[Music]
all right it is windows 11 time
microsoft announced this new operating
system
just last week and now they've released
a preview build that anyone can go and
grab
and download and install onto their
machines now whether or not you should
do that
that's entirely up to you but it's kind
of my job
so i've gone insta head and installed it
on my desktop pc
and i'm going to take you through a
bunch of the new changes in windows 11
so there's a new start menu there's a
new interface with all sorts of design
changes
there's a new store there's a bunch of
new new new and there's some familiar
stuff as well
so this is windows 11.
so the first thing you'll notice when
you first play around with windows 11
is it centered the taskbar centered
the start menu centered yes it's
centered
it looks a lot like mac os chrome os
that sort of thing
like it really feels like you're using
an android phone like it's a launcher
basically i can see all of my apps i can
go back and pin
apps and i kind of don't mind that like
i feel like it's
a lot more simplified and i feel like
that is the big thing about windows 11.
i'll go into all the design
changes but simplification and just the
design tweaks
that's the big thing you're really going
to notice the first time you use windows
11. now talking about design tweaks
let's take a look at the system tray now
before
you'd have had a volume sort of fly out
that would be up the top here
but now microsoft's kind of simplified
it you can control the volume from down
here
there's airplane modes or quick settings
you can get to or you can jump into the
full settings interface here
now look at settings it looks completely
different to windows 10 settings
there's a navigation bar down the side i
no longer have to sort of
dig in like say you go into windows
update i can check my update history and
i'm like okay let me just go check my
bluetooth devices
like i can really quickly get between
sections now this will take if you're
used to using windows it will take a
couple of hours to get used to it really
kind of
threw me off trying to work out where
all the settings were but as i've gotten
used to it
i really like this like i just really
like where microsoft's heading with this
simplification
and i feel like you'll find this
obviously elsewhere in windows 11 as
well
now let's look at file explorer now file
explorer used to have this sort of
ribbon interface
that used to be very much like this now
they've actually removed that for in
favor of a command bar and i think we're
going to see this sort of
interface show up a lot more in windows
11. it's not quite there everywhere just
yet
if i look at notepad this uses like an
old menu in system
but i think we're going to see this show
up a bunch and i kind of like it
it just feels again a lot more
simplified i don't want to say the word
simplified 100 times in this video but
really that's kind of what it's all
about now another area that's changed
obviously the notification center as
well or action centers microsoft calls
it
so you get your notifications you can
obviously swipe those away easily you've
got the calendar that pops out here
you can obviously shrink that so it's a
little bit more customizable there
but it just looks it just looks a lot
better and if i dig back into the
settings i can actually show you some of
the ui
changes here in the dark mode so we're
obviously in light mode now
if i go into like start and run that
will be all light mode if i flick over
to dark mode
it takes a few seconds for it to sort of
like change
you'll notice that the settings panel
will also change as well
now i prefer the dark mode personally so
here we go
we're in dartmouth now so this just
looks a lot better i just prefer the
start menu here
um file explorer obviously be dark as
well um they haven't quite
put dark mode everywhere i'd really like
to see this in the run
i'd like to see this in task manager and
stuff like that but
hopefully that will come before this
actually ships and there's also a bunch
of different themes that microsoft's
added in here so i can
put this theme on which is a default one
or maybe this one
and this this kind of shows off some of
the subtleties to microsoft's design
here so
let me just show you if i hover over
like this orb here
you'll see the color sort of shining
through on the window here then
immediately if i switch away so say
i bring up like settings you'll see that
color is no longer there
but as soon as it's in view the color is
there so it gives it that sort of like
depth in the design
i kind of like that real subtlety of
windows 11. it's those
real subtle changes that just makes it
look and feel
like new
[Music]
so not everything is perfect in settings
so i was really hoping if i dug into
stuff like the mouse settings
and i wanted some additional mouse
settings it wouldn't do this
and throw me into this sort of like old
interface of windows
and you know the control panel is still
there like
obviously i feel like that's there
because microsoft wants people to be
able to get to that stuff that they rely
on but i
don't like the way that it kind of shows
you into this old interface all these
settings really should be in the
settings by now
and i'm not quite sure why they're not
now one of the other real big ui changes
to windows 11 is widgets
now instead of being buried in a task
bar here they've actually got their own
button now and it slides out from the
left
so you'll see there's a bunch of
different widgets there's weather widget
there's you know i'm getting updates on
the euro soccer games
there's news all that sort of stuff i
feel like we're eventually gonna get
third party ones from developers but
they're not quite there just yet so you
can
choose from a bunch of microsoft ones
now these windows widgets
may remind you of windows vista but you
can't actually grab these
widgets and sort of drag and drop them
on the desktop just yet i don't know if
that will come
to windows 11 or not but they're kind of
contained within their own system here
and one of the things i really don't
like about this though is if i click
on the new section here and i want to
see one of these articles
it will throw me into microsoft edge
which isn't my default browser and it
seems like microsoft is
not adhering to the default browser
stuff here i really hate that
and it's actually a big part of the
search as well so say i search
for the verge like once again i have
chrome set as my default browser it's
going to throw me into edge
now i kind of get why microsoft's doing
this because they want to force people
into edge but i feel like it's really
icky and i really wish they wouldn't do
that and they would respect my browser
defaults
now beyond some of the surface level ui
work there's actually some really
interesting multitasking changes here
