10 was supposed to be the last version of Windows, updated but never replaced. Either this is a free update that just increases the number (stupid move but not catastrophic) or Microsoft will lose an enormous amount of trust.
Microsoft also discovered the Android update pain by tying OS APIs updates to specific OS versions.
Common users and IT departments don't update the OS like browsers, even when that is a couple of mouse clicks away.
Plans never go 100% as we think they would.
Let's start by not making hazardous plans for the sake of marketing, which is notoriously harmful in its short-sightedness.
What was the technical point behind the announcement of an eternal major version number? Clearly none, since upgrades to the underlying system are still happening, whether they are called Windows 11, Windows 10 "This-years-flavor Update", Windows 10 "2105" or "21H1" or whatever subversion name they come up with (with total inconsistency even here, in typical Microsoft fashion).
With Windows 10 linage that kind of breaking change can't be done in a clean way.
UWP evolution is like Android updates, APIs are tied to specific versions and backwards compatibility is a mess.
Win 8 had three programming models for tablet, phone and desktop.
Win 8.1 merged tablet and desktop and called it UAP.
Windows 10 merged all of them together than called it UWP and the whole One Core message.
Then some key C++ developers started an internal movement at WinDev against C++/CX, managed to deprecate it. But here is the thing, after 4 years it still doesn't offer anything like C++/CX tooling, forcing a Notepad like experience for IDL files. Screw paying customers.
Meanwhile .NET Native is stuck into C# 7.3 with .NET Core 3.1, with no roadmap.
WinUI 3 is only planned for desktop with no roadmap for HoloLens and XBox.
So both developers and users need to come to an agreement what their computers should be running.
For me, pressing the red button and coming into an alternative version of "Windows 8", aka Windows 11, is the only way to sort out the mess Sinosfky started.
Honestly, I wish this was the move. I regularly fantasize about how much better Windows would be if it were XP with 20 years of bug fixes, driver updates, and little else. If it had focused on the support subscription model the incentive would be to churn out updates regularly to keep people paying for them. Windows truly would be the most stable OS instead of the cluttered mess it is now.
But you can use over 4G limit on x32: http://vm1.duckdns.org/Public/Windows_XP_SP3_Remove_PAE_Limi... or other versions too: https://wj32.org/wp/
And since Mac OS recently bumped to 11, Windows has to do it too, to keep up with the number, much like Firefox adopted Chrome's numbering.
The Patch Tuesday fiascos have already done that.
What trust do they currently have?
Seriously, nobody cares about things like this. Way bigger things have been walked back on.
Vista had serious technical problems with memory consumption, which Windows 7 addressed. It also had perceived-but-not-real problems due to superfetch and PCs being sold with too little memory or too weak graphics - changing the name may have helped with that.
But the technical changes were real. Windows 7 rearchitected GDI - offloading it to the GPU (AKA WDDM 1.1 / DXGI) - so that using it didn't cause the bits of each window to be retained in system memory. So Windows 7 can open as many Notepad windows full screen as you like, whereas Vista with DWM enabled cannot.
And Windows 7 rearchitected how services load. Vista had introduced lots of features, implemented as services, but it loaded them all on startup and kept them in memory. Windows 7 introduced a mechanism to load them when the features were actually used, saving memory and startup time.
And then there's the list of visible features, which, as you can see, is pretty large: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7
I would have thought they'd have 10.1 like Apple does. Windows 10 was like MacOSX for Microsoft.
So better reboot Windows 11 as Windows 7 vNext, while pretending 8 - 10 never happened.
It is just pity that Microsoft has decided to take the usual approach on sensitive subjects, usually when certain technologies are heavily pushed and then abandoned (XNA, Silverlight, Bizztalk,...) they just stop talking about it, but never make any big annoucement that they are leaving it behind.