I’ve often heard that the reason Windows has suffered from bloat and so much has been built on top of ancient underlying technologies, partially to ensure compatibility with old software.
If something like Windows 11 requires specific hardware in order to install it, why does it need to accommodate compatibility for archaic devices/software?
Would it not be preferable for Microsoft to start from scratch with an OS that is considerably more efficient and cut-down for newer devices, similar to something like Apple’s MacOS transition from Intel to Apple Silicon, and just provide security updates for the legacy operating systems that would be in use on un-upgradable hardware?
There’s no value in switching to ARM, basically.
ARM is absolutely serving Intel’s head on a platter these days and it’s slowly happening - Server 2025 is availableish in ARM, and the Copilot PCs are ARM. There’s value but MS would rather customers go to PaaS than rebuild eg MSSQL on ARM, I think.