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Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload

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Re: Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload

#111

Post by nashashmi »

I understand the approach Satya took initially. He had a big investment in AI. He saw a theoretical value in AI supporting productivity. And he pushed his developers and creators to imagine and mock up ideas how AI would deliver.

Obviously the last part was disappointing. In hindsight, the push was far too aggressive, and too mediocre. We have a lot to learn from this try, about ourselves and about others.

Integration 2.0 will be or needs to be a bit more skewed towards low hanging fruits. I want a copilot for the help menu, and for the 1000 commands not in the toolbar, and a copilot enhancement to the search bar (which came from google!). And a natural language interface to bring up templates, open files, and look for images. Apple could have done this AI enhancement with settings, and added a start button to open apps.

As for "privacy", that is the first scream that comes out from people who have never touched the product. Assurety should have been made that all data would be local. This runs contrary to the "data is the new oil" direction, but it would have been a good way to entice the skeptics and eventually swallow them whole to give up their privacy (insert evil laugh here).

Re: Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload

#112

Post by pjc50 »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #35
Shank wrote: post #2

> It appears this moment of pushback has resonated with internal teams: According to people familiar with Microsoft’s plans, the company is now reevaluating its AI strategy on Windows 11 and plans changes to streamline or even remove certain AI features where they don’t make sense. Obviously this is a complete failure of governance. The very first thing they should have considered was whether or not these features ma…

I think Windows 11 is the Trump moment. Even if they right the ship, Linux is good enough or good enough is on the near horizon for most use cases so people are jumping ship. There's also bleed from people being tired of Apple's lack of software innovation.

The trouble with Microsoft is that even if the ship is holed beneath the waterline it will take a long time to sink.

Re: Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload

#113

Post by pjc50 »

Lucasoato wrote: post #7

This is absurd, the fact that Windows has 70% if global desktop operating system market share makes them their most important moat, why are they deliberately taking actions and steps to make it worse? They added ads, forced updates, mandatory Microsoft account activation, so much unwanted AI slop... Think about it, if it was another more competitive company, they would be charging for the AI service and the onboardin…

The moat is still secure. So the strategy is to loot as much value as possible from within the moat. After all, where are the corporate customers going to go?

Re: Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload

#114

Post by sumtechguy »

OsamaJaber wrote: post #5

The real issue was never AI in Windows It was AI with no clear user benefit. A Copilot button in Notepad doesn't solve a problem anyone has Good to see them pulling back, but the test will be whether the features they keep actually earn their place in the workflow instead of just being there because someone had a KPI to hit

> The real issue was never AI in Windows It was AI with no clear user benefit.

I find it handy here and there. HOWEVER... There is no clear way to get rid of the thing. MS has added tons of features and then burry them in really obtuse ways to get rid of them if you can at all. That is the core of MS's user backlash. It makes people feel like they are not in control of their hardware. When I feed the machine 32 gig of ram and 8 to 12 is already taken up on fresh start something is seriously broken.

The second issue is people feel windows is not keeping up with its competitors (Linux, MacOS). They are throwing features in. When the benchmarks are where they are slowing yielding to their competitors.

The third issues is backwards compat is not as good as it used to be. They made backwards compat one of their key selling points. That is breaking in hundreds of subtle ways that piss people off. If I am going to lose my software to time rot why am I staying with this thing that randomly changes what the start menu looks like every 6 months and I have to figure out again where they put things. Plus now there is this copilot thing chirping all over the place.

CoPilot is not the issue, it is a symptom. It is the total lack of awareness MS has about its user base. It has been this way since windows 8 first launched. I use windows to launch my software and do things. There are 2 other viable OS's out there that do the same thing. If MS had put an advert into the message popup saying 'hey copilot is ready for your machine would you like to turn it on' they would have probably been in a better position. Instead it is on by default and you just get to deal with it. So now feel like 'gee thanks' hey what about these thousands of other issues? How many times are you going to break remote desktop again? How many weird directx 7/8/9 shims do I need to make my game launch this time? Oh an fix the backwards compat tool. It is broken too.

Windows 11 needs a 'service pack 2' moment. Where they focus on fixing as many bugs as they can. Lower the memory and CPU usage to as low as they can. Fixup the hundreds of backwards compat issues I see all over the net. Just well tested bug fixes.

Re: Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload

#115

Post by pjc50 »

XorNot wrote: post #110
pjc50 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Massive self-inflicted brand damage worked for X dot com, I suppose.

Is X even breaking even at the moment? Last I checked the ad revenue had dried up and boiled off, did they actually manage to cut enough to even it out?

Statistia has them at a loss, but varying around breakeven: https://www.statista.com/statistics/299119/twitter-net-incom...

But that doesn't matter. It was bought as a toy and propaganda network. It can lose money indefinitely as long as its owner is paid by Tesla: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyk6kvyxvzo

Re: Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload

#116

Post by mlnj »

1718627440 wrote: post #95
pixelpoet wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Office brand is literally gone, they renamed it to "Microsoft Copilot 365 app". Check https://office.com

Except that nobody cares. The Office brand is too large too get killed by Microsoft.

It's already gone. Replaced once with Microsoft 365 and then rapidly and haphazardly by the Copilot name.

Only the domain and SEO artifacts remain.

Re: Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload

#117

Post by vachina »

Shank wrote: post #2

> It appears this moment of pushback has resonated with internal teams: According to people familiar with Microsoft’s plans, the company is now reevaluating its AI strategy on Windows 11 and plans changes to streamline or even remove certain AI features where they don’t make sense. Obviously this is a complete failure of governance. The very first thing they should have considered was whether or not these features ma…

Everyone was just following the boss (Satya)

Re: Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload

#119

Post by debo_ »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #83
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The pain of ripping this all out properly is likely too high. That is just completely illogical and betrays a complete lack of understanding of how Windows works. Most problems people have with Windows are in the user mode, and not in the kernel. The pain of reverting straightforward UI/UX/vendor-provided application code that is probably version-controlled and tagged for specific historic Windows releases is 'too…

My comment was meant to be an old fogey criticism of giving up on having in-house browser talent and instead just white-labelling chromium, but clearly that's not how it was taken. Another lesson for me in writing clearly (no sarcasm on the internet!), but the last thousand haven't stuck so I'm not terribly optimistic about this one

/s is pretty good

Re: Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload

#120

Post by vachina »

joe_mamba wrote: post #86
Sharlin wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike IE, the NT kernel was never bad and is still (presumably) in a pretty good shape. It's the userland that's gone insane. Someone should just port the Windows 7 shell to the newest kernel and call it a day.

>Ever since they got the delicious taste of white-labelling chromium instead of fixing ie What exactly was wrong with Edge Legacy(not IE) based on their own engine that they need to fix, and why was Chromium a sweet taste? AFAIk Edge Legacy was kicking ass in all benchmarks. Their only achilles heel was Google messing up Youtube and G-apps to break they way they got displayed on Edge LEgacy forcing users to switch to…

> What exactly was wrong with Edge(not IE)

The constant fear of having Copilot shoved down your throat whenever you close and update Edge. And Microsoft homepage.

> why was Chromium a sweet taste?

Do zero of the heavy work maintaining a browser engine. Do maximum (little) work of adding AI slop.

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