Understanding Windows 11 Version 24H2 (Premium)

Windows now follows a more chaotic and less predictable upgrade schedule than at any time in its history, making it difficult to know when new features will be added to the platform. This, tied with Microsoft's historic inability to communicate effectively and a more overt effort to behave non-transparently, is problematic for those customers who rely on Windows.

This isn't new, nor is it news. Uncertainty has been the hallmark of Windows since the introduction of Windows 11 in 2021, and given the time and effort I've spent trying to make sense of the nonsense in the intervening time, there's little reason to step through that history now. It is what it is, as they say.

That said, the constant change will continue throughout 2024, and what I would like to do is examine what we can expect from Windows this coming year. This information is, by definition, incomplete, a moment in time understanding that will be updated in future weeks and months as Microsoft marks milestones publicly, with announcements, and less desirably, simply just releases new features out of the blue, with no warning or testing whatsoever. Again, it is what it is.

Here's what we know.

Microsoft will release at least two *feature updates* in 2024, one relatively minor, and one more major. The minor update is called Moment 5 internally, and it's now winding its way through the formal release process, with a preview update release this past week and a public, stable release due on Tuesday, April 9, Patch Tuesday. The major update is called Windows 11 version 24H2, and it is a formal, annual Feature Update (capital F, capital U) that impacts the Windows support lifecycle.

In keeping with this era of constant, unpredictable change, everything else about these updates is different from that of their predecessors. And in keeping with their relative scope and important, the differences we see in Moment 5 are minor while the differences in 24H2, as I'll call it, are more notable.

Moment 5, like its predecessor Moment 4, is applicable to Windows 11 versions 22H2 *and* 23H2. That is, PCs using either version will get the same cumulative update and the same set of functional updates—new features—it contains. This is one of those slice in time things, as 22H2 and 23H2 are built on the same code base, a first in the short history of Windows 11, but a confusion nonetheless.

You may be wondering why this is so, or why this matters. But the answer is simple enough. Microsoft's handling of Moment 4–a literally momentous release that brought us Copilot and many other new features—is licensing theater, a power play by which the software giant undermined its own product support policies so that it could force a strategic new capability—in the form of Copilot and its AI-based features—on those corporate customers that would have skipped 24H2 had that been the vehicle for this functionality (as originally planned). Yes, this is yet another form of *enshittific...