Rounded corners and touchscreens, is that windows 8/vista again? What i want from windows is speed . More and more people are going to be using them to work from home, and not on a tablet or a laptop, but on a good old desktop pc, their sales are going up. What's the rationale behind this kind of regression to terrible windows 8? Can i plz have snappier windows 7 with slightly cleaner look?
> app developers can now bring their own commerce into our Store and keep 100% of the revenue – Microsoft takes nothing. App developers can still use our commerce with competitive revenue share of 85/15
Except that the rounding only happened on the window decoration, which took space. The client rendering area was a full rectangle. Now, they’re cutting corners out of the client rendering area.
but how are their sales doing? given the kind of apps that run on a PC, i think the touchscreen is just a gimmick that is barely used. Windows programs are just not made for tablets, and will never be
The sales seem to be increasing, I wouldn't say it's a gimmick. Also touch support is not just for touchscreens, most laptops now have multi-touch touchpads where you can do gestures. Making a program support those already puts it significantly closer to having real touchscreen support, so it's not as hard or difficult as you'd imagine for older Windows programs to gain good tablet support.
The point with those laptops is, you use the keyboard when it makes sense, and you use the touchscreen when that makes sense. I think you're confusing "touch-first" with "having any support for touchscreens at all," some concessions need to be made if you don't want it to be totally unusable on a device like that which has an optional touchscreen.
> i think the touchscreen is just a gimmick that is barely used.
I'll just say that my laptop (Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga) has a touchscreen and I love it. Every laptop I buy from here out will be a touchscreen merely because the ability to reach up while I type and just tap where i want my mouse to go next is such a better system than working with a nipple or trackpad.
I think as laptops with touchscreens become more affordable lots of people will change across. When i'm forced to work on my work laptop without KB&M, I really miss the ability to touch my screen instead of working with the god awful trackpad.
I would assume part of this is due to the trackpad. The only trackpads (of those I have used) that I would describe as better than "decent" have been on mac laptops.
I use Linux now but keep windows VMs around for some legacy stuff. It takes about 5-10s to boot win7. It's snappy as heck, and reliable, even in a vm with minimal ram.
> App developers can still use our commerce with competitive revenue share of 85/15
But there isn't a perpetual Agreement guaranteeing MS won't ever increase its cut in the future when its store becomes more popular. The Store hasn't yet been terribly successful. Most of my Windows apps are installed outside the MS store: Notepad++, VSCodium, Steam, and so on. So MS will try to get more apps in the Store and then lock down Windows like iOS once it has enough apps, then increase its own cut so that it can transfer wealth from the middle class to billionaire MSFT shareholders, just like AAPL does.
You know I kind of wish windows had a store, but then I tired installing apps using the current store and it's a terrible experience. They make it so hard for people with more than 1 hard drive to manage what goes where.
>> app developers can now bring their own commerce into our Store and keep 100% of the revenue – Microsoft takes nothing. App developers can still use our commerce with competitive revenue share of 85/15
> This is great. That's how it s done
It can't go on, though. Why won't every developer turn their app "free" and use Stripe or something to shave even more off the commerce fees? Meanwhile Microsoft eats hosting/maintenance/development on the store for zero return. We saw why Apple went the IAP route even if it's unpopular among developers and the fees could afford to be reduced.
The primary slowdown factor on Windows is not the filesystem itself but Windows Defender doing its scans. Just disable it and file operations will be a lot faster.
I don't understand how the search indexer consumes so much resources, I was able to make something faster by following the ntfs journal and just keeping a full listing of files in sqlite.
For me it has maybe a 10% success rate for searching strings within files. Yet it takes minutes to search for file names even when spelled exactly. Finding files by name is the primary use-case, maybe optimize for that first.
Windows Defender has a massive impact on file transfers, especially small files. For example on my laptop with a NVMe SSD, unpacking the Golang zip file goes from seconds to minutes with Windows Defender enabled.
Not necessarily, because for that comparison to work you would need a proper NTFS driver. Does one such even exist for Linux? Looking at the Debian wiki [1] there's either a FUSE driver or a limited feature set kernel driver. Neither looks like a proper optimized "enterprise ready" driver. These work fine for accessing some files, but comparing these in a benchmark would no doubt show their weakness.
Now even if NTFS is inherently a slower architecture than ext4 or something, that does not change the fact that this difference would be minimal compared to the absolute horror show that is the Windows Defender slowdown.
Yeah, it looks like they finally just threw the towel in and admitted that macOS has had a superior design aesthetic, and started heading in the same direction.
As a long time Linux-only-user (since 1996...) who is now forced by management to work on a MacBook: macOS just feels snappy. Things are where I would expect them to be. Files in the finder are actually what I searched for, and finding stuff is fast. UI animations give a clear indication on what is happening.
I still prefer i3 ... but I can understand why a nontechnical user might prefer a mac device to a windows(10) device. Someone at Apple clearly knows about UI/UX.
Probably more a return to form than anything. I seem to recall reading a book about the early (v 1.0 - 3.11) history of Windows where a developer recounted Bill Gates looking at early builds and asking if they could make it look more like Mac. Wish I could remember the title because that's going to gnaw at me for the rest of the day.
That's the thing with these Windows UI updates. It looks great until you fire up some application like Office and then it suddenly it's the same interface you were using before. Then you have this weird mix of aesthetics.
Good news is you can still anchor the taskbar to the left. At least you can within the leaked ISO. Bad news is that the smallest taskbar size is bigger than the current smallest size.
EDIT: Sorry I misread, you meant the icons. But yeah unfortunately it sounds like you can't move the taskbar as a whole anymore. I always kept mine at the top.
Well that does suck for me though, I've been using it on the left side of the screen for well over a decade now. Guess I'll have to get with the times (as arbitrary as they are).
Although considering I've seen no one else mention this issue, I'm guessing I'm a huge outlier.
I'm not a fan. A centered dock does look pretty, but to me it's not as intuitive as a left-aligned screen. Especially since you would be navigating to the "Start" menu a lot. Getting my mouse bottom left is more natural than "some random offset of dead bottom center".
I can't tell if the icons get larger as you hover. That sort of magnifies this problem, as the start button would shift left as other icons are highlighted.
