The art of bad communication (and the questions that are left unanswered)

Alright. Picture this scenario:

For the first time in 7 years, you are announcing a major refresh to what — to the consumer market is arguably — your flagship product. It has fancy new features, a fancy new design, is focused on improving productivity, and the fact that it is the first major refresh in 7 years just gets everybody talking. Because of course: it’s something that a lot of people will come into contact with and use daily.

So, with that scenario, what do you want people to talk about after your announcement? Is it the new features? The new design perhaps? Does it matter? No of course not, if they talk about your product, everything is great because all of these aspects matter to you.

Now imagen that you’re the second most valuable company in the world, an you are in this exact scenario. And what are people talking about?

About… Trusted Platform Modules and CPU generations. Not your product. Not the features. Not the design. People are talking about their hardware configurations.

1.3 billion

Windows 10 is installed on 1.3 billion devices, and Microsoft is using it to run what is likely one of — if not the — largest beta-program in the world: the Windows Insider Program.

Ever since 2006, Windows’ system requirements have remained the same, and even gone down in 2009 when Windows 7 launched (screen size and resolution requirements then went up again with Windows 8, before going down again with Windows 8.1). As a result, any machine that was properly capable of running Windows Vista should in theory be able to run Windows 10 version 21H1 today, 15 years later.

But the hardware requirements that you need to run Windows aren’t the same as the hardware requirements OEMs and Microsoft’s own Surface have to match to be able to stick a “Windows 10”-sticker on it. Microsoft has been requiring a TPM 2.0 module for years now, OEMs haven’t been allowed to bring new 32bit devices to market, and storage restrictions have moved up over the years too.

When Windows 10 launched, there was also some commotion about the fact that Microsoft was not going to update Windows 7 and 8 with support for more recently released CPUs. Instead, you’d have to use Windows 10 if you wanted to enjoy support for Intel’s 7th generation of CPUs, you had to get Windows 10.

But now, many of these OEM requirements have suddenly become just the basic system requirements. And that’s something a large portion of those 1.3 billion machines probably don’t meet.

Unenforced Soft Floor

A “Soft Floor” is apparently something Microsoft calls the absolute minimum requirements for Windows to run. They removed this wording from their documentation earlier this week, but its out there now. The Soft Floor for Windows 11 seemed to imply that the generation of your CPU doesn’t matter.

But according to the Windows Health Check app that checks if your device supports Windows 11, it does. And so says Microsoft. As a result, only devices with an 8th generation Intel CPU or Zen 2 AMD CPU can upgrade to Windows 11 (and any previously supported Qualcomm CPU except for the already unsupported Snapdragon 835).

Here is something you may not know. Microsoft has a list of minimum required CPUs for Windows 10 too. Over the course of Windows 10’s life time, this list has always increased. The only exception is version 1607 which removed some low-end Intel Atom CPUs from the list but beyond that the list of Windows 10 supported CPUs has remained the same, with the to be expected expansions for more recent hardware.

You know which CPUs are not on that list, however? 3rd and 4th generation Intel CPUs. And if you are a Surface Pro, Pro 2, or Pro 3 owner (or own any other device with these or even older chips) you’ll probably be scratching yourself behind your ears: “wait a minute, these chips are in mine.”

And yes, they are indeed. Despite the fact that the Surface Pro 3 and older, as well as the Surface 3, and many, many other devices are not “officially” supported by Windows 10, they do run it without any issue or even warning because these requirements, so far, only applied to OEMs.

The same now applies to Windows 11, which has scrapped the 6th and 7th generation of Intel processors. But unlike Windows 10, Microsoft is now stepping on the breaks. And hard. After decades of never enforcing the “soft floor,” suddenly Microsoft goes into overdrive and draws a hard line. Why?

To make it more complicated: the Windows Insider Program

But things get more complicated, because while these new requirements will apply to the next update to Windows 11, they have only become known and enforced this week. But Microsoft has been testing Windows 11 since December 16th, 2019, a good 1.5 year ago. As a result, many Windows Insiders find themselves on an OS that their hardware does not support. How does Microsoft solve this?

They block any other people from joining the Beta and Dev Channel, move everyone that does not match the requirements out of the Beta and Dev Channel into the Release Preview Channel, and anyone already on a Windows 11 preview build can just move on. But this raises a lot of questions… Let’s start with a few:

1. Microsoft is telling insiders they can tag along for the rest of Windows 11’s development but will have to downgrade to Windows 10 to continue to remain supported. Are insiders going to be able to install the Windows 11 RTM and then just not get updates anymore?
2. Microsoft is implying that anyone already on the Dev builds can keep going. But Windows 11 won’t have a 32bit version. Windows Insiders can be on a 32bit preview build. Is Microsoft going to compile and support 32bit versions of Windows 11 just for Windows Insiders?

