Windows 11 is no longer merely “coming this fall.” Microsoft will begin releasing the new operating system to the public on October 5, starting with newer PCs (and PCs being sold in stores) and then rolling out to other supported systems over the next nine or so months. The company also says that the Amazon-powered Android app support coming to Windows 11 won’t be ready for public consumption at launch; Microsoft will offer “a preview [of Android apps in the Microsoft Store] for Windows Insiders over the coming months.”
Get your centered taskbar and 12th concurrently used Windows theme October 5.
Because “Windows 11” is less of a mouthful than “facsist posh boys racists let them eat cake social aparthied” version. What I don’t think people get is how closely US operating systems and their survival fit around US law and politics and economic needs. And at the moment the US very definately is throwing the rest of us under the bus. Amazon powered android app support? I guess that is two other American monopolies in their pocket.
The staged rollout is another con. It would look bad if it was Windows “90% cannot install it” version or Windows “we don’t want this garbage” version or Windows “know your place wifebeater housekeeping tax” version.
Brexit and the pandemic is sucking the life out of the UK as well as decades of American inspired “Chicago school” economics and a decade of failed austerity policies not to mention the “hostile environment”. You’re not going to get anyone in the current UK government lift a finger. The only question is whether anyone in the EU Horizon’sproject and EU Commssion are going to put their heads together and flex regulatory muscles so they release Windows “bluff has been called” version.
Either way I think it’s time to get off the American crack whether it’s OS, social media, search engines, transnational online retail, or media giants. There needs to be sanity in the market and it’s not there at the moment.
Why did you have to bring “brexit” into this?
I guess you only read socialist newspapers. Everything from the right to moderate left sources show that the UK is outperforming most of the EU despite the pandemic according to everything from the mirror to the express.
Don’t buy the UK PR BS to counter the EU KA.
I didn’t vote to leave the EU as I now live in it. However, living here has convinced me that Brexiteers had a point. The UK is doing just fine and will continue to do so.
It might even be able to use some of the money it’s saving and invest in mental health treatment for people that clearly need it! Lol
@VardekPetrovic
Last time I checked, the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) were vehemently pro-Brexit.
It seems you’ve made the mistake of confusing Neo-Liberal with Socialist.
You need help, seriously.
Very true.
I have mixed feelings about new Windows 11 release. To be fair, I am currently typing this on Windows 10, but it was not a 100% fit either.
Going through their own highlights:
1. The new design and sounds are modern, fresh, clean and beautiful, bringing you a sense of calm and ease.
So a new UI, trying to finally put the coffin on the Win32 style and replace everything with “modern” rounded rectangles. I am indifferent on this one, it could work; in the past I got used to the “ribbon” on Office. I am sure I will miss the old UI, but I am also sure they have some pretty experienced people working on this.
2. With Start, we’ve put you and your content at the center. Start utilizes the power of the cloud and Microsoft 365 to show you your recent files no matter what device you were viewing them on.
More online services inside “Start” menu. I already don’t like the slowness of Windows 10, and immediately disable their assistant after every reinstall. Let’s see how this goes.
3. Snap Layouts, Snap Groups and Desktops provide an even more powerful way to multitask and optimize your screen real estate.
Finally Windows has a response to i3 / awesome, probably with much less manual configuration. I used to try Object Desktop and a few other Stardock tools, but they were very resource hungry. This is the most welcome change for me.
4. Chat from Microsoft Teams integrated into the taskbar provides a faster way to connect to the people you care about.
Lovely…
5. Widgets, a new personalized feed powered by AI, provides a faster way to access the information you care about, and with Microsoft Edge’s world class performance, speed and productivity features you can get more done on the web.
I think this is their third(?) attempt in including interactive content on the desktop. The first one was Windows ME(?) web based stuff. And then some more in Windows Vista. They usually get things right in the third try, so let’s give it some benefit of the doubt.
