Windows 11 – Why does this exist??
Windows 11 has ‘leaked’, sporting a rather new look and seeing as the ISO is readily available… Well, it’s worth checking out. One quirk of this development build of the ISO is that it doesn’t seem possible to install it on any old system. It works in a virtual machine, even with a full GPU passed through, but won’t let you install it natively on either Ryzen or Intel desktops. Apparently you need a machine with TPM 2.0, and since I don’t have one, let’s fire up a VM and take a look.
Annnnnnnnnddddddddddddd it’s a Windows 10 reskin. The first thing that you’ll notice is the taskbar – by default the icons and start button are centered. This is obviously controversial, I mean ever since Windows 95 the start menu button has been pinned in the bottom left corner of your screen, so for Microsoft to actively move it AND make it a variable position… I can’t say I’m a fan. What gets me here is that they went to the effort to make the start button and all the icons move around, but then they left the time and taskbar app drawer pinned on the right. Come on if you are going to ruin everyone’s muscle memory, ruin it all!
Speaking of the start menu, it’s a new design too. It’s taking on a very ‘app drawer’ from Android or iOS vibe. Each of the apps are only displayed by icon and name, and when “apps” are updating they get greyed out and get a progress bar on the bottom. You can click the “all apps” button to see everything installed, or start typing although I can’t work out if search is any better than stock Windows 10.
The other thing you’ll notice is the new icons. Settings gets a very Android-esque look, as does Windows Explorer, and you even get a new “widgets” button that… loads MSN.com. Wow. So cool. When you open Explorer, you’ll notice something… WHY IS EVERYTHING SPACED OUT?? Why are folders double spaced? Why are the quick access options double spaced?
Thankfully, it’s pretty easy to revert these changes. For the task bar just go to task bar settings and pick left instead of center, and for spacing head to the settings, which aren’t in the “Settings” app, instead still in their standalone settings window, and enable “compact view”.
Since we are talking about settings, I thought Windows 11 would be the perfect opportunity for Microsoft to finally incorporate all of the controls that are fragmented between Control panel and Settings. For example, in Windows 10, if you want to change your network settings you can open the Settings app and go to Network. But if you want to change your network adapter settings, that can’t be done in Settings, you have to open Control Panel, go to Network and Sharing Centre, then adapter settings, then change it there. In fact there is even a shortcut from the Settings app that opens the adapter settings in Control Panel. So, with Windows 11 they finally rolled all those options into the Settings app, right? Nope. As far as I can see, nothing has changed.
So, why does Windows 11 exist? I mean they’ve rolled out more substantial feature updates for Windows 10 in the past, and it’s clear this is just a slight UI tweak with some new icons and sounds. I’ll leave the conspiracy theories to the comments, but the one rumour I thought I’d mention is support and optimisations for Intel’s Alder Lake CPUs due to come out at the end of this year.
For those that don’t know, Alder Lake is Intel’s next generation of CPUs, and is rumoured to include two different types of CPU cores in the same chip. It’s the same principle that your phone’s chip uses, ARM calls it big.LITTLE, Intel calls it Intel Hybrid Technology, basically you have both high power, high performance cores, and low power, high efficiency cores on the same die. The low power cores handle the general running of the OS, playing videos and web browsing, all while using very little power, and when you need to fire up a game or render a video the high performance cores switch on and run that. That’s one of the reasons why Apple’s new M1 Macs are so efficient and get such long battery life times compared to the same chassis with a ‘standard’ Intel chip.
As we saw when AMD’s Ryzen CPUs first came out, with their unique CCX design, when Microsoft finally made a “CCX aware scheduler” for Windows, performance increased as the operating system was able to more efficiently utilise the processor. That’s the theory here, Microsoft is updating to a “new” version of Windows with baked in support for a new style of CPU so when Intel finally launches their new chips they can say “Works best with Windows 11”. Nice and clear marketing, plus Microsoft gets to make hype around a “new” version of Windows. Like, if this was just another feature update, do you think it would be getting as much press as it is right now? I’m talking about it, but odds are I wouldn’t have made this video if it was just a “new look for Windows 10”, so I guess their plan is working well.
I should also mention that it seems like a lot of these UI changes are trying to gear Windows to be more touchscreen friendly, hence the folder spacing, centered taskbar and app drawer like start menu. A lot of these changes that are enabled by default in this development build may not be enabled for your average desktop installation, perhaps the installer might be smart and only enable those settings by default if it recognises you have a touchscreen connected. And of course all of this is subject to change anyway. The ‘official’ launch event is on June 24th, so once it’s made properly available I’ll do some follow up testing and see what’s changed, and run some benchmarks to see if there is any performance benefits to this not-so-new OS.
