No this one will require a bit of mental gymnastics. But in response to a related question, Microsoft told me today that there is no “RTM,” “final” or “gold” version of Windows 10. And that I’m not alone in my confusion: much of the company still doesn’t get this either.
To be fair, this is in some ways just semantics, I get that. But you don’t have to go back too far to remember Windows RTM sign-offs that involved much pomp and circumstance, including in at least one case the RTM bits—literally encoded on gold optical discs—being whisked away from the Microsoft campus in a helicopter. (Yes, really.)
Drama aside, the term RTM is useful in the same way that all terms are useful in that it lets us refer to a thing, simply, by a name that in this case is well-understood and still somewhat accurate. PC makers have always received the RTM version of Windows whatever, and that is the code that went out on PCs. With recent Windows versions, that RTM code was often added to post-RTM so that what went out on new PCs was updated. (And if you got the code on disc as an upgrade or whatever, those post-RTM updates would be downloaded via Windows Update.) The RTM build, always, had a specific build number.
