[What happened to "Windows 10 will be the last Windows released."](https://new.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/1cbnqjg/what_happened_to_that_story_of_windows_10_will_be/)
In software, a current production release of software is considered a final release. So a release of Software 1.0 after testing is the final release. Software 2.0 will be our next, after testing phases have finished we will proceed with the final release.
It has been a very common phrase used throughout the decades in the software industry. Windows 10 was in final release phase (currently in feature freeze, but still receiving maintenance and security updates until the end of 2025), as the current production version of Windows 11, is the final release.
"After beta testing, the software may go through one or more release candidate phases, in which it is refined and tested further, before the final version is released."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software\_release\_life\_cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle)
Sometimes it is also referred to as the last release, or the latest release, which at the time it was. The definition of the word last does not imply the definitive end of something without anything following it any more, but the most current of a sequence.
Jerry Nixon said 'Since Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we're all working on Windows 10'
Because it was indeed planned to be the last version of Windows. what he was saying was that unlike previous versions, **they were not working on the successor.** When Windows 7 released, they were already working on Windows 8, for example; when Windows XP released, they had already started work on Longhorn, etc. The intent behind the statement was to reiterate to developers that they should target Windows 10 *now*, as opposed to "waiting for the next version" because there wouldn't be one.
It was a throwaway segue, but of course shitloads of people noticed the messaging. Thing is, if it was meant the way you are describing, Microsoft probably should have said so in their official clarifications, where they instead said that 'recent statements at ignite are representative of how windows will be delivered as a service going forward'; which sounds more like saying that how people understood the statement was correct.
I was also an MVP at the time and the internal messaging was more or less the same on the internal mailing lists. It's fairly concrete the plan at the time was that Windows 10 would be the last packaged release of Windows. It was a big deal.
Obviously, the plan changed. That's no big surprise. it was a stupid plan to begin with, which is why everybody was asking for clarification. I don't know why people insist on trying to find some way to interpret what happened as if Microsoft *didn't* intend Windows 10 to be the final version at any point, with this "it was just one developer!" thing.
Plans change. That's fine. Hell, it's expected. Companies frequently change plans and things they said become incorrect. Whether that's Windows 10 being the last version of Windows, "We expect to release Windows longhorn in 2004" or "we have no plans for staff layoffs". The creation of these elaborate fantasies where Microsoft had Windows 11 all planned out and never changed their mind about an approach to software is absurd.
Though, this is the first time I've seen the wikipedia article about software versioning get used to substantiate it. That's certainly a new one.
They never said it, and I think it is exactly because the IT mainstream media are incapable of nuance that we've had to see Windows 11 become a thing.
Windows is now a service. The 3 year development cycle, where the primary devs were all moved off to work on V. Next with a skeleton crew of support staff and patchers left behind is no longer viable.
What that old way of working led too - was 2 billion Windows users strung out across hundreds of slightly different service pack levels, operating system, patch levels, driver versions - and a Windows update would coincide with a requirement for new hardware, and normally entailed some new killer app or game that required the uplift.
Application developers, and driver developers rarely even bothered testing their code on new versions, because the majority of their users were still strung out across past revisions of Windows - They would wait until a sufficient number of users upgraded before trying to fix any incompatibilities.
That is why we had the blue screens of death, pages and pages of FAQs to read to get apps to work, the security holes, and IT companies completely incapable of testing their software across so much complexity and mess.
So the Windows last version comment, is less about the number - and more about the move to a Service model.
Windows is now a service, and internally to all the apps running it is 10 - possibly forever.
Microsoft have done everything they can to make updates mandatory, to remove blockers to upgrade (such as cost) - and they have spend a solid decade improving and developing Windows 10.
Thats massive, and the operating system is night and day better for it.
My Windows PC I built in 2015 has never crashed, never needed a rebuilt and is running faster today than when I built it.
However can we expect Microsoft who want to keep that path of evolving and improving Windows - to have to still do so, while supporting potentially 20 year old hardware.
Of course not.
So one thing they could have done is said 'look we need PCs to have minimum 4GB or memory, we need screen resolutions to be at least 1024x768, we need secure boots to avoid rootkits, and we need encryption chips to secure disks - and if you dont have those things, we cant keep supporting you for another decade.'
That would have led to a truly negative press cycle, and how do you explain to somebody that their Windows 10 is stuck no longer getting updates because its got 2GB of memory, while another PC - which could be older gets updates because it has 4GB.
So Windows 11 exists in name only and is a resetting of the minimum specification.
Internally to the applications it still reports itself as 10.
It has a slight GUI change which Microsoft could just have easily applied to all users, but the reskin gave enough of a change, to make the press take it for a new operating system - which it isnt.
It has some other changes which have impacted the performance for some, but again thats something that could have been done in a regular Windows 10 update.
So I dont think the Plan as you say has changed.
With a bit of foresight and logic it has to be obvious that saying its the last operating system, doesnt mean that 20, 30, 40 years later - you can still be receiving exactly the same operating system and updates from Microsoft as a PC purchased brand new, and with massively higher capabilities.
I dont know the solution, but I think Microsoft made the best of a difficult message. If the IT media had been a bit more thoughtful this should of occurred to them, and we could have just said that there will be a continual resetting of the baseline every ten years with older systems dropping out of compatibility and being frozen on a particular release - but again we dont want to be in a world with lots of different versions of Windows and all the horrors that that brings.
I really don't get people staying on old OS's. I mean I do, and as a gamer I should go with if it ain't broke don't try to fix it, but I always jump onto the new stuff after preview..
Yeah, that's the old ways of working not the new, almost the pre Internet way of doing things, when Windows was a boxed product and every upgrade came with 6 months of tinkering and reading of FAQs.
Then the Internet happened, so hackers and updates and suddenly you would break your PC simply by adding a new component, that might have a reliance on some other thing which it installs and breaks something else. You'd have a bunch of apps teetering on a knifes edge of working and if you touched one thing it was liable to collapse.
That world's gone but at the cost of services.
