I…didn’t think windows 12 was actually a thing but here we are?
Lol. Remember when W10 was to be the “final” one?
Actually XP was supposed to be the last one. Service Packs were supposed to be the future of OS updates/upgrades.
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.
It might be for me. Not sure when I’ll refresh my hardware to something with TPM but I’m not feeling any rush.
The final one with the number 10, obviously.
Huh, and I’ve never even used Windows 11…
Remember when Windows 10 was “the last operating system”?
Yeah, it was supposed to be a subscription model that they would continuously update. They have not lived up to that promise…
They probably did a user survey and found out that moving windows to a subscription would cause 100% of users to switch to Mac / Linux
Here’s a good article about that: https://www.pcworld.com/article/394724/why-is-there-a-windows-11-if-windows-10-is-the-last-windows.html
Apparently that wasn’t really ever Microsoft’s official stance.
Pepperidge farm remembers. I had the same thought. lol
Already??? Windows 11 just came out
2 years ago? That’s seems like a normal cadence for OS releases.
Huh, outside of a few outliers, I guess major Windows releases generally come quicker than I thought
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_Windows_versions
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
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
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.
Are they going to let us move the damn taskbar this time?
Maybe in 3 years. They only just brought ungrouping taskbar icons back in the beta lol
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?
To bridge the gap to Windows 13, which will put it in the middle of the screen.
The Taskbar is the screen in Win 13
My cynical take - it’s what MacOS looks like and they’ve been throwing away their own identity to copy Apple for years now.
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.
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 *
I can see a few reasons for this.
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Whenever Explorer.exe crashes, it takes down the desktop including the taskbar. They are probably trying to separate the taskbar from the desktop.
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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.)
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.
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.
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.
iTunes/Apple Music has joined the chat.
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Why do they insist on dicking around with the taskbar?
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.
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?
Microsoft: “Gotta keep all of the telemetries and AI running 24/7 of course!”
Every day I’m closer to trying Linux again.
Fedora linux: If Microsoft does this why not us?
Lots of ai integrations? Yeah, no thanks
Tired of windows messing their UI every next monday? You will love linux!
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.
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
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.
there is some immutable distros, but I wouldn’t like that it becomes the norm
Meanwhile, Xbox Series S/X:
Apparently they’re going to move the system files to their own protected partition in 12, first good Microsoft change?
why are the comments on most news articles on here so negative or cynical :(
I think the floating tasbar looks nice
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.
And with all that telemetry and AI, the floating taskbar thinks you look nice too. Click here to buy Tay Sway concert tickets!
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.
Typically all of humanity has since XP.
It’s visually pleasing, but very impractical.
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.
