Windows 11 Is Announced

Microsoft announced Windows 11 at a dedicated event on June 24, 2021, led by Chief Product Officer Panos Panay. The announcement followed weeks of leaks — a build of Windows 11 had circulated online on June 15, 2021, confirming the visual redesign before the official event. The user interface changes included a centered taskbar and Start button (repositionable to the left in Settings), a new Start menu showing pinned apps and recent documents (but removing live tiles entirely), redesigned context menus and dialog boxes with rounded corners, a Widgets panel (news, weather, sports, calendar pulled from Microsoft services), and Snap Layouts (hovering over a window’s maximize button revealed 2–4 zone layout presets). The Microsoft Store was redesigned to allow Win32 application submission — developers could submit traditional desktop software, not only UWP/MSIX apps — addressing one of developers’ long-standing grievances with the previous Store. DirectStorage (a Windows API allowing the GPU to decompress NVMe data directly, bypassing CPU and system RAM for asset loading) was announced as a Windows 11 feature, though it was later backported to Windows 10 as well.

The hardware requirements announced at the event were significantly more restrictive than Windows 10’s: 64-bit processor from the 8th generation Intel Core (Kaby Lake and earlier excluded) or AMD Ryzen 2000 series or later, 4 GB RAM, 64 GB storage, UEFI firmware with Secure Boot enabled, and TPM 2.0 (Trusted Platform Module). The CPU list excluded Intel 7th gen (Core i5-7600K, Core i7-7700K) and AMD Ryzen 1000 series — both only a few years old and fully capable of running Windows 11’s software. Microsoft explained that the requirements enabled Virtualization-Based Security (VBS) and Memory Integrity (HVCI) — features that isolate sensitive memory in a hypervisor-protected enclave even from compromised kernel code — as defaults on supported hardware. Microsoft released the PC Health Check tool, which initially gave unhelpful “This PC can’t run Windows 11” messages without specifying which requirement failed, prompting Microsoft to temporarily withdraw and relaunch the tool. The backlash was significant enough that Microsoft added a bypass registry key for TPM 1.2 systems, though the official supported list remained unchanged.

Android application support was announced as a built-in Windows 11 feature through the Amazon Appstore and the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA) — a different codebase from the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2), using Intel Bridge Technology to translate Android ARM code to x86 when necessary and providing a standalone Android 11 AOSP environment. The feature did not ship with the October 2021 release; it entered public preview for US users in February 2022. Windows 11 also integrated Microsoft Teams chat directly into the taskbar (replacing Skype’s position as the default consumer messaging integration) and added Xbox features including Xbox Game Pass browsing, Auto HDR (HDR color upgrade for DirectX 11/12 games on HDR monitors without per-game patches), and DirectX 12 Ultimate support emphasis. The release set Windows 10 end-of-mainstream-support at October 14, 2025, giving enterprises roughly four years to plan hardware refresh cycles.