Windows 11: Known Knowns, Known Unknowns, and Unknown Unknowns (Premium)

In honor of the late Donald Rumsfeld, I’d like to address what’s happening with the Windows 11 hardware requirements, at least right now in this slice of time. As we’ve already seen, and as we’re no doubt going to experience repeatedly going forward, things are going to change.

The problem, of course, is Microsoft’s inability to communicate effectively. When you think about it, most of the issues we have with the software giant—certainly, most of the issues I have—are tied to this same problem. It’s like we’re living in Groundhog Day but it doesn’t matter what we do because Microsoft will keep making the same kind of blunder over and over and over again.

Anyway, here we are. So let’s take a step back, examine what Microsoft has communicated to us about the Windows 11 hardware requirements, and how that’s both changed with time and has never really matched the reality of the situation.

In the days leading up to the Windows 11 reveal, Microsoft invited some journalists and bloggers to an off-the-record pre-briefing in which it said it would set expectations. This would have been the ideal time to be clear about the hardware requirements, but Microsoft is always Microsoft, and that’s not what happened. Instead, the assembled press was told that Microsoft was finally raising the system requirements—after not doing so in Windows 7, 8, and 10—but only to slightly better CPUs than before; 1.2 GHz vs. 1.0 GHz, and dual-core vs. single core. And it revealed that Windows 11 Home would require an Internet connection and a Microsoft account (MSA) during the initial Setup.

Naturally, everyone who attended that meeting came away believing that that latter condition would be the big controversy surrounding the Windows 11 launch. But as we now know, of course, that’s not the case. Windows 11’s hardware requirements, which were much more stringent than Microsoft had let on, would emerge as the bigger issue.

When Microsoft announced Windows 11 on Thursday, June 24, it published a very Apple-like promotional page on its website that highlights new features in the coming OS. And there, once again, we see the same vague hardware requirements: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster CPU with 2 or more cores on a compatible 64-bit processor or System on a Chip (SoC), 4 GB of RAM or more, 64 GB or larger storage device, and firmware that supports UEFI, Secure Boot, and Trusted Platform Module (TPM) version 2.0.

That “compatible 64-bit processor” is interesting for two reasons. First, as we discussed during the launch, Windows 11 will for the first time not support 32-bit processors and will not be made available in a 32-bit version as was Windows 10 and previous Windows versions. Second, Microsoft links that text to its Windows Processor Requirements page on the Microsoft Docs website. And that page links to separate pages for AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm processors that, at the time, told a very interesting story. (To keep this simple, I’m going to stick with Intel processors, since they’re the most well-understood.) Windows 11 will supposedly work on a 5th-generation Intel Core processor or newer, we were told.

Except, of course, that’s not really true. In fact, that page has since been edited to reflect the new reality: Microsoft really intends to only support 8th-generation and newer Core processors. But we’ll get to that.

As Thursday turned into Friday and then Saturday that week, and as enthusiasts mulled over Microsoft’s confused messaging and the exponentially more confused messaging from the press and bloggers who had received Microsoft’s muddled original missives, confusion turned to anger and then to outrage. No, not about the processor requirements, but rather about TPM 2.0, a chipset/feature that is either unavailable or disabled on many modern PCs. Technical people should be able to figure out how to enable this feature and related requirements like Secure Boot. But the unwashed masses will have no idea (and probably won’t care); all they know is that their PC isn’t compatible with Windows 11. Actually, they probably won’t even know that, but whatever.

As I argued over that weekend, the TPM 2.0 issue is something of a red herring because of those aforementioned conditions, and because, let’s face it, this will probably impact a very small audience. And that’s all well and good because the real Windows 11 hardware requirements—an 8th-generation Intel Core processor or better (or the AMD equivalent)—are truly arbitrary and thus outrageous.

Intel’s 8th-generation Core processors are notable for only one reason: This is where Intel shifted its mainstream U-series processors from dual-core to quad-core designs, and it did so without impacting battery life or the price, so it was received as a real gift to the community (that I’m sure it hoped would buy some goodwill during a time in which Intel was mismanaging its transition to more efficient chip manufacturing processes).

But that doesn’t explain why Microsoft would make that the minimum requirement. Previous-generation chipsets, including 6th-generation (Skylake) and 7th-generation (Kaby Lake) Core processors, are quite capable of handling Windows 10, and thus they are quite capable of handling Windows 11. These systems are likely to including TPM 1.2 or 2.0 chipsets, come with at least 4 to 8 GB of RAM, and almost certainly all have at least 128 GB of onboard storage. There must be some other reason.

Two possibilities emerge.

The first, of course, is the Spectre and Meltdown set of processor vulnerabilities that were discovered in early 2018. The resulting patches and mitigations help newer processors avoid these vulnerabilities, but at a cost. And that cost is greatest in, wait for it, the 8th-generation Core processors, which saw performance fall by as much as 14 percent. (You know, come to think of it, this might be why Intel went to quad-core with this generation of chipsets. Intel knew about Spectre and Meltdown ahead of time but said nothing.)

