The scam knows no limit. Make sure Windows 10 isn't updated anymore and then make sure Windows 11 isn't supported "because the hardware is too old", forcing people to buy new computers.
As a sidenote for whatever reason I tried to install Windows 11 on an AMD 3700X (don't remember why exactly I did that as I typically don't run Windows). The AMD 3700X came out in mid 2019. Windows 11 refused to install for the hardware wasn't supported: I don't know if it was the mobo, the CPU, a configuration in the mobo... Really no clue. All I know is not only it failed but it failed without telling what wasn't supported. On a computer that was not even four years old.
Meanwhile my wife is happily using Ubuntu on my old sixth gen Core i7 6700K from... 2015 (first Asus mobo that had a NVMe M.2 PCIe slot so in eight years I basically just upgraded the NVMe SSD to a more recent one).
I agree with the other poster: it's an opportunity to have "old" computers and just install whatever Linux distro on them.
All that "normies" need is a browser: I switched my 67 years old mother-in-law to Linux. If she can use Linux, nearly anyone can.
On a 3700X you can just switch on the eTPM and it should work. Most bioses come with it off. And no Microsoft doesn't tell you this with a clear message.
But in my opinion this isn't really about security. It's more about DRM. Microsoft wants to appease the content providers by requiring TPM, supporting attestation etc.
This way they can support running Android apps (and other things like their own store thing they're still pushing) but keep the user from messing with them under the hood. The same way macOS does with iOS apps. If you turn off system integrity protection on Mac you will lose the ability to run iOS apps.
Actually, there's more to this than DRM. They basically killed to support to every setup that don't have DCH¹ (universal drivers). The reason being because they wanted to do state separation in future version (likely Windows 12), which will require DCH drivers.
The now canceled Windows 10x already had state separation, it used Storage Spaces to manage partitions. It's basically immutable Windows, similar to ChromeOS.
Hmm but even an immutable OS has a strong DRM feel to it for me. Besides offering a bit more security there's a large "hands off under the bonnet" thing about it too.
macOS has it too in the form of SIP and Signed System Volume. But once you turn those things off there's suddenly a lot of content you can no longer access like iOS apps.
Yeah, Mac has a really confusing autocorrect. It was DHCP when I had typed HDCP for sure - I would know, I had to work with Dolby and Netflix for 3 years at Microsoft.
Incidentally, you can observe the same effect, however with a different delay, with subsequent releases of macOS versions: each time the support for some devices is dropped, their price drops, too, even though the hardware is inherently the same before and after announcement.
In the past, I used these MacBook Pros from 2012 to install additional memory and replace small HDDs with large SSDs but today this is no longer possible. Still, some perfectly good hardware can be bought cheap only because Apple doesn't support it. And if you used it back then, you can install perfectly functioning software on them like, say, Logic and use it for many years to come as an audio workstation even if Apple doesn't want to support it anymore.
I just bought one of these "junk" mini PCS for less than $100 with decent specs, and it came with Windows 10 professional, but it did not qualify to be updated to Windows 11.
I didn't even boot into windows. I immediately installed Ubuntu, and now it is my home automation and home media interface.
Honestly, I can't think of anything more beneficial to the Linux community then suddenly having a lot of cheap computers with good specs that are not only merely adequate, but actually rather exceptional for the cost, all because of the advent of Windows 11.
That started with Windows 10 actually, the moment they made it a free upgrade from 7/8/8.1.
I just installed Windows 10 on a VM and laptop, both are getting non-stop "suggestions" to "finish setting up my device" with Microsoft 365 subscriptions.
Windows 11 is a free update and they don't make profits from the sale of new hardware since they're not in the business of selling hardware (barring the niche surface devices which don't really sell meaningful numbers to be profitable).
Edit: -4 downvotes already? wow. What's with the downvotes my dudes? Should I juste come to HN to spam "hurr durr Microsft bad" for karma farming to coincide with the acceptable party line?
My assumption is that your (required) new computer comes with Windows 11, which was licensed for that unit by the manufacturer. I doubt they pay the full $140, but I also bet it isn't free.
Doesn’t Microsoft only make Windows 11 “free” if you’ve already paid for a Windows license previously? That means they benefit when you buy a whole new machine.
Furthermore, Microsoft makes money from ads, so a more intrusive UI along with more extreme data harvesting also leads to more profits.
Nothing is "free." Ever. If the update is "free," your attention and autonomy are the price.
