Windows 11? (Premium)

All it took was a single email to media, analysts, and enthusiasts, and Microsoft suddenly has the attention of the world. That’s kind of interesting when you consider how much time the software giant has wasted trying to court consumers and the excitement that companies like Apple seem to generate with such ease.

I assume this will be instructive to the decision-makers at Microsoft, who watched last year as a pandemic swept the earth, driving home a reality that should have always been obvious: To the billion-plus people who use and rely on Windows every single day, Microsoft’s desktop platform isn’t legacy or old-fashioned, it’s a modern-day workhorse that keeps solving problems no matter how much its critics—or, sadly, its detractors inside of Microsoft—try to put it down.

I watched the world change over the past decade, and I’m as interested in smartphones, tablets, smart home solutions, streaming services, and other types of personal technology as anyone. But Microsoft and Windows have always been at the core of what I care about, what I write about, and how I choose to spend my time. It’s what made me write (Re)Focus (Premium) almost exactly one year ago, an article I can condense into a single, declarative sentence so powerful in its simplicity that I made it the tagline on my Twitter profile too: “Personal technology, with a focus on productivity, mostly Microsoft.”

I care about Windows so much that I freak out, publicly and loudly, every time Microsoft undercuts its own desktop platform with advertising—the “slippery slope” I first warned of when Windows 8 launched in 2012—crapware, privacy invasions, and, worst of all, Windows as a Service (WaaS), the ill-fated attempt to force Windows users to install two major version upgrades every year and an interminable number of other updates every month. And I’ve bristled every time the firm has lied to its customers about promised Windows features that never seem to materialize or how WaaS is going just fine, thank you very much. Hell, I called out Satya Nadella when he claimed over 6 years ago that he wanted users to love Windows.

Well, I do love Windows, as much as anyone can love something non-biological. And while I approach the coming Windows announcement—which promises to unveil “the next generation of Windows”—with an uncomfortable and unwarranted level of excitement, there’s also a concern in the back of my brain that I just can’t shake. This is a firm that has categorically ignored Windows for years, at its tradeshows, during its earnings releases, and most problematically during the two year period between the time that Windows chief Terry Myerson announced he was leaving Microsoft and Panos Panay took over; during that time, Windows was leaderless and had no representation on Satya Nadella’s senior leadership team. That’s shameful.

Well, thank God for COVID-19. OK not really. But it took a freaking pandemic for Microsoft to wake up and realize that Windows isn’t just an important asset, it’s a business that contributes somewhere between $10 billion and $15 billion in revenues per quarter, and that was true even when the PC market was shrinking, as it did for several years in a row.

And now we’re going to trust these people? With Windows?

Ah boy. I want to believe. I really do. But I have over two and a half decades of experience with this company, and I’ve watched as men both good—Jim Allchin—and bad—Steven Sinofsky—have come and gone, defeated by the organizations they led and the products they brought to market. I’ve seen redemption, as when the “B-teamers” from Windows phone, led by Mr. Myerson, took over “Big” Windows. But I’ve also seen far too many defeats, too many miscalculations. I’ve watched Microsoft go from the company that was Windows, which branded almost everything as Windows, to the company that has pretended that Windows didn’t even exist anymore.

And we are again. Everything just keeps coming ‘round again.

So here’s where I’m at.

I don’t care what they call it. Some have complained that Microsoft once said that Windows 10 would be the “last” version of Windows, and that this statement precludes it from rebranding it now. That’s silly. By my count, Microsoft has released an incredible 12 (!) versions of Windows since making that claim, and these versions have appeared over a 6+ year period during which the firm would have historically released two major Windows versions, each with its own branding.

Worse, Microsoft cares so little about Windows that it can’t even identify it correctly. Its employees and executives routinely describe a version of Windows by the name of the update that is used to arrive at that version—that is, describing one version as “the May 2020 update” instead of its real name, Windows 10 version 2004. So if Microsoft wants to try something different—just Windows, perhaps, though that will be confusing, or maybe Windows 11—that’s fine with me. The name almost doesn’t matter, beyond needing to have the word Windows in it.

