No they will make the same money either way because they are selling the OS, not the hardware. They are requiring only newer hardware to limit their surface of exploitation and reduce their compatibility list.

Microsoft and their OWM partners sell hardware and have done so for a very long time.

They also sell a license with the new hardware. The bulk majority of the public never buy hardware without an OS. So yes, they are making more money with each new hardware sale. Plus the increase of forced advertising means they make more per user, effectively double dipping.

Why do you feel the need to defend a convicted monopolist for engaging in user hostile behavior?

They might sell more Windows 11 if it ran on more hardware. How does this make them money?

It's worth asking, but I think there's an answer: they want the OS to be transformed into an interface to their cloud where recurring revenue is easier. To do that, they need to make it more like a mobile OS and more locked down. TPM helps this.

> They might sell more Windows 11 if it ran on more hardware. How does this make them money?

Given the free Win 7/8->10->11 upgrade path, almost every end user who'd want a Windows license probably already has one. This leaves enterprise licensing and computer manufacturers (laptops, mini-PCs, desktops), who wouldn't care about this because they'll have newer hardware anyway.

Dropping windows 10 support is a pretty big lever to apply pressure to get people to upgrade to 11. Oh turns out you also “need” to buy new hardware to run it.

Dropping windows 10 support is a really reasonable decision. The focus is on 11, it's been out for almost 5 years. I'm guessing they are close to releasing 12 at this point, maybe in a year or two. Supporting three entire fully fledged oses is quite alot of work. I also understand supporting newer hardware, they dropped 32bit on 11 and moved the instruction set up a bit. You gotta do a cutoff somewhere and I'm happy that they are at least allowing us to use the improved performance our modern CPUs have. I'm not happy with alot of stuff, but I get this at least.

I'd argue it's probably time to drop 32-bit x86 support, but the rest of this stuff is arbitrary and doesn't have any tangible benefit except conveniently providing hardware manufacturers with an excuse to unload new hardware onto people when there's nothing wrong with what they have. (not to mention, pardon the conspiracy theory, they're probably trying to use the TPM to turn the PC into a smartphone-like platform)

It's surprising that when we had Win7 they did that brief "XP Mode" experiment with some virtualized-penalty box.

Why didn't that go further? Presumably virtually any x86-64 box currently in circulation would be fast enough to run a VM running a full copy of 32-bit XP/Win7/Win10, or even a full carousel (or download store) of DOS and early-windows releases. It could be the most compatible Windows ever, solving the weird "64-bit systems can't run some 16-bit apps" gotcha and perhaps allowing some way to bridge in support for devices that can only be driven by old 32-bit XP drivers.