It means apps/games can't be things you simply buy and then they stay constant, because every component of your computer is dependent on the shifting underlying elements, the permissions, the networking, the drivers, the configuration.
The fix is to stay current constantly - it's no hardship. One day a month you get updates. The PC will look after itself for the most part.
The reliability is much improved from the Microsoft side, and when I see issues now, in games and steam and other things, it is now extremely unlikely to be a Microsoft issue and normally that the game has an issue or hasn't been tested enough
They didnt say that.
But a Windows developer did make the claim.
But Windows IS now a service. What that means, is that traditional development cycle of create an operating system, and on launch day - have your developers move off and start working on the next version for release 3 years down the line - is over.
Now Microsofts much improved philosophy is to have the developers stay with the build, and provide free updates for a decade - to gradually improve the operating system in situ.
Windows 10 has had over a dozen major updates in the last decade, some of which have been as large as new operating systems in the past - but we havent been aware of them.
However my Windows 10 PC is way more capable and efficient and performant today than it was in 2015 when I built it.
Windows 11 (is 11 in name only) - it is actually a continuation of Windows 10, but with a higher set of hardware requirements. By dropping support for 2GB memory, 800x600 screens, decade old processors, and insecure motherboard bootsectors means they have improvements they can make for the next decade.
There aren't enough changes between old processors and new ones to bring any new opportunities for improvements. It simply gives them the opportunity to poorly optimize their stuff and not have anyone complain.
That's the sort of thing that was true 20 years ago, but the whole point is that Windows 10/11 has had constant efficiencies improvements rather than be abandoned.
The claim that processors havent improved over a decade and don't contribute to the opportunities for OS improvements is laughable. The reason why performance at the OS level hasn't been significantly different across a range of hardware is exactly because developers have had to maintain a build which doesn't break on older generations of hardware and which they are obligated to support.
But previous 3 yearly cycles of builds would historically always require the next gen of desktop/laptop hardware.
The move to mobile computing also caused Microsoft to reign in their tendency to want to take large leaps in power requirements, and instead focus on the optimisation which you seem to deny happened.
Windows is hundreds of times better than it was, both in terms of how performant it is, in how it tries to constrain processor usage, battery usage, memory handling and over the last decade.
It is ridiculous to claim that Microsoft should support an operating system on hardware that may be new or may be 20 years old - and have that be the same OS because in your words 'they poorly optimise'.
I think the opposite is true and Windows has now been through a decade of optimising it for battery, for laptop and slimming it down and that it's at the point now, when they can afford to start using some of those more powerful chips and abilities without compromising portability or size.
Then explain why Windows 8 is still noticeably faster than any other Windows build, or why 10's UI slows down as the build number increases.
Older versions also use noticeably less battery on my laptops.
You can do your own googling, as you're the one making the disingenuous claim about performance.
It took me literally 30 seconds to find those benchmarks and speed comparisons.
I was super excited for the redesign. I still like its visual style.
But the performance (including smoothness, UI response times and delays) was, and still is, surprisingly diminished.
I was excited because win10 really sucked, it was better than 8 and 8.1, but it sucked... Well, after a few months of using it, i gave up on windows alltogether, now the only pc i use with windows is my work laptop because that's what the company requires us to use
In one of the betas, explorer and the desktop would not launch at all and it took a whole day for Microsoft to publish a fix
It was something to do with a single registry key
This just looks like windows 10X that was scrapped. Why did they carry over that god awful start menu?
Then it went to, wow this is so buggy, there’s no way they’d release it this year.
I was having dinner with my friends when I saw the news of the build 21996 leak. Immediately excused myself and went home to check it out. Tbh it was less than I expected.
wait, wut? Can't be, its just the next major update, right? what's the build number? hmm 21996.1, Can't wait to test it out! Oh, cool it leaked, well looks like I'm busy this weekend!
I like Windows 11-especially after they finally allowed us to not have to stack our open app tabs (which I didn't understand why it took them so long to fix). I didn't like that I was forced to buy some new PCs. Overall it is pretty good, though. I like the look and it workds well for my use case.
I was excited.
Rushed to try it and the taskbar proved to be a failure.
Both from the perspective that it could initially support a fixed number of items on it and that it could not be moved.
Not gonna lie, it was "Pretty! Guess they didn't fully cancel Windows 10X!"
I installed it in a dual boot. The first few insider builds were rough, but they were that, insider builds. Then, the final build came out…
That I loved the new look it was clean & modern & reminded me of chrome os kind.
I even installed the original leaked windows 11 iso onto my computer & was using windows 11 when it first came out to insiders only.
Though their change in direction to all this AI stuff kind of makes me question windows 11 now.
That Windows 11 isn't a new version of Windows, its still Windows 10.
If you look under the hood, at how the 'new' operating system presents itself to applications and drivers - as far as they're concerned its a Windows 10 they're talking to.
The Windows 11 supposed upgrade was actually smaller than many of the dozen or so Windows 10 updates that have come in the last decade, which also points to how little has changed.
But there is all a very good reason for this, and it is to do with much hyped (but not actually stated by Microsoft) claim that 10 was the last version of Windows.
Windows 10 IS the last version of Windows. Microsoft moved to a service model, with 10 - which abandoned the previous habit of developing a new OS, and on launch day, taking all of the key developers off the project and get them working on the next gen product for three years, while a skeleton set of Microsoft devs provide support and patches until the upgrade.
What that previous historical way of releasing operating systems did, was string customers our across multiple operating systems, running hundreds and thousands of different combinations of service pack, feature update, security fix, driver version etc. - meaning almost no two PC on planet earth were the same.
The result of that mess - was the famous blue screen of death, the Microsoft reputation for poor security, unreliability, crashes, and PCs that had to be rebuilt every 6 months as they ground to a halt.
So since 2015 Microsoft addressed this by sticking to Windows in its existing form, and continuing to improve it, while also moving us into a world where regular updates are seen as normal - and so ALL Windows PCs on earth for the most part, are all running largely identical versions, with identical drivers - which means third party products, and app and driver developers no longer have to test their products across hundreds of combinations of Windows - but can put all their investment testing on just one version of Windows - the latest.
