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The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a disaster

zdnet.com

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Re: The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a disaster

#181

Post by NexRebular »

rkagerer wrote: post #105
for_i_in_range wrote: post #8

Hate that if you use Word for Mac, you now have Copilot next to your cursor with no way of turning it off. I just want to use Word. I like its print layout features better than Pages. I don't want to switch. Just let me write and leave me alone. Now they're jamming AI down my throat without any opt-out mechanism.

Office 2003 is my preferred pick for productivity, I use it for all new documents - and best of all there's no ribbon.

Office v. X on a Powerbook G4 12-inch. Can't get better than that...

Re: The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a disaster

#182

Post by RHSeeger »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #149
infecto wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MacOS copilot implementation is horrid. Takes up a significant amount of screen space just to offer a summary of the email. Cannot turn off. For whatever reason cannot be a simple button with pop up on click. It’s horrid.

I can't think of an email I have ever received that needed to be summarized? Who is writing these super long emails?

I've written some super long emails; but I also include a TL;DR summary at the top when I do. Sometimes, the "how to get to the summary from the current, commonly known info" (long) part is useful; but not for everyone. And certainly not right out of the gate.

That being said, I'd almost never trust an AI to generate the summary part.

Re: The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a disaster

#183

Post by Khaine »

kibwen wrote: post #135
Toutouxc wrote: post #86

I understand people who love Apple (or the OSS world) unconditionally and I understand people who hate either, but I find it hard to feel any kind of strong emotion towards Microsoft. Feels like there isn’t a single product person left in the company, no vision, no direction, no soul, no plan, nothing.

I just tried to use Excel for the first time in ages and somehow it has become completely unfit for purpose. Two series of data, one table of 300 cells containing one automatically extrapolated formula that multiplies the value of the cells in the series. A trivial spreadsheet use case that was solved 40 years ago. Changed the values in one series, and the table just... didn't update. Clicked into the cells and the f…

There is a setting in excel that disables auto calculation. This is useful for people who are (ab)using excel with massive data sets and crazy calculations. It sounds like this setting may have been on

Re: The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a disaster

#184

Post by malnourish »

markdeloura wrote: post #21

When CoPilot showed up in my Word, I was writing a pitch doc that asked me to also describe whether I was using GenAI for anything for this pitch. It made me realize I didn’t know whether this doc was getting auto-pushed to CoPilot and would be used for training in some way. Dislike.

fyi, it's "Copilot"

Microsoft is evidentially bad at all forms of naming -- I have it on good authority that even (some) of their sales people think so (and will discretely admit to it).

Re: The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a disaster

#186

Post by passwordoops »

robotnikman wrote: post #125
dunham wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hate that if you use Word for Mac, you now have Copilot next to your cursor with no way of turning it off. They should put it in the bottom corner, next to an animated paperclip instead.

>next to an animated paperclip instead. Now that would be kinda funny, Clippy powered by modern AI

I heard a description of Copilot as "What Microsoft thought Clippy should be". Thanks, but no thanks.

Re: The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a disaster

#187

Post by hoistbypetard »

rsolva wrote: post #34

A lot of people use Microsofts products out of old habit and because they are simply not aware of any alternatives. I have helped alot of people try LibreOffice, which offers everything they need from their office suit. Most people also like that LibreOffice looks like what Word and Excel looked like before Microsoft changed up the menu system.

> Most people also like that LibreOffice looks like what Word and Excel looked like before Microsoft changed up the menu system.

I feel exactly the same way about that. And I often use it for stuff I don't need to collaborate on. But for paid jobs with stuff I need to round-trip with people who I know are using Microsoft products, I just use the Microsoft products myself.

It's cheap insurance against giving the people who are paying me to collaborate with them a bad experience.

Re: The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a disaster

#188

Post by jappgar »

Finnucane wrote: post #180
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just let me write TextEdit all the way. I used to edit a market-leading print magazine with TextEdit. I don’t need layout features, the designers do that in InDesign. I don’t need a grammar checker or AI because I can write.

Do you have a copyeditor and/or proofreader? I'm a production editor. Part of my job is to fix stuff written by people who can write.

You can still proof it. Op is just saying they don't need spellcheck (perhaps because they do have an editor).

Re: The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a disaster

#189

Post by heresie-dabord »

utdoctor wrote: post #143
robotnikman wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>next to an animated paperclip instead. Now that would be kinda funny, Clippy powered by modern AI

“It looks like you’re trying to build AGI! Need help taking over the world responsibly?”

"It looks like you think whatever I am doing with all this venture capital is AGI! Should I bother to correct you?"

Re: The Microsoft 365 Copilot launch was a disaster

#190

Post by Barrin92 »

smt88 wrote: post #39
tapoxi wrote: post #9

Is this the absolute death of the high school essay? Even if you didn't want to cheat by avoiding ChatGPT, AI is now right there, in your word processor, and you have no way of turning it off.

I think it's the death of essays and also of reading. Why read a book when AI can read it for you? Teachers I know have already seen this happening.

>Why read a book when AI can read it for you?

because learning to read and to write is learning to think, and if you're the only person with some autonomy while everyone else regurgitates the same AI slop that's going to give you a lot of opportunity.

Ever since the internet has been around it's been easy to outsource your work, it won't do anything for you in the long run.

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