Obviously, when Microsoft released Windows 10, they said that Windows 10 is the last and will continue to update. However, Windows 11 was newly released in 2021, and maybe they will release "New Valley" in 2024. I think that the reason why MS released Windows 11 is to solve serious bugs in Windows 10 itself. What do you think?
Ever heard of Windows 10X ? Do you ever get this feeling 11 looks and acts a bit like MacOS ? M$ HAD to do something with 10X, even if it was only renaming it to Windows 11. Tadaaaa ! Look back, how often M$ stuff dissapeared as fast as it showed up. They truly have other, additional markets to make even more money too. I see this as experiments. Let them experiment. “Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing.” (but they do)
11 kind of feels like a tablet version of 10. They made everything smaller, like the new context menu and new start menu and got rid of things that are useful on huge screens like the ability to separate tasks. The new centered taskbar is even kind of perfect on a smaller vertical screen. The whole things feels like "So you hated 8 when we forced all the changes all at once so this time we will boil the frog a bit more slowly". If there is a 12 I expect it to be somewhere between 11 and 8 ...... great. If they wanted people to actually love 12 they should set a goal to make it feel somewhere between 7 and 10, but there is no chance of that.
Microsoft never once said officially that Windows 10 will be the last version. This misconception became sort of an urban legend due to a developer known for making hyperbolic statements.
Who really cares what they name it as long as its free. The anniversary updates and such to windows 10 where you basically had to install windows over again are basically like new versions, call them 11, 12, 13 or 10.1 10.2 10.3, doesn't really matter in the end.
More like somewhere between Windows 7 and Linux but supporting the latest directx, vulkan, etc. without ANY of the telemetry, nag screens, bloaty apps or "features". Make all that opt in by manual download from the store...as much as I hate the mostly broken store itself, at least then there would be a use for it.
If they made a version for workstations where the installer gave you the option to check boxes for the stuff you actually wanted, they could easily sell that to people like me.
So Bill G won a lottery and we weren't aware of it . Obviously MS made and still makes a bunch of money with windows. Even if every single copy was pirated they still made a bunch of money.
Understanding what you read is more important than acquiring data just for the sake of parroting them. Is pretty obvious that office was by crude numbers more relevant than windows itself, but you can't sell the blades if no compatible razors are in the hands of the consumers. So, does Gillette makes money with razors? According to your metric, no. According to facts, yes, absolutely. More "modern" companies officialized that marketing model even more. So, how much money makes Google/Alphabet with it's Chrome browser or Android, or Chrome OS? Likely they are technically a loss, practically they make a big part of the income. That said, recently, with the stupidity of cloud services, things are changing and hosting services are becoming more and more important for all the big brothers, Amazon, MS, Google, Apple and so on. But MS here is just following the thrend, something that started only after Nadella replaced more "MS minded" people.
The analogy doesn't work. No one forced you to buy the new coke. Win11 will be sold in any PC no matter if you like it or not, and also will be pushed in any W11 ready PC, and 98% of the users will just abide.