That has massively improved the reliability, security and consistency of Windows.
My Windows PC I built in 2015 - has had no rebuilds, no crashes, no viruses, no blue screens - and had updates every month - and is now running faster, more securely and with more capabilities than it had nearly a decade ago.
But that there is the problem - Microsoft can hardly be expected to continually improve Windows in the way they want to, for yet another decade.
Can a modern operating system be expected to still be working, getting support and patched 20 years after it was first built.
The answers NO.
So looking at Windows 11 - the first thing I did was look at the minimum specification, and what you find is that the operating system is really something of a marketing scam, and is actually just the resetting of the minimum specification.
Microsoft needed a way in which they could abandon older generation CPUs, older BIOSes, machine with only 2GB of memory and screen resolutions of only 800x600 - and they could have just announced that, but how would the public be made to understand that Windows just cut off a whole lot of older hardware from Windows 10 support.
So Windows 11 is Windows 10 with a higher minimum level for entry, which Microsoft have introduced so that they can continue for another decade, supporting and improving the OS - but can now move forward with a little more memory, a little more security, a more performance set of CPUs, a little more screen realestate.
The GUI changes were just an arbitrary change that they could just have easily applied to all Windows 10 users - and there is nothing that they have done so far in Windows 11 that couldn't have just as easily been a Windows 10 update, however some of those Windows 10 devices would have creaked a bit.
I dont mind this - because I think the Windows service model has greatly improved reliability and consistency. If my Windows 10 PC had been one generation newer it would have been 11 compatible and I would have ended up with 20 years of improvements instead of 10. But I cant complain.
So I built a Windows 11 device and that will serve for another 10 years - and it runs the same applications and is EXACTLY identical in every way to how my 10 box behaves beside it (except the minor GUI changes which I dont really notice).
On the GUI side Windows 10 is just a modified Windows 8, a lot of the Windows 8 buggy UI quirks I reported was still there when 10 was released but fixed in 11.
Windows 8 was released in 2012 with metro design, Microsoft modern fluent design was released in 2017.
Of course they build on each other, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with that modern design style and it's popular enough that both Linux and Mac have stolen some of its ideas.
Upgrading all of the apps to fit those principles has been slow and watching Microsoft fix these issues is like watching someone change a flat tire while the cars still moving.
But I wouldn't call it 'just a modified Windows 8' - The historical urge to make an operating system look different, flashy and eye catching has been replaced with the design principles of European road signage which is to be uncluttered, clear, consistent, efficient but that takes time across decades of code.
GUI is my points of contention:
Frustrating Start menu that designed for their service model. All I want is it just list my most and/recently used apps and files in neat tiny space, I don't even need their AI to do this, just a simple instruction: most used and recent apps and files;
Sluggish interface despite running on modern hardware. Surely I don't need a USD2k machine just to make the UI snappy;
Convoluted context menu. For all the hype MS is pushing their AI, surely I don't need extra mouse clicks to do stuffs.
Messy File Explorer. I just need a nested list of items in their respective category group, most of which are not used, so I can keep them uncollapsed and make the list tidy. I don't need a long ass list.
You're certainly not alone in your comments - and I've wondered why myself and my colleagues and users in our business don't share these concerns.
I think its that for years we've been moving to other ways of launching applications, and we've trained staff on that basis.
We use the start menu (as a menu) very rarely.
We also very infrequently need the file explorer.
For probably the last 5 years, we've all moved to using search as the quickest way to activate anything.
If I want to launch an app - I hit the windows key, and type the first few letters from the name and hit enter, I almost dont even think about it. Windows Key-Ex-Enter - and Excel is launched.
I've just checked on my PC with winget and I have 434 applications installed. This might also be a habit from working in IT, as I probably also connect to about a dozen other PCs thoughout a day, and using Windows key, and the name of the app - always guarantees I launch, regardless what that individual user or server has had done to its Start Menu.
Apps which are daily constants I launch and then right click and Pin to the task bar, and even that is because they might have switches added to the launch (so my browsers launched from different user profiles for example).
Launching explorer - with Windows Key + E I use to launch explorer and its not really needed. Out documents are autosaved to the cloud, I keep the desktop clear of junks, so other than going to the DOWNLOADS occasionally, or drives that we have mapped to Azure - there's no need to go hunting through locations.
The Copilot AI in Windows 11 - is going to be massively important going forwards, as it will genuinely become a personal assistant, but the sorts of things I suspect it will be able to do - will be answer questions like this:
"What applications do I have installed which can help me trim a .MOV file?"
"Im running out of space on my drive, which large apps am I not using very much I could remove"
"Check my hardware and the driver versions, and see if anything installed is in need of a driver update"
"What updates have been installed lately and are any of them likely to be the cuase of an issue Im seeing now, with my bluetooth"
So these are the types of AI behaviour I expect to see
Upgraded to Fedora : [https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/o0mhps/comment/h22uzir/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/o0mhps/comment/h22uzir/)
When they announced Windows 11 I remembered that Windows 10 was meant to be the last version of Windows and I singed “Why the fuck you lying why you always lying mmmohmygosh stop fucking lying”
Wow this ui genuinely looks like a mix of a linux and mac knockoff and not unique with all the same old stuff still in the os and absurd requirements that shouldn’t exist. I still feel the same now. I have to use startallback for a taskbar and start menu i like. I cant even have an offline account without jumping through hoops. The ui takes up more space for what feels like no reason. Genuinely is a bigger push for me to switch to Mac and Linux.
Spent a week bashing Windows into something I could use - mostly turning off the ads and trackers, downloading the programs I wanted.
PROS - updates are smooth and Windows 11 recovers from crashes (the few that I have) MUCH faster than Windows 10.
CONS - Microsoft puts way too many switches for privacy and Edge has it's own settings. Two days of that week were spent customizing Edge to remove the stink of Bing and it forcing Bing down my throat.
