Microsoft’s October Update Failure is Holding the Whole PC Industry Back

Microsoft still hasn’t re-released Windows 10’s October 2018 Update. Now, PC manufacturers are shipping PCs with unsupported software, and Battlefield V is coming out next week with real-time ray-tracing technology that won’t work on NVIDIA’s RTX hardware.

Some New PCs Are Running Unsupported Software

The holiday shopping season is almost upon us. PC manufacturers have been working on new hardware and want to release it in time for Black Friday and the Christmas shopping season.

As Brad Sams points out over at Petri, PC manufacturers were testing their new hardware on a pre-release version of the October 2018 Update, also known as Windows 10 version 1809.

According to Microsoft’s processor requirements, new devices with an Intel 9th generation or Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 processor are only officially supported on the October 2018 Update.

But the holiday shopping season is nearly here, and these PC manufacturers have to release this hardware. So Microsoft has let them release it with the older version of Windows that isn’t officially supported and hasn’t been properly tested.

Sams found a Lenovo ARM-based Windows 10 laptop with a Snapdragon 850 chip on it at Best Buy, and it was running that old version of Windows. That hardware may not work properly with its current operating system. That’s not all, though. As Sams puts it:

Companies who created marketing material for their devices that highlighted features from 1809 can’t start using that material until this version of Windows 10 ships. Considering that we are about 7 weeks from Christmas, the clock is ticking louder and louder each day that passes.