Why the end of support for Windows 10 is uniquely troubling
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> Many of the computers still running Windows 10 can’t upgrade to Windows 11. In 2022, hardware researchers found that 43% of all computers running Windows 10 could not move to Windows 11 — which equaled around 400 million computers at that time.
Wow. This is actually pretty troubling. I naively assumed Microsoft was just following previous practice and that this wasn't a big deal, but this is actually... insane.
This is the same microsoft that said win 10 would be the last version of windows and that they'd basically be patching and working on different versions of it forever.
Maybe next time they can create a poly market bet.
Version numbers like this are arbitrary. They could have released Windows 11 as Windows 10 21H2 and it would have changed nothing about the scenario where some people can't update and their version would stop receiving security updates.
> “Right now we’re releasing Windows 10, and because Windows 10 is the last version of Windows, we’re all still working on Windows 10,” Nixon continued. “And it’s really brilliant. So I can say things like, yeah, we’re working on interactive tiles and it’s coming to Windows 10 in one of its future updates, right.”
> Microsoft didn’t deny what Nixon said, but it also didn’t back up the “last version” of Windows, either.
For all reasonable intents and purposes "Microsoft" said this was the case then had to walk it back.
[1] https://www.pcworld.com/article/394724/why-is-there-a-window...
It very much is them following previous practice.
https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/bypass-windows-11-tpm-re...
There's 2 clear signs here from what I can see: if Linux does just fine for my non-technical 20yo daughter it will do fine for most people. Also, she has never really used Windows, only Linux (at home) and Chromebooks (at school and university) and does not feel the urge to start using it 'cause she does not stand to gain anything from it. Microsoft has lost the battle for the personal computer - or should that be 'for general purpose operating systems' - as far as I can see and any breaking change - like this Windows 11 your-hardware-need-not-apply thing - will cause more people to leave the platform.
That Windows 11 VM will probably be removed in a few months time when it becomes clear she does not need it so why keep it around? Bye bye, Windows, we hardly knew you and she did not know you at all but your time has passed. Let's just hope that the passing of Windows does not also lead to the passing of general purpose computing and the further advance of locked-down computing appliances. There's no love lost for Microsoft from me, having been there when it rose to power using all the dirty tricks in the book and then some but they were a strong factor in the commoditisation of general purpose computer hardware - PCs and servers, laptops and notebooks - for which I will grudgingly give them some respect, also because I got to profit from the flotsam and jetsam caused by the ever-increasing hardware demands by repurposing 'old' hardware which then often outperformed the new and shiny only because I ditched Windows and installed Linux on it.
Windows 10 dropped out of support only 3 years after its successor (Win11) was available; when Windows 8.1 still had 7 more years of support after its successor (Win10) was released.
There's a lot of users who never upgrade windows but instead just get whatever is the latest whenever they buy a new computer. If these people bought a new computer every 5 years, they were always fine in the past, but now for the first time run out of support (because Win10 was "the latest" for an unusually long time period).
If they have an older PC, then they must have already enjoyed quite some period of the 10-year Windows 10 support lifecycle.
Unless Microsoft were to go to an Apple-esque annual release cycle, regularly dropping support for older hardware, I'm not sure how they could ever manage this.
I wonder if that could be grounds for a false advertising suit.
They are intentionally cutting that hardware off from support to force hundreds of millions of upgrades so that they can reap the licensing fees and cram more of their Edge/AI shit down the throats of everyone that has been avoiding it so far.
Microsoft presumably could -- at any time -- abandon these requirements via an update and a new installer. It's unclear to me why they're being so aggressive in this area, and represents a real closing door for a proper OS for anyone not using an alternative. (macOS, Linux, etc.)
Multiply 400 million (or whatever the current number is) by Microsoft's average profit per Windows 11 license sold.
the upgrade is free
Really? I thought it was very clear Microsoft wants to turn Windows into a mobile like OS where everything is locked down, you are restricted on what software you can run and the system is more like a digital surveillance apparatus and data usurping hell hole than an actual product that works for your interests.
Presumably MS wants to do more things using toolkits that are more memory hungry.
IT worker here, managing a ~400 computer install at the company I'm employed at. Laptops, desktops, some very old (10 years) and some relatively new(ish).
It's processor and TPM, not memory, in every single case of the nearly 150 computers I have to replace.
"Altogether 71.5 percent of the PCs failed the RAM test and 14.66 percent the TPM test."
A signed bootloader with TPM is the first step to implementing an OS that can only run signed code. The long term goal is to be like Android (who recently flipped to requiring all APK's to be signed by Google. Almost zero user push back) and iOS in this regard. MS is looking down the road and they want a locked down OS as well. They will pitch it as enhancing security and protecting children more than likely.
There is a good chance that in 5-10 years Linux will be the only platform that allows unsigned code to run. I hope I am wrong.
Taking [1] as a source, win 7 in 2025 has a marketshare of about 2%. In 2020 it had 20%. If we look at 2016 specifically [2] win 7 is still at 47% at the end of the year (and win XP at 6%, while this source gives win8.1 at 10%).
Running unmaintained Windows releases is a tradition.
[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desk...
[2] https://gs.statcounter.com/windows-version-market-share/desk...
The only things I miss from Windows now are videogames, ShareX, and Everything. But Raycast and iStat Menus, while different, are awesome in their own way.
Too bad. The "Mac-native" version of SC2 is awful, I have to run it on the lowest graphics settings on my $3,000 MBP.
* Windows 10 (IoT LTSC) will actually be supported to 2032.
* Microsoft is forcing hardware requirements that are just there because reasons as Win 11 IoT/LTSC have lesser requirements.
* Because Microsoft sold Win 10 till 2023, so it is basically shooting it down after 2 years.
* Because Win10 still has 40% of market share.
