All valid points. Still, the quality of the OS has nothing to do with its hardware requirements, actually. The way Microsoft handled all that on a PR and communication level was a disaster, to be sure, but at the end of the day… look, it’s a conscious choice they made, right or wrong that is it. It will have consequences in the future, but that’s not really the main problem with Win11 at this point.

The problem is that they are half-baked and needlessly simplified, for one. It’s also the fact that the new stuff they bring to the table is underwhelming, to say the least. Plus the fact that the security benefits of such a hard-line set on those hardware requirements were never adequately explained. So if an OS does not run faster, does not offer anything new of substance — even stuff that was promised, let us not forget, has not been implemented yet — and does not make users’ lives easier in any way that matters, then… why release it anyway?

I would have preferred them to take another year of development, do proper testing and overdeliver on their promises. They had absolutely no reason to rush it, 2022 would have been fine too. But… no. It had to be announced, “tested” and “released” in the space of *five months*.

Well, that’s not the way quality products are delivered. People claiming that “Windows 11 runs just fine, why all the complaining” miss the bigger picture. There’s no point in releasing meh products anymore, of any kind. When a company releases a product seemingly “for the sake of it”, consumers can be sure that it’s not released for their benefit but for the company’s and its partners’ benefit.

In this case, it was a release designed to force people into upgrading their PCs in the name of security. Simple as that.