Windows 11 leak reveals new UI, Start menu, and more (UPDATE - added source for Windows 10 retirement date)

The life and death of Microsoft Bob is mostly a mystery. A few facts from my recollection of the media reports:

Bob was born in Redmond Washington. He suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder and was known to experience panic attacks around punched-hole cards, Fortran, magnets, IBM keyboards, paperclips, Apples, and anything POSIX.

Bob was found dead in his one-bedroom 3.5" high-density floppy diskette just two days after the announcement of a new "improved" Office Assistant. The official cause of death was suicide, but some suspected murder. Unfortunately, his home was reformatted the week following his death, making it impossible to conduct a thorough investigation. Conspiracy?

A paperclip was found beside his home at the time of his reported death. It had been magnetized.

The night preceding his death, neighbors overheard Bob arguing about the layout of the new TPS report template for Office.

Bob's funeral was closed-source. No one attended.

Last seen with Bob:
View attachment 370063
It looks like you're writing a TPS report. 📎

Would you like help?

🔵 Get help with with writing the report.​
🔵 Just type the report without help.​
☑️ Violently smash PC with hammer.​
 
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TL;DR whole thread. But a friend pointed out that the idea of centering the taskbar (dock like) may be due to the popularity of ultra wide monitors.
 
So should I dump all my old Hardware on ebay since it's going to be devalued because of Windows 11?
 
As much as people bash Apple for it, us tech nerds always hear 'my mac is just so much faster!'... well yeah... they use (mostly) good parts in their systems. I hate hearing how great and premium macs are and how trash pc's are when they're comparing their $1200 macbook air to their $300 walmart laptop.

That said, I have macOS, Windows, and multiple flavors of Linux at home.

I actually love the look of Windows 11. I hope there is more to it though than the aesthetics.

My M1 Macbook cost less than my XPS 9310 and it blows the Dell out of the water on things like video editing, and (especially) battery life. The Dell's Display is sharper of course. And it has touch but it's a 2in1 anyhow. I have 11 Pro for Workstations running on the 7310 under HyperV with 16GB (the 9310 has 32GB) and it runs great. The M1 chip is the real game changer here in both throughput and power for sure!
 
My M1 Macbook cost less than my XPS 9310 and it blows the Dell out of the water on things like video editing, and (especially) battery life. The Dell's Display is sharper of course. And it has touch but it's a 2in1 anyhow. I have 11 Pro for Workstations running on the 7310 under HyperV with 16GB (the 9310 has 32GB) and it runs great. The M1 chip is the real game changer here in both throughput and power for sure!

 
My M1 Macbook cost less than my XPS 9310 and it blows the Dell out of the water on things like video editing, and (especially) battery life. The Dell's Display is sharper of course. And it has touch but it's a 2in1 anyhow. I have 11 Pro for Workstations running on the 7310 under HyperV with 16GB (the 9310 has 32GB) and it runs great. The M1 chip is the real game changer here in both throughput and power for sure!
cool story bro. whats you thoughts on the topic?
 
Nothing at all wrong with Win11...been using it for two months.
I'm on an MSI B450 pro Carbon with a Ryzen 5600X. Fast and no crashes.
Same here. Down loaded the big update this month. Been stable as hell. No issues. Daily driver. I am not sure. But I am sure bitching will continue though. Seems fast as hell to me and I actually got used to the menu bar in the middle. I have the 43 inch wide screen and I am starting to prefer it better now. Muscle Memory took me to left first few weeks but now it’s normal.
 
Same here. Down loaded the big update this month. Been stable as hell. No issues. Daily driver. I am not sure. But I am sure bitching will continue though. Seems fast as hell to me and I actually got used to the menu bar in the middle. I have the 43 inch wide screen and I am starting to prefer it better now. Muscle Memory took me to left first few weeks but now it’s normal.
I too like the central placement of the taskbar. Very clean look. I transcoded some sim video the other night and I was blown away by how fast it had Handbrake chewing through it. I have not had a single program fail to launch. Every simracing title I currently own screams along...
Assetto Corsa, ACC, Rfactor2, Automobilista2, RRE. Not a single issue...fast and smooth.
 