Left aligned makes a ton of sense until you exceed a horizontal resolution of 2k or so. The web realized this ages ago - a left aligned page doesn't work at large screen sizes. With the web it isn't as critical (often times we have a browser window smaller than our full screen), but for a taskbar that spans the full horizontal resolution, left aligned doesn't make sense when you have a 5k ultrawide. Screen sizes will continue to slowly increase, centering the taskbar is futureproofing for that.
It doesn't matter what size the screen is when I want to reach the corners. I just slam my mouse to the lower left and I know exactly where it will be.
Why is this downvoted? This is exactly the usability argument for having a bottom-left aligned Start menu, and it's based on robust evidence about how easily users can select controls of different sizes and in different places with a pointing device.
If you have such a large screen that you can't quickly move your pointer to anywhere on it, I suggest that you have a bigger problem with your system than where your Start menu appears.
Not that i disagree, but who actually clicks on the start menu using the mouse? Just use the Windows button on the keyboard where your left hand is likely resting already.
Fun fact btw, in win 95 the border of the start button was not clickable, so slamming into the corner did not work because of that 2px border. Microsoft was proud of presenting this feature in later versions, don't remember if it was in 98, 2000 or XP.
> Left aligned makes a ton of sense until you exceed a horizontal resolution of 2k or so. The web realized this ages ago
I think you're comparing apples and oranges though - with web pages, the issues are readability and aesthetics, whereas with the taskbar it's that icons are where you expect them to be (when centred, they will move as you open more windows).
IMO, a more apt comparison is the tabs of a browser, rather than the content the browser is showing.
Fitts' Law didn't stop making the corners of a screen the most reliably reached parts just because some UI designer at Microsoft likes central alignment. I expect that central placement for the Start button to be objectively less efficient for users who frequently use that button, even if it's just a small but frequent irritation.
yeah im at the first screenshot and it just looks awful
Have Microsoft forgotten the lessons they learned so hard since 1995? The start button being in the corner has real usability benefits.
They ruined the taskbar a long time ago, the button grouping thing is absolutely horrible and can only be partially turned off... hopefully they at a minimum kept the full button option somewhere.
And the centering... if new stuff is added and it recenters, it means things are moving all the time. eeek.
Microsoft's usability dementia started with them removing the 3D relief from toolbar buttons in Windows 98 to look like plain icons and making menubar labels indistinguishable from toolbar buttons (except text instead of icons) just for the sake of looks, despite all these having different user interactions.
Then again they were never completely consistent. For example in Win3.x design 3D elements were supposed to be for those that cause some command to be performed, yet the scrollbar visual design was the same as that of buttons.
There is no bloody touch on a desktop except on their braindead surface tablets. You can point your finger at the monitor but after some time, it hurts.
XFCE, CDE, KDE and WindowMaker and AfterStep all had the same sort of dock look for many years.
At least we can finally go from one machine to another without too much of a difference or having to learn much - particularly good for those who only use what they "know".
This is a particularly awful example of Americentrism. Going by season names is bad enough (this is a habit of Americans, Canadians and Europeans, which doesn’t work much beyond the northern hemisphere’s temperate and sub-arctic regions), especially for “fall”; but people in the rest of the world will normally eventually be able to figure it out. But this use of “holiday” is utterly unknown to most of the world and is nigh impossible to figure out without someone telling you what it is. As an Australian, I only learned about it last year, and my considered guess as to what it meant was wrong—I guessed somewhere in the middle of the year, when school is not operating during the summer. (We call the breaks between terms “school holidays”, most significantly of the summer break, which for us is mid–late December until the end of January or so.)
This was unclear to me as well. “This holiday” is not a phrase I’ve ever really heard in casual conversation or in the media register. I know the British “go on holiday” but that means vacation.
Their PR/marketing department dropped the ball on this specific phrase. At the same time it seems that marketing department slip ups are common these days.
If they mean Christmas time, I.e. December or winter, they should just say December or winter. That would be more clear.
Windows nowadays feels like a carefully crafted piece of software built by brilliant engineering and UX teams that, just before release, gets crapped all over by ads teams with annoyances and dark patterns. It must be frustrating to work in the former.
Idk, it feels like the UX team has been hitting the whiskey, and the UI team slapped something together to squeeze out a pay rise.
And then the ads team garnishes that with terribleness.
It still a little mindblowing to me that teams steals focus like it does at startup. Windows boots relatively slowly that I could be in an Outlook window or typing in a URL or whatever after a fresh reboot and then teams just steals my mouse and keyboard. I've trained myself to not do anything until teams starts (and being an electron app, it certainly takes its time) because I'm so annoyed by focus stealing.
On my home computer the xbox application does the same but at least it loads super fast. I am just bewildered that in 2021 that focus stealing like this is so common and accepted by anyone let alone Microsoft. It just feels like scammy 2000s adware.
There’s a setting to open teams in the background/minimized. I’ve never seen that not work. If you want the window to open at startup as a window… then it’s working as expected, it’s not stealing focus, you told it to open at startup and above everything, zoom, steam, origin, VPN, did the same thing when I allowed them to open at startup maximized.
Not sure why you’re using the Xbox app, but I believe it also has the option to open in background.
I don't see that as working as expected nor do I appreciate having to hunt and peck through settings to find this setting. The default should be for it to a polite application like any other. Awful defaults is exactly the dark pattern I'm complaining about. Just because Microsoft generously allows me to not have this awful behavior if I manually find this setting is not the big counter to my argument that you seem to think it is.
"Guys guys. Last second change from the top. We're gonna need to bundle Among Us. It needs to be front and center of our new start menu. We need it by EOD!"
How innovative, more P A D D I N G around everything! What's information density? I guess all the UI controls need to social distance? Big ScrollWheel™ did it again!
They had a good product with win7, they can afford to ruin it some more. If anything windows has stagnated for decade+ in terms of UI apart from cosmetic nonsense, and that's probably a good thing
When people complain about ads in Windows I wonder if they are seeing a different version than I am. Maybe it is the difference between US and EU or Home and Pro versions?
They do place links to third party games in the start menu upon installation. And they also inform about first party services where it makes sense (like OneDrive in Explorer, and Office365 when trying to edit a Word file). I wouldn't consider the first party offers an ad, if anything maybe an upsell, but that is just semantics.
