4 ms·

But who wants to be stuck on an older OS? It's still a big reason to upgrade before it would have been technically necessary.

userbinator 5y ago
Everyone who isn't the sort of "rabid trendchaser techie" that MS is trying to convert more of its users to... fortunately, the majority of slightly-computer-literate people I know are not. They use their computers to create documents, email, browse Internet, and complain about the constant churn of the tech industry. They are constantly irritated by UI changes and other updates that had zero or negative impacts on their daily use. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is the norm, not "What's the latest and newest? I must have it!"
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Ok true, but this is hacker news of course. I would expect most people here to be exactly that sort of "rabid trendchaser techie" :) And of course, the question is how hard is MS going to push Windows 11. They pushed the upgrade from W7 to W10 pretty hard towards end users.
  - Daishiman 5y ago
    Even the most die-had MS user is not excited about Windows and hasn't been for the last decade. Operating systems are finished products at this point.
    - supernovae 5y ago
      People say this all the time, but it certainly isn't true. I for one, I am excited about Windows 11 because its finally things coming together. 64bit only, dropping old cruft, making the UI consistent/cleaner.. If you like tech/gaming - there is a lot to be excited about. PC and Console gaming with Game pass ultimate is a hell of a deal... Plus WSLg, Android apps ... i mean come on, its pretty f'n cool.
      - fleaaaa 5y ago
        Agree, plus some techs that were only available for their console are coming to desktop which would gain quite a lot of performance boost for low to mid tier budget desktop. UI change is icing on the cake but more or less it's huge update for consumer OS. Obviously folks here are pretty much isolated from mass market though.
      - Daishiman 5y ago
        None of those things are changing the daily use habits and the usability of an OS that I've been using to do the exact same things for the past 20 years. The internal cleanup is great; good for them, but it doesn't map out to any subtantial change in the apps you're using. The UI, thanks for it being clean, but as far as I'm concerned everything after Windows 7 has not improved desktop app usability much if anything. We used to have compact UIs that maximized screen usage. Now every single UI element has tons of padding, tons of vertical screen usage in a world where everything is widescreen. The compromise of desktop OSes for mobile-like use cases has not improved the desktop story at all and judging from the videos of Windows it's more of the same. Android apps? Every app I've ever wanted already exists on Windows or the browser. I'm sure a minuscule amount of people will want that, but I want native desktop apps, leveraging native OS features. Game pass is great, I use it for the Xbox, but it's not a core OS feature. Anyone can implement this, it doesn't require Windows 11.
        supernovae 5y ago
        Ok, so for you, stay with windows 10. I don't see what the problem is. It's supported until 2025 at least.
      - staticman2 5y ago
        Game pass already works on Windows 10. It's not in any way a plausible Windows 11 feature.
        supernovae 5y ago
        It is when the store experience is much improved and the performance is better because all the old !64bit cruft is removed.
  - recursive 5y ago
    I don't mind using an old thing at all. Unless there's a specific reason to use the new thing. I haven't heard one yet.
- EvanAnderson 5y ago
  Presumably Microsoft will aggressively push developers to use Windows 11-only APIs to encourage adoption. I hate it, but it seems likely.
  - userbinator 5y ago
    Similar to how it tried to aggressively push UWP? No doubt some developers will get sucked into the hype, but I bet the majority of Windows developers that have stayed on Win32 are not going to change. If MS tries to deprecate Win32, they will lose all their big business customers too. And WINE is so good that it got attention from MS' lawyers. As a long-time Win32 developer myself, I like the fact that my work is usable on anything from Win95 and up. Backwards compatibility has long been the key strength of MS, so them doing stuff like this recently is playing with fire. I'm wary of "the New Microsoft" far more than the old.
    - EvanAnderson 5y ago
      Yeah-- I think it'll be like UWP. I just hope it fails the same way. Pretty much 100% agreement with everything in your comment. The "new Microsoft" is really, really suspicious to me.
lupire 5y ago
Since 2015 or so when proprietary OSes implemented all needed features and switched to adding user-hostile advertising and spyware to raise money. Even for tech heads, Win 7 was plenty good until security patches stopped.

userbinator 5y ago

Everyone who isn't the sort of "rabid trendchaser techie" that MS is trying to convert more of its users to... fortunately, the majority of slightly-computer-literate people I know are not. They use their computers to create documents, email, browse Internet, and complain about the constant churn of the tech industry. They are constantly irritated by UI changes and other updates that had zero or negative impacts on their daily use. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is the norm, not "What's the latest and newest? I must have it!"