I like it for the most part. Only gripe is the forced grouping based on icon. When I have several browser windows open, it's less quick to bring up the one I want. But that's a super minor thing. I also actually quite like the centered bar on my ultra wide, but also like having it on the left on my Surface Pro. Glad it's an option for now.

I'm also not one to go hacking through installing random apps to be stuck in a look/feel from 10 years ago, or edit random regkeys to change things.

Everything I run - games, software dev, virtual envs, etc. all run very well. I haven't (and can't) A/B performance to Win10, but, it certainly doesn't feel any slower at all.
 
People need to move on. The Start menu was never that great.
It is not about the start menu. It's the erosion of customization options, restricting access, making it harder to create true offline installations and such things. Every ui change in each consecutive W10 release makes it worse than it was before. With no exception.Windows 11 is just a continuation of that trend. What used to be 1 clicks, becomes 2, then 3, then 15..., and then eventually removed.
 
I like it for the most part. Only gripe is the forced grouping based on icon. When I have several browser windows open, it's less quick to bring up the one I want. But that's a super minor thing. I also actually quite like the centered bar on my ultra wide, but also like having it on the left on my Surface Pro. Glad it's an option for now.

I'm also not one to go hacking through installing random apps to be stuck in a look/feel from 10 years ago, or edit random regkeys to change things.

Everything I run - games, software dev, virtual envs, etc. all run very well. I haven't (and can't) A/B performance to Win10, but, it certainly doesn't feel any slower at all.
In other words you are the model MS user, who just falls in line, and accepts every bit of inconvenience or hurdle they push ahead of you without a complaint.
 
In other words you are the model MS user, who just falls in line, and accepts every bit of inconvenience or hurdle they push ahead of you without a complaint.

At this point, who really cares? Privacy and security are way more important than anything else, especially today.
 
At this point, who really cares? Privacy and security are way more important than anything else, especially today.
Do you actually believe that a new version of Windows is going to help this?

Come on now.... I knew back when I was a kid on dial-up that security was really never a thing. If someones wants in, they will get in. Proven time and time again.
 
In other words you are the model MS user, who just falls in line, and accepts every bit of inconvenience or hurdle they push ahead of you without a complaint.
What you view as "inconvenience" and "hurdles", I simply view as "something new". There isn't an OS out there that doesn't go through changes over time. Things in life change... people can choose to be a stick in the mud, act childish, throw a fit and slow down everyone else, or, they can just roll with things they have no control over.
 
What you view as "inconvenience" and "hurdles", I simply view as "something new".

There's nothing new about this. Every possible interface has already existed for decades. And Windows offered the best interface experience for about one or two of them, depending on who you ask. Not perfect, but still the best.

Windows has set so many standards for best UI that other operating systems deliberately use worse UIs in order to differentiate themselves from Windows.
 
It is not about the start menu. It's the erosion of customization options, restricting access, making it harder to create true offline installations and such things. Every ui change in each consecutive W10 release makes it worse than it was before. With no exception.Windows 11 is just a continuation of that trend. What used to be 1 clicks, becomes 2, then 3, then 15..., and then eventually removed.
This post on ghacks sums it up well:

Jeff M. S. said:
Just FYI if anyone including Martin thinks those are the only options they removed from the taskbar, that’s not actually true. 90% of taskbar functionality is gone and they want you to “give feedback” (beg them to restore all 90% of it one by one). Here’s a brief history of the Taskbar for those who haven’t been using Windows long enough:

Windows 95: Taskbar was born. Buttons exist with text labels and appear in the order in which the app is started. Third party apps like Taskbar Shuffle can rearrange buttons but Windows natively doesn’t support it yet

Windows 98: DeskBands (Taskbar Toolbars) added, one of which is QuickLaunch but there are others like Address, Links – basically any folder with icons can be turned into a toolbar

Windows 2000: Link to open Task Manager, now even tray icons can be rearranged with apps like Taskbar Shuffle but Windows still doesn’t natively allow you to do that

Windows Me: High color tray icons natively (earlier versions supported a limited color palette and requires Explorer.exe patches), there is also a nice setting to prevent accidental moving and resizing of the taskbar once it is set up on any side of the screen

Windows XP: Start button finally updated for the hot corner so you can just shove the mouse pointer into the corner which carries the Start button without precisely positioning the mouse over “Start”.