The thing is, I haven't payed for Windows in close to a decade (legally!). Even at work, we get all the Windows and Office licenses from Microsoft Gold (for having a couple employees take some IoT certification and slapping their sticker on promotional material). One way microsoft makes money is with these "Ads".
If there is something that bothers me about Windows, it is the inconsistency. Visually, and quality wise. It seems MS is a totally heterogenous organisation with some brilliant teams that have a lot of freedom, and some less good teams that are heavily constrained. Some parts are really good (like the work on Windows Terminal, WSL, the new iteration of fluent design). But it seems nobody has the authority to push consistency across the system. There are longstanding bugs and sources of wierdness that are never addressed. Meanwhile new features are added at a breakneck pace (like the blurry weather applet). I can imagine some manager shouting "ship it now!" when I look at it.
And some decisions seem to be business motivated, like trying to push Edge and trying to create restricted a "Chromebook"-like edition again and again, but they neither make sense business- nor technology-wise. It sometimes seems like nobody has the big picture over there.
Ah you're right I do recall Windows Update installing a game by itself. That was freaking annoying because it happened when I was creating a master image in "audit mode". And you couldn't "generalize" it anymore in order to clone it, because a UWP app was installed.
well said. It’s like the table of money people look at a great finished product and then decide how they can maximize profit by injecting crapware, breaking it apart into multiple versions with varying price points (LTSB, Education, Pro, Home, Ultimate.. on and on)
I am reading this and it is only HN rules that make me give it a benefit of doubt. Windows simply cannot be carefully crafted at this stage for one simple reason. It is built on a foundation of compatibility ( which also happens to be its selling point ). The UX I can't really comment on. I don't like it, but I accept regular users may disagree.
So we decided to make meaningless and confusing UI changes! Nevermind that billions of people rely on their knowledge of this OS's interface, fuck 'em! We're just so damn innovative all the time!
With the growing awareness that tech giants possess intimate knowledge of our preferences, activities, and lives - and use that influence to literally addict us to technology, sell us things, influence us politically - who the f*ck wants another fantastically wealthy corporation "woven into our lives"?
I mean, honestly, does anyone else yearn for the pre-2000 Internet? It sure feels increasingly like we're living in a tech dystopia.
> The only real question is, will I still be able to get to the Network card configuration page that's been the same for the last 15-20 years. [I use it every day and don’t want them to make it into some simplified screen]
Microsoft truly can’t win!
One person praises it for being ugly while another for its beauty, while another criticises the central alignment of the taskbar and another says it’s a fundamentally stupid choice.
They could mostly win by making the new stuff actually fully functional; although any change would be annoying, the biggest part of "and don’t want them to make it into some simplified screen" is "simplified".
I don't know how this doesn't bug other people more. It's completely unfinished. Plenty of settings haven't moved from their XP or Windows 7 menus, as new "metro" 8/10 settings menus are created that have missing settings, new settings, and conflicting settings.
The new W10 interface to set a static IP will conflict with the old one (adapter properties) without telling you. Happy debugging.
As a late adopter to Win10 who hadn't been in a Windows environment since the early days of Win7, I was shocked how jarring ugly and inconsistent it was.
Win11 from what they've revealed looks like a moderate improvement? But I know what they're not showing is how the desktop will look with several non-native MS applications open, the nonsense of the theming across Office applications, and Explorer with its inexplicable tab bars.
It makes me disappointed that something so ubiquitous and essential to peoples' work can't aspire to be aesthetically, if not beautiful, at least nice.
Office and Explorer were actually shown in some other videos today, they've been updated to the new UI theme as well. As have paint/notepad. Edge as well, that combined with the Taskbar/Start menu and Store they demoed in the main video. Settings has also been completely restyled to match the new theme, don't remember which video(s) that was in though. The new Terminal (which can now replace command prompt as the default terminal for applications too) seems to fit in visually too.
Overall I don't think every Microsoft app ever made is going to get a facelift but it really seems like all of the main user facing apps have actually been updated together for once.
The ODBC Driver interface for configuration is tied to the old dialog.
The interface for the drivers was designed around GetOpenFileName() as it was at the time.
One of the features of GetOpenFileName/GetSaveFileName is that the structure passed in can include two special options- a function pointer to a hook routine, as well as a custom dialog template which windows will insert.
The functions were improved in Windows 95 with the "Explorer style". Even old programs get this style at the very least, because windows will imply the flag.
unless a template or hook routine is specified. See if a hook routine or template is specified and the OFN_EXPLORER flag is not, then the hook routine or template was designed for the old-style dialog. Windows uses the old-style dialog in this instance so that the program can run and doesn't crash.
The ODBC Driver configuration uses a dialog template to add the "read Only" and "Exclusive" checkboxes. That is why it shows the old style dialog.
People might say, "They should update it"
Update what?
If GetOpenFileName()'s ability to fallback to the old-style dialog is removed, than you won't see this dialog. Instead, it will crash. Cool. great experience.
the driver interface? OK great. so now there is a new version of the ODBC Driver interface. Now all the ODBC Drivers need to be updated. Some of the drivers were written by companies that are either out of business or rather different. I have this sneaking suspicion that Paradox software isn't going to be writing a new ODBC Driver for the MS-DOS Database.
Just drop everything? OK Cool.... so now companies get forcibly upgraded to Windows 11 and literally cannot do business because they rely on them in some manner. "They should upgrade". I won't get into that except to say it's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, but companies in that position are far more likely to find ways to not upgrade the software that caused the problem so, you know, they can keep doing business. And not upgrading the OS is certainly cheaper than countless thousands of man-hours in upgrading their Business software.
And a big thing people don't understand about backwards compatibility is it's not just about old programs working. It's about new ones working to.
If Microsoft removed all "backwards compatibility", than practically nothing would actually work. Software would be constantly crashing, sending error reports, etc. Now, call me crazy, but somehow that doesn't seem like it's a great experience. And if upgrading to Windows X+1 suddenly caused programs to crash left & right, nobody is going to blame the programs.
Thanks for the read. Actually, I have no problem with Win95 (and previous) era UI components, it's the layers of inconsistencies on top of that bothers me. The Windows 95 is still the best Windows UI of all times.
The backwards compatability on Windows is truly great, particularly compared to Linux and macOS (where messages fired off when buttons are clicked silently disappear nowhere, and the button does nothing)....
