Windows 11 leak hands-on: Like Windows 10 meets MacOS

By admin | June 18, 2021

After dabbling with the (now infamous) Windows 11 leak for several hours, I’ve come to a surprising conclusion: It feels a lot like MacOS. Now hear me out: Windows 11, at least in this early version we’re looking at, is basically a decluttered version of Windows 10. It has some of the optimizations we were expecting to see in Windows 10X, but now that I’m actually experiencing it, I’m getting some serious Mac vibes.

The most obvious difference is the new centered Taskbar. It works like it has since Windows 95, housing the Start menu button, active apps and your choice of shortcuts. But it’s all icons now — I can’t find any options to show Window labels in the Taskbar. That’s something Microsoft has been trying to push for years now, but as a native Windows user, I’ve always rejected it. I’ve preferred knowing exactly what an app or window held before I clicked on the Taskbar icon.

Windows fans may scoff at any changes to the Start menu. After all, one of Windows 10’s big selling points was that it restored that feature to its former glory after Windows 8 unsuccessfully tried to sell us on a fullscreen Start menu. In actuality, though, the Windows 11 implementation may make more sense today. Like the new Taskbar, it’s all about reducing clutter. I rarely scroll through my entire Windows 10 Start menu anymore, so having a large collection of pinned apps is easier to navigate. And if I’m really in a rush, I can still hit the Windows key and just start typing to quickly search for an app. Microsoft is just easing us into a world where we don’t have to fish around the entire Start menu.

Microsoft also added an ingenious way to snap windows without dragging them at all. Now when you hover over the maximize icon in the title bar, you’ll see a dropdown of potential snapping locations. You just have to hit the one you’d like to get the window into position. Maybe I’m just too much of a Windows nerd, but I think this feature alone will fundamentally change the way I work. I hate manually resizing Windows, and I’ve always found the auto-snapping feature to be a bit clunky.

BY DR. HARDAWAR

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