The comparison you're making is utilitarian design versus functional design.
Do I need to see a list of every single application on my computer (utilitarian) or do I need to see the applications I use the most and added most recently (functional)?
The "list every application ever" paradigm predated search indexing. There was no alternative to an alphabetical list of every installed application. On a desktop/laptop computer, I spend entire days without using the Start Menu/macOS Dock/Application Launcher (KDE's "start menu") as an actual method to launch programs. I'm hitting Command/Alt + Space or the Windows key and typing in the first letter or two of the program I'm trying to launch.
Information density was also a necessity of the era, not a design preference. You and I might prefer information density as power user coders or what have you. Do my parents prefer information density? Nope!
I would agree with you more broadly that the Windows 11 Start Menu isn't really a great design but I can see what they were going for. The execution isn't there but I think the overall idea makes sense.
We can also have the rose tinted glasses about Windows 95 with the cascading menus but it was really clunky when your application list gets really long or you have a lot of nested folders. It was easy to accidentally misclick or lose your sub-folder.
E.g., in that screenshot you posted, if I hovered my mouse over "Kids Choice" and wanted to get to a program inside there, but then I accidentally moved my mouse over "Visio Home SE" and lost the "Kids Choice" submenu selection, then I have to bring my mouse back to find it again.
Do I need to see a list of every single application on my computer (utilitarian) or do I need to see the applications I use the most and added most recently (functional)?
The "list every application ever" paradigm predated search indexing. There was no alternative to an alphabetical list of every installed application. On a desktop/laptop computer, I spend entire days without using the Start Menu/macOS Dock/Application Launcher (KDE's "start menu") as an actual method to launch programs. I'm hitting Command/Alt + Space or the Windows key and typing in the first letter or two of the program I'm trying to launch.
Information density was also a necessity of the era, not a design preference. You and I might prefer information density as power user coders or what have you. Do my parents prefer information density? Nope!
I would agree with you more broadly that the Windows 11 Start Menu isn't really a great design but I can see what they were going for. The execution isn't there but I think the overall idea makes sense.
We can also have the rose tinted glasses about Windows 95 with the cascading menus but it was really clunky when your application list gets really long or you have a lot of nested folders. It was easy to accidentally misclick or lose your sub-folder.
E.g., in that screenshot you posted, if I hovered my mouse over "Kids Choice" and wanted to get to a program inside there, but then I accidentally moved my mouse over "Visio Home SE" and lost the "Kids Choice" submenu selection, then I have to bring my mouse back to find it again.