There is no backward compatibility from Win 7 onwards. A lot of games stopped functioning in Win 7( you need to rename system dlls or change registry entries for them to work). And in win 10 they just don't work.
On one side of the house you have folks saying Windows 3.1 dialogs are still able to be referenced, on the other you have folks saying there is no backwards compatibility from Windows 7 onwards. Clearly both can't be true yet Windows gets the short end of the stick after each reference anyways :).
"Really old games" probably don't have the same backward compatibility weight as "really really really old business software". As a good example a friend of mine with a local business just had me migrate his 16 bit ordering system from the 90s... to Windows 10... and I'll be damned it worked.
a very fair, honest review. yes, software ages with time, and with time piles of new layers are added and others cannot be removed for very obvious reasons.
people who fail to understand this have basically no clue about complex systems evolution over tens of years, or have only produced their own cloud-managed service.
so, yeah, Microsoft is faring very well. OSes after windows 7 are extremely stable considering the diversity of components and packages that run on top of it.
apple killing all backward compatibility is not necessarily a good thing. we are talking right to repair? then what what right does an OS vendor to kill backwards-compatible components?
> Starting later this year, people will be able to discover Android apps in the Microsoft Store and download them through the Amazon Appstore
I probably shouldn't expect different, but it's a bummer that you apparently won't be able to to load paid Google Playstore apps. I have several reference apps that are paid and would love to run those on my desktop since no web or native app exists.
I run chromeOS as my daily driver, and find a few android apps quite useful (I run linux apps too). There are lots of apps that are mobile-only which are nice to have a second copy of or use the big screen; google maps is possibly my favourite, much better than the web version.
There's also just more developer focus on android than windows for a lot of small apps like free VPNs, currency converters etc, leading to better choice/quality/discoverability than native windows apps.
The way it's worded also implies it's going to be a loooong road before it's anything like production ready.
Like you though, I can't imagine why I'd want to use Android apps on my desktop... I'd prefer to use my Android phone/tablet, where such apps were designed to run. Now, I'm thinking maybe I'm not the target market for this feature... but then I wonder, who is? For example, they mention TikTok - does your average TikTok user even have a Windows PC? And if so, why would they prefer to sit in front of a desktop to view short videos, rather than their phone or TV?
Laptops are still a thing. I imagine the age group of TikTok users includes a lot of students. A phone won't cut it for anything like schoolwork. The Surface line of Windows PCs and the multitudes of 2-in-1s are very touch-centric and can act as big tablets. The "sit in front of a desktop" association is a bit outdated.
In the late 90s, IE4 and then IE5 was the gold standard. We were all ecstatic when we didn't have to support Netscape 4 anymore. It wasn't until Firefox (more specifically Firebug) was mature that IE lost the crown.
Yeah that line, along with others, is almost offensive. Microsoft tried really hard to stop the open web during the time they were building early Windows. They're trying to take credit for something that popular that they tried really hard to stop.
"We tried to adopt, extend and extinguish this golden child in our possessive embrace, hobble it to us as was our custom, but it grew up all the stronger for fighting us, and shouldn't we all be grateful for that?"
Not almost, it is simply a blatant lie. Now, how should I trust Microsoft if they can't avoid a lie (that is totally unnecessary btw) in their press release that was probably carefully crafted and approved by several levels of managers? It's like saying "we can do whatever we want, no matter if it's good or wrong, as long as in line with our interests." Shame.
>I'd like to think that, but I am not sure if that's actually true.
It's hard to get real numbers, for sure. There's counts based on what the server shipped with, when those used to be bundled, which favors Windows. And there's counts of active servers on the internet, which favors Unix-like. Both counts are fundamentally flawed for various reasons.
Came here to say pretty much this; add to that Bill Gates' "the internet is just a passing fad" attitude at the time, this comes across as a complete whitewash of history. I know it's just a PR fluff piece so it's not like I'm going to write any angry letters, but I had to shake my head a bit at that.
For many home users that is a reality, even if it is not historically accurate. And, more importantly, I think that highlights the current position of Windows.
In the 90s and 2000s, Windows was synonymous with computing, the office and the Internet. Nowadays, Android and iPhone are the point of contact with the world for most people. Windows has lost that position.
What I read is "The web was born and grew up on Windows" ... and we want Windows to be its future. That is what, I think, it follows from that statement and the goal of Windows 11.
Apparently this will be a free and in-place update from win10, so maybe that is compatible with what they meant by "just updates", even if it is a redesign.
Which, by the way, is pretty strong evidence that you will be the product (even if it weren't for the talk of "weaving in with your life" or whatever).
Easy to thumb our noses at it, and this community is already on it in spades from the comments so far.
I'll wait and see. I like Win10 much more than I thought I would. I rode Win7 into the sunset, only abandoning the ship about a week before they dropped security updates for it because I thought I'd dislike Win10 so much. I even ran Ubuntu as my desktop OS for about four months before switching back over to Microsoft and Win10.
It will happen one night while you are sleeping in the middle of a time sensitive deadline that will prevent you from doing what you need because several things are now broken after the update you didn't ask for occurred.
Yeah W2K was an oddity that way. I wasn't sure how to fit it in this. But TBH, it wasn't as well adopted as ME or XP and I didn't feel the need to wedge it in there. The point stands, with or without W2K in the mix.
Windows 2000 was originally intended to be that. While the official switchover got pushed back (ultimately to XP) that made 2K an extremely capable consumer OS.
Honestly, I find this to be a lazy trope. MS has certainly laid some eggs before, but the "every other version sucks" narrative relies a lot on revisionist thinking. Vista was a resource hog on the hardware of the time, but the UI was honestly a huge improvement and a lot of the complaining about Vista centered around security improvements the _ABSOLUTELY_ needed to happen. I suspect plenty of HN readers have memories of the malware infested mess that less technical XP users machines often turned into. XP also had an (accidentally) long life, so the XP that was replaced by Vista was significantly improved.
You also leave out 8.1, which was a big improvement on 8.
I'm speaking specifically of initial releases. I recall working on a Vista SP2 machine that I honestly thought was Windows 7 until I looked closer. And 8.1 wasn't too bad. But Vista at release was just awful. It created as many problems as it solved, as did 8.
Personally, I found Vista's UI to be horrible - the only saving grace was that one could use a "Classic Windows" theme to get back to something useful (as you also could in Win 7). UAC was just awful icing on the horrible cake.
