Brad Sams's article is well reasoned, and as such I respect it. I've read other articles by him which were also well reasoned. When you use quotation marks, I think you should make sure you're actually quoting words that were written or spoken. Neither is, nor was the case here.
One might ask where your statement,
Windows 11 was to stand on its own just like Win XP and Win 7 and Win 10, there was no intent at all to use Win 11 as a stepping stone to anything, but with hindsight and all the cards in front of us, it can be easy for any of us to assume this.
comes from? Is it based on a published corporate statement or blog?
It's far from invalid to look at the various versions of Windows and look at the future and reason where it's going, and MS has discussed such plans. No one wrote or said, "MS going to do W98, then XP, then W7, then...etc, etc." In fact the business of W8, then 8.1 supports Brad Sams's thought.
What's being said is that there are definite incremental steps from one OS to another, not making the changes overwhelming in order not to lose customers. Such trial and error steps were even taken inside W11's various versions before it got to the "final" release.