Taskbar locking was introduced to prevent moving of taskbar itself plus internal elements too i.e. deskbands on the taskbar get locked, Optional taskbar button combining and unused tray icon (notification area icon) hiding

Windows Vista: Thumbnail previews introduced, Tray icon positions remembered, System icons now in a separate locked down area

Windows 7: Proper large icons added even for running app buttons, which properly touch the edge of the screen (earlier only Quick Launch could have large icons and that created a problem that there remained an area below buttons that didn’t activate the taskbar buttons).

You can now natively rearrange buttons and tray icons, Jumplists added as well as pinning, progress bars, much more customizable tray overflow area, Drag and drop to pin items and Shift+ drag to open with. Only the date, language and Show Desktop in hot corner are locked, rest of the icons are freely rearrangeable.

One big negative is forced grouping of app buttons even if you choose “Never combine” they are still grouped together e.g. two Explorer windows always next to each other. Windows 7 taskbar added AppUserModelIDs and overall greatly expanded functionality although not all of it was exposed to the end user. But apps like 7+ Taskbar Tweaker were born which let you customize the hell out of it

Windows 8: Removes Start button, but adds multi-monitor taskbar

Windows 8.1: Restores Start button but no Start “menu”

Windows 10: Removes button separation lines for the taskbar’s theme.

Windows 11: Removes most features as only a miniscule functionality is re-implemented with the new XAML islands technology. WTF. But everything else from past 25 years of progress is GONE and as usual they want to give feedback which will be all ignored and nothing actually restored

If you ask me, the last few releases of Windows have been all about the crippling of the Start menu and the Taskbar (along with some nasty crippling changes to Explorer as well). Whoever is working on these needs to be fired from Microsoft. We are getting improved kernel etc but horrible unacceptable regressions in the UI
 
Changing the UI doesn't necessarily always = progress. Look no further than Windows 8. Even MS about-faced on most of what they did in Windows 8. Even the good things. Some of what they're doing via the UI/UX is a straight-up experiment. Technical progress and additional security don't require UI changes. They're using educated guesses to make common functions easier. Or (in a more sinister opinion) steering users to do things in a way that makes MS's lives easier or more profitable. Every time they change the UI they're playing a game of guessing how important something's location is to people.
 
Changing the UI doesn't necessarily always = progress. Look no further than Windows 8. Even MS about-faced on most of what they did in Windows 8. Even the good things. Some of what they're doing via the UI/UX is a straight-up experiment. Technical progress and additional security don't require UI changes. They're using educated guesses to make common functions easier. Or (in a more sinister opinion) steering users to do things in a way that makes MS's lives easier or more profitable. Every time they change the UI they're playing a game of guessing how important something's location is to people.
I don't think it's nearly as thought out as that. I think that it's simply an issue with what UI designers have been taught in at least the last decade, a lot of which has been influenced by the emergence of smart phones. Everything needs to be dumbed down, replaced with nothing but meaningless icons, and include a ton of unused whitespace for touchscreen functionality. I've had to recently deal with this nonsense in the most recent upgrade of EPIC Hyperspace my company did.
 
What you view as "inconvenience" and "hurdles", I simply view as "something new".
Oh, RLY? "When I have several browser windows open, it's less quick to bring up the one I want."
At least don't contradict yourself so blatantly. What you describe is exactly what I said making easily accessible functions less easy, but you choose to just accept it because of the misguided notion that change is unconditionally good.
There isn't an OS out there that doesn't go through changes over time. Things in life change...
Change in of itself is not good. Especially change for the sake of change. But when change is demonstrably for the worse then you don't get to use sleigh of hand to justify it.
people can choose to be a stick in the mud, act childish, throw a fit and slow down everyone else, or, they can just roll with things they have no control over.
I'm sorry that I'm hindering your progress towards a brick wall. What was I thinking wanting change to be a net positive, instead of just change for the sake of changing things.
 
