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Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

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Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#181

Post by jfim »

frickinLasers wrote: post #92
cezart wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about this recently. The centrality of the stock market, while historically a great tool to allocate resources efficiently, might actually be a big weakness for the USA today. A capable adversary, like China, can kill entire strategic sectors in the US using the stock market. If they undercut the US companies and are willing to accept low returns on their investments, then the respective USA compet…

As someone who is essentially financially illiterate, what does this mean, "allocate resources efficiently?" Nobody's investing in companies that promise to cure world hunger or alleviate childhood suffering. They're investing in technologies that can extract the most wealth from the population, regardless of externalities. Is that desirable? Then again, I can't fathom what people would be doing with their money if t…

That's what's meant by efficiency, it's allocating it to the place that has the highest return on investment.

As you point out, in practice what's efficient is what can capture the highest return, not necessarily the highest return per se. If say investing in education had high returns society wide but those returns couldn't be captured, that's not an efficient use of private capital.

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#182

Post by themafia »

jsheard wrote: post #122
ZeroConcerns wrote: post #62

Well, the major problem Microsoft is facing is that its AI products are not only shoddier than average , which is nothing new for them in many categories, but that this time the competition can actually easily leapfrog them. Like, I have a 'Copilot' button prominently displayed in my New Outlook on MacOS (the only platform where the app-with-that-designation is sort-of usable), and it's a dropdown menu, and it has...…

> So, my question to anyone in the Microsoft C-suite: have you ever tried to, like, actually use, like anything that you're selling? Satya Nadella insists that Bing365Pilot has supercharged his productivity, but determining if he's high on his own supply or lying through his teeth is an exercise for the reader. > Copilot consumes Nadella’s life outside the office as well. He likes podcasts, but instead of listening t…

> he loads transcripts into the Copilot app on his iPhone so he can chat with the voice assistant about the content of an episode in the car on his commute to Redmond.

What a dorky thing to do. Does the CEO have some concept he's living a life that precisely _zero_ of his customers do? Who would even think to do this?

> “I’m an email typist,” Nadella jokes of his job

Yea, I have actual work to do, perhaps you should familiarize yourself with this?

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#183

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

ZeroConcerns wrote: post #62

Well, the major problem Microsoft is facing is that its AI products are not only shoddier than average , which is nothing new for them in many categories, but that this time the competition can actually easily leapfrog them. Like, I have a 'Copilot' button prominently displayed in my New Outlook on MacOS (the only platform where the app-with-that-designation is sort-of usable), and it's a dropdown menu, and it has...…

I've always suspected Microsoft is a front for an ineffable cosmic evil that is trying to crush the human spirit into bewildered, abject despair.

How else do you explain Teams and the Hotmail UI?

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#184

Post by FpUser »

this_user wrote: post #9

Microsoft's entire business model for decades has been to shove shoddy products down people's throats. And somehow, they have figured out how to do it too, because otherwise Teams wouldn't be used by anyone.

>"Microsoft's entire business model for decades has been to shove shoddy products down people's throats."

I remember this one. In the 90s MS reps would come to our company and sing about how their Visual Basic was superior to Delphi. When pointed to countless features that proved the opposite all they were able to say is that the MS has bigger dick.

Their recommendation was to have 2 developers instead of one we had. One would code GUI / front end in Visual Basic and the other write DLLs that would do all the meat.

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#185

Post by Draiken »

janlukacs wrote: post #12
this_user wrote: post #9

Microsoft's entire business model for decades has been to shove shoddy products down people's throats. And somehow, they have figured out how to do it too, because otherwise Teams wouldn't be used by anyone.

I find it fascinating how they are able to sell their crap software.

I find it infuriating, but that's how the system's supposed to work. It's the definition of a monopoly and they're in the extraction phase. When there's no competition (and eventually there's always going to be a winner) you don't need to make good products anymore.

They've successfully indoctrinated whole generations to use Windows/Office. Here in Brazil using a computer was (probably still is) synonymous to using Windows/Office. Everyone had their pirated version of Windows and many don't even know that alternatives exist. When those people open companies they'll use what they know.

Software companies have to build for the most popular OSes and most can't justify anything else. Which then means most software only works on Windows and people can't leave it even if there are better alternatives (see Adobe). Finally, any non-closed computer comes with Windows so the cycle continues forever.

