Not going back to work tomorrow – unfortunately I did the dumb thing of eating some corn chowder thinking it was ok but, um, how do I put it, I was hugging the porcelain throne later that night which was not enjoyable. In future, when it doubt chuck it out even if on the pack it says that it is well within the expiry date. I think in future I’m going to play it safe an stick to tomato and pumpkin soups – they’re a known quantity and I’ve never gotten sick from eating either of them.

Leaks of Windows 11 are making the round before the big announcement on 24 June (25 June NZ Time):

1) The Verge (link)
2) Windows Central (link) (link)
3) Arstechnica (link)
4) XDA Developers (link)

They’re some of the high profile sites that have been reporting on it. The one thing to keep in mind that this might possibly be an older build or a build where features have been disabled so it is important not to get too dead set on the idea that this is the final appear or get sucked into the nonsense that this is the final product. What I think is a pretty good indication that this is ‘work in progress’ has been the fact that users won’t be forced to upgrade to Windows 11 – Microsoft will continue to provide updates to Windows 10 and when people feel comfortable they can switch over.

The part that I think gets lost in the discussion is how Windows 11 fits in when one considers the Windows 10X cancellation and how the new UI appears to be the porting of Windows 10X UI changes over to Windows 11. For those wanting a background to Windows 10X – Windows 10X was designed to be a cut down legacy free version of Windows 10X for low cost devices and then Win32 support was to be added back (and expanded to more devices) in by using a transparent container/virtualisation technology which would keep win32 applications self contained and keep the operating system squeaky clean.

I can’t help but get a feeling that although Microsoft saisd they cancelled it, I thinkt he biggest factor was OEM feedback and given how some of them were stung in the past with Windows RT I think there wasn’t the appetite for dealing with all that is involved with providing support for a new operating system not to mention customers ringing up, after buying such a device, complaining that their win32 application isn’t working. For me, Windows 11 is an evolution of the Windows 10X project – the big question is whether they’re going to be doing something with win32 applications so that they’re segregated from the system, whether we’re going to see the UI developed further – keeping the underlying code that works but replacing UI components.

I am hoping that a lot of this changes will occur as we see Project Reunion make their way into Windows (along with all the frameworks that make up ‘Project Reunion’ (link)) with it forming the basis of Windows 11 going forward where parts are pulled out and replaced with parts based on ‘Project Reunion’ and ‘Project Reunion’ expanding gradually to include more frameworks so eventually there is something as comprehensive as win32 on offer along with the great work also being done on .NET with the word done on being able to use WinUI as well.

Although I sound a lot more excited about the Windows 11 news, it is primarily because Microsoft has so much more than needs to be done to their platform than in the case of Apple. For me, if Apple bought Safari up to the HTML5 compliance equal to that of Chrome, implemented the Webextensions api in Safari so that it was compatible with Firefox’s implementation along with custom domain hosting (which is being launched with iCloud Plus) then I would be a very happy lad. In the case of Windows 11 – it is a lot of catch up and although the progress is exciting lets also remember Microsoft’s propensity to lose interest in something then leave it in a half completed state (see prior version of Windows introducing a new UI design language but Microsoft spending zero effort to bring all the applications and operating systems they ship with Windows to bring it up to date to use the new design language).