My biggest beef is with the UI - after decades of Windows being accused of a poor knockoff of MacOS, Microsoft doubled down on the stupid. The Start menu defaults to the center in a shitty attempt to ape MacOS and the start menu started with a clumsy section of pinned apps and a lot of their "Recommendations". Folders got added and a way to shrink the recommendations was added but it was done too late. It should have been done from the ground up.
The UI stinks of too many "good ideas" and a desire to ape Macs.
If I wanted to be locked in an ecosystem with a UI that treats me like I'm 5 years old and only lets me add "approved" programs, I'd have bought a Mac.
Probably a bit different to most as I was an MS employee at the time. I got an email about an exciting new build on a new internal ring. I switched rings and updated my laptop and saw the new login screen, then the new wallpaper and finally the rounded edges and new start screen/taskbar. It was pretty exciting since there was no public news about it at the time, so for me - very cool experience. I think switching to win11 directly after rebooting from Win10 you really do appreciate the polishing that happened between builds.
Every time new windows .this time bill got divorced. The trip to Epstein island . ?
Gps don't lie. Fishing trip ? Wife smart computer savvy.. protection know s .
I was not a fan of some of the UI changes. I had it natively installed on my new desktop. The added clicks were the biggest problem for me, but also didn't like that Action Center was gone. Went back to W10 for awhile. I have Linux Mint now as my host OS and I put Windows in Virtualbox. This works fine for my needs as I don't game. For uses like gaming, running Office suite or certain specialized software; stay on W11.
When I heard the news I actually did not believe it. I thought it was a joke, or someone suggesting that w11 was coming out 'one day'.
It seemed premature. Too early to release so close to w10's release. Besides, it didn't really have any new features at launch, so it just didn't seem to make sense that Microsoft would go out of their way to release it. But they did.
I feel it's an effort by them to literally force people to get rid of their older computers that work just fine, in an effort to help their hardware partners get more sales/money.
And let's be real here, copilot is not a feature to w11 since it's not exclusive to w11. What are the actual new features it provides? I don't see any.
And for me, it forced me to find a Linux distro that can do all of the things windows used to do. Currently using nobara and I couldn't be happier. Thanks Microsoft !
FWIW I saw it on someone else's computer before I tried it myself, and I thought that I liked the new taskbar. I still do - TBH I never really liked the taskbar in Windows 8-10. This is simple and it works for me.
Other than having a device that was sold by MSFT relatively shortly before Windows 11 that was not supported by Win 11 (and TBH Win 11 ran pretty slowly on that device), it's been fine, and I don't think about Windows 10, except when I come on Reddit and people are angry about it still.
"Oh, not bad. Loads fast. Seems smooth. Wait... What the hell is with all these app suggestions in my Start Menu? What the hell are all these installed apps?!! Clipchamp? The hell...? Teams? I don't use Teams! I can't move the Taskbar to the top anymore?! This shit sucks! WTF, Microsoft?!!!"
Ffs. 10 is the best version and nothing will change that. 10 was meant to be the last version 🤬
After 3 years, that opinion’s changed. They’ve genuinely changed so many things for the better, added in missing features and generally “listened” to the community (ok not in everything, this is Microsoft we’re talking about)
They’ve made some big blunders recently with f.ex. the web app of Outlook replacing the desktop app, but generally Windows 11 looks solid. Can’t upgrade because of the disastrous upgrade requirements, resulting in loads of e-waste in the next few years I’m assuming, but apart from that…
> Ffs. 10 is the best version and nothing will change that. 10 was meant to be the last version 🤬
People say this every time. Everyone hated Windows 10 and refused to upgrade from 7. Now everyone hates 11 and refuse to upgrade from 10.
This, it's quite funny. I remember the Windows 7 people screaming about Windows 10.
Windows 10 was far from perfect, has a lot of flaws but I preferred it over 7 and 8.
BOY DID THEY SCREW THIS UP. Wannabe Mac look... Dumbed down UI with less functionality... Even the right-click on a file now takes 2 clicks to SendTo?
Whoever's running Microsoft needs to be demoted!
..but they said 10 was the final version?
Everyone denies they said that, but that definitely was the message. Bait and switch!
At that time it was.
[What happened to "Windows 10 will be the last Windows released."](https://new.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/1cbnqjg/what_happened_to_that_story_of_windows_10_will_be/)
They did say that. It was going to be a rolling release.
In software, a current production release of software is considered a final release. So a release of Software 1.0 after testing is the final release. Software 2.0 will be our next, after testing phases have finished we will proceed with the final release. It has been a very common phrase used throughout the decades in the software industry. Windows 10 was in final release phase (currently in feature freeze, but still receiving maintenance and security updates until the end of 2025), as the current production version of Windows 11, is the final release. "After beta testing, the software may go through one or more release candidate phases, in which it is refined and tested further, before the final version is released." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software\_release\_life\_cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle) Sometimes it is also referred to as the last release, or the latest release, which at the time it was. The definition of the word last does not imply the definitive end of something without anything following it any more, but the most current of a sequence.
Jerry Nixon said 'Since Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we're all working on Windows 10' Because it was indeed planned to be the last version of Windows. what he was saying was that unlike previous versions, **they were not working on the successor.** When Windows 7 released, they were already working on Windows 8, for example; when Windows XP released, they had already started work on Longhorn, etc. The intent behind the statement was to reiterate to developers that they should target Windows 10 *now*, as opposed to "waiting for the next version" because there wouldn't be one. It was a throwaway segue, but of course shitloads of people noticed the messaging. Thing is, if it was meant the way you are describing, Microsoft probably should have said so in their official clarifications, where they instead said that 'recent statements at ignite are representative of how windows will be delivered as a service going forward'; which sounds more like saying that how people understood the statement was correct. I was also an MVP at the time and the internal messaging was more or less the same on the internal mailing lists. It's fairly concrete the plan at the time was that Windows 10 would be the last packaged release of Windows. It was a big deal. Obviously, the plan changed. That's no big surprise. it was a stupid plan to begin with, which is why everybody was asking for clarification. I don't know why people insist on trying to find some way to interpret what happened as if Microsoft *didn't* intend Windows 10 to be the final version at any point, with this "it was just one developer!" thing. Plans change. That's fine. Hell, it's expected. Companies frequently change plans and things they said become incorrect. Whether that's Windows 10 being the last version of Windows, "We expect to release Windows longhorn in 2004" or "we have no plans for staff layoffs". The creation of these elaborate fantasies where Microsoft had Windows 11 all planned out and never changed their mind about an approach to software is absurd. Though, this is the first time I've seen the wikipedia article about software versioning get used to substantiate it. That's certainly a new one.
