I…didn’t think windows 12 was actually a thing but here we are?

    • davehtaylor@beehaw.orgEnglish
      7·
      2 years ago

      Actually XP was supposed to be the last one. Service Packs were supposed to be the future of OS updates/upgrades.

    • Aurailious@beehaw.orgEnglish
      5·
      2 years ago

      Apparently the source of that wasn’t an official statement by Microsoft. It was some offhand comment in a dev conference that kind of got out of control.

    • MagicShel@programming.devEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      It might be for me. Not sure when I’ll refresh my hardware to something with TPM but I’m not feeling any rush.

  • MangoKangaroo@beehaw.orgEnglish
    30·
    2 years ago

    KDE developers: okay so we’re gonna switch to a floating taskbar so we look less like a Windows clone

    Windows developers: hey guys I have a crazy idea

  • ArtZuron@beehaw.orgEnglish
    271·
    2 years ago

    Key features include subscription fees, only-online capacity, baked in popup ads in every folder and directory, is slower than windows 7, and also streams your webcam to anyone who pays them enough.

    /hj

  • martreides@beehaw.orgEnglish
    26·
    2 years ago

    Nah, this is pure speculation. The only source is Microsoft saying they are working on some next gen stuff, could just as well be a major upgrade to W11.

    • klyde@beehaw.orgEnglish
      7·
      2 years ago

      Maybe in 3 years. They only just brought ungrouping taskbar icons back in the beta lol

  • Executive Chimp@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    23·
    2 years ago

    According to the source, Microsoft wants to make the taskbar appear to float above the desktop by separating it from the desktop and rounding off the corners.

    …why?

    • troye888@lemmy.oneEnglish
      8·
      2 years ago

      To bridge the gap to Windows 13, which will put it in the middle of the screen.

    • abir_vandergriff@beehaw.orgEnglish
      7·
      2 years ago

      My cynical take - it’s what MacOS looks like and they’ve been throwing away their own identity to copy Apple for years now.

      • CleoTheWizard@beehaw.orgEnglish
        5·
        2 years ago

        I don’t see why this is cynical. They fell pretty flat on their face with windows 8 (no explanation necessary) and then made a Frankenstein job out of windows 10. I have zero idea what the plan is here.

    • Sturgist@lemmy.caEnglish
      6·
      2 years ago

      In an effort to make the user experience even shittier? Or maybe one of the suits saw their kid with a custom linux desktop and was like: we need to get these kids off that linux crap, and clearly the floating task bar is the clincher! *does a giant rip of cocain *

    • MJBrune@beehaw.orgEnglish
      5·
      2 years ago

      I can see a few reasons for this.

      1. Whenever Explorer.exe crashes, it takes down the desktop including the taskbar. They are probably trying to separate the taskbar from the desktop.

      2. It’s a new style and people expect to see a unique style with every Windows version change. Of course, if you really want to you can make Windows 11 look like Windows 98 with a few button presses afaik.

      3 a) It potentially looks like they might start auto-hiding the taskbar by default which could be interesting. If they are and they allow applications to maximize to the full borders of your monitor, that could potentially be awesome.

      3 b) auto-hiding the taskbar frees up real estate and if you put on a tin foil hat you can say that Microsoft is going to use that newfound real estate to show ads to users and will justify it because they only take up less space than you were missing before, it’s no big deal, right? (This is highly unlikely and Windows as an OS hasn’t really shown people ads yet. The most it’s done is shipped with minor bloatware apps.)

      • Sina@beehaw.orgEnglish
        6·
        2 years ago

        They are probably trying to separate the taskbar from the desktop.

        I’m 99.9% sure this is only visual, without major changes under the hood.

      • delmain@beehaw.orgEnglish
        3·
        2 years ago

        Windows as an OS has absolutely been showing ads for a long time. Ads for their own stuff for the most part, but those are still ads. They pop stuff up all over the place advocating for paid OneDrive plans or Office 365 or whatever.

