Too little, too late.
Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload
21–30 of 293 posts
Re: Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload
#22This 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…
I think the summary is that "product owner" types and other agile simulacrums wanted it simply because they viewed it as an easy win towards KPI and other performance metrics. The most damning proof of this is Copilot in Notepad, and that half-attempt at renaming the entire Office suite to simply "Copilot" (they seemed to reverse this a few days later).
I think that’s a little harsh. When the CEO groupthink network says AI all the things, what are the PMs supposed to do?
Re: Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload
#23The 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 might not be a clear user benefit, but there is a clear career benefit. Delivering AI for a billion users looks good on your CV
Re: Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload
#24Please, delete all AI from my Windows
Re: Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload
#25> 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…
> The question Microsoft should ask themselves is why they built them in the first place It seems like everyone except MS themselves knows why: they got tunnel vision from Azure and AI, and completely forgot about what actually made them successful. Hell they even burnt down one of the most famous brands in the world, MS Office, for zero reason other than to try and whitewash their Copilot name. The marketing guys wh…
I don't know about Windows, but it will take a lot more enshittification than that to burn down the Office brand. Excel alone carries it to dominance.
Re: Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload
#26Trying to bake AI into the OS was so dumb. Make the OS super agent friendly, surface as much data as possible in agent accessible way, and perhaps create a journalling config management system so agent actions can be rolled back. Then sit back and let people build cool shit on your base and let people market your product for you.
Re: Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload
#27> 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…
> The question Microsoft should ask themselves is why they built them in the first place It seems like everyone except MS themselves knows why: they got tunnel vision from Azure and AI, and completely forgot about what actually made them successful. Hell they even burnt down one of the most famous brands in the world, MS Office, for zero reason other than to try and whitewash their Copilot name. The marketing guys wh…
> The PMs are completely asleep at the wheel
or, everyone has career aspirations for which they need to demonstrate impact, relevance and in shipping products. Since the current hype is AI, making and being part of the AI hype means career advancement (at the time).
Re: Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload
#28> 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…
The pain of ripping this all out properly is likely too high. Ever since they got the delicious taste of white-labelling chromium instead of fixing ie, another way has been looking better and better: windows 13 or 14 will just be a linux distro
> 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 high', so, therefore, let's do something that's even higher cost, and...
> windows 13 or 14 will just be a linux distro
Ugh, not this again. It looks like this train of thought will never leave HN commenters who probably have never seriously actually used or programmed on Windows. Literally every week I see 'Windows should keep the same user mode and move to the Linux kernel'.
You guys know what another Linux kernel running a locked-down user mode stack is called? Android.
Re: Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The question Microsoft should ask themselves is why they built them in the first place It seems like everyone except MS themselves knows why: they got tunnel vision from Azure and AI, and completely forgot about what actually made them successful. Hell they even burnt down one of the most famous brands in the world, MS Office, for zero reason other than to try and whitewash their Copilot name. The marketing guys wh…
I don't know about Windows, but it will take a lot more enshittification than that to burn down the Office brand. Excel alone carries it to dominance.
The Office brand is literally gone, they renamed it to "Microsoft Copilot 365 app". Check https://office.com
Re: Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload
#30> 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…
But, but, what about those managers? What they are working on? Making explorer better? or AI AI AI?