- Yeah! Let's go!
- Windows 11 is no ordinary update,
but sitting through Microsoft's dull
and bug-ridden announcements training,
you'd never know it.
Which is why a lot of what we're going to talk about
was actually pulled from the fine print
on Microsoft's website and from our own firsthand experience
with the leaked build from last week.
The good news is that there is a lot to talk about.
The bad news is that, well, not all the news is good news.
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(upbeat music)
At first glance, Windows 11 is little more
than a major interface redesign
on top of what is fundamentally Windows 10.
But on closer inspection,
there is more going on under the hood
than we give it credit for.
In particular, enhanced support
for hybrid architecture processors
with both a mix of performance
and power savings CPU cores, like Intel's Lakefield.
That is gonna be a big deal in very little time.
♪ Big ♪
- Sorry for that.
The most obvious improvement is, of course though,
the new visual design.
It's a frosted glass aesthetic
with multiple themed styles, rounded corners on windows,
and a center aligned task bar,
an optimization that Microsoft made clear
was for touch users.
Ooh.
Did you feel that?
The new start menu, clearly lifted from Windows 10X,
is powered by the cloud
which appears to be code for,
we included Bing search as usual.
But hey, now your recent documents will sync across devices
if you're using Office 365, so that's pretty cool.
There are more useful changes, of course.
Snap layouts let you quickly
and easily tile windows in different orientations,
similar to how the FancyZones PowerToy works today,
except it's significantly more user-friendly
and significantly less configurable.
Microsoft says that nobody else lets you do that
with this many windows.
- Nobody else lets you do this.
- And that ended up being one
of the biggest revelations of the presentation.
Linux has apparently been renamed to nobody else, alas.
They do bring something new to the table here though.
Windows groups this way will group together
in the task bar and be treated like a single item.
So, you can switch to and from a window layout on the fly
and your multiple virtual desktops can now be customized
with different wallpapers to make it easier
to keep track of them.
It's kind of like customizing your water bottle
with the stickers you get
for free with your order from LTTstore.com.
What's more, they finally fixed the issue
where windows would rearrange themselves semi-randomly
when monitors are disconnected and reconnected.
So instead, they will minimize windows
that were on the remove to display
and then put them all back when you reconnect.
This is gonna make docking a laptop way less frustrating,
although I'm not sure what happens
if you disconnect the display,
then interact with those programs, then reconnect it.
I guess we'll see.
There's more for all-in-ones and touch displays
in general as well.
Touch targets are bigger now with more visual feedback
and there's a new onscreen keyboard
that we didn't get to properly test drive just yet
that looks a lot like the iOS keyboard,
right down to the ability to move the cursor around
by holding the space bar.
But, that's all boring productivity stuff.
What about gaming?
Well, after debuting on the Xbox series X,
auto HDR is coming to Windows
and direct storage support is baked into Windows 11
at the OS and driver level.
That's gonna bring Windows more in line with Xbox
from a feature standpoint, and personally,
I am really excited to see both of these in action.
I mean, given the Windows Teams
historically terrible HDR implementation,
I'm hesitantly optimistic
about automatically converting older, non-HDR games to HDR.
But Direct Storage, which allows your GPU
to access your systems game drive,
or really any other drive, directly,
should substantially improve loading times in games
once it's supported.
Investigating these features is gonna make
for some really interesting videos
and you're gonna wanna make sure that you are subscribed.
Xbox game pass is now integrated
into the Xbox app that comes with Windows.
And we got more promises
of cross-platform play as is the tradition by now,
though we have no idea how many titles will support it,
if it's gonna be difficult to support it,
if it's a system-wide thing, or what .
Though at least with Sony,
also finally talking more favorably about cross play,
it feels like the light at the end of this tunnel
is finally visible.
The additions to pen input look pretty sweet
and Microsoft has added haptic feedback to simulate the feel
of different tools as you're using them.
There's not really a whole lot else
for us to say about that
because they only showed it briefly.
And the same goes for screen rotation
which is much more streamlined now
with windows rotating smoothly with the display
and tiled windows in landscape mode stacking
onto each other rather than arranging unpredictably
like they used to.
Speaking of unpredictable,
Teams is now integrated into Windows directly.
I can't say I predicted that.
When did everyone start using Teams?
Am I outta touch? No.
It's the children who are wrong.
There's now a dedicated icon for Teams then
that gives you what looks like a searchable jump list
of recent contacts and buttons for interacting them
and I'm just not sure this is what anyone was asking for.
But hey, at least Microsoft has something akin
to I-message and FaceTime built-ins.
So, that's cool I guess.
There was a brief mention about dictation
and voice commands as well.
