Ask Paul: October 10 ⭐
Happy Friday! Let’s put yet another controversial week behind us and kick off the weekend a bit early.
🔟 Windows 10, we hardly knew you. Now please leave
helix2301 asks:
What are your feelings on the EOL of Windows 10 next week and Office 2019? Windows 10 was a big breakthrough, I think, for Microsoft. It went from being the last OS to the more open platform in the span of about 10 years. Thanks to Microsoft changing CEOs.
I have mixed feelings about this, but I think that was probably true each time a major Windows version hit end of support. For people who follow Windows closely, these releases are rollercoasters of highs and lows. But they impact mainstream users, too, and the coming end of the Windows 10 era has garnered more attention in that space than I feel is warranted.
Whatever anyone’s feelings about Windows 10, one thing is objectively true: It is one of only a handful of Windows releases—the others being Windows XP and Windows 7—that were so widely used at the time of their exit from support that Microsoft was forced to adjust the schedule in some way. With Windows 10, we see the most extreme steps yet. In addition to supporting the release for businesses with an additional three years with paid support, Microsoft opened up additional paid support for consumers, too, albeit only for one year. And then things escalated. Anyone can get Windows 10 support for an additional year for free.
All year, we’ve speculated whether Microsoft would be “forced” to keep supporting Windows 10. I see both sides on this one. Windows 10 and 11 are close enough technically to be considered identical from a servicing perspective, so what’s the harm or cost in continuing to deliver security updates to Windows 10 users? On the other hand, the Windows 11 hardware requirements establish and newer and more secure baseline for supported PCs. And 10 years of support, 13 really, is a much longer support lifecycle than is offered by any mainstream personal computing platform (meaning the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Android in all its forms). When you consider that other platforms with more users than Windows 10 are supported for less time, it’s unclear how this warrants so much outrage.
Looking at it as a user, but also as an amateur historian of this product line, Windows 10 feels like the product that the previous team would have made had they stuck around. (This was true of the shift from Vista and that team to the Windows 7 team as well.) They were already unwinding the most egregious of Windows 8’s sins and working to bring the PC and phone closer together. Windows 10 might have been called Windows 8.2 but for the horrible reputation that 8 earned.
But Windows 10 marked a nice return to desktop centricity, the correct decision given the nature of the user base. The problem, and this was no one’s fault, really, was that the merging of PC and phone, and related products like Surface Hub, Xbox, and HoloLens came too...
The post Ask Paul: October 10 ⭐ appeared first on Thurrott.com.