6. Windows 11 delivers the best Windows ever for gaming and unlocks the full potential of your system’s hardware with technology like DirectX12 Ultimate, DirectStorage and Auto HDR. With Xbox Game Pass for PC or Ultimate you get access to over 100 high-quality PC games to play on Windows 11 for one low monthly price. (Xbox Game Pass sold separately.)
As I imagined, they are moving Windows into a more “locked down” ecosystem a la the Xbox.
Yet, I would have preferred the other way around — making the Xbox into a more generic purpose computer. Their recent hardware is actually pretty nifty for the price (top of the line AMD cpu, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB nvme), yet it can more or less only play games and browse basic web.
I don’t line this general trend for more curated systems, hopefully the Linux based Steam Link will be a breath of fresh air.
sukru,
I actually used active desktop in windows 98 quite a bit. I thought it was awesome and not dissimilar to the widgets we have on android and linux desktops today, They removed it all in the next windows upgrade to my disappointment at the time. (I think I made the transition from win98 to win2k)
Ditto.
I think what you are asking for would be very popular among xbox users and I think microsoft already had a good model for doing it. My boss had a windows XP media center edition PC and it was actually really cool. It targets the living room entertainment space, but was also a very effective & usable windows computer and he did work on it. I didn’t have one at university but it would have been awesome there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0DTZNPhyGQ
Xbox is little more than a computer anyways and it would work. But you’re right the trend is for corporations to push us steadily towards more walled gardens. All our major tech companies are finding that being a gatekeeper is lucrative business worth many billions but it has come at the expense of consumers and developers in general.
Alfman,
Yes, Media Center was awesome. Unlike the competitors, it came with free guide service. And you could use the Xbox 360 as an “extender” no longer needing long cables from your PC to the TV area.
The fact that more consolidation is also coming from Microsoft is ironic. They have risen up thanks to commoditization.
Yes, I get the value in appliance like products. If I were to get a Wyze Cam, the hardware also comes with their own software and online service. Yet, at the same time, if Wyze were ever to go out of business, my camera becomes a useless. So it is a tradeoff, but at least an upfront one.
Windows switching to closed ecosystem is not.
Microsoft became successful by selling software independently when every other manufacturer had closed ecosystems (Apple, Amiga, IBM, Sun, practically everybody else, except maybe BSD). Windows 11 breaks that cycle.
My theory is all these began with the multimedia and DRM, as far back as 5-10 years ago. Games had added to that as well. The 4K BluRays on the PC required certain combinations of CPUs and GPUs to make sure there was a “protected” path. Then Netflix required certain browser versions, and maybe Steam’s success led to standardized DRM’ed software distribution.
Of course all these restrictions hinder only the regular users. One could get a $300 device to disable HDMI content protections + $3,000 4K recorder to bypass all these. So a $30 stick can play the content, thinking it is secure, while our high end PCs will max out at 720p.
Back to Windows Media Center: It was possible to set up add-ons to play services like Netflix or Hulu on them. This meant, I could actually set up a fully functional media PC to my liking. Today it is no longer an option due to content restrictions.
sukru,
That’s exactly my concern as well. Note that I’m not against IOT devices being able to connect to Alexa, Siri, Wyze, etc. But in the ideal world devices would be using standards that are not locked to a fixed service provider. Owners should be able to change providers at will.
Just take phones, they used to be permanently locked to a single provider and you had to throw it out if you changed providers. Thankfully regulators stepped up and gave consumers a right to unlock. All of us benefit when we have the right to migrate the devices we own, but unfortunately these rights do not apply to IOT devices in general. If I buy a Wyze or Ring camera, nest thermostat, etc, the devices can be permanently tethered to providers that can and sometimes do discontinue, as you bring up.
