So, let's think about this and assume Microsoft are behaving rationally rather than just being out to screw users for the hell of it. Most of Microsoft's incent

So, let's think about this and assume Microsoft are behaving rationally rather than just being out to screw users for the hell of it. Most of Microsoft's incentives are to get as many people as possible to upgrade to Windows 11. Why aren't they making it as easy as possible? I think it's because they're planning on supporting Windows 11 for 10 years. Supporting 20 year old hardware in 2031 would be a massive pain, both in terms of testing and in terms of still not being able to depend on platform features and needing all kinds of kludgy fallbacks (e.g. virtualization or the TPM). The cost of allowing installation on older hardware for now is basically zero, and is an easy concession to make to help with the negative PR. The cost of promising updates on that old hardware is impossible to estimate, but could be quite high.