7 was a success, but mostly it was "Vista with the rough edges ironed out and more time for hardware to catch up". Ditto for 8 and 8.1. So I think it's based on a real phenomenon, where Microsoft was basically unintentionally doing the "move fast and break things" of modern software development, minus the fast part.
It already has broken the cycle. I was a Windows Insider and have used Windows 10 since the first build in October 2014 and several builds of the bi-annual updates after that (assuming the new features/optimizations were worth the headache). The early RTM versions of 10 really sucked as far as getting UWP apps to operate without random crashing. Since Windows 8, Search of Windows has been designed horrendously and that was made worse by Windows 10 with it's "cloud-based" Bing clutter (something that still hasn't changed since). Telemetry processes gobbled up memory and disk speed on HDDs and required cmd hacks to stop. A plus for Windows 10 is that the OS itself is stable and robust even on early Insider builds. Bad Patch Tuesdays and hibernation issues notwithstanding, it takes quite a bit of effort to get the OS to BSOD. But Windows 10 would have been better of as a reskinned and optimized Windows 7 + MS Store than the perennial Beta test OS that Windows 10 became. And it doesn't look like Windows 11 is going to be all that different in the respect.
“The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products.”
So, Windows 10 is my daily-driver (Enterprise eds), and I love it. I'm a big fan of Windows in general.
But Microsoft did say that Windows 10 was going to be theast version of Windows, with incremental updates thereafter; I don't see why they need to change that to accommodate what appears to be little more than an unwanted UI refresh with more crappy AI-driven news feeds that nobody wants. From everything I've seen, Windows 11 looks like it's very much an incremental update over the Windows 10 of today.
So why not have a Windows 10 feature update? What is the point of this?
It bothers me simply because they said they wouldn't, and I don't understand the point of it for a UI refresh. Also bothers me because I don't want a UI refresh.
because I don't want all my stuff to break and I don't want to configure everything again, which is something that happened with all numbered Windows updates to date
> I don't see why they need to change that to accommodate what appears to be little more than an unwanted UI refresh with more crappy AI-driven news feeds that nobody wants
It's obviously a lot more complex than that.
For example, they are dropping 32-bit support. You can't release an update that does something like that.
By "anything more of substance", I meant, well, features!
Also, this TPM requirement seems like something they shouldn't be doing - it's not a benefit for end users to have less choice. I mean, if I don't want to use a TPM, then why should I have to?
My guess is that Microsoft didn't want to move away from the 10 moniker, but Apple's release of Big Sur as macOS 11 meant that they had to keep up with versioning to stay competitive with marketing.
The article you link is pretty clear that they did not commit to the "windows 10" name forever ("We aren’t speaking to future branding at this time"), but rather to a model with more smaller regular updates. Which a no-cost update fits in, even if they change the name.
A few years ago, I decided to buy a Windows 10 Pro retail license, which I figured would last pretty much forever since "Windows 10 is the last version of Windows". I wonder if my Windows 10 license will be able to activate a new Windows 11 install or if I'll need to buy another.
The only real question is, will I still be able to get to the Network card configuration page that's been the same for the last 15-20 years? I use it daily. They've just put it behind more and more "nicce looking, but non-functional" network management UIs,.
Oh yeah.. I fucking hate Windows 10, a few weeks ago I had to check these settings and I got lost every time.. I think they've completed the web-pagization of the control panel nowadays.
Well, right now it's: Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Network and Internet -> Network and Sharing Center -> Change adapter settings. I'm sure they will add " -> Ad for Steve Ballmer's Basketball Team -> ".
Classic network configuration is not good UI by any means, claustrophobic non-resizable windows with complicated nested hierarchy. But they somehow managed to make "Settings" not better, with huge whitespace and a lot less functional...
Apparently the Home edition will require a Microsoft account and an internet connection. [1] Can't say I'm looking forward to this. All my Windows installations are with local accounts and I would like to keep it that way. Microsoft has already made it incredibly obnoxious to achieve this with the latest Windows 10 setups, where you have to make sure your computer is not connected to the internet to even unlock the fallback local account creation option. [2] A sad day indeed if this is no longer possible.
I think a recent version of Windows I had the misfortune of setting up also required a Ms account: no option for a local install. It's also possible that I'm just stupid and didn't see it, but (shrug)
The secret is you have to install Windows 10 with the network disconnected. If it doesn't detect a network connection, it lets you create a local account
You can bypass it by either turning off the network connection prior to a new/clean installation on 20H2/21H1. If you are stuck on the account screen during the installation process, then entering wrong credentials 3 times will present you with a local account option. However, if you have completed installation, then there is an option to turn it into a local account in Settings --> User Accounts --> Change your account type.
It sounds like Windows and macOS are similar in this regard, except Apple has more customers who would see this as a "convenience" because their smartphone/tablet world is tied to Apple.
- It prompts you when you try and update the non-operating-system software that came with the computer, and doesn't let you upgrade it if you don't create one.
And probably a whole lot more prompts that I missed.
It also uses dark patterns to imply that you must enter payment information for you account. Took me 15 minutes of googling to figure out how to create one without entering payment information.
macOS does that, but I find Windows 10 to be way, way worse. There's an option in one of the setup screens, but good luck finding it. They really make it hard to use a local account (or at least used to - I haven't reinstalled Windows in 2 years).
I'm torn on which is worse, I've helped people set up windows computers on the most recent iteration and was equally unimpressed.
Windows hides the option more, mac holds updating offline apps hostage, safari browser extensions hostage, and tries to trick you into entering payment information.
If that's true, then I'll be forced to move many people's PCs to another OS after decades of Windows. I hope they reverse that decision, it's so hostile.
I don't like that they make it mandatory, but I understand why they want to push users to using MS accounts. When I set up a PC (Android phone) for non-technical users I always make sure they have a MS (Google) account.
Things like backup and password reset are just so convenient that they outweigh the very theoretical privacy risk for most people.
It's a prelude to subscription Windows. Instead of having a family PC that everyone can use, every user with a Microsoft account will need a license. The OS for a family PC is eventually going up 5-10x in price IMO.
They have really obsure stuff going on but I don't actually think they'll deny it even if you're not connected, that'll raise a LOT of legal actions against them.
