So, What About Windows 10? (Premium)

Lost in all the excitement and controversy around Windows 11 is the little OS that could, Windows 10, and its 1.3 billion users. What’s going to happen to Windows 10?

Well, Microsoft isn’t talking, of course. All we have are two facts.

First, Windows 10 will be supported through October 14, 2025, which conveniently—and, I assume, purposefully—provided it with the same 10 years of support that it afforded previous major Windows releases. So much for Windows as a Service (WaaS) and support being for “the lifetime of the device,” whatever that meant.

And second, Microsoft will ship Windows 10 version 21H2 concurrently this October with Windows 11, which, by the way, is also currently described as being version 21H2. That may be a clue: Windows 10 and 11 versions 20H2 are almost certainly built on the same core platform, and will be serviced by the same updates, including the same feature experience packs, possibly. (This is how Microsoft services different versions of Windows 10, so it may help to simply think of Windows 11 as another version of Windows 10 on a number of levels.)

But those that wish to stay on Windows 10—and those that will be forced to because of Windows 11’s curiously arbitrary hardware requirements—are naturally curious about what the next four and a half years will look like. I think the past provides a guide.

Most are probably familiar with the fact that WaaS was such a huge failure that Microsoft scaled back its plans for shipping major versions of Windows over time. Initially, it said that it would ship “2 or 3” major new versions of Windows 10 each year, but that quickly changed to twice per year. Those major upgrades, called feature updates, were so unreliable and caused so many problems, however, that Microsoft moved into a staggered model in which the first update each year would be minor, with almost no new features, and the second would be a major update with new features (and a longer support lifecycle for businesses).

That didn’t work either. So the past several Windows 10 “feature updates” have been nothing more than traditional monthly cumulative updates masquerading and major upgrades. They were faster to install, and they came with little in the way of new features, but they were reliable. And then something weird happened: Thanks, I think, to ongoing work to improve the reliability of Windows updates, Windows 10 version 21H1 wasn’t even as big as a cumulative update. It was something else, something even smaller, and I upgraded multiple PCs to this version in as little as three minutes. That’s a huge improvement over previous feature updates and “feature update”/nee cumulative update releases. Huge.

(With Windows 11, Microsoft is taking yet another step back from the WaaS cliff. It will support Windows 11 Home and Pro for two years and Enterprise and Education for three. What happens after that is still a mystery because, well, Microsoft.)

Windows 10 version 21H2, as noted, is due this fall. This will be either a “feature update”/cumulative update or whatever the heck 21H1 was, and it is expected to have little to no new features and install without any drama. But beyond that, we enter the great unknown.

So let’s think through the possibilities.

Microsoft could, of course, just continue releasing these minor feature updates twice each year, so we’ll get a 22H1 and 22H2 next year and so on through the end of 2025. Assuming the core of Windows 10 and 11 remain the same as we move forward, this actually makes the most sense, I think. They’re building Windows anyway, and one of the few nice things about Windows Update now is that once you clean install a given Windows 10 version, you only have a small handful of cumulative updates (and driver updates) to install to get a PC up-to-date. I don’t see that changing for the worse.

That said, the second major possibility is that Microsoft simply stops revving the product version at some point and just deliver monthly cumulative updates each month until October 2025. But this possibility isn’t really that different, or at all different, from what I described above because those version changes aren’t really feature updates anyway. They’re just cumulative updates. So the difference between these two possibilities is really just semantic.

Apps will continue to get updated, of course, and I don’t see any reason why the new apps we’re expecting for Windows 11—like the new Photos—won’t come to Windows 10 too. Should Microsoft somehow stop updating apps on Windows 10, however, we can expect some blowback as there is literally nothing unique to Windows 11 that would prevent these apps from happening on Windows 10 too. (And that Office visual refresh we’re still waiting for? It’s not even Windows 11-specific: If you have Windows 10, you will have access to it as well.)

Some have guessed that Microsoft might extend Windows 10 support beyond October 2025, but I don’t see that happening for consumers. Instead, it’s possible that Microsoft will provide enterprises with paid extended support for another three years, as they do/did for Windows 7. But even that will depend on the Windows 11 adoption numbers. If things are going well enough, Microsoft might not feel the need.

And it’s reasonable to think that Stardock or others will ship utilities that bring Windows 10 as close as possible to Windows 11 from a visual perspective. It’s not hard to imagine a Windows 11-style Start replacement, and we already have ways to center the taskbar icons.

If you think forward to 2025, we’ll be at a point in time in which PCs based on chipsets earlier than the presumed upgrade cutoff—e.g. those based on 6th-generation Intel Core processors or their AMD equivalents—will be at least 9 years old (at least from time of manufacturing; some will have been sold to users a bit more recently). And for all the understandable griping out those PCs being perfectly viable even at that time, it’s also reasonable to see Microsoft not extending the support lifecycle for individuals. Today, a 9-year old PC is one that just predates the initial wave of Windows 8 computers. It would have come with Windows 7. That feels out of date to me.

Microsoft could do a lot to address the concerns by easing up on the Windows 11 hardware requirements for upgraders. As I wrote earlier today, however, that calls into the nebulous category of known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. So we’re just going to have to wait and hope for the best. Regardless, Windows 10 has had a great run, and even if all comes to a crashing halt in October 2025, that’s a solid 10 years.