Microsoft deletes official Windows 11 CPU/TPM bypass for unsupported PCs

As an Occam fan, I'd assume the main accomplishment is ensuring a minimum level of hardware capability for Windows 11. Anything on W11 will have a TPM so you can build around it. There's also a minimum CPU spec or whatever you can know you don't need to test under.

I'd imagine that cutting off support for 10+ year old machines and hardware would give a much bigger advantage then the revenue they get from a hardware refresh itself.

2017 for macOS 15 (2018 for mainstream Macs):

https://support.apple.com/en-us/120282

A few years shorter than the Win 10 lifecycle. Much shorter than the XP lifecycle, though that was unusual.

I would it is a combination of metric-stuffing, land grab, and genuine concern about security.

Metric stuffing. Everyone at Microsoft is graded on "impact". All the EVP-types at Microsoft have their eye on boldface jobs, so they need a track record of massive impact. Beimg able to claim that they got W11 from X billion devices to Y is how theyll be judged. Another example is how in Azure, the only metric that matters is consumed revenue. That sort of thing drives behavior.

Land grab. W11 infamously makes the Start menu a billboard and has all kinds of usage data going back to the mother ship. If adoption slows, then Microsoft misses out on eyeballs, misses out on the ability to weld users to Copilot, misses the opportunity to earn money from ads, misses the opportunity to improve Windows by learning how people really use their conputers.

Security. Windows is embedded in modern life and although Microsoft gets a lot of flak, (and sometimes it takes a major beating to remind them of their responsibilities), they do want to elevate the security of users. They believe that W11 and TPM will give them a basis to really deliver stronger services. I dont know that they are right (eg if the #1 exposure for home users is ransomware, does a tpm help at all?), but I am prepared to give them dome grace.

Then again, I plan to use this opportunity to install Linux on my old PC.

Windows 11 looks like the perfect reason to give UNIX-based systems another try. Literally the only thing that's kept me hooked to Windows are the Office apps. They're baked into so many of my workflows, from creating simple graphics to doing my personal finances, and of course plenty of legacy documents that I'd like to continue being able to use. They're really Windows-native I've found, even the official versions for iOS seem to be missing some features (last time I checked was in the past year, and I couldn't find some paragraph-level formatting options I wanted in Word, eg). Google Docs seem like a different product, they apparently have great APIs, but the "click-based" features are no match. It's been ages since I tried LibreOffice, but it was no match back then either.

I'm thinking, either I need to get used to different workflows or just try virtualization. I heard Figma is great for presentations, anything that Excel can do where the alternatives are lacking is probably better done in R/Python anyway, but for Word I don't see an alternative. No way I'll use LaTeX for all my writing, and anything Markdown-based just won't cut it formatting-wise. Or just use something like Wine I guess. Anyone facing a similar situation?

I mean... Office also just runs just fine on a Mac. But I agree, Linux is the way to go. VMs are not so bad, but you can also use Steam's Proton to run most Windows software just fine, I would be surprised if people don't just run Office from Steam's flavor of Wine, since the game support is phenomenal.