I replaced Windows with Linux for gaming a couple years ago, due in part to Valve's Proton. It's not perfect, but I estimate 80% of the games I play "just work" and require no tweaking. The state of things for your set of games can be evaluated with https://www.protondb.com.
I've found that a majority of games work on Linux, but they all have drastic performance hits. What can run at 200fps on Windows will be less than 140fps on Linux at the same settings.
> I've found that a majority of games work on Linux, but they all have drastic performance hits
It's probably highly dependent on your graphics drivers in fairness. But with regards to the comments on the 200 -> 140 hz drop, I have a genuine question: how much of an impact does that have unless you have a 240 hz monitor?
Me too. Proton is amazing, it’s really lowered the barrier to entry for gaming on Linux. For the most part, people can totally avoid having to mess with wine themselves. Until online multiplayer games make their anti-cheat software work on Linux or vac-banning Linux users stops I think Windows will still have that part of the market.
> Start utilizes the power of the cloud and Microsoft 365 to show you your recent files no matter what platform or device you were viewing them on earlier
I mean this is basically just iCloud and users generally adore it. Having deep integration to say things like “get me the document I was working on my phone” or a global browser history search is really freakin cool.
I really don't need microsoft harvesting my personal documents and telemetry to power a start menu.
I'd be happy if they could finally get round to answering questions like "open the file called file.ext", rather than doing something terrifying like guessing what I might have meant by uploading absolutely everything to their own servers.
I know I’m a former microsoft employee so I’m a bit biased, but man the quality of these presentations are awesome. Panos is the best salesperson I’ve ever had the chance to meet.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 274 ms ] thread> app developers can now bring their own commerce into our Store and keep 100% of the revenue – Microsoft takes nothing. App developers can still use our commerce with competitive revenue share of 85/15
This is great. That's how it s done
I wouldn't mind a complete visual regression to Windows 7. In fact, I remember that Win 7 Aero only had rounded corners.
Except that the rounding only happened on the window decoration, which took space. The client rendering area was a full rectangle. Now, they’re cutting corners out of the client rendering area.
Besides, this "touch-first" approach has been tried with win8 and in my experience it was atrocious
I'll just say that my laptop (Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga) has a touchscreen and I love it. Every laptop I buy from here out will be a touchscreen merely because the ability to reach up while I type and just tap where i want my mouse to go next is such a better system than working with a nipple or trackpad.
I think as laptops with touchscreens become more affordable lots of people will change across. When i'm forced to work on my work laptop without KB&M, I really miss the ability to touch my screen instead of working with the god awful trackpad.
Windows 8 distinctly had no rounded corners. The metro design language was quite square
But there isn't a perpetual Agreement guaranteeing MS won't ever increase its cut in the future when its store becomes more popular. The Store hasn't yet been terribly successful. Most of my Windows apps are installed outside the MS store: Notepad++, VSCodium, Steam, and so on. So MS will try to get more apps in the Store and then lock down Windows like iOS once it has enough apps, then increase its own cut so that it can transfer wealth from the middle class to billionaire MSFT shareholders, just like AAPL does.
Transparent windows and widgets make it more like Vista.
> This is great. That's how it s done
It can't go on, though. Why won't every developer turn their app "free" and use Stripe or something to shave even more off the commerce fees? Meanwhile Microsoft eats hosting/maintenance/development on the store for zero return. We saw why Apple went the IAP route even if it's unpopular among developers and the fees could afford to be reduced.
Now even if NTFS is inherently a slower architecture than ext4 or something, that does not change the fact that this difference would be minimal compared to the absolute horror show that is the Windows Defender slowdown.
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[1] https://wiki.debian.org/NTFS
I feel like they're just aligning with macOS now. Not that I'm complaining, the video and the interface all are sexy.
I still prefer i3 ... but I can understand why a nontechnical user might prefer a mac device to a windows(10) device. Someone at Apple clearly knows about UI/UX.
The bad news is Apple is fucking it all up, having apparently put iOS people in charge of macOS. The new safari looks insanely bad.
> Taskbar functionality is changed including: Alignment to the bottom of the screen is the only location allowed.
[0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifica...
EDIT: Sorry I misread, you meant the icons. But yeah unfortunately it sounds like you can't move the taskbar as a whole anymore. I always kept mine at the top.
Although considering I've seen no one else mention this issue, I'm guessing I'm a huge outlier.
I can't tell if the icons get larger as you hover. That sort of magnifies this problem, as the start button would shift left as other icons are highlighted.
If you have such a large screen that you can't quickly move your pointer to anywhere on it, I suggest that you have a bigger problem with your system than where your Start menu appears.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law
Fun fact btw, in win 95 the border of the start button was not clickable, so slamming into the corner did not work because of that 2px border. Microsoft was proud of presenting this feature in later versions, don't remember if it was in 98, 2000 or XP.
Everybody except hn readers who live in their own bubble.
I think you're comparing apples and oranges though - with web pages, the issues are readability and aesthetics, whereas with the taskbar it's that icons are where you expect them to be (when centred, they will move as you open more windows).
IMO, a more apt comparison is the tabs of a browser, rather than the content the browser is showing.
There's a name for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law
and the fact that their UI people somehow have forgotten about it speaks volumes.
Have Microsoft forgotten the lessons they learned so hard since 1995? The start button being in the corner has real usability benefits.
They ruined the taskbar a long time ago, the button grouping thing is absolutely horrible and can only be partially turned off... hopefully they at a minimum kept the full button option somewhere.
And the centering... if new stuff is added and it recenters, it means things are moving all the time. eeek.
Then again they were never completely consistent. For example in Win3.x design 3D elements were supposed to be for those that cause some command to be performed, yet the scrollbar visual design was the same as that of buttons.
At least we can finally go from one machine to another without too much of a difference or having to learn much - particularly good for those who only use what they "know".
Wow!
Which holiday? Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year, Labor Day... Fourth of July?
Maybe Halloween would be appropriate, given how scary any major Windows upgrade is to enterprise orgs.
If they said "this holiday season", that would probably mean December timeframe, but they don't say that.
They repeat this confusing reference later on:
> The free upgrade will begin to roll out to eligible Windows 10 PCs this holiday and [...]
Why can't they just a) commit to a date or month, and b) specify UTC time for their launches.
Their PR/marketing department dropped the ball on this specific phrase. At the same time it seems that marketing department slip ups are common these days.