What I do care about is the contents of this coming version upgrade. I care about this very much.

Here, I’m of two minds. On the one hand, I would like to see Microsoft make the entire Windows user experience more consistent, and that would mean touching some legacy UIs that have sat unchanged for years. (I’m looking at you, Control Panel, as well as other legacy UIs like the Microsoft Management Console.) But on the other, I’m leery of any attempt by Microsoft to change the basic paradigm here. Windows works today in part because Microsoft hasn’t screwed with it too much. If we’ve learned anything from Windows 8, it’s that new user experiences have to be additive and not something that ignores what people are used to and like using.

We don’t know too much about “what” this next Windows will be, beyond the fact that it will include “Sun Valley,” what I think of as a spit-shine refresh of the basic Windows user interface, similar to what Apple accomplished with macOS Big Sur. That is, Apple didn’t really change the way the Mac works, it pretty much just made it prettier. And if Microsoft could accomplish just that with Sun Valley, we should applaud that for the major advance that it is.

But let’s get real here. No one should expect Sun Valley to be as successful as Big Sur, because Microsoft has too many layers of legacy UX in Windows to ever create something truly consistent. There will always be legacy interfaces in Windows. The question is whether Sun Valley will go further with new UX than did Windows 10. We can only hope.

We also know that Microsoft is bringing some new tools to Windows, including Windows Terminal, WinGet, and a new Store of some kind. That last bit is vague, so we’ve had to speculate, but here’s what we do know: Two years ago at Build 2019, Microsoft admitted that the Microsoft Store in Windows 10 and its underlying app platform, the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), had failed. And it has spent much of the subsequent time trying to figure out ways to get by those problems. One result is Project Reunion, which will coincidentally ship alongside Sun Valley and bring UWP APIs and capabilities to traditional desktop applications. And one will be a way for app developers to distribute their apps outside of the Store in a way that will be safe and trusted. We’re still waiting to hear how that will work.

But will Sun Valley—or this “next generation of Windows”—include more than these changes? Is this truly a new Windows? Or just a new version of Windows 10 with a different name?

I don’t know, of course. But we’ll find out in less than two weeks.

I feel like it won’t matter much either way, though. I care a lot about this. And I know that many of you do as well. But Windows doesn’t matter much to most people in the sense that it’s expected and always there, and it just works. It’s infrastructure, sort of like electricity or water, something you don’t notice until it breaks. But it’s also something no one buys directly because we buy PCs instead, and only once every several years on average. And those just come with Windows.

Getting that user base excited by “the next generation of Windows” is impossible here in 2021. The last time a Windows launch was truly exciting to the mainstream was also the only time that a Windows launch was exciting to the mainstream: That happened in August 1995 when Windows 95 arrived and Microsoft, briefly, was at the top of the world.

Since then, we’ve had Windows 2000 (business users only), Windows XP (a muted launch thanks to 9/11, and then the UPnP scandal, which triggered Trustworthy Computing), years of delays because of Longhorn, Windows Vista (which launched first for businesses and was bogged down by performance and compatibility issues), Windows 7 (boring but stable), Windows 8 (insanity), and then Windows 10 (an apology for Windows 8). Even the tamest Apple launch event during these years was more interesting to most normal people.

So what do I really expect?

I expect “the next generation of Windows” to be mostly about the Sun Valley user interface upgrade, which I think is important enough to be the only major new feature in this release. But I don’t expect it to change much. Windows will continue forward, racking up billions in revenues every quarter. PC sales will remain flat or grow/fall in the low single digits. Most people will continue to be far more enamored of their smartphones, tablets, and smart devices. And Microsoft will lose interest in Windows again in a year or so.

And … it’s all good. I’m just happy that Microsoft is paying attention to Windows again. Even though I believe it will be temporary. And that we’ll be back to handwringing again all too quickly.