Groan. Looks like yet another forced march to yet another Windows release is looming on the horizon.

Let me say what this means to me, as a long-time heavy user (but not a designer, developer, or vendor) of Windows. When Windows 10 came out, I heard it said that this would be the last release of Windows forever – only invisible incremental improvements from that point on. I rejoiced at this news. What I want from an operating system (like any other piece of infrastructure) is that it be good enough that I can learn to use it and then forget about it, freeing my energy and attention to focus on the creative and useful things that the infrastructure enables me to do.

Windows 3 was good enough for me. So was Windows 2000. So was Windows 7. So is Windows 10. I endured each of these migrations only when forced to do it because Microsoft had stopped supporting the release I had, and no one was writing apps that would run on that release. Each migration cost me a few dollars and many days of effort – reinstalling all my apps, fixing all the things that were supposed to work just fine in the new release but didn't, and figuring out how to do in the new system all the things that I had totally mastered in the old. And the benefits? Basically, zero. I can't remember a single time, in my 25+ years as a Windows user, when I've said "Oh, I'm so glad I upgraded to Windows N+1, because now I can do this important thing that I couldn't do at all in Windows N!"

From this user's view, GUI operating systems like Windows, iOS, and Linux are a mature technology. By that I mean that the services they provide me and the user interface that provides them, meet my needs so well that I don't want to be bothered with any new features or functions or frills.

I do appreciate that incremental improvements to security, stability, and performance are still needed, and if necessary I'm OK paying a subscription fee to finance these. But other than that, the version of your product I've got is good enough, so please let me keep using it as is.