Windows 11 is released without a hiss and a roar, and it’s beautiful

As originally posted on stuff.co.nz on 8 Oct 2021

Windows 11 was officially released this week, but you’d be excused for not noticing. It was probably the most muted Windows release ever.

It’s a far cry from the mega release of Windows 95 (was that really 26 years ago?) that had people lining up all night in a chino-induced Gates-athon. We just don’t care very much about Windows releases anymore, particularly because so many of them have been so naff (Vista, anyone?)

This applies to a lot of us geeks too. It wasn’t so long ago that I, for one, would be running early versions of Windows and macOS on my home and work machines well before they were finished and released to the public. I’ve always been keen to get a handle on what features and improvements the upcoming versions would bring.

I was so underwhelmed with the incremental-sounding Windows 11 that, for the first time, I didn’t even bother trying it until its general release to the public.

So imagine my surprise when I discovered that, with Windows 11, Microsoft has finally cracked the code. They’ve finally released the perfect desktop operating system.

It really is insanely good. Better than Windows 10. Better than MacOS. Better than I thought any desktop OS could be. And from Microsoft? The company that inflicted Windows 8 on us only a couple of versions ago (it was so bad there was no Windows 9 – clearly no version of Windows wanted to be adjacent to the dog that was Windows 8)?

But what makes it so good? Is it the new features? Is it the interface improvements? Is it the performance?

It’s all of these things together. Finally, Microsoft has created a version of Windows that’s beautiful, fast and, most importantly, consistent from end to end.

To describe the individual improvements in Windows 11 just doesn’t do them justice, so be prepared to be underwhelmed by reading about them. It’s not the individual tweaks or new features, but the overall user experience that makes Windows 11 sublime.

You need to experience it for yourself to get a feel for what I’m talking about and thankfully doing so is unlikely to cost you much. If you’re a Windows 10 user, your Windows 11 upgrade is free. Just fire up Windows Update to get started.

With Windows 11 it feels like Microsoft has taken the best bits of Windows, macOS, Linux and even iOS and Android and put them together with an interface that’s been redesigned from the ground up.

Suddenly, after decades of users struggling to find how to do (or configure) things in Windows, everything seems to be so intuitive… and pretty!

Although Microsoft’s advertising campaign for Windows 11 is derivative of something Apple would produce, the interface for Windows 11 itself feels fresh and original. It still feels like Windows, but with a design sensibility that I didn’t know Microsoft was capable of. There are no crazy ideas (like replacing the Start menu a la Windows 8) or desperate-feeling interface tie-ins (such as the ‘doughnut of death’ dotted wait timer, which was a tie-in to the ill-fated Windows Mobile, which was never a good thing).

It feels as if Microsoft has finally hired a great team of UI and UX designers and has let them do their jobs without marketing ‘oversight’.

In fact, one of the biggest criticisms of Windows 11 has been that it’s not bold or radical enough, but this misses the point. When you buy the latest Mercedes you don’t expect to find they’ve put the steering wheel in the back seat in an effort to be ‘bold or radical’. You expect the refinement and sophistication that comes with 120 years’ experience in designing and building automobiles.

With Windows we don’t want radical, we want refined.

There are still cracks, of course. If you scratch the surface you’ll still find remnants of less polished versions of Windows past, but not many of them. When you do see them (such as the ‘Show more options’ pop-ups associated with most properties sheets – right-click something to see what I mean) they make sense. You can tell why they’re there, and they’re easy to find if you need them.

This is a big improvement from Windows 10, which seemed to offer two (or more) ways of doing just about everything, yet you never really knew which one you should be using. Windows 10 interface ‘improvements’ were a confusing mess, even for us IT pros.

Microsoft has really listened to Windows users about our pet hates, and not only have they addressed many of them, but they’ve introduced innovative new features that we didn’t even know we wanted. One my pet hates, for example, was windows trying to resize themselves as they were dragged around. No, I DIDN’T want to maximise that window thanks very much.

I shudder to think at how many hours I’ve wasted trying to arrange windows on screen just how I want them, almost fighting Windows for control of their size and placement.

With Windows 11 not only do windows behave themselves as you’re moving them, if you hover over the maximise/restore button on the toolbar a handy snap layouts box will pop up, letting you arrange windows with a single click.

Such a simple tweak, but one that will save me a lot of time and frustration and generally make Windows more fun to use.

Windows 11 also finally brings multiple desktops to Windows. This is a feature that almost every other desktop OS has had for years. Better late than never and Microsoft’s implementation of multiple desktops is the best I’ve seen so far.

Having multiple desktops is a boon for power users who want to organise their workspaces and minimise the jumble of windows and browser tabs most of us have open as we work. It’s simple to create virtual desktops and to switch between them and each desktop can have different wallpapers and other customisations, which is pretty sweet.

Virtual desktops are also great for those of us with multiple family members sharing a computer, as each can have their own desktop without the need for separate Windows logins.

There are still some frustrations with Windows 11. It tries really hard to get you to stick with its inferior Edge browser if you change the default to Chrome, for example. In a move that would have been all but impossible in the antitrust days, Microsoft Teams is also now ‘integrated’ into the operating system – even when uninstalled you’ll find a Teams icon on the Taskbar that has to be manually turned off.

This kind of feels like having U2’s ‘Songs of Innocence’ automatically downloaded to your iPod. Even U2 fans didn’t appreciate it being force-fed to them, but it can be removed with a bit of work.

The new Widgets function also sometimes fails to load, and it only uses Bing for search but, let’s be honest, none of us are going to use it anyway. Widgets feels a bit like Yahoo! – you might dwell on the clickbait articles for a few minutes if you ever stumble across it, but you’d never go there on purpose.

Thankfully Microsoft has put the bits of Windows 11 that suck in places we won’t often (or ever) use them, so they can be safely ignored.

I’m also disappointed that Android apps aren’t supported yet, but they will be in a coming release. When this hits you’ll be able to run any of the 500,000+ Android apps on Amazon’s Appstore (but not Google Play) directly on your Windows 11 PC via the Amazon Appstore Windows app. It’s a bit naff, and more than a tad confusing, that you’ll have to download one app store from another (from the Microsoft Store) to install Android apps, but I am looking forward to reaching for my phone less once I can run Android apps such as my Sonos player, Uber and others directly from Windows 11.

The thing I like best about Windows 11 is that it’s a symbol of the dynamic, product-focused company Microsoft has evolved into now that it no longer holds a monopoly over our digital lives. For 20 years or so it seemed that innovation, security and user experience were secondary to competition and profits at Microsoft and, for the most part, their products sucked.

Microsoft took us for granted for a very long time and we flocked to Apple and Google as a result.

Windows 11 is a product of a Microsoft that has been quietly reinventing itself over the past seven years since Satya Nadella took the helm. It’s the product of a company that’s re-emerging as a worthy competitor to Apple and Google in the operating system space and long may this continue.

Competition is great for us consumers – I can’t wait to see what it brings next.