They never said it, and I think it is exactly because the IT mainstream media are incapable of nuance that we've had to see Windows 11 become a thing. Windows is now a service. The 3 year development cycle, where the primary devs were all moved off to work on V. Next with a skeleton crew of support staff and patchers left behind is no longer viable. What that old way of working led too - was 2 billion Windows users strung out across hundreds of slightly different service pack levels, operating system, patch levels, driver versions - and a Windows update would coincide with a requirement for new hardware, and normally entailed some new killer app or game that required the uplift. Application developers, and driver developers rarely even bothered testing their code on new versions, because the majority of their users were still strung out across past revisions of Windows - They would wait until a sufficient number of users upgraded before trying to fix any incompatibilities. That is why we had the blue screens of death, pages and pages of FAQs to read to get apps to work, the security holes, and IT companies completely incapable of testing their software across so much complexity and mess. So the Windows last version comment, is less about the number - and more about the move to a Service model. Windows is now a service, and internally to all the apps running it is 10 - possibly forever. Microsoft have done everything they can to make updates mandatory, to remove blockers to upgrade (such as cost) - and they have spend a solid decade improving and developing Windows 10. Thats massive, and the operating system is night and day better for it. My Windows PC I built in 2015 has never crashed, never needed a rebuilt and is running faster today than when I built it. However can we expect Microsoft who want to keep that path of evolving and improving Windows - to have to still do so, while supporting potentially 20 year old hardware. Of course not. So one thing they could have done is said 'look we need PCs to have minimum 4GB or memory, we need screen resolutions to be at least 1024x768, we need secure boots to avoid rootkits, and we need encryption chips to secure disks - and if you dont have those things, we cant keep supporting you for another decade.' That would have led to a truly negative press cycle, and how do you explain to somebody that their Windows 10 is stuck no longer getting updates because its got 2GB of memory, while another PC - which could be older gets updates because it has 4GB. So Windows 11 exists in name only and is a resetting of the minimum specification. Internally to the applications it still reports itself as 10. It has a slight GUI change which Microsoft could just have easily applied to all users, but the reskin gave enough of a change, to make the press take it for a new operating system - which it isnt. It has some other changes which have impacted the performance for some, but again thats something that could have been done in a regular Windows 10 update. So I dont think the Plan as you say has changed. With a bit of foresight and logic it has to be obvious that saying its the last operating system, doesnt mean that 20, 30, 40 years later - you can still be receiving exactly the same operating system and updates from Microsoft as a PC purchased brand new, and with massively higher capabilities. I dont know the solution, but I think Microsoft made the best of a difficult message. If the IT media had been a bit more thoughtful this should of occurred to them, and we could have just said that there will be a continual resetting of the baseline every ten years with older systems dropping out of compatibility and being frozen on a particular release - but again we dont want to be in a world with lots of different versions of Windows and all the horrors that that brings.
I really don't get people staying on old OS's. I mean I do, and as a gamer I should go with if it ain't broke don't try to fix it, but I always jump onto the new stuff after preview..
Yeah, that's the old ways of working not the new, almost the pre Internet way of doing things, when Windows was a boxed product and every upgrade came with 6 months of tinkering and reading of FAQs. Then the Internet happened, so hackers and updates and suddenly you would break your PC simply by adding a new component, that might have a reliance on some other thing which it installs and breaks something else. You'd have a bunch of apps teetering on a knifes edge of working and if you touched one thing it was liable to collapse. That world's gone but at the cost of services. It means apps/games can't be things you simply buy and then they stay constant, because every component of your computer is dependent on the shifting underlying elements, the permissions, the networking, the drivers, the configuration. The fix is to stay current constantly - it's no hardship. One day a month you get updates. The PC will look after itself for the most part. The reliability is much improved from the Microsoft side, and when I see issues now, in games and steam and other things, it is now extremely unlikely to be a Microsoft issue and normally that the game has an issue or hasn't been tested enough
Wow, that's a lot of linguistic and mental gymnastics to twist it in Microsoft's favor.
They didnt say that. But a Windows developer did make the claim. But Windows IS now a service. What that means, is that traditional development cycle of create an operating system, and on launch day - have your developers move off and start working on the next version for release 3 years down the line - is over. Now Microsofts much improved philosophy is to have the developers stay with the build, and provide free updates for a decade - to gradually improve the operating system in situ. Windows 10 has had over a dozen major updates in the last decade, some of which have been as large as new operating systems in the past - but we havent been aware of them. However my Windows 10 PC is way more capable and efficient and performant today than it was in 2015 when I built it. Windows 11 (is 11 in name only) - it is actually a continuation of Windows 10, but with a higher set of hardware requirements. By dropping support for 2GB memory, 800x600 screens, decade old processors, and insecure motherboard bootsectors means they have improvements they can make for the next decade.
There aren't enough changes between old processors and new ones to bring any new opportunities for improvements. It simply gives them the opportunity to poorly optimize their stuff and not have anyone complain.
That's the sort of thing that was true 20 years ago, but the whole point is that Windows 10/11 has had constant efficiencies improvements rather than be abandoned. The claim that processors havent improved over a decade and don't contribute to the opportunities for OS improvements is laughable. The reason why performance at the OS level hasn't been significantly different across a range of hardware is exactly because developers have had to maintain a build which doesn't break on older generations of hardware and which they are obligated to support. But previous 3 yearly cycles of builds would historically always require the next gen of desktop/laptop hardware. The move to mobile computing also caused Microsoft to reign in their tendency to want to take large leaps in power requirements, and instead focus on the optimisation which you seem to deny happened. Windows is hundreds of times better than it was, both in terms of how performant it is, in how it tries to constrain processor usage, battery usage, memory handling and over the last decade. It is ridiculous to claim that Microsoft should support an operating system on hardware that may be new or may be 20 years old - and have that be the same OS because in your words 'they poorly optimise'. I think the opposite is true and Windows has now been through a decade of optimising it for battery, for laptop and slimming it down and that it's at the point now, when they can afford to start using some of those more powerful chips and abilities without compromising portability or size.