The second is Microsoft’s outrage at Intel following the Surfacegate debacle of 2016. As you may recall, Microsoft was the first to market with PCs based on the 6th-generation Intel Core (Skylake) chipsets, which were more powerful and ran cooler than their Haswell-based predecessors. The problem, of course, was that these processors were also among the buggiest that Intel had ever shipped. And Microsoft, an inexperienced hardware maker, got into a very public spat with Intel over which company should be supporting users with patches. Microsoft thought that Intel should be responsible. Intel, which had been dealing with PC makers for decades, explained that PC makers were responsible for these patches.

I’ve gone back and forth on the blame here as new information came out over time. And what I’ve concluded is that the fault is Microsoft’s. No major PC maker—HP, Dell, or Lenovo—had the issues with Skylake processors that Microsoft did, and I’ve been told off the record, and multiple times, that Skylake was just business as usual for them. Regardless of that, Microsoft went thermonuclear on Intel and refused to support older Intel silicon in new versions of Windows 10, hoping that this move would cause Intel to reverse course on supporting Skylake.

This animosity can be tied back to Terry Myerson, who ran Windows at the time. You might remember that Terry had Windows 10 ported to ARM because AMD was “circling the drain” at the time (his words) and Intel needed competition if Microsoft was going to help PCs transition to more modern mobile hardware. And he wanted to “get those f#$king Intel stickers off of PCs” (again, his words). Not that it matters, I guess: Intel and Microsoft publicly bitched about each other for a while and then things calmed down. And Microsoft never led the way with a new-generation chipset on Surface again.

To this day, Microsoft has yet to make a clear case for an 8th-generation Core minimum for Windows 11, and this line feels arbitrary to me. Anecdotally, but based on a number of factors, I feel that 7th-generation Intel Core processors today represent the biggest part of the market using Windows 10 that could upgrade to Windows 11, and that Microsoft is making a major PR blunder by not allowing this group in. That may be changing, of course: Microsoft this week indicated that it may include 7th-generation chipsets into the fold after testing concludes this summer in the Insider Program. But even that communication is vague and uncertain. I think Microsoft’s customers deserve both certainty and clarity.

There’s one more possibility to consider here, as obvious as it is: Perhaps Microsoft is simply trying to give a boost to a PC market, which, after years of sales freefalls experienced a year or two of flat sales and then a temporary COVID-19 sales boost bonanza. With that unprecedented event now starting to wind down in Microsoft’s biggest markets, PC sales are correctly expected to level out again eventually. But maybe Microsoft could keep the party going by making many users upgrade PCs to get Windows 11.

This may seem far-fetched to some, but I do feel that it is part of the reason. After all, Microsoft’s Windows customers are not you and me; no one really buys Windows these days. Microsoft’s Windows customers are PC makers. And PC makers, which have always faced low margins, want the COVID-era boom to keep going as long as possible.

The issue with this theory, of course, is that no one really wants to buy a new PC and that COVID-based buying was about need if not desperation. And when that need subsides, so, too, will PC purchases. No normal people out in the world care about a new Windows. We do, but we’re tech enthusiasts. We’re not the mainstream market, which arguably is losing interest in new iOS and Android versions too, let alone Windows.

I expected Microsoft to quickly retreat on its Windows 11 hardware requirements and this week’s mea culpa and promise to evaluate 7th-generation Core chipsets is correctly seen as the first step back from that cliff. But I expect further concessions, especially as more news arrives. For example, we’ve now learned that system makers can get exceptions to the hardware requirements and ship Windows 11 on new PCs with older CPUs or TPMs. If that’s true, then it should be true for everyone, including upgraders. And … I bet it will be.

But the lingering problem I have here goes well beyond Microsoft’s traditional inability to communicate. Generally speaking, the software giant has seemed surprised in the past when every single major Feature Update it’s ever shipped has arrived with major problems that impact customers. It drags John Cable out of cold storage to write a blog post about how everything is fine, the system works, and, oh, by the way, this is the most successful Windows version upgrade ever. Stay the course!

But this time is different. There is absolutely no way that Microsoft’s decision-makers did not know that this 8th-generation Core chipset requirement wasn’t going to be a major controversy ahead of time, and one that could literally impact the adoption of Windows 11 and customers in very negative ways. And yet, knowing the problem, it not only went ahead with this mad plan, but it purposefully hid the requirement from the press and the public, claiming only that 64-bit dual-core 1 GHz processor bit and so on. This wasn’t just ineptitude. It was malicious. And stupid.

And that is troubling to me. Windows 8-level troubling. That Microsoft, or the Windows team, would knowingly deceive its fans, its customers, and the press about what it is really doing with Windows 11 should be troubling to anyone reading this. Rather than celebrating this otherwise wonderful Windows upgrade, we’re forced to wonder about Microsoft’s motivations and distrust the company to ever do the right thing again. And that’s the biggest problem of all. Once customers walk away from Windows and Microsoft, and they’re never coming back.

The good news? There’s time to set this right. But Microsoft needs to act decisively and communicate what it’s doing with clarity. Does anyone want to take a bet on that ever happening?