Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…
What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!
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Mary Jo was right: the hype cycle has begun in earnest with the latest @Windows tweet: the horizontal pane / pain was seemingly removed on purpose in a new GIF, so Windows “11” then.
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Many questions, but keeping my hopes down. I do think Windows Weekly & Leo’s radio show will have many inquiring minds curious about Windows “11” in the next few weeks, so a new OS rebrand is exciting in that sense.
On my mind now, so hopefully we’ll know more by July 24th (+1 month for Microsoft to give us all the details because the launch will likely be hype + demos, haha).
- Who gets to stay on Windows 10? Will it be a choice for home users or are we doing forced overnight upgrades like Windows 8 → 10?
- Will the UI changes be toggleable like a theme or we’re pulling a Windows 8 and it’s mandatory on all Windows “11” installs, e.g., business / education / enterprise?
- Will Windows 10 get feature updates or it’s now strictly monthly updates like the past three quarters?
- How long has Sun Valley been tested? Unfortunately, I’m not overly trustful of Microsoft’s internal testing. With Microsoft’s development split between 10X and “11”, I’m a little concerned: probably safer to wait until 2022?
- Relatedly, will Sun Valley have a lengthy beta period (early 2022 launch?) or it’ll be shortened so OEM partners can launch with Windows “11” for the Q3 / fall / back-to-school sales?
Presumably, Microsoft has done a lot of backend work here. Intel’s newest Alder Lake CPUs and some of AMD’s upcoming models will need new CPU schedulers because they have two kinds of CPUs inside (a la Apple M1). I genuinely think everyone I know is dead-tired of Windows 10’s XP-era update model: foreground patching, plenty of lengthy restarts, and somewhat confusing versioning. The wishlist is long!
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Windows 10 does have the typical 10-year retirement date: October 14th 2025, so take that as you will of Microsoft claiming Windows 10 “is the last version”.
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That’s a heck of a list, and quite optimistic imho. I’m expecting a half-baked UI refresh but hoping for everything you mentioned. If they can meet us in the middle with an update engine overhaul and not force a radical new UI on us then I’ll be a happy clam.
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Oh, haha, yes. I’m more likely to believe Windows 11 will solve 1-2 problems and kick the Windows can down the road until the long-game of virtual desktops is ready.
Microsoft doesn’t seem to have the engineering resources or company-wide commitment to on-premises Windows relative to the # of global Windows users (1B and counting).
Microsoft canned 10X in a random update blog post, even after hyping a new Surface device, launching a public emulator, and not a few public presentations. If they did all that and still could only cancel it 19 months later, how well will they execute a “big” feature update? 
I do not expect Sun Valley / “Windows 11” will be totally ready by 2021. It could even be split into two or three updates to deliver all of its features.
EDIT: My actual wishlist
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Windows 11 needs an update revamp: bundle updates, deliver almost all of them quietly without user intervention, allow simple rollback, give users a clear single number (everyone is A-OK with Chrome’s single long version number, and by Zeus, enough with the restarts. Whether this requires in-place duplication of DLLs or other mechanisms, restarting just for an update is the #1 pain point I hear.
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Put the brakes on telemetry and shell / app bloat. Stop adding new shell features like News & Interests or My People or 3D Objects every few months, stop tracking uselessly (their telemetry must be terrible for all the update failures we’ve seen), kill the OS-native ads, and give us back our GBs & CPU cycles. Windows 10 should not feel like such a heavy OS on older CPUs: Defender, background processes, app & website timeline syncing, etc. It didn’t help anyone: Microsoft doesn’t depend on ad revenue in any way.
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Search needs to be flawless. Get rid of the internet search, index folder sizes like any modern OS, allow SMB / NFS folder indexing (NAS growth is exploding), and would love some sort of omnibar as PowerToys is always a little buggy.
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Paul mentioned this a few weeks ago: Where is any Microsoft Account Profile syncing? Logging into Windows on a new computer syncs nothing relevant. Settings, default programs if installed (if not, a gentle WinGet-Store prompt), wallpapers, folder views, Group Policy settings, etc. It’s horrendous: another tracking fail. Why track me if you don’t remember anything useful I’ve done?
