Windows 10 news recap: New ISOs, build 9888, new fixes, Consumer Preview in January and more

Zac Bowden

Windows 10

It’s time for another weekly Windows 10 news roundup. This week, Microsoft finally released updated ISOs for the Windows 10 Technical Preview. Until recently, if you wanted to jump aboard the Windows Insider program, you’d have to download build 9841 and update through PC settings to the latest builds. Now, all you need to do is download the new ISOs and be running build 9879 immediately.

Alongside the new ISOs, Microsoft released a couple of new updates for build 9879, which addressed some bugs which users were facing. It appears bugs such as the GDI leak which many have been experiencing is yet to be fixed, and a security update which was released for Flash Player was also pushed out this week.

Microsoft also revealed the most popular Windows Insider preview ring. Many expected the fast ring to be the most popular, however according to Microsoft, the fast ring only accounts for less than 10% of Insiders, meaning the slow ring is by far the most popular ring available.

Windows 10

Windows 10 will also support FLAC files natively when the operating system launches in 2015, as teased on Twitter by Gabe Aul. FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, an audio format similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality.

WinBeta also revealed many new features available in build 9888 of Windows 10 this week. Additional animations, changes to the PC settings app, and the beginning of unified context menus are all new. Build 9888 is also one of the first Windows NT 10.0 builds, too. We’ve got a video on the build below:

And of course, it was confirmed this week that a Consumer Preview for Windows 10 would make its debut in late January. We should expect to see new Windows 10 features, and a first look at Windows Phone 10 too.

And that’s a wrap! Stay tuned for another awesome week of Windows 10 news!