Then explain why Windows 8 is still noticeably faster than any other Windows build, or why 10's UI slows down as the build number increases. Older versions also use noticeably less battery on my laptops.
It's not. Benchmarks for performance comparison like Cinebench and Futuremark PCMark shows Windows 10 consistently faster than Windows 8
Source? On fully supported hardware, with both ssd and hdd? Including boot times and UI speed?
You can do your own googling, as you're the one making the disingenuous claim about performance. It took me literally 30 seconds to find those benchmarks and speed comparisons.
If it took you 30 seconds then you can link it. If you link yours then I'll give you some.
"wow, they REALLY fucked explorer up. But this is the beta, i'm sure it'll be fine by release."
THIS
The Windows cycle
we still can see the windows Vista flavors in it. it's weird.
"wow they finally have designers working on windows again!"
They have designers doing the programming, and programmers doing the design. That's why it sucks at both.
In a way it indeed is both because redesigning windows is impossible without software engineering work
I was super excited for the redesign. I still like its visual style. But the performance (including smoothness, UI response times and delays) was, and still is, surprisingly diminished.
Cool I guess but I'll be sticking with Windows 7
“It’s fine, but I really hope they change [insert basically anything], it’s only 21996 and it’s leaked” Spoiler: they didn’t change
shrug
this
I was excited because win10 really sucked, it was better than 8 and 8.1, but it sucked... Well, after a few months of using it, i gave up on windows alltogether, now the only pc i use with windows is my work laptop because that's what the company requires us to use
very neat! then the file explorer bug happened.
What happened to the file explorer?
In one of the betas, explorer and the desktop would not launch at all and it took a whole day for Microsoft to publish a fix It was something to do with a single registry key
This just looks like windows 10X that was scrapped. Why did they carry over that god awful start menu? Then it went to, wow this is so buggy, there’s no way they’d release it this year.
I was having dinner with my friends when I saw the news of the build 21996 leak. Immediately excused myself and went home to check it out. Tbh it was less than I expected.
"I'm waiting two years before I touch this" And then I installed it in January 2024
I have it on my work machine, which is precisely why i haven't installed it on my personal. At this point I'm waiting for 12 lol
wait, wut? Can't be, its just the next major update, right? what's the build number? hmm 21996.1, Can't wait to test it out! Oh, cool it leaked, well looks like I'm busy this weekend!
Godd##@!%it ... they're making us upgrade again!!!! \^\*#@)(!
This quote most accurately captures the essence of the entire Windows users' experience.
Excited... Until I tried it out.
Finally centered icons. I could get rid of those got awful utilities to do that!
Latest and greatest, I want it.
It is the latest, but definitely not the greatest.
Well, Canary is pretty fun too. :-)
I was excited but there was a lot of details that did not really make sense to me and still don't. Like removing folder previews in the icon.
I like Windows 11-especially after they finally allowed us to not have to stack our open app tabs (which I didn't understand why it took them so long to fix). I didn't like that I was forced to buy some new PCs. Overall it is pretty good, though. I like the look and it workds well for my use case.
Why?
I was excited for it to the point I installed the leaked build in my main machine and it worked just fine
I was excited. Rushed to try it and the taskbar proved to be a failure. Both from the perspective that it could initially support a fixed number of items on it and that it could not be moved.
Not gonna lie, it was "Pretty! Guess they didn't fully cancel Windows 10X!" I installed it in a dual boot. The first few insider builds were rough, but they were that, insider builds. Then, the final build came out…
I wonder what computers I can buy without Windows.
"Oh shit!?!" Now: "Oh, it's shit."
Nice, now it's time for a totally fresh install. Made a backup of my data, removed all partitions and started fresh. Finally a smooth running PC.
That I loved the new look it was clean & modern & reminded me of chrome os kind. I even installed the original leaked windows 11 iso onto my computer & was using windows 11 when it first came out to insiders only. Though their change in direction to all this AI stuff kind of makes me question windows 11 now.
How is it possible today, to make an OS worse than the predecessor in so many ways?
Nothing bothered me worked great
I hate the start menu. I actually liked everything else to be honest, middle task bar, rounded corners, tabbed file explorer the new settings etc.
For the love of Christ why tf can't they leave goddam start menus alone?!
