Windows 11: We are moving backward, not forward

Dmitry Yarygin
6 min readNov 11, 2021
Photo by Windows on Unsplash

Windows 11 was released a few weeks ago and Microsoft thought that it might be a good idea to refresh Windows Desktop UI by bringing up some additional elements, menus, and pop-ups.

There is just one problem with this. Nobody even asked for this change. I can’t think of a single person who suggested polishing the start menu and replacing the icons.

Then I’ve started to think about where exactly are we headed. Are we progressing in terms of the Desktop Operating Systems or what exactly are we trying to achieve there?

Let’s take a step back into the early 2000s to compare where are headed and how things are looking those days in comparison?

Control Panel and Settings

Control Panel in Windows 2000

The first thing that comes to my mind is a Control Panel. Here is how it looks in Windows 2000 which was released more than 20 years ago. It already had everything that the user needed.

You could easily reach any settings from there and it’s going to take a split second. Windows 11 UI looks much more bloated compared to this.

Lack of unnecessary Wizards and…

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Dmitry Yarygin

Nomad lifestyle writer. Passionate about breaking software— QA Engineer. My Travel & Tech YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/nomadicdmitry