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Touch feels like I fell into the Windows 7 era. I have owned three 2-in-1 laptops and each one reminds me, “That isn’t hardly as useful as you’d think.” Apps, obviously, are never going to be fixed, but even the OS is finicky. Microsoft doesn’t have the most basic touch assists found in Android or iOS: magnifier when two buttons are very close together, reliable text selection (horrific on any Windows 10 laptop on touch: am I swiping back or am I selecting text?), the touch keyboard is finicky and sometimes refuses to pop-up or then refuses to close), etc.
Those five would be a start. Goodness knows there’s so much left. Virtual desktops, dark mode bugs, buggy backup mechanisms, etc.
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This accidental post on Microsoft’s documentation lends credence to @MaryJo’s theory: Microsoft may split consumer 21H2 and business/enterprise 21H2.
Building on the existence of two, separate 21H2 updates, Windows Latest is speculating that:
- Consumers get Windows “11” CO21H2 (aka Sun Valley) as a big upgrade / feature update.
- Businesses and enterprises get Windows 10 21H2 as a small enablement package.
@thurrott also mentioned this recently shipped 21H1 update was unusually quick & available on every system. The 21H2 enablement package may be upcoming in KB5003214,
We’ve also spotted some hard evidence of enablement package for version 21H2 in a new preview cumulative update for Windows 10 version 21H1.
Inside the KB5003214 (Build 19043.1023), a preview update which was released on May 25, we found references to version “21H2”. It’s even possible to switch the current installation of the May 2021 Update (version 21H1) to Build 19044 / version 21H2 by running some scripts.
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Leo, you asked for a beer limerick during the show? I offer you this:
There once was an IT guy from Denver
Drinking at a club where he’s a member
He spotted a young lass
At whom he made a pass
And was told he couldn’t light her ember.
“That’s a feature, not a flaw” said he.
“One doesn’t have to burn with passion
To find happiness and satisfaction
Is a lesson I learned from Windows XP”
“Maybe not but is helps,” said she.
“For I’m a Mac girl, not PC
And when you make such a report
I get why your only friend is Leo Laport –
he and the people on Windows Weekly.”
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That is going to be a long time. The CLOUD Act, the Patriot Act and US TLA overreach preclude the use of cloud based systems in many countries, like the whole of the EU. Local cloud services are okay, but any cloud service with ties to the US is a non-starter, when it comes to GDPR.
I hope not. I use Windows at home and work and I want the same experience in both locations.
It is indeed that long game. I do think that’s where Microsoft will have a leg up: decades of experience in government / military contracts. Azure & O365 (and Teams, the new SharePoint) all faced the similar restrictions, but have exploded in popularity in spite of them (and the perennial debate of on-prem vs cloud).
I think we still have a good decade left, as I’m thinking any cloud PC come with its own hardware transition to thin clients. I don’t love the idea, but mass market film streaming long looked impractical and now, it’s hard to find optical drives on anything but dedicated Blu-Ray players and consoles.
I personally will keep my full client hardware, but it’s hard to argue with some of the benefits for bigger markets, e.g., education.
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Agreed!
We’ll assume it’s marketed as a full Windows version that allows for in-place upgrades (aka Windows 8.1 → Windows 10), just that it uses the same servicing (aka 21H2) as Windows 10.
Depending on your work organization, how fast businesses switch often comes down to senior system admins. I’d also like the same UI everywhere I go, but many businesses were still running Windows 7 on work machines while consumers were already 1-2 feature updates into Windows 10.
Very few businesses switch at the same time as consumers, it seems likely due to increased training, but it will depend on the organization. Even Windows 10, the apology for Windows 8, only enticed 5% of this survey’s business respondents to upgrade “as soon as possible.”
I hope you’ll be in the 5% or perhaps they can allow exceptions. I never loved UI transitions for the same reason.
Windows 10 enterprise adoption: Who’s in? Survey says… | ZDNet
That’s awesome. Can you make it into a sea shanty? (Kidding!)