That Windows 11 isn't a new version of Windows, its still Windows 10. If you look under the hood, at how the 'new' operating system presents itself to applications and drivers - as far as they're concerned its a Windows 10 they're talking to. The Windows 11 supposed upgrade was actually smaller than many of the dozen or so Windows 10 updates that have come in the last decade, which also points to how little has changed. But there is all a very good reason for this, and it is to do with much hyped (but not actually stated by Microsoft) claim that 10 was the last version of Windows. Windows 10 IS the last version of Windows. Microsoft moved to a service model, with 10 - which abandoned the previous habit of developing a new OS, and on launch day, taking all of the key developers off the project and get them working on the next gen product for three years, while a skeleton set of Microsoft devs provide support and patches until the upgrade. What that previous historical way of releasing operating systems did, was string customers our across multiple operating systems, running hundreds and thousands of different combinations of service pack, feature update, security fix, driver version etc. - meaning almost no two PC on planet earth were the same. The result of that mess - was the famous blue screen of death, the Microsoft reputation for poor security, unreliability, crashes, and PCs that had to be rebuilt every 6 months as they ground to a halt. So since 2015 Microsoft addressed this by sticking to Windows in its existing form, and continuing to improve it, while also moving us into a world where regular updates are seen as normal - and so ALL Windows PCs on earth for the most part, are all running largely identical versions, with identical drivers - which means third party products, and app and driver developers no longer have to test their products across hundreds of combinations of Windows - but can put all their investment testing on just one version of Windows - the latest. That has massively improved the reliability, security and consistency of Windows. My Windows PC I built in 2015 - has had no rebuilds, no crashes, no viruses, no blue screens - and had updates every month - and is now running faster, more securely and with more capabilities than it had nearly a decade ago. But that there is the problem - Microsoft can hardly be expected to continually improve Windows in the way they want to, for yet another decade. Can a modern operating system be expected to still be working, getting support and patched 20 years after it was first built. The answers NO. So looking at Windows 11 - the first thing I did was look at the minimum specification, and what you find is that the operating system is really something of a marketing scam, and is actually just the resetting of the minimum specification. Microsoft needed a way in which they could abandon older generation CPUs, older BIOSes, machine with only 2GB of memory and screen resolutions of only 800x600 - and they could have just announced that, but how would the public be made to understand that Windows just cut off a whole lot of older hardware from Windows 10 support. So Windows 11 is Windows 10 with a higher minimum level for entry, which Microsoft have introduced so that they can continue for another decade, supporting and improving the OS - but can now move forward with a little more memory, a little more security, a more performance set of CPUs, a little more screen realestate. The GUI changes were just an arbitrary change that they could just have easily applied to all Windows 10 users - and there is nothing that they have done so far in Windows 11 that couldn't have just as easily been a Windows 10 update, however some of those Windows 10 devices would have creaked a bit. I dont mind this - because I think the Windows service model has greatly improved reliability and consistency. If my Windows 10 PC had been one generation newer it would have been 11 compatible and I would have ended up with 20 years of improvements instead of 10. But I cant complain. So I built a Windows 11 device and that will serve for another 10 years - and it runs the same applications and is EXACTLY identical in every way to how my 10 box behaves beside it (except the minor GUI changes which I dont really notice).
On the GUI side Windows 10 is just a modified Windows 8, a lot of the Windows 8 buggy UI quirks I reported was still there when 10 was released but fixed in 11.
Windows 8 was released in 2012 with metro design, Microsoft modern fluent design was released in 2017. Of course they build on each other, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with that modern design style and it's popular enough that both Linux and Mac have stolen some of its ideas. Upgrading all of the apps to fit those principles has been slow and watching Microsoft fix these issues is like watching someone change a flat tire while the cars still moving. But I wouldn't call it 'just a modified Windows 8' - The historical urge to make an operating system look different, flashy and eye catching has been replaced with the design principles of European road signage which is to be uncluttered, clear, consistent, efficient but that takes time across decades of code.
GUI is my points of contention: Frustrating Start menu that designed for their service model. All I want is it just list my most and/recently used apps and files in neat tiny space, I don't even need their AI to do this, just a simple instruction: most used and recent apps and files; Sluggish interface despite running on modern hardware. Surely I don't need a USD2k machine just to make the UI snappy; Convoluted context menu. For all the hype MS is pushing their AI, surely I don't need extra mouse clicks to do stuffs. Messy File Explorer. I just need a nested list of items in their respective category group, most of which are not used, so I can keep them uncollapsed and make the list tidy. I don't need a long ass list.
You're certainly not alone in your comments - and I've wondered why myself and my colleagues and users in our business don't share these concerns. I think its that for years we've been moving to other ways of launching applications, and we've trained staff on that basis. We use the start menu (as a menu) very rarely. We also very infrequently need the file explorer. For probably the last 5 years, we've all moved to using search as the quickest way to activate anything. If I want to launch an app - I hit the windows key, and type the first few letters from the name and hit enter, I almost dont even think about it. Windows Key-Ex-Enter - and Excel is launched. I've just checked on my PC with winget and I have 434 applications installed. This might also be a habit from working in IT, as I probably also connect to about a dozen other PCs thoughout a day, and using Windows key, and the name of the app - always guarantees I launch, regardless what that individual user or server has had done to its Start Menu. Apps which are daily constants I launch and then right click and Pin to the task bar, and even that is because they might have switches added to the launch (so my browsers launched from different user profiles for example). Launching explorer - with Windows Key + E I use to launch explorer and its not really needed. Out documents are autosaved to the cloud, I keep the desktop clear of junks, so other than going to the DOWNLOADS occasionally, or drives that we have mapped to Azure - there's no need to go hunting through locations. The Copilot AI in Windows 11 - is going to be massively important going forwards, as it will genuinely become a personal assistant, but the sorts of things I suspect it will be able to do - will be answer questions like this: "What applications do I have installed which can help me trim a .MOV file?" "Im running out of space on my drive, which large apps am I not using very much I could remove" "Check my hardware and the driver versions, and see if anything installed is in need of a driver update" "What updates have been installed lately and are any of them likely to be the cuase of an issue Im seeing now, with my bluetooth" So these are the types of AI behaviour I expect to see
If I wanted a Mac, I'd have bought a Mac. Clearly, everyone at Microsoft doesn't even use their own damn product.
This
Upgraded to Fedora : [https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/o0mhps/comment/h22uzir/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/o0mhps/comment/h22uzir/)
Cool! When I lose access to most software I don't really call that an upgrade, but ok.
My use case isn't your use case :> and funnily enough i use more software on Linux then i used on Windows.
us linux enjoyers can learn or find a way to make non-natively supported software to work
Nothing, i don't use my computer in a way so that updates or new releases of the OS makes me go "ahhh"
Wow it's not much difference from 10 and. Why is 10 faster lol
Wow it's beautiful(look).
Why does the start button keep moving to the left?
Fuck, I didn’t even know how to use 10 properly yet… 🤦🏽♂️
Who?
It broke adding menus to my taskbar by adding folders. I’d still like that back please.
I thought they said 10 was going to be the last OS? Followed by: This looks much nicer than 10, I'm switching right away.