I'd be fine with that, if they offered an alternative for power users who don't want to participate in Microsoft's move-the-mouse-cursor-for-shitty-popup-celebrity-news corporate strategy. Even an expensive alternative! But they have chosen not to do so.
They've gone on the record that they saw significantly better end-user security when the hardware used had TPM, SecureBoot, et al. to ward off common attack vectors.
Common attack vectors aren't warded off by SecureBoot. Alternative OSes and messing with your own computer are the ones impacted. None of the common attacks on Windows need rewriting your boot loader.
It's essential for TCPI platform attestation, that has come back into fashion recently.
If with security you mean them having the ability to use your computer against you then yeah. They dont care about your security, they care about securing their profits which they will be able to safeguard with remote attestation and DRM.
It won't be your computer anymore, it will be a platform for them to show you ads on.
I genuinely struggling to see how TPM or SecureBoot improves security for normal users. The vast majority of attacks are not done by evil maids, but by zero-days, poorly configured software, or being phised.
my 2014 PC has TPM 2.0 and supports secure boot but is not on the list of supported chips
not that it matters, I binned Windows everywhere when it was clear with Windows 10 release that the platform is now designed to work against the users interests
It's absurd that this is the case; it's purely about short-term profit, as others have said. I regularly refurbish and resell machines from more than ten years ago which run Windows 10 (or Windows 11, if you're willing to modify it to accept an installation) just fine.
For normal office or school use, there's nothing wrong with them! You need an SSD, about 8GB of RAM, and a first-generation i5 or i7 or newer, and you have a PC that is more than good enough for most people's needs.
I am worried about how my business is going to be impacted by the forced retirement of Windows 10, but, I'll adapt, just as the industry always does. Probably, that looks like installing Windows 11 on unsupported hardware with a disclaimer and instructions on how to keep it updated. It's unfortunate, but given that the alternative is enormous amounts of e-waste, I'll take it.
(For those who would say the alternative is Linux: Yes, for you or me, but not for the average customer. Linux machines won't sell.)
It should be a legal requirement for platforms dominant in their industry to provide security updates until the hardware is at least 15yo, or include source with a license allowing for modification.
It is crazy that they can just abandon hardware that drove sales of their software after only a few years.
Either you fix anything that is broken, i.e. bug fixes both security and non-security related, or you should be required to let the people who bought it fix it, forever.
Did you stop supporting Windows 95? Ok, time to put it's source code and build tools into the public domain.
I would happily be lenient and throw in an extra clause: if you don’t want to do either, give people a full refund for wasting their time on your (now) garbage software.
I would have disagreed about supporting 80286 PC-DOS and Apple ][ computers all the way to the year 2000
but supporting 2+Ghz 64-bit x86’s in 2023 isn’t really asking a lot.. and android phones in particular need to be prosecuted criminally for their ocean garbage
You still need to support those, or your expensive factory automation platform stops working.
Unless society as a whole is entirely on-board on paying factory renovations, or the environmental impact of such upheaval of scrapping away working manufacturing plants.
I would say it is even worse when considering tablets and smart phones, and maybe even laptops (although they have a significantly better shelf life than tablets and smart phones).
They are garbage the moment the battery ages out. For some tablets, that meant one or if very lucky, two years. That's a lot of nice screens to the bin for something that otherwise should be trivial to replace.
I have a nexus tablet and ipads that are 10 years old and they still work. The iPad I had to repurpose in a osc controller because of lack of updates but the nexus still works and is useful.
What if there was a tax when a company caused the creation of waste by refusing to update or support a product and also refused to release it as FOSS?
Maybe $1 per pound / $2.20 per KG based on estimated ewaste.
I would love to see cell phone providers who refuse to let me activate perfectly usable phones and Google who literally will not allow apps for older versions of Android in the Play Store change their ways.
Linux is not an option for me. I think I've heard the "just move to Linix" thing more often than I've brushed my teeth.
I'm staying with Windows both because I've been using Microsoft's tech since MS-Dos 2 back in 1985, and work is a Microsoft estate, again making Linux a no-go for me.
That said, I have Windows 11 on my Surface, and usability stinks to high heaven, squared. And so I will stick with Windows 10. I'm keeping an eye on 11 via the Surface, but not hoping for usability to get easier in the near future...
Meanwhile the flagship Nexus 5X reached EOL already in 2018, and I doubt there were many Android 6 devices with longer support. Yet it was released the same year as Windows 10...
