Microsoft Introduces Windows 11

Panos Panay, on Microsoft’s Windows Experience Blog:

Windows has always existed to be a stage for the world’s innovation. It’s been the backbone of global businesses and where scrappy startups became household names. The web was born and grew up on Windows. It’s the place where many of us wrote our first email, played our first PC game and wrote our first line of code. Windows is the place people go to create, to connect, to learn and to achieve — a platform over a billion people today rely on.

Some cool-looking stuff, but the devil, as always, is in the details, not the demos. The window tiling features — “Snap Groups” and “Snap Layouts” — in particular look pretty clever. Also, Microsoft is doing something very interesting with app icons — they’re using different shapes for each of them, rather than forcing them all into the exact same roundsquare shape. That’s an idea Apple should copy.

But if you’ll allow me to be persnickety, I’m pretty sure the web wasn’t born on Windows.

★ Thursday, 24 June 2021