It fascinates me to speculate about who this is for. At least among people I've talked to, the ones who still want windows (instead of the obvious alternatives) cite wanting things to "just work", often claiming that they "don't want making the computer work to become a second job" or similar. I personally don't think these preferences reflect the reality of how much effort using e.g. a linux distro is in this day and age, to be clear, but these are the beliefs I encounter. Are there really people who want to deal with providing feedback and stress testing an operating system and its various software components and features, but doing this for a corporation that sets the terms of their transparency efforts and ultimately does this for profit and will still grab the reins and exert control against their users' will when they feel like it?

Not a Windows user, have never been (since Windows 3.11). But if I were, I would think this is just PR unless they changed some fundamentals, like bringing back local user support without jumping through five hoops.

They talk about improving memory footprint and performance, but simply removing (or making optional) the massive amount of cruft and telemetry in a default Windows 11 install would go miles.

Installing Tiny11 and then running a debloat over its corpse results in a much faster and less memory hungry default clean install.

> You want to see what we’re doing, understand our decisions, and see progress through shipping. Second, a shared sense of pride.

So basically: - recent changes are all crap - so why did you make them?

> The theme is simple: fewer disruptions, more clarity, more control. This update moves Windows toward a single monthly restart by consolidating OS, .NET, and driver updates, and gives you more flexibility to time updates around your schedule. We’ve also made changes to the Power menu so you’ll always see the standard Restart and Shut down options without having to install a pending update first. You decide when updates happen, not the other way around.

Finally, like seriously, so many times I have to "shutdown" (aka restart) for an update before going to bed. I don't want to have to babysit my desktop computer when I want to finish up for the night.

It's fascinating that one of the top features insiders are interested in is making File Explorer more dependable.

I really like Windows. I just wish Copilot could be made fully optional.

Honestly, I can live with Windows 11 being a little slow, and I can deal with File Explorer issues. I can write my own tools to manage some of that, and PowerShell is simple enough for many tasks. Those parts do not bother me that much.

What bothers me is Copilot being pushed into the operating system experience itself. I wish it could simply be treated as an optional feature.

Windows is an operating system. An operating system is the foundational layer that governs the user’s work. Because of that, AI should be an opt-out assistant, not a premise that changes the default behavior of the system.

When I move from Windows 10 to Windows 11, Copilot feels like something that damages the user experience itself.

If Copilot were at the level of GPT or Claude, I probably would not complain as much. But I do not understand why the quality gap feels so large.

Just switch to Linux people!

I have a feeling that my fat ass switching over to Linux is going to outrun their attempt to roll back decades of accumulated tech debt, institutional incompetence and burned bridges.

"trust me bro"