Microsoft's Windows 11 turns five, and its mix of forced interface changes and tight hardware requirements has become a cautionary chapter for the company.
Microsoft, the maker of the Windows operating system, launched Windows 11 despite Windows 10 being broadly serviceable, a decision many users read as a needless overhaul.
The redesign removed familiar controls, an immovable taskbar and a reworked Start menu among them, and only in the last year has the company promised to restore some removed interface options such as taskbar movement.
Anger was greatest over hardware rules that required TPM 2.0 and roughly an eighth-generation Intel CPU or newer, a cutoff that rendered otherwise capable machines unusable and for which community workarounds later exposed technical flexibility.
Those requirements slowed uptake as hardware that ran Windows 10 was left behind, and the rollout ran parallel to a push to add AI features and Copilot branding that Microsoft later began to retract in apps like Notepad.
Much of the change in market share was likely driven by hardware replacement cycles and the end of mainstream support for Windows 10 on 14 October 2025, with Windows 11 finally overtaking its predecessor in 2025 and the gap widening in 2026.