        • MJBrune@beehaw.orgEnglish
          4·
          2 years ago

          Those aren’t ads embedded in the OS. Those are ads because an app is installed. It’s also fairly easy to uninstall them. Also, all over the place is a bit silly. It’s like once via the notification system when you first install the OS.

  • dan@lemm.eeEnglish
    21·
    2 years ago

    Why do they insist on dicking around with the taskbar?

    • i_am_not_a_robot@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      6·
      2 years ago

      The Windows 10 taskbar is just better. The Windows 11 taskbar moves things to the middle by default for some reason, violating Fitt’s law, and removes several features of the Windows 10 taskbar without improving anything as far as I can tell. The new taskbar in the screenshot makes it even harder to click things by making them farther from the bottom of the screen, and makes the right side of the taskbar take up more space.

      The new system tray is laughable. The icons cannot be that size. Imagine 16 icons of that size, but half of them are 24x24 or smaller icons scaled up.

      One possible improvement with the new taskbar is that even though they have useless search and task switch buttons and the date+time takes up an unnecessary amount of horizontal space, they don’t have any of the other visual clutter like news and weather tickers.

  • ziviz@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    20·
    2 years ago

    They are necessitating 8GB of RAM. for what?! Like, it would be a struggle to find a machine with less than 8GB still being sold new, sure, but why does the OS need that RAM?

    • TMoney@beehaw.orgEnglish
      14·
      2 years ago

      Yes sir, until you update your video driver and never see your screen again. I jest a little bit, but watching linus do that cracks me up every time.

    • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.orgEnglish
      10·
      2 years ago

      Yeah! There it’s you fucking up your UI every next Monday because you’re not mentally well, and you can’t let good enough be good enough

      • averyminya@beehaw.orgEnglish
        4·
        2 years ago

        There needs to be some middle ground between so much control that simple things that should be obvious breaking your computer isn’t as possible as it currently is.

        Linux has a learning curve yes, it also has several hurdles that seem to be an unnecessary byproduct of having total control over your OS.

  • esty@lemmy.caEnglish
    14·
    2 years ago

    Apparently they’re going to move the system files to their own protected partition in 12, first good Microsoft change?

  • slaytswiftfan@beehaw.orgEnglish
    14·
    2 years ago

    why are the comments on most news articles on here so negative or cynical :(

    I think the floating tasbar looks nice

    • ursakhiin@beehaw.orgEnglish
      19·
      2 years ago

      I’m this particular case, I think there is a lot to criticize.

      8GB minimum RAM is a lot of requirement for an OS. It makes Microsoft look like they have forgotten what an OS is supposed to be doing.

      The floating taskbar might look nice, but to me it looks like they are trying to mimic MacOS or Gnome3. While there’s nothing wrong with that, it does seem like Microsoft is not innovating so much as following.

      I think many people are just jaded by Microsoft, though. The last couple of releases have been kinda meh and with them dropping support for older hardware entirely and sunsetting support for Windows 10 soon they are leaving a lot of users out to dry.

      As a developer who has to support Windows 11 currently, I find the prospect of Windows 12 replacing 10 to be cause for worry. Windows 11 has been a nightmare to support just due to the API not being idempotent with 10. Queries that work in 10 don’t work anymore in 11.

    • The Baldness@beehaw.orgEnglish
      11·
      2 years ago

      And with all that telemetry and AI, the floating taskbar thinks you look nice too. Click here to buy Tay Sway concert tickets!

    • Pepper@beehaw.orgEnglish
      6·
      2 years ago

      Typically on Reddit users responded to news about any changes to Windows with complete vitriol, so I’m honestly not surprised it’s happening here.

    • unique_hemp@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      3·
      2 years ago

      Lol, yeah, let’s waste even more screen real estate. Not having small icons as an option in win 11 was already anoying, especially on laptops.