Some of you may recall the leaking of several Windows 7 SP1 (Service Pack 1) builds prior to the final release of Windows 7. Naturally, those leaks — some as far back as June 2009 — sparked a lot of speculation as to the quality bar Windows 7 would RTM at. I mean, just prior to Windows 7’s final build, you start seeing SP1 builds and you can’t help but wonder if they’re in preparation to fix things they knew would be off-center in the final build, right? Well, sort of.
In light of an entry I recently stumbled upon on LinkedIn, I believe I’ve found the missing link which makes sense of the whole thing. And now that I’ve seen it, I can’t help but think to myself, “duh!” Okay, for starters, look at the build string in the following image:
Long story short, there were no crazy bug fixes starting to happen that Windows 7 RTM wouldn’t see. Those SP1 builds were compiled simply to test Windows 7’s service pack technologies and experience! I and so many others like me really looked waaaay too far ahead into what those builds could have possibly meant — only to miss the simplest (and most likely, I might add) of possibilities: Microsoft preparing and testing service pack technologies and processes.
In addition to the revelation above, there are farther-reaching implications this person on LinkedIn has made us privy to. To quote:
Aside from stating the obvious, with the time it took to complete Windows 7, I suppose Windows 7 SP1 will also exceed expectations. And that’s a good thing.
Finally, there is also mention of Windows 8 planning:
Good comedy would be to see a Windows 8 SP1 build leak prior to even a Windows 8 Milestone 1 build! At that point, I would have to say they were getting a bit *too* far ahead of the game, wouldn’t you? Anyway, I just thought I would share my findings and attempt to explain away some of the confusion created by those SP1 builds previously.
