But windows 10 was marketed as being different. They said that you would continue getting updates for "the lifetime of the device". They even said it was the last version of windows, and it would just keep receiving updates. And then they changed their minds and made windows 11, which didn't even run on most hardware that was running windows 10.
I wonder if that could be grounds for a false advertising suit.
The worst part is that Win 11 very much does run on the hardware, see any of the requirement bypass solutions out there for proof.
They are intentionally cutting that hardware off from support to force hundreds of millions of upgrades so that they can reap the licensing fees and cram more of their Edge/AI shit down the throats of everyone that has been avoiding it so far.
Only if you measure the life cycle starting from the initial release.
Windows 10 dropped out of support only 3 years after its successor (Win11) was available; when Windows 8.1 still had 7 more years of support after its successor (Win10) was released.
There's a lot of users who never upgrade windows but instead just get whatever is the latest whenever they buy a new computer. If these people bought a new computer every 5 years, they were always fine in the past, but now for the first time run out of support (because Win10 was "the latest" for an unusually long time period).
If someone has a newer PC, they should be able to upgrade to Windows 11 for free.
If they have an older PC, then they must have already enjoyed quite some period of the 10-year Windows 10 support lifecycle.
Unless Microsoft were to go to an Apple-esque annual release cycle, regularly dropping support for older hardware, I'm not sure how they could ever manage this.
Except those OSs would work on any machine. They’d be slow in some cases but would still work. Windows 11 has requirements that either require BIOS tweaks or a whole new MB (or new machine).
Windows 11 can be made to work on machines which do not meet those requirements without much - if any - effort. I installed it on a KVM yesterday, running it in 4 GB of memory with 64 GB of storage (42GB free after install, debloat, upgrade to latest and clearing the C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download (might have an 's' after it, don't remember, don't care) directory) on a 2016 HP Spectre with an i5 CPU (2 cores, 4 threads with hyperthreading enabled, 8 GB/256 GB). That is not a powerhouse but it runs no worse than Windows 10. It will probably never be used but that's another story. I installed it on that machine for my 20yo daughter who has gone full Linux and did not see the need for it. I only put it there 'just in case' she needs it for her studies (preparatory year for vet college) and 'cause I can.
There's 2 clear signs here from what I can see: if Linux does just fine for my non-technical 20yo daughter it will do fine for most people. Also, she has never really used Windows, only Linux (at home) and Chromebooks (at school and university) and does not feel the urge to start using it 'cause she does not stand to gain anything from it. Microsoft has lost the battle for the personal computer - or should that be 'for general purpose operating systems' - as far as I can see and any breaking change - like this Windows 11 your-hardware-need-not-apply thing - will cause more people to leave the platform.
That Windows 11 VM will probably be removed in a few months time when it becomes clear she does not need it so why keep it around? Bye bye, Windows, we hardly knew you and she did not know you at all but your time has passed. Let's just hope that the passing of Windows does not also lead to the passing of general purpose computing and the further advance of locked-down computing appliances. There's no love lost for Microsoft from me, having been there when it rose to power using all the dirty tricks in the book and then some but they were a strong factor in the commoditisation of general purpose computer hardware - PCs and servers, laptops and notebooks - for which I will grudgingly give them some respect, also because I got to profit from the flotsam and jetsam caused by the ever-increasing hardware demands by repurposing 'old' hardware which then often outperformed the new and shiny only because I ditched Windows and installed Linux on it.
It very much is them following previous practice.