Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by saratogacx » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 5:06 PM UTC

Telaneo wrote: post #65

The thing that bothers me the most about this is that I actually have faith in the people actually developing Windows. I'm not at all aurprised that they are rebelling against stupid non-features. But that rebelling doesn't amount to anything, since managers and decrees from the top funnel all effort into the most user-hostile results possible. If MS rehires their QA teams and listen to the people on the ground, I'd…

You say that but they rewrote the start menu and task bar from scratch. Something you see cried for over and over again by folks who think that rewriting is easy.

The end result is a painful, inflexible, and overly opinionated piece of UI that is slowly re-learning lessons learned by it's fore barer and is likely to never be as capable of what it replaced. From beta people wanted to resize and reposition it and that feature is still nowhere to be seen after 5 years (including public preview).

I have little to no confidence that the develpers currently in the Windows org can, collectively, build their way out of this in any time frame that feels reasonable.

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

#232

Post by enopod_ » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 5:06 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #222

madhacker wrote: post #132

Microsoft needs to double down on its ubiquitous AI initiative so that more users can discover the joy of Linux.

As someone that uses Linux distros since 1995, I have had lots of joy getting it to work on various kinds of hardware, during weekends and long nights.

Ah the good old days. Investing an entire weekend to make your pci soundblaster card work. Nowadays you just install an iso from a thumb drive, it takes 30 mins and everything works out of the box. So boring!

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

#233

Post by a_f » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 5:11 PM UTC

protoster wrote: post #88

Too late, idiots. Just as Windows 10 was being retired, you ran the craziest anti-marketing campaign I've ever seen and successfully coaxed me into switching my daily driver to Linux. Until this year, I've been using windows my ENTIRE life.

Reminds me of the Xbox One release disaster, and the push for Kinect and TV streaming support.

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

#234

Post by thewebguyd » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 5:18 PM UTC

tialaramex wrote: post #96

everdrive wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm shocked they didn't stash "defender" in there somehow. I used to joke that one name they'd rebrand the start menu as "defender for application launching" and rebrand the power button as "defender for powering on."

Microsoft's brands are historical markers. There's an era when a new Microsoft product is .NET, and an era when it's Azure, and one where it's 365 etc. If you have a new Doodad, if you say "Microsoft Doodad" the other divisions hate you because that's not their thing. Brand it "Hot Brand Name Unrelated Word" and now you're part of the family even though you have no product purpose and your customers will forever be c…

> Azure Active Directory

At one point in time, before AzureAD got renamed to Entra ID (or is it just Entra now?) they had:

Active Directory Domain Services, Azure Active Directory Domain Services, Azure Active Directory. All three different products.

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

#235

Post by simianwords » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 5:22 PM UTC

I really wonder what is happening inside where Microsoft does not release a single nice or product in years.

What would happen to the morale? What would people proudly say “this is what my company built”?

I’m trying to understand how they screwed up the AI thing so much.

There’s so much innovation, creativity possible using AI, especially as an integration in the OS.

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

#236

Post by bartread » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 5:26 PM UTC

GrinningFool wrote: post #131

bartread wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and you know how to know this is true? This story has already dropped three quarters of the way down the front page and has a grand total of 72 points. Topics that people really give a damn about on this site often garner 1000 - 2000 points and stay on the front page for 36 hours or more, but nobody cares about this. They’ve already lost the HN audience and there’s certainly an element of where we go everybody…

Did they ever have the hn audience? Over the years I've gotten the impression most folks here are primarily Mac and Linux for daily drivers.

A lot of Microsoft stories have got a lot more traction than this one although, yes, I agree, the community skews anti-Microsoft. Nevertheless, I’d bet many of our employers are Microsoft shops to a greater or lesser extent.

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

#237

Post by ryandrake » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 5:27 PM UTC

malfist wrote: post #161

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine it went like this: CEO: Put AI everywhere/ Engineering Staff: There's a lot of places where it doesn't make sense to do this. CEO: Do it or find somewhere else to work. The problem of pushback at the lower levels is that it is completely ineffective when the top levels are set on something.

As a point of data for your statement, Jassy has repeatedly said that teams that have higher AI adoption are safe from layoffs. Use AI or lose your job is the blunt message

What a wild business metric. Apparently not measuring productivity, profit, or even vague "impact." Just "AI adoption." Imagine your boss said that your job was safe if you switched over to using Python instead of whatever language you're currently developing in.

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

#238

Post by hubertdinsk » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 5:28 PM UTC

_heimdall wrote: post #122

hubertdinsk wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not both? Where I work, there have been a lot of pushback where that BS doesn't make a lick of sense (the crown jewel of BS request atm: "let's put AI in the bootloader"). Good governance "should" also mean that those kinds of pushback are encouraged.

It could have been both for sure. I'm just going off the public info here though and it doesn't seem like the employees failed to do what they were told to do. In a company as large as MS, I'd never really expect a culture of encouraging pushback from below. They'd just never get anything done and the team culture and morale would likely end up in the tank.

No no I agree with you.

It's just that I don't vibe with the sentiment that company culture are a one-way street from management.

Anyway I do see that after a while the people who would have said no would all be gone. So maybe this is not the start of the decline but actually closer to the end of Microslop.

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

#239

Post by thewebguyd » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 5:32 PM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #77

CuriouslyC wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think they will find it very hard to right the ship. I suspect they have forgotten how to write good software.

> Forgotten how to write good software

Given their current fixation on writing windows components in React Native, I suspect they have a talent problem internally. From the outside looking in, it looks like anyone who knew windows (and office) internals really well are gone, and the new talent they bring in can't deal with the legacy so now they don't touch it, and are building on top using web tech.

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

#240

Post by ethbr1 » Mon, Feb 02, 2026, 5:33 PM UTC

larrik wrote: post #175

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dumbification of Control Panel to Settings was one of the factors for me. I'm not sure if Control Panel is still available, hidden away somewhere, but I've since moved on to pastures that only seen to get greener when compared with the Microsoft Windows paddock. They're somehow finding new shades of brown on a monthly basis.

The idea made sense to me, but the execution was trash. Settings was slow, it wasn't any easier than control panel, and if you wanted to do anything that mattered you ended up in control panel apps which were completely jarring UI-wise from the rest of the PC.

The issue, and this is a recurring Windows theme, was "replacement without feature parity"

Imho, nothing should be allowed to ship in Windows unless it at least covers 100% of previous functionality.

If there are functional gaps, those should require approval at the CEO level.

The Windows team has incinerated a ridiculous amount of goodwill with 80% replacements that leave 20% of previous functionality (often including important workflows for power users) lost.

The issue isn't that Setting was different: it was that it didn't do as much as Control Panel. And that's a fixable issue! Just build the additional widgets / plug-ins.