Quote Originally Posted by dilettante View Post
The main thing I've seen so far "requiring" a manifest was for programs that insist on checking the Windows version they are running on. Without a manifest specifying a <supportedOS/> node for 8.1, such a program will be told it is running 8.0 when run on 8.1. I'd assume the same applies to later versions of Windows (beyond 8.1) as well.
Seems so, as quoted from another site
Note that the latest version of Windows includes the default version lie shim that was present in Windows 8.1. If you have the 8.1 GUID present in the <compatibility> section of the manifest, Windows 10 will report version 6.3 if your application uses the legacy GetVersion(Ex) APIs. Without it or with only older GUIDs, it will report 6.2. To get the version number reported as 6.4, you must add another GUID to your manifest:

<!-- Windows 10 -->
<supportedOS Id="{8e0f7a12-bfb3-4fe8-b9a5-48fd50a15a9a}"/>