GekkePrutser 5y ago
Ok true, but this is hacker news of course. I would expect most people here to be exactly that sort of "rabid trendchaser techie" :) And of course, the question is how hard is MS going to push Windows 11. They pushed the upgrade from W7 to W10 pretty hard towards end users.
- Daishiman 5y ago
  Even the most die-had MS user is not excited about Windows and hasn't been for the last decade. Operating systems are finished products at this point.
  - supernovae 5y ago
    People say this all the time, but it certainly isn't true. I for one, I am excited about Windows 11 because its finally things coming together. 64bit only, dropping old cruft, making the UI consistent/cleaner.. If you like tech/gaming - there is a lot to be excited about. PC and Console gaming with Game pass ultimate is a hell of a deal... Plus WSLg, Android apps ... i mean come on, its pretty f'n cool.
    - fleaaaa 5y ago
      Agree, plus some techs that were only available for their console are coming to desktop which would gain quite a lot of performance boost for low to mid tier budget desktop. UI change is icing on the cake but more or less it's huge update for consumer OS. Obviously folks here are pretty much isolated from mass market though.
    - Daishiman 5y ago
      None of those things are changing the daily use habits and the usability of an OS that I've been using to do the exact same things for the past 20 years. The internal cleanup is great; good for them, but it doesn't map out to any subtantial change in the apps you're using. The UI, thanks for it being clean, but as far as I'm concerned everything after Windows 7 has not improved desktop app usability much if anything. We used to have compact UIs that maximized screen usage. Now every single UI element has tons of padding, tons of vertical screen usage in a world where everything is widescreen. The compromise of desktop OSes for mobile-like use cases has not improved the desktop story at all and judging from the videos of Windows it's more of the same. Android apps? Every app I've ever wanted already exists on Windows or the browser. I'm sure a minuscule amount of people will want that, but I want native desktop apps, leveraging native OS features. Game pass is great, I use it for the Xbox, but it's not a core OS feature. Anyone can implement this, it doesn't require Windows 11.
      - supernovae 5y ago
        Ok, so for you, stay with windows 10. I don't see what the problem is. It's supported until 2025 at least.
    - staticman2 5y ago
      Game pass already works on Windows 10. It's not in any way a plausible Windows 11 feature.
      - supernovae 5y ago
        It is when the store experience is much improved and the performance is better because all the old !64bit cruft is removed.
- recursive 5y ago
  I don't mind using an old thing at all. Unless there's a specific reason to use the new thing. I haven't heard one yet.
EvanAnderson 5y ago
Presumably Microsoft will aggressively push developers to use Windows 11-only APIs to encourage adoption. I hate it, but it seems likely.
- userbinator 5y ago
  Similar to how it tried to aggressively push UWP? No doubt some developers will get sucked into the hype, but I bet the majority of Windows developers that have stayed on Win32 are not going to change. If MS tries to deprecate Win32, they will lose all their big business customers too. And WINE is so good that it got attention from MS' lawyers. As a long-time Win32 developer myself, I like the fact that my work is usable on anything from Win95 and up. Backwards compatibility has long been the key strength of MS, so them doing stuff like this recently is playing with fire. I'm wary of "the New Microsoft" far more than the old.
  - EvanAnderson 5y ago
    Yeah-- I think it'll be like UWP. I just hope it fails the same way. Pretty much 100% agreement with everything in your comment. The "new Microsoft" is really, really suspicious to me.

lupire 5y ago

Since 2015 or so when proprietary OSes implemented all needed features and switched to adding user-hostile advertising and spyware to raise money. Even for tech heads, Win 7 was plenty good until security patches stopped.