As a person who has primarily worked on Apple devices for the past 25 years, I do not spend a ton of time in Windows. But for the last five years, I have had a PC that I keep updated so that I am in the know and able to access Windows-only development tools. I am constantly evaluating new development plans, so it makes sense to see if any of my apps would be a good candidate for a Windows port. It also makes a pretty nice gaming machine.

When I was younger, I would have ordered my PC piece by piece and assembled it with loving care. Now I’m old, so I bought a pre-built PC that showed up ready for me to get going out of the box. When I bought it back in 2020, it came with Windows 10 pre-installed. That was fine, and I can’t say Windows 10 was bad. For anybody who works across the Mac / Windows divide, Windows has always been a bit of a dog compared to the GUI of the Mac.

Windows 11 came out and had a fantastic glow-up. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of rough edges, areas where Microsoft has completely dropped the ball, and more. But it is a substantial improvement to the GUI and flow of Windows 11, in addition to refining frequently used features.

The biggest thing is the Start menu - it’s no longer in the corner of the screen where it has lived since the fall of 1995. The Start menu has moved and centered itself, looking much more like a Microsoft version of the macOS Dock. The menu itself now has pinned items and an option to dig deeper and show all apps. That bottom left corner is now reserved for a live news feature, where hovering over it will show you the latest news, traffic, and weather. The bottom right is more stable - clock, menu icons, and more just like you would expect coming from a previous version of Windows.

Speaking of Windows, the GUI has been modernized quite a bit. Floating windows now have nice rounded corners, a floating drop shadow, and dark mode is in more places. Frustratingly, Microsoft hasn’t finished migrating everything in Windows to this new look. For example, open an Explorer window, and you are greeted with this nice, modern look. Right-click on a file and get the Properties window, and you will get a classic Windows 10-styled dialog that just doesn’t belong. To top it off, it’s bathed in blinding white, standing out in the midst of your dark mode interface.

Windows 11 also includes some other nice updates, like a full-on rework of Windows iconography. Also, finally, Internet Explorer is dead and has been replaced with Edge, Microsoft’s new Chromium-based browser. As a web developer, this is great news. IE has a non-existent market share, but fully removing it is a great step. We also get some cool functions like Phone Link, where your mobile device can interact with your PC. You can share files, get notifications, see your charge level, and more.

In recent updates, CoPilot has been infused into more and more Windows 11 functions. You can use the app itself just like ChatGPT, but even basic apps like Paint and Notepad now have built-in CoPilot functionality. Microsoft is quite committed to AI, so I would expect this trend to continue. As someone who works across multiple platforms, I still use the ChatGPT app for cross-platform support. The current Windows 11 CoPilot app is a poorly written web wrapper, but a native version is coming in a future update.

Performance has been great, and honestly, I can’t say I have seen any difference since upgrading from Windows 10. However, the upgrade from Windows 10 to 11 was rough. It took me a while to get all the settings in both BIOS and Windows exactly how Windows wanted them before it would allow me to begin the upgrade process. For many users, this will be too much, and they’ll stay on Windows 10 or get a new PC that comes with Windows 11.

I think Windows 11 is probably the first Windows release since Windows 2000 where I could use it daily if I had to. Don’t get me wrong, you can pry my Mac from my cold, dead hand - but Windows is improving and finally getting the UI / UX improvements it has sorely needed for a while. And for the millions of people using Windows 11, that will make a huge difference in the long term.