Don't worry, once enough people come back, they'll roll back in the ads and the intrusive performance-killing features and the cycle will repeat all over again
A fundamental problem with this is that "8" is two different releases (8.0 and 8.1), "10" is about 9 different releases, and "11" is three different releases so far (21H2, 22H2, and 24H2). It doesn't make much sense to lump all of them together because they share the same marketing name; technically there's no difference between going from 8.0 to 8.1 or from 22H2 to 24H2 and going from Vista to 7 or 10 20H1 to 11 21H2
10 was bad 11 is a little better but no enough.
With win10 they started with more annoying ads and the start menu with apps and the click bait news in the start menu
I mean, apart from killing the start button and all the touch first applications, windows 8 felt really satisfying to me by eliminating transparency effects and having simpler, clearer window decorations. I hate the transparency effects in windows 7, and performance was improved in Win 8.
Maybe Windows 12 will be the promised "last Windows" which 10 was supposed to be.
I'd love to know the exec who ordered Windows 11. It stinks of "I need a product on my resume that I launched because being Windows 10 "maintainer" sounds so pathetic on a resume."
Anyone who tried to do serious native windows dev has been burnt so often by Microsoft. I really wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt with WinUI 3 but I really cannot anymore. Until proven otherwise I expect absolutely nothing to improve meaningfully. It’s extremely sad for those of us who were dumb enough to think Microsoft take on modern GUI would be interesting to follow closely, we are in 2026 and WPF is still the way to go IMHO.
What kind of thing do you write? I'm still amazed at how much functionality is packed into tiny binaries like the sysinternals tools, and depressed at how acceptable 50MB todo apps have become.
The only people that still buy into this are folks that never developed anything with WinUI, aka WinUI 3.0.
Since Windows 8, they messed up the development experience so bad, that they managed to turn many advocates like myself into vocal critics.
We avoid anything WinRT unless there is no way to do the same with Win32, classical COM (WinRT is an evolution of COM), or regular .NET (Forms/WPF).
And also post regularly about the actual state of the tooling unlike Microsoft's marketing posts.
Example, they keep mentioning about WinUI being supported in C++, but never mention how bad C++/WinRT dev experience has become, or that the framework is in maintenance, and has been superseded by WIL.
Don't worry, once enough people come back, they'll roll back in the ads and the intrusive performance-killing features and the cycle will repeat all over again
You can always really on the MBAs
I can't downvote this comment, because I've observed exactly this practice happen, again and again, over the past three decades.
I still remain naively hopeful and cheer them on, however.
Microsoft has long had a tick tock cycle for Windows.
98: great. ME: bad. XP: great. Vista: bad. 7: great. 8: bad. 10: great. 11: bad
Maybe “great” is going a bit far for some of those. “Not bad” vs “bad” seems more realistic.
A fundamental problem with this is that "8" is two different releases (8.0 and 8.1), "10" is about 9 different releases, and "11" is three different releases so far (21H2, 22H2, and 24H2). It doesn't make much sense to lump all of them together because they share the same marketing name; technically there's no difference between going from 8.0 to 8.1 or from 22H2 to 24H2 and going from Vista to 7 or 10 20H1 to 11 21H2
10 was bad 11 is a little better but no enough. With win10 they started with more annoying ads and the start menu with apps and the click bait news in the start menu
9 replies →
I mean, apart from killing the start button and all the touch first applications, windows 8 felt really satisfying to me by eliminating transparency effects and having simpler, clearer window decorations. I hate the transparency effects in windows 7, and performance was improved in Win 8.
Maybe Windows 12 will be the promised "last Windows" which 10 was supposed to be.
I'd love to know the exec who ordered Windows 11. It stinks of "I need a product on my resume that I launched because being Windows 10 "maintainer" sounds so pathetic on a resume."
Anyone who tried to do serious native windows dev has been burnt so often by Microsoft. I really wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt with WinUI 3 but I really cannot anymore. Until proven otherwise I expect absolutely nothing to improve meaningfully. It’s extremely sad for those of us who were dumb enough to think Microsoft take on modern GUI would be interesting to follow closely, we are in 2026 and WPF is still the way to go IMHO.
> we are in 2026 and WPF is still the way to go IMHO.
Why not Avalonia? It's not Microsoft but it is a spiritual successor to WPF, cross-platform, and open source.
Sure, Avalonia is fine. I meant specifically Microsoft offering
2 replies →
Yep, it's 2026 and I'm still 8 hours a day in win32.
What kind of thing do you write? I'm still amazed at how much functionality is packed into tiny binaries like the sysinternals tools, and depressed at how acceptable 50MB todo apps have become.
May I ask what kind of work you do at what sounds like a dream job to me?
Nah, mostly marketing.
The only people that still buy into this are folks that never developed anything with WinUI, aka WinUI 3.0.
Since Windows 8, they messed up the development experience so bad, that they managed to turn many advocates like myself into vocal critics.
We avoid anything WinRT unless there is no way to do the same with Win32, classical COM (WinRT is an evolution of COM), or regular .NET (Forms/WPF).
And also post regularly about the actual state of the tooling unlike Microsoft's marketing posts.
Example, they keep mentioning about WinUI being supported in C++, but never mention how bad C++/WinRT dev experience has become, or that the framework is in maintenance, and has been superseded by WIL.
Their recent post about explorer performance was “we raise clocks when you launch explorer” rather than an actual fix