Remember folks, even when you 'buy' windows, it's not a purchase, it doesn't belong to you.
I paid for Windows 10 on my one-and-only gaming machine. I am one user. I upgraded my gaming machine (same hard disk & Win 10 installation). Now it watermarks the screen with "Activate Windows. Go to Settings to activate Windows." even over the top of games.
My guess: if people current computer can't upgrade to win11, they are either going to stay with win10, no matter what Microsoft says, or just stop using a classic computer and stay on their mobile.
Sure there will be exceptions, some may migrate to mac or linux, but for the most part, most people just don't need a computer.
Despite the name, this is a full fledge Windows Desktop. The full name is Windows 10 IOT ENTERPRISE LTSC 2021. It is the version I run on my PC.
99% of the PCs that can run Windows 10, can run Windows 11. The only problem is TPM, but if you burn your ISO to USB using Rufus, it has an option to disable TPM requirement.
Or you can also install Linux.
I don't see the problem here. Of course, it would be best if TPM was not an official (but skippable) requirement on Windows 11.
Windows 10 iot is not windows 10. I don’t think it even has a desktop. It’s designed for embedded not a personal computer. It’s designed for machines that run one program only.
You can’t always “install windows 11 easily” the system requirements for 11 shut out a lot of older machines arbitrarily. Windows thinks my relatively new machine, built in 2020 with modern hardware, “doesn’t meet the system requirements” because it “doesn’t have a tpm” (it does). I think a bios change fixes it? But for now it keeps me on 10 and that’s fine with me.
Using Linux is an option, but not an easy one for many users.
MSDN-acquired licenses can't be used in production. Probably doesn't matter much for home usage, but I wouldn't use an MSDN license on anything I use for work.
Windows iot is designed to work on small devices such as the Raspberry Pi, and it is not a desktop operating system. You can run scripts on it, do things directly with the hardware, and that's about it.
The point is that a lot of perfectly good hardware out there that can run Windows 10 cannot run Windows 11 "easily" or at all. My laptop is one such a device. Even if it would let me, the dual core cpu would be unbearable under that environment.
Installing Linux is not a problem for people interested in using Linux. Younger people are more exposed to Linux because of devices like Raspberry Pi (the one place where "Linux on the Desktop" is absolutely a thing!). But there are a lot of folks who have never used Linux, and probably never will. And their systems will be more landfill fodder.
Linux doesn't solve the problem of TPM support, and in fact it kind of illustrates exactly the problem. There are a lot of services that you cannot use unless your device supports DRM with a certain set of properties. These services are the main reason that Linux is basically unusable as your only device.
So Microsoft is basically making the decision that you need a new device if you want to use apps that have a certain security level, and rather than just disabling those apps they've elected to disable the entire operating system.
The Peacock streaming service will not run at all on Linux and my understanding is that this is because it requires the OS provide a certain level of DRM. A main goal of mandating a certain TPM level to run Windows is clearly so that they can provide TPM-backed DRM APIs that are enforced at the OS level and can't be worked around in software.
I'm not sure if anything actually requires TPM per se yet because they still need to support Windows 10 but it's clearly the eventual goal.
Which can't be bought by individuals. And even then, buy the same OS again so that it can run on the same hardware?
And although I personally am a fan of LTSC it isn't what your typical user would expect.
Besides, the problem isn't primarily about the computer geek that like to fiddle with the computer. But the single parent on a tight budget and no interest in computers. Your grandparents etc.
As a sidenote for whatever reason I tried to install Windows 11 on an AMD 3700X (don't remember why exactly I did that as I typically don't run Windows). The AMD 3700X came out in mid 2019. Windows 11 refused to install for the hardware wasn't supported: I don't know if it was the mobo, the CPU, a configuration in the mobo... Really no clue. All I know is not only it failed but it failed without telling what wasn't supported. On a computer that was not even four years old.
Meanwhile my wife is happily using Ubuntu on my old sixth gen Core i7 6700K from... 2015 (first Asus mobo that had a NVMe M.2 PCIe slot so in eight years I basically just upgraded the NVMe SSD to a more recent one).
I agree with the other poster: it's an opportunity to have "old" computers and just install whatever Linux distro on them.
All that "normies" need is a browser: I switched my 67 years old mother-in-law to Linux. If she can use Linux, nearly anyone can.