Microsoft really is trying hard to get Windows 11 to fail. They still haven't realized most people don't feel the urge to update unless its 100% painless or it's necessary. If you alienate or disgrunt the "techies", ie those who recommend people what to do with their tech, you are going to get people that remove 11 to install 10, or holdouts on older versions. That's the way it is. IT Departments won't maintain two separate versions of Windows, so expect 10 to remain the default everywhere until 2025.
If they’re not automatically installed, they’ll never be installed. They’ll upgrade to Windows 11 when they buy a new computer. The idea of downgrading won’t cross their mind because the operating system and hardware are not distinct, decoupled components—if they don’t like Windows 11 they’ll just learn to live with it because that’s just how new computers are.
If what you've described was indeed the case Vista would have taken off eventually, but it didn't and it barely touch a 20% of the market in almost 3 years of being exclusively sold by OEM on new machines. In the Enterprise market, it probably never reached a 1% of all installs.
The reason for this phenomenon is in my experience that most computers are actually managed by a vast public of "techies", i.e. people that are computer literate enough to reinstall an OS and to provide support to their computer illiterate relatives and friends. These people tend to be vastly over assess their IT knowledge, and are very vulnerable to "rumors" spread on forums and blogs. This makes them very prone to becoming zealot about random topics they hear on the internet (like "Windows 8 sucks", or "Linux is bad").
When a non-techie gets a new computer with a new Windows version, they often can't figure out how to accomplish even the most basic things - or rather, they don't care and don't want to invest the time to tinker with the new system, generally. They then rely on their own "trusted" person for that, and one frequent answer they get is that the new Windows version is crap and they offer to downgrade their computer. I've seen this happen a lot with both Vista and 8, EVERYONE was downgrading PCs back then without a good reason for doing so. I even saw PC shops recommending to downgrade before selling a computer, with leaflets advertising for the service on the front desk.
I saw a high school buy Core 2 Quad machines in 2008 and wipe away Vista in favour of XP, even though they only needed the machines for Office and Autocad, and there was thus absolutely no reason whatsoever for doing so, given how beefy the machines were back then and that Vista SP1 had basically fixed the OS. The main motivation behind this was the stigma around Vista, and the fact the IT department was full of low-skilled technicians that got their training from pinned threads in PC forums. It was rare to find anyone using Vista back then, even on new computers, unless they were basically grandparents whose grandchildren lived far away.
For what I've learned in these years, the first month or so a new Windows version comes out is crucial and it foreshadows how well it's going to fare with users. If there's even a slight hint of doubt it could be bad the users immediately reject it, it gets stigmatized and it is basically dead in the water.
It's very diffierent in the Apple ecosystem in my opinion. People are usually nonchalant, even excited about upgrading. I think that's how Microsoft want people in the Windows ecosystem to feel, but it's just not refined enough for that to happen.
That's not my experience at all. People are just as wary about upgrading Apple devices. I've seen it among friends and family. They're afraid things will break or their device will slow down or everything will move around and they'll have to relearn how to use their device again.
And rightfully so. iOS 7 upgrade turned my iPhone 4S from blazing fast to a slow molasses, and there was no way back. At least you can downgrade most OSes (not sure about macOS).
Practically. And people will be so elated with Win 12, when the stupid changed will be normalized somewhat. I feel like I'm being courted by a pickup artist.
They already disgruntled a lot of devs with their environments. .net core still lives, but anything else seems like a wasteland. There are still a lot of VS Basic and C# devs, but it at least seems their number is decreasing.
It is really a problem to get someone that knows the tech if you have to interface it for some mundane Office tasks.
Interfacing their Graph API is a horror show that I recommend to any dev about how not to do security.