If they mean Christmas time, I.e. December or winter, they should just say December or winter. That would be more clear.
And now, the teams team wants to make it worse.
It still a little mindblowing to me that teams steals focus like it does at startup. Windows boots relatively slowly that I could be in an Outlook window or typing in a URL or whatever after a fresh reboot and then teams just steals my mouse and keyboard. I've trained myself to not do anything until teams starts (and being an electron app, it certainly takes its time) because I'm so annoyed by focus stealing.
On my home computer the xbox application does the same but at least it loads super fast. I am just bewildered that in 2021 that focus stealing like this is so common and accepted by anyone let alone Microsoft. It just feels like scammy 2000s adware.
Not sure why you’re using the Xbox app, but I believe it also has the option to open in background.
Curiously (and annoyingly) enough, when I type "update" in Windows search the top result is, invariably, "Microsoft Teams."
They do place links to third party games in the start menu upon installation. And they also inform about first party services where it makes sense (like OneDrive in Explorer, and Office365 when trying to edit a Word file). I wouldn't consider the first party offers an ad, if anything maybe an upsell, but that is just semantics.
The thing is, I haven't payed for Windows in close to a decade (legally!). Even at work, we get all the Windows and Office licenses from Microsoft Gold (for having a couple employees take some IoT certification and slapping their sticker on promotional material). One way microsoft makes money is with these "Ads".
If there is something that bothers me about Windows, it is the inconsistency. Visually, and quality wise. It seems MS is a totally heterogenous organisation with some brilliant teams that have a lot of freedom, and some less good teams that are heavily constrained. Some parts are really good (like the work on Windows Terminal, WSL, the new iteration of fluent design). But it seems nobody has the authority to push consistency across the system. There are longstanding bugs and sources of wierdness that are never addressed. Meanwhile new features are added at a breakneck pace (like the blurry weather applet). I can imagine some manager shouting "ship it now!" when I look at it.
And some decisions seem to be business motivated, like trying to push Edge and trying to create restricted a "Chromebook"-like edition again and again, but they neither make sense business- nor technology-wise. It sometimes seems like nobody has the big picture over there.
Are they complaining about a few demo games pre-installed? I don't get it.
How to disable a lot of them: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-remove-advertising-window...
Also I've seen Windows updates install games without my permission. (for example once it installed Candy Crush).
The live tiles can display whatever MS wants, and sometimes what MS wanted there was ads for random applications and games.
Folks, if you were thinking Windows 11 will bring less telemetry, you were wrong :-)
So we decided to make meaningless and confusing UI changes! Nevermind that billions of people rely on their knowledge of this OS's interface, fuck 'em! We're just so damn innovative all the time!
I mean, honestly, does anyone else yearn for the pre-2000 Internet? It sure feels increasingly like we're living in a tech dystopia.
But Windows is less and less a money maker for Microsoft, so it's the obvious route.
[1] https://ntdotdev.wordpress.com/2021/02/06/state-of-the-windo...
> The only real question is, will I still be able to get to the Network card configuration page that's been the same for the last 15-20 years. [I use it every day and don’t want them to make it into some simplified screen]
Microsoft truly can’t win!
One person praises it for being ugly while another for its beauty, while another criticises the central alignment of the taskbar and another says it’s a fundamentally stupid choice.
Just pull the band aid fast. Can't adjust the UI for inconsistencies in long time users muscle memory. They will adjust to a consistent UX.
I don't know how this doesn't bug other people more. It's completely unfinished. Plenty of settings haven't moved from their XP or Windows 7 menus, as new "metro" 8/10 settings menus are created that have missing settings, new settings, and conflicting settings.
The new W10 interface to set a static IP will conflict with the old one (adapter properties) without telling you. Happy debugging.
Win11 from what they've revealed looks like a moderate improvement? But I know what they're not showing is how the desktop will look with several non-native MS applications open, the nonsense of the theming across Office applications, and Explorer with its inexplicable tab bars.
It makes me disappointed that something so ubiquitous and essential to peoples' work can't aspire to be aesthetically, if not beautiful, at least nice.
Overall I don't think every Microsoft app ever made is going to get a facelift but it really seems like all of the main user facing apps have actually been updated together for once.
The ODBC Driver interface for configuration is tied to the old dialog.
The interface for the drivers was designed around GetOpenFileName() as it was at the time.
One of the features of GetOpenFileName/GetSaveFileName is that the structure passed in can include two special options- a function pointer to a hook routine, as well as a custom dialog template which windows will insert.
The functions were improved in Windows 95 with the "Explorer style". Even old programs get this style at the very least, because windows will imply the flag.
unless a template or hook routine is specified. See if a hook routine or template is specified and the OFN_EXPLORER flag is not, then the hook routine or template was designed for the old-style dialog. Windows uses the old-style dialog in this instance so that the program can run and doesn't crash.
The ODBC Driver configuration uses a dialog template to add the "read Only" and "Exclusive" checkboxes. That is why it shows the old style dialog.
People might say, "They should update it"
Update what?
If GetOpenFileName()'s ability to fallback to the old-style dialog is removed, than you won't see this dialog. Instead, it will crash. Cool. great experience.
the driver interface? OK great. so now there is a new version of the ODBC Driver interface. Now all the ODBC Drivers need to be updated. Some of the drivers were written by companies that are either out of business or rather different. I have this sneaking suspicion that Paradox software isn't going to be writing a new ODBC Driver for the MS-DOS Database.
Just drop everything? OK Cool.... so now companies get forcibly upgraded to Windows 11 and literally cannot do business because they rely on them in some manner. "They should upgrade". I won't get into that except to say it's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, but companies in that position are far more likely to find ways to not upgrade the software that caused the problem so, you know, they can keep doing business. And not upgrading the OS is certainly cheaper than countless thousands of man-hours in upgrading their Business software.
And a big thing people don't understand about backwards compatibility is it's not just about old programs working. It's about new ones working to.
If Microsoft removed all "backwards compatibility", than practically nothing would actually work. Software would be constantly crashing, sending error reports, etc. Now, call me crazy, but somehow that doesn't seem like it's a great experience. And if upgrading to Windows X+1 suddenly caused programs to crash left & right, nobody is going to blame the programs.
