For the past couple of decades (specifically, since October 2003), "Patch Tuesday" Windows updates have been a regular fixture that land on the second Tuesday of every month. They are designed to roll out aggregated fixes and security patches for Windows SKUs. But have you wondered why Microsoft decided on this cadence of releasing Patch Tuesday updates on that particular day of the week rather than any other?
Well, the reason is very simple, especially for people who work in corporate IT environments. The strategic decision behind not releasing updates on Monday is to give IT admins and workplaces some space to look into issues from the previous week (and perhaps even the weekend).
This made Tuesday the ideal candidate because it meant that when Microsoft rolled out Patch Tuesday updates at 10 am Pacific Time, IT admins would have the rest of the week to deploy them, monitor impact, and resolve any issues that may arise. Microsoft itself monitors bugs reported by customers, both enterprise and consumers, so that it can develop patches and release them out-of-band if necessary.
And since updates are released on a monthly basis, updates can be beefier and more significant, rather than requiring IT admins to always be on their toes to deploy tiny patches as soon as possible.
Although the trend of integrating AI into all systems possible is gaining speed recently, Microsoft has been using AI-assisted technologies for almost a decade to ensure that this Patch Tuesday update goes as smoothly as possible. Microsoft"s Vice President, Product Management, Windows Servicing and Delivery, John Cable, noted in 2018 that:
We continuously collect update experience data and retrain our models to learn which devices will have a positive update experience, and where we may need to wait until we have higher confidence in a great experience. Our overall rollout objective is for a safe and reliable update, which means we only go as fast as is safe.
While this predictably in cadence down to the specific day and time gives IT admins and organizations in general more time to prepare for Windows updates, most of us here at Neowin know that this is not a perfect process. Despite Microsoft"s planning, testing, telemetry, and feedback from customers, bugs still creep through. But perhaps that is expected when developing an operating system used by hundreds of millions of users.