I had Win11 running in a vm, and just the amount of ads it would show in the task bar or notifications at idle leaves me flabbergasted.
Most recently, ads on your lock screen which aren't obvious how to disable.
Except nobody apologizes anymore; we've gotten used to it.
I'm not sure I'd agree. Most people I know use Google docs by default since nearly everyone can access and unlike M365, it's free.
Hasn't Microsoft Office (or whatever concoction of 365, copilot and other eterprise-ish words they call it today) been turned into a web app over the last 15 years? Isn't it perfectly usable for like 99% of users?
What about my mother who is not technical enough to fix Windows when it will inevitably break in a future update?
Should I setup win11 for her only for me to come back urgently in a few months when the install breaks?
The awful thing about all this is that they’re essentially turning a (perceived) perpetual license into a subscription license.
I’d expect to see a lot of scammers attempting to fleece unsuspecting users around upgrades and support.
I'm holding out as long as possible, hoping that reason re-enters the game, but I'm not holding my breath.
And the fact that software developers think that they "know better" is part of the problem with our software world today.
It is not just MS that does this.
By ‘progress’ I mean compatibility with new innovations like DirectX or some new instruction set that enable dumb things like transparency, or spacial audio, as well genuinely useful things.
You simply can’t bolt that onto an 18 year old system without breaking things irreversibly.
It also means depreciation of insecure ways of doing things. MS’ attempt to get TPMs into every desktop is clumsy, but it serves a greater good.
None of those things require W11 to operate, but I can see why they needed to make it look fancier than W10 to convince people that it’s somehow ‘better’.
It has the opposite effect. People do not like the fancier look.
It also depends on what you mean by progress. if it is genuinely better for customers why do you have to force them to use it?
Sure, if they don't make it everybody else's problem. Not to defend MS too hard, but they supported Windows XP with security updates for 18 years. At some point software needs to be "finished", and once it is, all responsability falls upon the user.
The enterprises with competent IT that will airgap their XP machines to keep running the control plane for their factory probably "know better" than MS, the power user who refuses to use a Linux distro for their Pentium 3 box or who will disable Windows Defender and run random scripts on the internet to "debloat the OS" without understanding it, or the ones who run LTSC and then complain that their games aren't working - they all absolutely don't know better, but unfortunately they tend to be the louder voices in the conversation.
That was recently waived for private EU users, and I’m half expecting them to expand it more broadly.
Arguably better than XP. 7 and 10 didn't really give most folks much better experience, they benefited from Vista already forcing everyone to update their crap.
Windows 10 on the other hand was released over ten years ago now.
Not the best comparison, but it’s increasing more difficult to separate their OS support lifecycles from their M* hardware.
In the end, the chances seem so minimal, I am surprised how much disdain people have for win11, when it feels nearly the same as win10 to me.
Windows 11 fixed a lot of issues I was having, particularly in things like driver support and bluetooth connectivity. It also has a lot of little UI touches that are improvements (like volume control or game management) - particularly on a laptop. Also, the settings and configuration menus have gotten usability updates for the first time since Vista.
I haven't noticed any bugs or problems (or even the intrusive advertisements that I have heard so much about). But then again, I didn't try Windows 11 until two years after it was released, so it could be that I just missed out on a bad launch.
At the end of the day, it's like 95% the same as Windows 10 (although on my other PC I am still running an unactivated free version!)
Don’t forget also that Office 2019 is also going EOL (among other things) on 14 October. Despite Microsoft’s efforts, people still use and even prefer their non-cloud products at home and enterprise.
The most exposed component of Windows is going to be the Edge browser, but throw in an unpatched Outlook and Word, and there’s a potential blood bath brewing after the first few vulnerabilities are disclosed.
You can still buy office as single-purchase standalone versions. I think the most recent version is 2024.
I worked on a project migrating away from office 2003... in 2022. In my opinion, people use outdated versions of Office because they want to, as it fulfils their needs, not because they can't buy standalone versions.
The system was built 6 years ago but things just haven't moved fast in hardware. It doesn't have a TPM 2.0 module though so no Windows 11. One nice thing about that fact is that i never get the upgrade nags since it fails compatibility checks.
Part of me is hoping we get some third party OS patches if anything major crops up. This has happened for previous versions of Windows.
I plan to continue running this as-is past October 14. If something serious enough does crop up with no third party mitigations or fixes I'll move to Linux. I could technically install a TPM 2.0 module on the motherboard but i don't want to. Not enough benefit to me as someone that's never installed malware (I'm extremely cautious about what i allow to run on it to the extent of not running various binary distributed game mods).
My understanding is that Microsoft has more or less phased out the requirement in question (that a CPU has TPM 2.0).
There are no reasons such improvements couldn't work for Windows and I am guessing this is their best idea for raising the floor of hardware protection they can assume is available.
I agree the push, which is quite disruptive, must be influenced by someone higher up. But I think its as simple as "Windows is insecure" is something they want to make untrue.
Update:
Patching has always been security theater for systems where security actually matters (national security), because it's assumed nation states already know vulnerabilities often years before there's a public disclosure or patch. These patches have always been to deal with nuisance actors impacting non-critical users. Besides, the user getting tricked is always the biggest risk, and patching does nothing at all for that.
If you care about security, don't get on the internet. The device you're using right now is probably already trivial compromised by unpatched vulnerabilities, if not known only by a state actor than a spyware company. Pretending this isn't the case is worse than discontinuing vanity security theater.
This is like everyone freaking out because they're shutting down the TSA. The idea that patches are important and effective is more dangerous than not patching.
Because you're guaranteeing to us that nobody will ever find another vulnerability in the existing codebase of Windows 10?
That's just a silly thing to say.
You’re much more likely pwned by phishing or running malware from software updates.