Early last month, Microsoft announced that the Xbox Insider Program would be getting a Skip Ahead ring, just like the Windows Insider Program. The idea is that while the Alpha ring is testing an update, Skip Ahead can be testing the feature update that will arrive after that.
The ring kicked off by being the first to test Redstone 5, something that Windows Insiders have been testing since early this year. Members of the regular Alpha ring started getting builds for version 1810 (Redstone 5) just three days later, so you might have wondered what the point was of Skip Ahead.
In a blog post thanking Skip Ahead Insiders for testing builds, Microsoft said that it will be flighting previews of a 2019 feature update 'very soon'. That should be 19H1, which is the codename for the feature update that will follow Redstone 5. It's named after the date, as it will be released in the first half of 2019.
It's great news for those that want to be first in testing new features and don't mind a bit of instability here and there. Typically, the Xbox Insider Program lags behind the Windows Insider Program by a bit. Hopefully, this will help the program ot get bits in the hands of users sooner.