I guess my biggest annoyance from this situation in this aspect is the fact that it happens 1.5 year into development. Suddenly the requirements change and unlike previous versions, Microsoft is enforcing them hard.

Why was this decision not announced and communicated when this dev cycle for Windows 10 started? Or why not wait until after Windows 11 was done? Why not announce that these deprecations are coming and apply them after Windows 11?

TPM and whether you have it or not

The most prominent panic around Windows’ sudden shift in requirements had to do with the Trusted Platform Module, this is a hardware component or software implementation in your CPU. OEM machines must have TPM for a few years now, but self-built systems usually don’t have it… enabled.

All modern Intel and AMD CPUs have a TPM implementation built-in, called TTP and (PSP) fTPM respectively. It usually only has to be enabled in the BIOS.

But honestly, it doesn’t even matter. Because while the chance that you have a TPM is high, the chance that you have the knowledge to find out that it’s the issue at fault and the subsequent knowledge on how to turn it on is low in the case that you don’t have an OEM device. But even if you have a device from an OEM, there is a chance that your TPM isn’t turned on.

This isn’t as big of a hurdle as previously implied on the internet, but it is one nonetheless.

The reality is that your CPU’s generation is going to be a larger issue.

A moment of triumph…

There was a lot of hype towards Windows 11’s announcement. As there should be. Windows 11 wasn’t just the first major release of Windows in 6 years (and as a result, Windows 10 dethroned Windows XP as the longest in-market current version of Windows), it was a sign that after years of neglect, Microsoft finally started paying attention to Windows again.

With Panos Panay, for the first time in years, Windows finally has someone again who is in Nadella’s inner circle. When it was announced in early 2020, it was a sign of the tide on Windows finally changing for the better. In the years before, the major feature updates to Windows 10 started to become less and less significant as Microsoft appeared to get afraid of changing to much, as well as breaking devices with major feature updates — a self-inflicted wound, may I add — that prompted the company to move to a tick-tock release with 1909.

Windows 11 was a break from all of that. And I’d imagen Microsoft’s PR division must have had high hopes on how people would talk about this bold refresh of the Windows platform. Would we be talking about the new features? Would more attention go to the new design? Perhaps even the message itself?

Windows 11’s announcement should have been the start of months of triumph, that would climax with its launch in late 2021.

But instead, and thanks to Microsoft incapability to properly communicate. Well… we know what happened.

…confusion and frustration

The Windows-community, and even outside people outside of it, just turned to confusion when the first system requirements, as well as the Windows Insider Program announcement followed.

Microsoft didn’t just publish incomprehensibly inconsistent documentation, but they also continued to send out mixed messages. Their Health Check app, that should check if your PC is ready for Windows 11 told you that it wasn’t supported, but not why. And then, as a cherry on top, the realization dawned that for the first time, Microsoft would be enforcing its CPU requirements on everyone, and not just on OEMs.

In one fell swoop, all excitement for the announcement was gone. Instead, journalists scrambled to figure out what the hell Microsoft ment. Were they really going to discard 4 year old PCs to the recycle bin? And for no apparent reason?

And then, it got even worse when people realized that, hey, Microsoft’s verry own Surface Studio 2, a device that not only is the latest in its line, a device that they not only actively continue to promote, a device that they still sell for a whopping $3499, does not support Windows 11 because of its 7th generation Intel CPU.

And I, for one, cannot imagen how that happened. How did nobody at Microsoft for a moment or so say: “hey, uhm guys, these minimum requirements… our flagship PC that we’re still selling for full price doesn’t mee them”. How did nobody at Microsoft stop this?

Here’s the worst thing, as mentioned before, Microsoft has had these minimum generation requirements before, and as mentioned before as well, the Surface Pro 3 and Surface 3 (and older) do not support Windows 10 according to these requirements. Yet they still run the OS. The problem isn’t that these devices are no longer on the list of supported CPUs. The problem is that this previously OEM-only minimum requirement is now being projected on everyone.