I think that it's simply an issue with what UI designers have been taught in at least the last decade, a lot of which has been influenced by the emergence of smart phones.

Yeah but then contrast that with Windows Phone and Zune UIs. Those were fantastic.

I'm leaning toward change for change's sake. They don't have any idea what they're doing or why. They don't know what their problems are and they don't know how to address them, so they're just pulling design elements out of a hat.
 
This post on ghacks sums it up well:
Windows ui designers are clearly taking inspiration from the wrong places, like phones. And it seems to me that they are basing changes on the default look and behaviour of windows 10, ignoring all the customization possibilities. If you compare w11 to the oob w10 experience then the changes don't seem that bad or significant. But when compared to a highly customized setup like mine (without any 3rd party apps mind you) the change in functionality is unacceptable.
 
Windows ui designers are clearly taking inspiration from the wrong places, like phones. And it seems to me that they are basing changes on the default look and behaviour of windows 10, ignoring all the customization possibilities. If you compare w11 to the oob w10 experience then the changes don't seem that bad or significant. But when compared to a highly customized setup like mine (without any 3rd party apps mind you) the change in functionality is unacceptable.
Still scratching my head why they don't have a more customizable version of windows for those of us who have been using it for many years. Keep windows home ed. for all the novices/computer illiterate who aren't going to care one way or the other.
 
Still scratching my head why they don't have a more customizable version of windows for those of us who have been using it for many years. Keep windows home ed. for all the novices/computer illiterate who aren't going to care one way or the other.

That's what I'd like to see. Hell, bury the options so casual users can't find them for all I care - just keep them available for those who want 'em.
 
Yeah but then contrast that with Windows Phone and Zune UIs. Those were fantastic.

I'm leaning toward change for change's sake. They don't have any idea what they're doing or why. They don't know what their problems are and they don't know how to address them, so they're just pulling design elements out of a hat.
I'd debate the Windows Phone and Zune interface advantages to some degree, but that's another thread.

Microsoft seems to have a problem with leaving the UI alone after a successful release. Like a painter who goes dadaist because their last piece was "too beautiful." (Not that Windows 10 is perfection, but you get the idea.) Well, that and the company has had serious bouts of Apple envy, like with Vista (to dupe OS X) and 8 (to counter the iPad).
 
I'd debate the Windows Phone and Zune interface advantages to some degree, but that's another thread.

They looked fantastic even if they were rudimentary, and the looks and some of the functionality is in Windows 10, particularly the icons and taskbar. And while the looks of Vista weren't popular with many, the functionality of the start menu and taskbar introduced in Vista set the high water mark for Windows.

The best possible option would be to have the Vista Glass start menu with 8-10 Metro looks, lose the old control panel, and put everything into the new settings menu. And update the old utilities like regedit and disk management to use the settings menu along with everything else.

Make the taskbar float as an option, and still make it lockable to any of the desktop borders, and lockable and extensible to any or all displays.
 
MS should expect the same uptake as Vista - even after they fixed the stability issues with early drivers / service pack, the perforance hit with Aero was still too much for anyone without a discrete or Nvidia iGPU.

It took until Windows 7 before you could actually buy acceptable IGP from both AMD and Intel...

the problem we have today is not the case of "nobody makes a cheap igp that can handle Aero," instead we now have a case of Windows performance being overkill for most users, while MS goes forever fishing for the "One That Got Away" (the rushed replacement for the cluster that is TPM 1.2, with easily-cracked protections)

When the rest of your machine is already complete overkill, nobody is going to toss their working machines in the can, just so that MS can tack another feature box hardly any of us will actually use; And given the cluster that TPM 1.2 already was, how long before we find another major exploit sitting there ripe-for-the-picking in firmware?
 
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Actually, the more I learn about TPM, the more I think it's a good idea, BUT it should be optional for DIY builders.

Yes, force Dell and others to sell compliant hardware, but if someone has an older machine and does not want or can't afford a whole new rig, at least give them the option of the new OS.

But if it's really that important for security to MS, then fine, I will accept it. I do think the security benefits are substantial.
 
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