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#186

Post by jsbisviewtiful »

ptdorf wrote: post #175

Nobody sane wants to use their shoddy products. Their office products can't even agree having the same menu options for the same functionality. People use them out of corporate inertia: Windows laptops are cheaper than Macs and that brings the whole office suite in.

> People use them out of corporate inertia

And now with how things are going with the American gov, foreign companies see security flaws on two fronts: Microsoft's AI's unreliability+invasiveness and the US gov's unreliability+invasiveness relating to its stateside companies.

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#187

Post by ivape »

kayhantolga wrote: post #96

As a .NET developer who actually likes some Microsoft products, I can say this: the Copilot series is the worst thing they've shipped since Internet Explorer—and honestly, it might overtake it. The sad part is they had a huge head start before competitors gained access to powerful models, yet this is what we got. If you haven’t seen how bad it is, here’s one example: Copilot Terminal. In theory, it should help you wi…

Try to think about it like a bunch of merchants running to line up in front of you as fast as possible with anything that resembles a product you might buy. The only thing they were successful at thus far was recognizing that something needs to be in your terminal, and they ran as fast as possible to your terminal with anything to beat others to the front of the line. I suppose they are doing this with all their efforts. A universe where a C-exec said in no uncertain terms, "get anything out there", is the very universe we're in.

Apple is the only merchant not running to line up with anything at the moment.

IMHO, one company needs to make the bold move and make a fork of their OS that is AI native with AI native apps/workflow and phase out the old paradigm. It'll have to be two product lines, but I think the new OS will have uptake like we've never seen before.

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#188

Post by dugidugout »

janlukacs wrote: post #12
this_user wrote: post #9

Microsoft's entire business model for decades has been to shove shoddy products down people's throats. And somehow, they have figured out how to do it too, because otherwise Teams wouldn't be used by anyone.

I find it fascinating how they are able to sell their crap software.

I'm guessing the broader demographic of users simply don't think the software is crap. My buddy working in water transportation was just raving about Teams to me the other day. His praise basically boiled down to being integrated with his organization, providing him easy access to his department-resources. I suppose it does serve my buddy well.

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#189

Post by Marsymars »

Maxatar wrote: post #139
brookst wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying they would rather double stock price than double revenue?

If you're someone who owns Microsoft, what option would you prefer? 1. Stock price remains the same but revenue doubles. 2. Revenue stays the same, but stock price doubles. Assuming all else equal, and recognizing that this is absolutely a simplification, but if these were the two choices then it seems a no brainer that you'd go with option 2. Revenue is a means of increasing stock price.

I guess it depends on what kind of investor you are.

If you're holding MS stock long-term, and you plan to gradually shift away from equities as you near retirement and then gradually liquidate your holdings to fund your retirement, juicing the stock in the short term does nothing for you.

If you're holding short-term, then you also need to sell the stock after it gets juiced, so that you can move your capital to not-yet-juiced stocks.

Re: Microsoft has a problem: lack of demand for its AI products

#190

Post by saubeidl »

jfim wrote: post #181
frickinLasers wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who is essentially financially illiterate, what does this mean, "allocate resources efficiently?" Nobody's investing in companies that promise to cure world hunger or alleviate childhood suffering. They're investing in technologies that can extract the most wealth from the population, regardless of externalities. Is that desirable? Then again, I can't fathom what people would be doing with their money if t…

That's what's meant by efficiency, it's allocating it to the place that has the highest return on investment. As you point out, in practice what's efficient is what can capture the highest return, not necessarily the highest return per se. If say investing in education had high returns society wide but those returns couldn't be captured, that's not an efficient use of private capital.

As somebody doesn't consider himself a capitalist, wouldn't it be fair to say it is "the most efficient" in precisely one thing: capital reproducing itself?

And if so, why is that necessarily a good thing? Why should that be our goal as society as opposed to things like minimizing child mortality, increasing literacy rates, making sure we don't have a ton of our fellow humans living on the street in misery etc etc - things that make the lives of our fellow humans better? Why is capital growth the metric we have chosen to optimize for? Surely there's better things to optimize for?

Excuse the polemic, but infinite growth with no regard for anything else is the ideology of a cancer cell - and to me that is increasingly what it feels like when we are wasting all these resources on a dying planet just to make numbers go up.

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