Microsoft once poked fun — rightfully so — at Apple for deprecating 5 year old devices. But this action pails in comparison. This is downright insulting and it leaves open a very important question for next year:

1. Microsoft says Windows 11 will be updated once a year with a major feature update, implying that like with Windows 10, Windows 11 will remain the current version of Windows for at least a few years. But if its not, and next year Windows 12 comes around (and even if it isn’t), what happens next year? Is Microsoft going to raise the bar further and drop supported for the 8th generation of Intel chips and Zen 2? Wil Microsoft only supported the last 4 generations off Intel chips?

Because if that’s what happens, then suddenly, from standing at a top, with a distance, of support for devices, Windows doesn’t just fall down, it faceplants into the ground to stand side-by-side with Android and Microsoft will be deprecating millions of devices just like that.

And all of this not only during a pandemic and a massive silicon shortage, but in a time that e-waste is continuing to snowball into a larger and larger problem. All, just to please OEMs, Intel, and AMD so they can sell more hardware (and Microsoft, of course, more Windows licenses).

What with 10

But now what happens to Windows 10? The now 6 year old support cut-off date of 2025 is nearing and many people will be stranded on Windows 10. And for the record, while Windows 10’s EOL date is set to October 2025, come December 2022 there won’t be any support left for consumers. That’s the EOL date of the currently latest version 21H1 and as it stands now, Microsoft hasn’t said anything about extending it. Luckily, we do know that there is a 21H2 in the form of build 19044, which should add another 6 months. But unless Microsoft either announces that it will support that version for longer than the 18 months Windows 10 Home & Pro users usually get, or it announces that there will be bi-annual feature updates for Windows 10 beyond 21H2 (mind you, they haven’t announced 21H2 yet), that EOL date isn’t October 2025, it’s May 2023. Also known as 2 years from now.

Now, in the past, Microsoft has allowed for Home and Pro users that are left on unsupported devices to get updates beyond the lifespan of the version they’re on. They did this with Windows 10 version 1607. Version 1703 dropped support for a number of Atom chips and as a result left devices stuck on 1607. Version 1607 was an LTSB-release, as a result Microsoft had to support that version for 10 years anyways and these unsupported devices benefitted from that.

We expect 21H2 to be another LTSC release. This means that Microsoft will be supporting this release for another 7 years (after they changed their support life-cycle from 10 years for previous releases). This means that Microsoft will have to support 21H2 until 2028 no matter what. Note that these old Atoms didn’t get the full 10 year of support, if I remember correctly, they only got 5 (including the default support they were getting from 1607 like everybody else).

It also makes for a clear end to stop making new feature updates for Windows 10. So 19044 might very well be the end of the line.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow, on Monday July 28th, we expect the first post-event build in the Insider Program. It will be the first Windows 11-branded preview. Tomorrow will also be the day that Microsoft gets back to work after the weekend and we might very well be in for another joyride.

Microsoft has a lot of explaining left to do. How is it going to address these ridiculous — because that’s what they are — requirements they’ve said up for CPUs for existing devices? How are they going to explain the other requirements? What’s going really going to happen with Windows Insiders already on early Windows 11 builds that do not meet the system requirements? Are they going to get the RTM and then no updates? Is Microsoft going to compile and distribute 32bit builds just for Insiders? Are devices that don’t make the requirements really cut off or are they going to be able to install it through ISOs? What is going to happen to Windows 10?

There’s lots of questions, and I for one do not expect answers on many of them, this is Microsoft after all, and “miscommunication” is their middle name. Or actually, this isn’t really miscommunication. It’s just plain bad communication.

Frankly, I hope the decision on CPU generations doesn’t remain stand. There is no viable explanation for it. 32bit hardware support and even TPM? Sure, although the later should be handled better. But the CPU requirements are just ridiculous, it’s nothing else. It’s not sensible, it’s not responsible, and it is very artificial. And its a bad look for Microsofts own line of hardware, a line of hardware that is being developed by the same team responsible for the OS. It’s just a waste.

Dear Microsoft

Dear Microsoft, Satya Nadella, Panos Panay,

Humanity is only just recovering for the largest health crisis it has faced in recent history, some places are hardly even “recovering” just yet. Regardless, the pandemic leaves many people in financial ruin.

But we were facing a threat before it, and after we’ve dealt with the Covid pandemic, it will become the most important crisis we’re facing for years to come.

You’ve pledged that you’d do your part in making Microsoft’s impact on the environment. You pledged Microsoft was committed to sustainability, to reduce its carbon footprint. These commitments are touted at events often, and why shouldn’t they? It’s good PR.

And now, you’ve also shown that it’s just a lie. Don’t ever say you’re invested in sustainability and climate change. You’re not.