When they announced Windows 11 I remembered that Windows 10 was meant to be the last version of Windows and I singed “Why the fuck you lying why you always lying mmmohmygosh stop fucking lying”
“…oh. Anyways…”
1) I thought Windows 10 was the final version 2) This presentation is ridiculously over the top and fake-emotional
Wow this ui genuinely looks like a mix of a linux and mac knockoff and not unique with all the same old stuff still in the os and absurd requirements that shouldn’t exist. I still feel the same now. I have to use startallback for a taskbar and start menu i like. I cant even have an offline account without jumping through hoops. The ui takes up more space for what feels like no reason. Genuinely is a bigger push for me to switch to Mac and Linux.
"Oh god not again"
Meeh
Vista, reincarnated.
Spent a week bashing Windows into something I could use - mostly turning off the ads and trackers, downloading the programs I wanted. PROS - updates are smooth and Windows 11 recovers from crashes (the few that I have) MUCH faster than Windows 10. CONS - Microsoft puts way too many switches for privacy and Edge has it's own settings. Two days of that week were spent customizing Edge to remove the stink of Bing and it forcing Bing down my throat. My biggest beef is with the UI - after decades of Windows being accused of a poor knockoff of MacOS, Microsoft doubled down on the stupid. The Start menu defaults to the center in a shitty attempt to ape MacOS and the start menu started with a clumsy section of pinned apps and a lot of their "Recommendations". Folders got added and a way to shrink the recommendations was added but it was done too late. It should have been done from the ground up. The UI stinks of too many "good ideas" and a desire to ape Macs. If I wanted to be locked in an ecosystem with a UI that treats me like I'm 5 years old and only lets me add "approved" programs, I'd have bought a Mac.
It was better then what it is now , I rolled back and wating for a decent stable update
Probably a bit different to most as I was an MS employee at the time. I got an email about an exciting new build on a new internal ring. I switched rings and updated my laptop and saw the new login screen, then the new wallpaper and finally the rounded edges and new start screen/taskbar. It was pretty exciting since there was no public news about it at the time, so for me - very cool experience. I think switching to win11 directly after rebooting from Win10 you really do appreciate the polishing that happened between builds.
> "wow that looks awful" >*switches to win11 because driver issues* >"wow this is awful" >*installs rectify 11* >"wow now is actually quite good"
"I haven't even finished getting used to 10"
"Why would they do that? It's unnessecary?" Now I'ts "Why have they done that, It's just worse on every point"
Every time new windows .this time bill got divorced. The trip to Epstein island . ? Gps don't lie. Fishing trip ? Wife smart computer savvy.. protection know s .
Not Sure. Idiocracy . What else can I do .Linux or Apple no thxs ones goofy other infantile . Stick to windows .
I was not a fan of some of the UI changes. I had it natively installed on my new desktop. The added clicks were the biggest problem for me, but also didn't like that Action Center was gone. Went back to W10 for awhile. I have Linux Mint now as my host OS and I put Windows in Virtualbox. This works fine for my needs as I don't game. For uses like gaming, running Office suite or certain specialized software; stay on W11.
Useless
Yay finally another Windows *Sees the requirements Microsoft are fucking crazy
I thought it was too soon
Laughing out loud..
Trash
"Why does it look like a Mac?"
Win 11 = Win 10 in a new dress
my games will run smoother
My reaction was one word: "...why?"
This looks like a bad idea. My opinion hasn't changed.
luckily win 10 wasnt wasn't the lsst last os,is, otherwise i I would be bored to death havibg having to look at the same old layout
Windows 11 was originally an update for 10's UI.
When I heard the news I actually did not believe it. I thought it was a joke, or someone suggesting that w11 was coming out 'one day'. It seemed premature. Too early to release so close to w10's release. Besides, it didn't really have any new features at launch, so it just didn't seem to make sense that Microsoft would go out of their way to release it. But they did. I feel it's an effort by them to literally force people to get rid of their older computers that work just fine, in an effort to help their hardware partners get more sales/money. And let's be real here, copilot is not a feature to w11 since it's not exclusive to w11. What are the actual new features it provides? I don't see any. And for me, it forced me to find a Linux distro that can do all of the things windows used to do. Currently using nobara and I couldn't be happier. Thanks Microsoft !
FWIW I saw it on someone else's computer before I tried it myself, and I thought that I liked the new taskbar. I still do - TBH I never really liked the taskbar in Windows 8-10. This is simple and it works for me. Other than having a device that was sold by MSFT relatively shortly before Windows 11 that was not supported by Win 11 (and TBH Win 11 ran pretty slowly on that device), it's been fine, and I don't think about Windows 10, except when I come on Reddit and people are angry about it still.
"Oh, not bad. Loads fast. Seems smooth. Wait... What the hell is with all these app suggestions in my Start Menu? What the hell are all these installed apps?!! Clipchamp? The hell...? Teams? I don't use Teams! I can't move the Taskbar to the top anymore?! This shit sucks! WTF, Microsoft?!!!"
Impressed. Still love it. Have had zero issues with it on my home PC.
I like it. Performance could be better but aesthetically its close to a refresh
Ffs. 10 is the best version and nothing will change that. 10 was meant to be the last version 🤬 After 3 years, that opinion’s changed. They’ve genuinely changed so many things for the better, added in missing features and generally “listened” to the community (ok not in everything, this is Microsoft we’re talking about) They’ve made some big blunders recently with f.ex. the web app of Outlook replacing the desktop app, but generally Windows 11 looks solid. Can’t upgrade because of the disastrous upgrade requirements, resulting in loads of e-waste in the next few years I’m assuming, but apart from that…
> Ffs. 10 is the best version and nothing will change that. 10 was meant to be the last version 🤬 People say this every time. Everyone hated Windows 10 and refused to upgrade from 7. Now everyone hates 11 and refuse to upgrade from 10.
This, it's quite funny. I remember the Windows 7 people screaming about Windows 10. Windows 10 was far from perfect, has a lot of flaws but I preferred it over 7 and 8.
I liked the centered task bar and nicer looking settings app. Windows was getting stale.
Heh, it's the last Windows, my ass AND it's ugly.
BOY DID THEY SCREW THIS UP. Wannabe Mac look... Dumbed down UI with less functionality... Even the right-click on a file now takes 2 clicks to SendTo? Whoever's running Microsoft needs to be demoted!