boasted that the April 2018 Update was the fastest version to reach 250 million devices since Microsoft launched Windows 10 in 2015, shifting to the Windows-as-a-service model.
That means the Windows 10 April 2018 Update is now running on about 36 percent of the nearly 700 million monthly active devices on some version of Windows 10.
It's significantly less than the 50 percent adoption[2] reported by Windows-focused ad analytics firm AdDuplex reported last month, however the firm was on the right track when it said[3] it was the "fastest spreading Windows 10 update by far".
Microsoft customer support calls and online queries continued to decline with the Windows 10 April 2018 Update Microsoft
Microsoft says the 250 milestone was reached in "less than half the time" it took the previous feature update, the Fall Creators Update, to hit that number.
While fast adoption is generally a positive signal, the reaction to AdDuplex's finding was not. Influential Windows watcher, Paul Thurrott, said the numbers were "irresponsibly worse" than he expected due to numerous glitches that users have encountered after or while updating. These have affected Chrome users, Avast antivirus users, machines with certain Intel SSDs, and a range of Dell's Alienware devices.
But Microsoft insists its combination of telemetry data and artificial intelligence (AI) actually made this update both "safe and fast", allowing it to identify problems early and block updates to hardware it will cause problems for. It did this