Windows 11 is one. Happy birthday?

Jon Honeyball delivers his damning verdict on Windows now that it’s reached the grand old age of one.

So the bouncing baby has reached its first birthday. Cake and candles all round! Everyone gather round and sing a song of celebration! If only I could muster such feelings of joy.

I know it’s sociably unacceptable to criticise any new offspring, but the only description I can muster for Windows 11 is “lipstick on a pig”. Or piglet, I guess?

It shouldn’t have been like this. Windows 10X as built was a ground-up new era operating system – 2020’s answer to Windows NT (New Technology). Something aimed at ARM processors. A clean structural redesign, with all historical cruft removed. Precision-engineered for touch, and with the possibility of a smartphone implementation, too. Remember when the first target device was the Surface Duo, Microsoft’s two-screen folding phone?

Except it didn’t work out that way. Microsoft decided that Android was a better fit for Duo, in a move that surely made Steve Ballmer come out in a rash. Finally, in May 2021, Microsoft admitted that 10X was going nowhere.

Not that Microsoft put it like that. “Instead of bringing a product called Windows 10X to the market in 2021 as we originally intended,” declared a half-buried blog post, “we are leveraging learnings from our journey thus far and accelerating the integration of key foundational 10X technology into other parts of Windows and products at the company.”

Put that into Microsoft Translate and it becomes, “Windows 10 is receiving a facelift”. Just like an ageing Hollywood star getting an overwrought bunch of surgery, the primary look and feel of 10X was bolted onto Windows 10 to create Windows 11. And just like most facelifts, it was the same old platform underneath if you cared to scratch the surface.

Windows 11 has been out for almost a year, and the rush to slap this new UI onto Windows 10 is evident most everywhere you look. Especially when you consider the rate at which Microsoft is trying to clean up the mess that this created. Functionality that went missing (such as Task Manager options) is slowly being bolted back in. There’s an endless struggle to update older UI elements to the Windows 11 look and feel. And Microsoft is pushing the likes of Acer, Dell and HP to drop Windows 10 as quickly as possible.

Microsoft handled the transition story badly, locking out a whole raft of existing customers. And it was surprised when we squealed. The OS-curious jumped in to take a look, before many jumped back in horror. With no compelling reasons to upgrade, the most likely reason to “switch” is because you’re buying a new computer so you might as well go with 11. Little wonder that take-up is flatlining, according to Statcounter. I can’t see this changing. Corporate users will run Windows 10 for years to come, as they try to wrap their heads around the whole 11 debacle. Their most reasonable transition strategy is surely to hold off until their hand is forced.

So, no, it isn’t a happy birthday for Windows 11. But let’s face it, Windows is just an operating system. Your needs for that should be robustly assessed and decisions made. Business users should go with the Microsoft flow. For others, it might be time to consider desktop Linux.