There is a huge number of minor annoyances (People tend to complain about start menus ads performance regressions, poor context menu in Win11 etc - and I agree with all of them).
But there is also a massive number of small things added and improve. Just between base Win10 and more recent Win10 there is a huge number of features added regarding for example how apps DPI scale, especially when moving across multiple screens with different DPI for example. Or WSL. So I wouldn't agree "everything" is going in the wrong direction. Something as simple as Win+Shift+S is an amazing improvement which required a third party tool under Win7 but no more since 2010CU. The new terminal... the list goes on and on.
WSL is not fundamentally different to me than a PC emulator. I'd still take Windows 2000 over Win 11 if I could run modern apps like browsers and IDEs on it.
It's been on my mind lately that Windows really hasn't done much lately except improving upon the way it's an Azure and Ads vehicle. That's the real "innovation".
The OS is no longer the product, it's just an appendage to the cloud. The mushroom, if you will. The mycelium it's connected to is much larger.
WSL was just one exemple. There are literally thousands of other improvements. Not all are revolutionary but at least some matter in a big way to most people. Any gamer would say DirectX 12 is enough to upgrade from Win7 to Win10. Anyone with two screens of different DPI should say the same. Anyone with a Wifi6 router would want to upgrade. The list goes on. I also liked the fast and simple Win2000, or Win7. But I do remember how terrible the screenshot functionality was, how bad the terminal was and how crappy the dpi scaling was. Nostalgic glasses are some times too rosy.
> The OS is no longer the product
It used to be that the product was office, sql server, exchange and windows was the vehicle to deliver it. It’s really not so different that the products are OneDrive or AppInsights or GitHub.
It's not. DirectX is an add-on. WiFi is additional drivers. Screenshot is just a user space application. The only thing requiring deep surgery is different DPI on different screens.
Too bad we have to choose between no spy-ware in the OS andd different DPI monitors.
>Something as simple as Win+Shift+S is an amazing improvement
Just now I hit that chord once to try the feature out , it came up but I hit "escape" to cancel the interaction. Now, typing the chord a second time, Windows no longer brings up the snipping UI. If I can find a show-stopping bug in an "amazing improvement" in five seconds then, I'm sorry, but it's not an improvement.
Ditto with the new Windows Terminal: occasionally connecting via SSH to a box already running `tmux` will just crash the renderer. Of course crashing the renderer (a fairly fatal error for a terminal emulator) doesn't tear down the program (!?!) so the renderer continues to crash once per frame drawn, every time you say OK to dismiss the error, until you terminate the program.
I cannot even think of something new in Windows 10 or 11 that has not, at some point, given me grief. The new task manager refresh, maybe, but I still have to dive into Resource Monitor (Vista) multiple times weekly, so even that improvement is not so good that it displaces its predecessors.
This is software that costs 100s (Windows, Office) or 1000s (VS) of dollars, and they can't even get it right. I generally like surreal humor, but we are way beyond absurd at this point.
Win 10 CU is when the replaced snipping tool with snip and sketch, but snipping tool dates back to Windows 7 at least, maybe Vista. It wasn't hooked up to a default shortcut, but you could fix that yourself.
But there is also a massive number of small things added and improve. Just between base Win10 and more recent Win10 there is a huge number of features added regarding for example how apps DPI scale, especially when moving across multiple screens with different DPI for example. Or WSL. So I wouldn't agree "everything" is going in the wrong direction. Something as simple as Win+Shift+S is an amazing improvement which required a third party tool under Win7 but no more since 2010CU. The new terminal... the list goes on and on.