So, presumably that is also an upgrade
to compete with Siri on Mac OS.
Ah, Mac OS, they made a big deal
about how Teams works on any platform
and it wasn't the only thing that felt
like an unnecessary dig at Apple.
Even the FAQ page on their website
has this kind of thing in place
of genuinely useful information.
Guys, Microsoft, we wanna know
how much it's gonna cost stand alone.
Obviously computers cost anywhere from here to here,
I guess we'll know soon enough though
when it pops up in the Windows store.
Ah yes, the Windows store.
Now with the ability to show movies, TV shows,
and other content, regardless of the streaming service
and integration with the Amazon app store.
Yes, my friends,
you can now run Android apps directly in Windows.
There's no word yet on whether sideloading is possible
or if you're stuck with the Amazon store,
but this is still really cool.
As for why they're doing it, our best guess is that
if enough people run Android apps on Windows,
developers will finally buy into Microsoft's pitch
about how it's super easy to port your apps natively
to the Windows store
and enjoy Microsoft's industry-leading rev share
and support for outside payment processors, finger guns.
And I guess the end goal then would be
to kill the Window store's current ghost town vibe.
Speaking of things deceased, but now brought back to life,
the new Widgets panel is nothing like Gadgets in Vista.
Microsoft describes them as a beautiful sheet of glass,
powered by AI.
In effect, they're pretty much the news
and interests panel that Microsoft added
to Windows 10 in the 21H1 update,
but with some additional features and the AI is, well,
it's news that is tailored to your interests, ha ha.
They can be brought up or dismissed
by swiping in from the left edge of the screen
on a touchscreen or clicking the icon in the task bar.
Of course, the biggest question is pricing and availability.
They didn't talk about this much in the presentation,
but from the FAQ, we've put together that it will be
a free update for Windows 10 users
and it'll start shipping in late 2021 on new PCs
with standalone copies available in early 2022.
As for pricing, if I had to guess,
I'd say it'll be a hundo for home
and a hundo plus for pro.
Otherwise, smart people would all just buy Windows 10
which costs that amount and then upgrade it for free.
Another thing Microsoft didn't tell us
and buried in the FAQ, system requirements.
As we've already seen, Windows 11 requires secure boot
and TPM 2.0 to function as a security measure.
This is hands down going to create the most confusion
for end users around this launch.
And Microsoft makes their own life more difficult
for no apparent reason because instead of just saying
when you go to install it, hey,
you need this trusted platform module chip
and secure boot enabled in your UEFI files,
Microsoft just gives you this ambiguous error
that says your system isn't compatible.
Why?
Windows 11 also requires two or more CPU cores,
four gigs of RAM, 64 gigs of storage,
and a DirectX 12 compatible GPU.
Don't have all that stuff?
I don't know, go buy a new PC I guess, says Microsoft.
What's more troubling, however, is this note
that Windows 11 Home Edition requires an internet connection
and a Microsoft account to complete first time setup.
And, this is a weird one,
you actually get fewer features
for using a Microsoft account.
Desktop wallpaper is no longer synched
with your Microsoft account between devices,
though I personally actually just found
that feature kind of annoying.
And the timeline feature has been removed.
There's more.
The task bar is now locked to the bottom of the screen.
The start menu no longer has support for folders or groups.
Live Tiles are gone.
The menu itself cannot be resized.
And Tablet Mode is gone and replaced
with the new touch inputs.
Not all the changes we had to dig for are bad though.
Cortana mercifully won't bug you during first-time setup,
nor take up unnecessary space on the task bar by default.
So, it's just baffling that this stuff wasn't touched on
during the event because a lot of it
seems pretty important to me.
Now, it's unclear how the Windows 11 leak occurred
before the big reveal today.
Some have speculated that it was on purpose,
but what we know for sure is that it was
a significantly older build than what they just showed
and that there's no immediate pressure for you to upgrade.
The October 14th, 2025 retirement date,
puts Windows 10 service life at just over 10 years.
That's just a few months short of Windows 7's.
Was it a good operating system?
Ah, I don't know if it be remembered
as fondly as Windows 7 was,
but it was definitely better than the mess
that was Windows 8.
So, here's hoping then that Microsoft finally manages
to break the good-bad, good-bad pattern
and keep that positive momentum going
when Windows 11 finally reaches our PCs
so that I can continue to make segues
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Thanks for watching guys.
Go check out our first look of the leaked build
of Windows 11 for some more Windowsy goodness.
I promise there's more information in there
then in Microsoft's presentation today.
Anthony was real salty about having to get up at 6:00
to sit through that thing.
I had to de-saltify the script a little.
- [Anthony] You watered it down!
- I did not water it down, I desalinated it.