One of my gripes is that in many cases it’s not clear (to me) whether a device offers traditional HTML access, rest interface, or similar. HTML interfaces used to be the norm on every IP enabled device sold and it made them easy to use in DIY integrations. But to my chagrin many manufacturers are dropping that and switching over to a remote website or proprietary application for administrating local devices. I’ve even seen a “cloud based” router where you need to login to a service to configure things like local port forwarding…and if the service goes down, too bad. I see hundreds of products touting compatibility with alexa, smart phone apps, or whatever, but then they’re silent on whether it can be used outside of these services. For someone who intends to use these products outside of 3rd party apps & services it’s painful not being given this information up front
Not too long auto some tplink automation devices remotely disabled local functionality. There was a stink about it, so at least now tplink is permitting owners to revert firmware on a case by case basis at least…but I’m extremely concerned with this trend of manufacturers taking away owner automony.
http://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2020/11/23/tplink-local-access/
My new bluetooth multimeter of all things has a cloud dependency that was not disclosed. I have to actually log into a remote account for it to work. And on top of that the app demands I turn on GPS and grant it access otherwise it immediately quits. This caught me completely off guard because in the past I’ve always taken it for granted that bluetooth devices work locally.. None of it is remotely acceptable and I would not have bought the damn thing had I known this was the case. Alas return shipping to china is more expensive than what it cost…I just won’t use the bluetooth functionality, but I’m really irked that I got tricked into buying a device tethered to a service I didn’t want.
Apparently this is going to be the new thing with cars, features that are controlled and authorized remotely for subscription purposes…ugh.
Sorry for ranting so much about it, haha.
Yeah, well microsoft is looking at the hundreds of billions apple has made on 3rd party app sales and wants in on the action. Their challenge is to do it in a way while managing to concerting existing marketshare without damaging it. They started to make “legacy” applications secondhand citizens in windows 8, but the result was jarring and unpopular, I do think microsoft’s long term goal is for windows to be closed.
I concur.
Alfman,
I don’t know your specific device. However the reason Android went to “location” permission instead of “Bluetooth” specific one was a recent security push:
https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/160479/why-do-i-need-to-turn-on-location-services-to-pair-with-a-bluetooth-device
If you can scan for Bluetooth, you can easily infer device location.
sukru,
Thanks for letting me know that. TBH, like the poster you link to, I feel it’s unreasonable for android to force us to grant location permissions for applications performing a bluetooth scan. I wouldn’t want to be forced to grant location permissions to perform wifi scans or using public networks even though these can sometimes reveal locations as well (IP and wifi geolocation has gotten remarkably specific over time).
As it pertains to the multi-meter the scanning & device pairing happens outside the application anyways, so it does not follow that the application would naturally require scanning privileges (or location) privileges. I’ll have to concede that I don’t know enough about the android implementation to place this blame on the app vendor or on google’s permission system. It’s possible that location permission being required is google’s fault.
I still have another question about it though because even if I assume android limitations require me to grant location permissions to bluetooth apps, why in the heck would using bluetooth require me to power on my GPS receiver? This doesn’t make any sense to me. I strongly suspect it boils down to abusive overreach by the application developer, but I admit I hadn’t considered that google’s bluetooth implementation may be playing a role. It’s something I’ll have to research further.
For the record though, granting the application GPS coordinates was just piling on top of an already unacceptable situation. I still think it’s unacceptable to require a cloud registration & login to use my multimeter’s bluetooth features.
The posts by android developer Brian Reinhold on the stack exchange link earlier seem to suggest this is in fact google’s fault and it causes big headaches for developers who just need bluetooth connectivity and nothing to do with location services. It even caused his application to be rejected over the location permissions that android forced him to use for bluetooth.
I haven’t confirmed it myself, but apparently Google finally fixed this in android 12 by adding separate permissions for bluetooth and location services. Honestly it should have been the case from the get-go, it’s going to take a while to rewrite applications to target android 12 given the marketshare of older devices. It’s interesting to note that google’s motivation for finally fixing this was that android was forcing covid-19 contact tracing apps be granted location permissions, which caused a great deal of confusion among users who were told these apps do not need location data.
https://www.xda-developers.com/android-12-location-scan-nearby-bluetooth-devices/
This is all very interesting, I learned a lot today
Alfman,
I don’t know what to say. Android used to have tens or hundreds of individual permissions, and was “simplified” to group them to a few high level ones:
https://www.howtogeek.com/190863/androids-app-permissions-were-just-simplified-now-theyre-much-less-secure/
Now they seem to be revisiting to expand some of these groups. Finding the optimum separation will probably take some time.
