Why I'm Not Excited About Windows 11

I've never been one of those PC users who laments change and rejects new desktop operating system features. I've cheered Microsoft's Windows evolution, even finding things to like about the much-maligned Vista and Windows 8, with its tiled interface. But if leaked screenshots are to be believed, Windows 11 may be a no for me.

I don’t care about rounded corners. I don’t want the Start button in the middle of the screen. I like the way the Windows 10 Taskbar is highly functional and informative, far more so than Apple’s macOS Dock—from which the leaked Windows 11 design seems to draw inspiration.

That design update (especially having the Start button in the middle) seems a direct port of the now-defunct Windows 10X, Microsoft’s Chrome OS wannabe. Is the thinking behind this move to drive users of the lightweight Chrome OS to the huge Windows 10 codebase? To me, it seems more likely to drive Windows users away. Yes, the Start button is more accessible in the middle, but I don’t want it staring me down like that. Most of the time I’ve already started my task.

And those rounded corners for windows and message boxes? They've been available on macOS for several years. I have nothing against them; they look nice. They just don’t affect the way I do things, so in the end, I could not care less about rounded corners.

Innovation or Imitation?

I guess the theme with both of these changes is this: Why does Microsoft feel the need to rip off design ideas from the competition? Why can’t it maintain its own identity or come up with its own innovations? Perhaps the answer is that software styles are like musical styles—one artist innovates and many emulate. It’s not as though the other OSes never took anything from Windows. That said, if macOS is Soft Jazz, why does Windows also need to be Soft Jazz? Why can’t it be heavy metal or hip-hop?

The Others Are No Better

I agree that macOS offers a more slick and consistent design. And yet...I can’t stand working in it. It seems to straightjacket a lot of actions and limit customization. Everything must be done how Apple thinks things should be done.

Windows in its current state makes it easy, for example, to instantly arrange windows the way I want them, or to share a screenshot wherever I want. Whenever I’m forced to use a Mac for testing, I get a confined, constricted—and in the end, frustrated—feeling. A lot if this is down to familiarity, and there are many who have the opposite experience. I’m just reporting my own.

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As for Chrome OS, it’s really a tenth of the OS that either macOS or Windows is. If you just want to browse websites or read email, it’s absolutely fine. For even slightly complex operations or to run creative software, forget it. Neither of its two app stores is really satisfactory. I love that it supports touch—I can’t understand, with the ubiquity of smartphones, that any screen on a device you’re intended to interact with these days is not a touch screen. Apple squirms and squeezes itself into several shapes trying to pass off the iPad Pro as a laptop or, with Monterey, as a touch screen for Macs, all unconvincingly.

What Windows 11 Should Have

So what would excite me in a Windows update? How about never seeing a blue screen of death again? Or getting rid of those wildly inconsistent legacy control panel dialogs? Getting startup time and battery life on a Surface Go equal to that of an iPad? Dare I dream that the Registry goes away, along with all the clutter it causes? Or having a default Mail client that actually works? For all we know, Microsoft is working on those issues just as hard as it’s working on rounded corners. We can only hope.

Microsoft has come a long way toward restoring user happiness with Windows 10 following the Windows 8 fiasco. Let’s hope Windows 11 doesn’t take us back to those dark days. If not, it appears that Windows 10 will be supported through 2025, so we have a few good years left.