so obviously in windows you've been able
to sort of snap windows side by side in
windows 10 and
a bunch of different windows operating
systems over the years but microsoft's
gone a little bit of a step
further here so if i hover over the
maximize button you'll see a bunch of
different snap layouts that's basically
what microsoft's calling these
and it's really an easy and quick way of
surfacing
all the different sort of snap modes
that windows has had for years
and just making them really easy for
people to discover them and use them
so look there's this free by free um
snap mode here
i'm gonna launch that up i'm gonna put
paint here and i'm gonna put xbox here
and there you go immediately i've got
free apps side by side and i can
obviously snap these back into place
where they were minimize
them all that sort of stuff it just
makes things a lot more accessible
there's also a bunch of gaming
improvements in windows 11. i'll talk
you through some of those
now this is the new xbox app i say new
but it's actually been around for sort
of six months
you might recognize it if you've been
using it on windows 10
either way you get access to game pass
all your social stuff and obviously the
store as well
and it's basically the sort of like hub
for the xbox stuff so
eventually it will have xcloud
integration so you'll be able to stream
xbox games to your pc that's not there
quite yet
but this is what's there right now
another feature they bring from the
export side is direct storage
which will speed up all of your game
load times on compatible games
now you'll need an nvme pcie three or
four
ssds just really take advantage of this
and i don't believe it's quite there in
the preview
build yet so we'll have to see how that
works out dynamic refresh rate is a new
windows 11 feature and it basically lets
your device
refresh at dynamic rates so what that
means is can be really important on
laptop so imagine you've got 120 hertz
display
microsoft will actually dynamically
alter that so you might be running at 60
hertz the majority of the time but it
will shoot up to 120 hertz
when you're doing stuff like inking or
you're scrolling and stuff like that
what that does is it saves battery
[Music]
okay so up next is the microsoft store
ah yes the
microsoft store the windows store
windows app store whatever you want to
call it
it's getting massively overhauled in
windows 11. so as you can see
this is the brand new store here and it
looks a lot different to the windows 10
one there's a
obviously an app section there's a
gaming section an entertainment section
but really it's been sped up it looks a
lot better
and the big key thing is that you might
actually get some apps in here that you
care about
so microsoft is allowing developers to
add in win32 apps
so i think we're going to see a bunch of
like desktop apps appear in this store
in the coming months
winzip's there today there's a bunch of
pwas as well microsoft is allowing those
in the store
so i think we're going to see some
pretty interesting apps appear here and
obviously adobe's on board
as well one of the other key changes to
the store is that microsoft is allowing
developers to bring their own commerce
agents to the store
now what this means is they can keep 100
of their revenue if they do this so they
use their own
payment platform system or a third party
one and they don't have to pay microsoft
a penny i think that's huge and it could
mean
we see a bunch of new apps that we
haven't seen but here before microsoft
has been a lot more open with this store
and i think that's great for developers
and end consumers at the end of the day
hopefully we'll see a bunch of new apps
and maybe some familiar storefronts like
i really hope that we see steam games
and apps appear in here
maybe if it just links out to steam i
don't care i just want this to be a
central location where i can just get
all the apps i actually care about
and speaking of the store there's a big
missing part of this that we can't test
just yet
and it's android apps on windows that
was a huge announcement when microsoft
made that last week they're going to be
running alongside windows apps
so you'll be able to side by side these
applications just as if they were
windows apps so what you'll be able to
do is you'll be able to go into the
store and search for something like
tiktok
and you might find like the android
version of it it'll say go out to the
amazon app store
like i think this is a big deal beyond
just the android apps as well because i
feel like it's going to mean that
microsoft's going to open their store up
to
rival app stores now i know a bunch of
you are probably watching this thinking
why do i need android apps on my windows
pc and i think that's a fair point
but there are some apps like home
automation apps like ring and stuff that
just aren't available
on the web and i feel like just getting
those android apps on my pc
there's probably only one or two that i
really care about but it'd be really
nice to have them on a pc
speaking of other things that are
missing from this preview build the
microsoft teams integration so that was
also another big deal that microsoft
announced last week and we can't quite
test it just yet
but basically what it's going to mean is
microsoft teams is going to be
integrated into the taskbar
so you can like right click send someone
a message or start a video call them all
that sort of stuff
now this is only integrated for
consumers at first and not commercial
customers
so i'm not sure exactly when that's
gonna arrive for commercial customers in
windows 11.
and i think one thing that microsoft
teams getting integrated into windows 11
says about microsoft is i don't know
what's going to happen with skype like
that used to be bundled with windows 10
and now it's not so
bye by skype
[Music]
there are some questions that remain
around windows 11 though
can microsoft create a consistent ui
across the os
how will android apps run and most
importantly will your pc
even get windows 11 microsoft doesn't
seem to be able to answer exactly what
the minimum requirements will be
for windows 11 pcs just yet now we've
obviously got months of testing to go so
some things will change
but it really feels like microsoft's
trying to strike a tricky balance
between security and the traditional
openness of windows
i think between now and october which is
when we're expecting microsoft to launch
windows 11 we're going to hear a bunch
more about this new operating system
and i'm hoping we're going to see some
surprises along the way and just some
general improvements to what's already
looking like a pretty solid foundation
[Music]
okay thanks for watching our first look
at windows 11 we've also been covering a
bunch more of this at theverge.com so
check that out
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