"Really old games" probably don't have the same backward compatibility weight as "really really really old business software". As a good example a friend of mine with a local business just had me migrate his 16 bit ordering system from the 90s... to Windows 10... and I'll be damned it worked.
people who fail to understand this have basically no clue about complex systems evolution over tens of years, or have only produced their own cloud-managed service.
so, yeah, Microsoft is faring very well. OSes after windows 7 are extremely stable considering the diversity of components and packages that run on top of it.
apple killing all backward compatibility is not necessarily a good thing. we are talking right to repair? then what what right does an OS vendor to kill backwards-compatible components?
This is super cool, but honestly I don't see myself using any Android apps on Windows.
I probably shouldn't expect different, but it's a bummer that you apparently won't be able to to load paid Google Playstore apps. I have several reference apps that are paid and would love to run those on my desktop since no web or native app exists.
There's also just more developer focus on android than windows for a lot of small apps like free VPNs, currency converters etc, leading to better choice/quality/discoverability than native windows apps.
Like you though, I can't imagine why I'd want to use Android apps on my desktop... I'd prefer to use my Android phone/tablet, where such apps were designed to run. Now, I'm thinking maybe I'm not the target market for this feature... but then I wonder, who is? For example, they mention TikTok - does your average TikTok user even have a Windows PC? And if so, why would they prefer to sit in front of a desktop to view short videos, rather than their phone or TV?
I think CERN engineers while working on web and www protocol were using unix as windows was not even there yet.
https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web
> The web was born and grew up on Windows
The first part is just a lie, the second part is open for interpretation, but certainly not the formative years.
I'd like to think that, but I am not sure if that's actually true.
It's hard to get real numbers, for sure. There's counts based on what the server shipped with, when those used to be bundled, which favors Windows. And there's counts of active servers on the internet, which favors Unix-like. Both counts are fundamentally flawed for various reasons.
I did, though, get a chuckle out of Microsoft's slide that showed more Linux instances than Windows ones on Azure: https://build5nines.com/linux-is-most-used-os-in-microsoft-a...
For many home users that is a reality, even if it is not historically accurate. And, more importantly, I think that highlights the current position of Windows.
In the 90s and 2000s, Windows was synonymous with computing, the office and the Internet. Nowadays, Android and iPhone are the point of contact with the world for most people. Windows has lost that position.
What I read is "The web was born and grew up on Windows" ... and we want Windows to be its future. That is what, I think, it follows from that statement and the goal of Windows 11.
Hard to believe that they didn't learn from Windows 8, but they didn't.
Also: weren't we told multiple times that there would be no successor to Windows 10? That all future versions of Windows would just be updates?
I'll wait and see. I like Win10 much more than I thought I would. I rode Win7 into the sunset, only abandoning the ship about a week before they dropped security updates for it because I thought I'd dislike Win10 so much. I even ran Ubuntu as my desktop OS for about four months before switching back over to Microsoft and Win10.
I'll wait and see this time.
Edit: actually some people are saying it may require TPM 2.0
98
- ME
XP
- Vista
7
- 8
10
- 11
Has Microsoft broken the cycle? Time will tell.
was ME ever adopted by anyone? I saw more W2K machines than ME back in the day
I had one friend with an ME box, and that was the worst POS around, it was so bad.
Everybody else was either 2K or linux.
quelle surprise.
That's same now as it was, 10 pro/workstation are better than home.
You also leave out 8.1, which was a big improvement on 8.
Steve Jobs Triumph of the Nerds (1996)
There you see again what Microsoft's statements are worth.
I’m not sure why this is that problematic?
> *Look for PCs that indicate they are eligible for the free upgrade, or you can check with your retailer for more information.
Are they, though?
1 - No licensed W10
2 - Too old PC - can't work with W11
3 - No MS account or internet connection (as this is a requirement for upgrading)
But Microsoft did say that Windows 10 was going to be theast version of Windows, with incremental updates thereafter; I don't see why they need to change that to accommodate what appears to be little more than an unwanted UI refresh with more crappy AI-driven news feeds that nobody wants. From everything I've seen, Windows 11 looks like it's very much an incremental update over the Windows 10 of today.
So why not have a Windows 10 feature update? What is the point of this?
> Windows 11 brings you closer to the news and information you care about faster with Widgets – a new personalized feed powered by AI
Also, I can already have the weather as a tile in my start menu if I wanted (why, tho?).
It's obviously a lot more complex than that.
For example, they are dropping 32-bit support. You can't release an update that does something like that.
Is there anything more of substance though?
Also, this TPM requirement seems like something they shouldn't be doing - it's not a benefit for end users to have less choice. I mean, if I don't want to use a TPM, then why should I have to?
[1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/windows-10-the-last-version-of-wi...
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[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22548480/windows-11-home-...
[2] https://www.howtogeek.com/442609/confirmed-windows-10-setup-...
- They ask you to when you buy it
- They ask you to in an email after you buy it
- It prompts you during install
- It prompts you right after you installed
- It prompts you when you try and update the non-operating-system software that came with the computer, and doesn't let you upgrade it if you don't create one.
And probably a whole lot more prompts that I missed.
It also uses dark patterns to imply that you must enter payment information for you account. Took me 15 minutes of googling to figure out how to create one without entering payment information.
So... "no".
Windows hides the option more, mac holds updating offline apps hostage, safari browser extensions hostage, and tries to trick you into entering payment information.
Both are terrible.
So they will finally get what they couldn't finalize in W10. These folks have no shame.
Things like backup and password reset are just so convenient that they outweigh the very theoretical privacy risk for most people.
Everyone already has a windows install, so the only growth is to charge more. It doesn't really matter how; windows will cost more
Also, as for legal actions, strongly doubt it. Apple has required an Apple ID on their iPhones and iPads for years during setup.
No they haven't. The setup process encourages using an Apple ID, but it has never been required.
Thankfully I only use that machine for gaming.
It's probably highly dependent on your graphics drivers in fairness. But with regards to the comments on the 200 -> 140 hz drop, I have a genuine question: how much of an impact does that have unless you have a 240 hz monitor?
See https://www.neowin.net/news/windows-11-home-requires-interne...
Well, consider me scared.
I'd be happy if they could finally get round to answering questions like "open the file called file.ext", rather than doing something terrifying like guessing what I might have meant by uploading absolutely everything to their own servers.