Actually I think its gonna be much MUCH worse than Xbox if the EU doesn’t get involved as what I think they are doing with the insane system requirements (nobody here with a bit of sanity is gonna say a Core i7 7700k or a Ryzen 1600af would have any issue running Windows 11) is they are wanting to copy the Apple/Google walled garden where they limit you to their store and can cut users loose frequently, basically turning PCs into glorified smartphones.
Considering we are in a global chip shortage trying to turn PCs into disposable items is about the worst thing you can do but I think its gonna be even nastier in that they will try to use a combination of Secureboot and TPM to make it as big of a PITA and possibly risky (just look at the recent article on the Samsung phone that kills your cameras if you unlock the bootloader) to attempt to leave the garden to keep the users locked in. They will point to Google and Apple as “competition” so your “choice” will be one of 3 walled gardens and if you want to run something like Linux they will make it as difficult as possible.
So yeah Windows 11 is looking like Vista levels of nasty with some Microsoft Palladium cooked in just to make it a bit more toxic and to try to turn PCs back in time to the days of black boxes. I’d hope they’d get busted for antitrust but the US courts have been bought and paid for for decades now so if the EU doesn’t step in Windows 11 may truly be the “last version of Windows” as you’ll have to buy a new PC every time they put out a new version.
My biggest issue with windows 11 is the requirement for secure boot with CSM disabled in the BIOS. This breaks dual booting for me and would mean I’d have to give up running a lot of other operating systems that either don’t have secure boot support or simply don’t have trusted keys on some devices.
It’s another move to knock the little guy out of the OS space.
laffer1,
I did not know they wanted CSM to go away. I guess they are dropping legacy cards with non-UEFI ROMs. To be fair those are rare, but can still be around.
So, using old servers as workstations would no longer be an option. Those older Xeons are pretty awesome if you need lots of cores and huge amounts of RAM, but don’t necessarily need the latest and shiniest generation.
A Xeon E5-2680 v4 will give you 14 thread under $150, and you can even have two of them on the same motherboard. Yet the SATA ports will probably require a CSM due to specialized IO backplanes.
I use a dual e5-2697 so i have 48 threads and i spent a total of 230USD on the motherboard and CPU’s. It does have both BIOS and EFI, but no TPM module, but it might be addable through an addon-card if i ever want to run windows on it. I also opted to max out the quad channel ram at 256gb, so i find it rather ludicrous that a dual core i3 can run latest windows even though my machine can not, even though it is vastly more powerful.
Yeah, but it’s because of security measures…
This is exactly why they require Secure Boot and has been the goal since it was first introduced so many years ago. Like Apple, they don’t want you to be able to use both their OS and an open source/Free OS on the same hardware. Either you stick with Windows exclusively or you don’t get Windows at all.
I predict that Windows 12 — or even some future update to Windows 11 — will refuse to install on a machine that allows you to turn off Secure Boot, even if you leave it enabled. Their ridiculous hardware requirements for this version were the testing grounds for such a move.
Morgan,
It is still possible to dual boot Linux, but only Ubuntu or Fedora at this time:
https://www.xda-developers.com/dual-boot-windows-11-linux/
But I agree. It is a slippery slope, and the next version will probably be worse.
Exactly: Only commercially backed Linux distros with deep ties to Microsoft are allowed on the playground.
Morgan,
Yep. I’ve mentioned this in the past but I’ve already come across hardware where ubuntu runs on it under ms keys but my own distro is blocked and I was unable to remove the secure boot keys. Adding to the confusion is that now reviewers will report the hardware as linux capable (look at that it runs ubuntu), and yet small distros aren’t able to run.
Welcome to bootable Windows WSL3 Edition