On Windows restart is not the same as shutdown/power on. I had a pc thar could not restart, but could boot after shutdown.

If every update required a manual power cycle, almost all of the internet would be off, most waiting for one of the far too few technical staff to cycle it back on manually.

Our phones wouldn't wake us up in the morning, as they too would be off.

Shutdown can be a lengthy process.

Bootup can be a lengthy process.

Automatically is the fastest way to do both.

And get back to work.

Is that too many options for you?

Might be an Apple UI designer.

Yes, we used to do that, back in the dinosaur (286-486, DOS and Win3.1) days.

“Have you tried turning it off and then on again” became such a common response to Windows 95+ being kind of crap that they started to include the option for convenience.

Nah, back in those days PCs even had a RESET button. So even when it was trivial to turn it off and on again, there was still a designated button to restart the computer.

Not the ones we had at my school and home in the 80s. Nor the outdated DOS machine I inherited to write school essays on when my dad got a new Dell with Windows 95. Just a power button or switch, depending on the model.

Power-up is hard on hardware, but restarting is often needed for software reasons, so the software makes it an option.

> Why do computers/phones have a restart

Kids those days. There is no problem in Windows (and lately, Android) that a restart cannot fix.

Restarting is more common than powering off.

On Windows, restart and shut down (power off) are not the same.

When shutting down, Windows optimizes the next start by caching some stuff. So it is not a true, clean restart.

On a restart, this caching does not happen.

Sources:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUIhzACQDAc

- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/power/system...

Do Macs behave differently?

this is kind of an lmgtfy quesation not a new thread on HN question