Ask Paul: April 11 (Premium)

Happy Friday! These things just keep getting more epic, so buckle up, it's going to be quite the ride. And away we go ...
? Windows ... 12?
helix2301 asks:

I was wondering if you have heard anything about Windows 12 seems like 11 is having a long life cycle like 10 did. I am waiting for the field guide to Windows 12 ;)

I'm eager to find out what happens here and for the same reason: I would like to figure out what's going on with the book(s). I'm going to post something about that soon, but since you ask, I will say that part of the reason I created the Windows 11 Feature Tracker was because it will help me keep the book updated: Knowing when certain features are arriving is nice for that planning. (There are other reasons, like episode planning for Hands-On Windows. But that's the big one.)

I feel like I need a Copilot feature tracker too, as that is updated regularly, and a side issue I'm considering is whether it makes sense to have a Microsoft Copilot Field Guide or whatever. But that would be a thankless task in some ways. It's updated so frequently that it would be difficult to keep up-to-date, and Microsoft current changes the UI so often that it would be doubly difficult.

In any event, consider how much has changed in just two weeks.

Microsoft announced that the Dev channel was switching to a new build number series (26200.x), but is still testing updates to 24H2 on March 25.
Knowing this meant that Dev was now on Windows v.Next--whether that means 25H2 or Windows 12 is unknown--I wrote my massive article trying to make sense of what was happening. In doing so, I set down this path of trying to figure out when specific features were first announced and when they had come to stable, if ever. And was surprised by how many features were not yet available to the public.
Microsoft starts testing another new feature, Taskbar icon scaling, in the Dev and Beta channels on April 3.
Microsoft starts testing a File Explorer change (in 23H2, seriously) related to New tab that will almost certainly come to 24H2+ on April 7.
Around this time, we discover there is a hidden but major change to the Start menu hiding in recent Dev and Beta channel (24H2) builds which I've enabled on my Surface Laptop.
On April 8, I finally decide to create the Windows 11 feature tracker that's been bugging me in the back of my brain. As I write that up, I look at the calendar expecting to have a week before needing to actually produce anything, but then I see it's actually Patch Tuesday. So a major new update is incoming, great.
Because it is Patch Tuesday, I cut the article I'm writing in half, post the first half and keep writing the first version of the tracker. When it's just about done in the sense that it has all the features I think I need to list--I kept screwing with it later--Laurent pings me. The Patch Tuesday updates are out, so he writes that up. I finish up my own write-up and post the first version of the Windows 11...