In context: A few years ago, Windows 10 was wrongly described as “the last version of Windows” to hit the market. Now, just a few years after the small debut of Windows 11, Microsoft seems to be working on the next generation of its desktop operating system.
Microsoft is hard at work on Windows 12, and Intel (and probably AMD) is working with the Redmond corporation to provide the new operating system with advanced AI capabilities. There is no official confirmation or comment available yet, but the well-known hardware leaker @leaf_hobby recently provided some revealing details about the upcoming Meteor Lake platform.
Meteor Lake is expected to arrive at the end of this year or in 2024, which will bring many new technologies to the x86 computing platform, including a new manufacturing process (Intel 4), a chiplet-based design , and (according to leaf_hobby) 20 PCIe Gen5 lanes. Intel’s 14th-gen Core processors should also provide some sort of hardware acceleration for AI algorithms, as the recently launched Ryzen 7000 mobile processors from AMD did in a dedicated engine for Windows Studio Effects.
Information provided by Leaf_hobby in a now-cancelled tweet specifically lists Windows 12 as the official supported operating system on the Meteor Lake platform, and Microsoft has recently started talking about the transformative power of AI algorithms for Bing search engine and Windows as a whole.
Redmond has already brought some of these AI capabilities to Windows 11 with the latest update, but Windows 12 may integrate more advanced features not just for search or the Taskbar. According to Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s head of consumer marketing, AI will play a more “natural role” within the Windows user experience. Windows chief Panos Panay also said that AI will “reinvent” everything people do on a Windows PC.
While we wait to see how Microsoft wants to reinvent the wheel, the latest market results are not very positive for Windows 11 yet. The latest operating system from Redmond was released 20 months ago, but according to Statcounter, it is still behind Windows 10 in terms of market share.
The web analytic service tracks more than 1.5 million sites worldwide, collecting information about the browser and OS used by visitors. In February 2023, the service said, Windows 10’s market share jumped from 68.86% to 73.31%.
Meanwhile, Windows 11 only grew by 1% (from 18.12% to 19.13%). January is the last month of extended support for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, so users and system administrators are forced to upgrade directly to Windows 10 if they want to continue using their aging PC hardware. in a safe manner. There is no direct upgrade route to Windows 11, as the new OS has stricter hardware requirements.