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Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards

arstechnica.com

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Re: Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards

#251

Post by int_19h »

swozey wrote: post #175
olyjohn wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people will accidentally push the button and be sent to LinkedIn. Good for their stats. Computers are no longer being built to do what you want them to, but what the software maker wants you to do with them.

I cancelled Netflix years ago. I just got a new Shield TV remote with only a Netflix button and it is constantly getting hit. I probably hit it 5+ times a night. I wonder what they learn from that.

If that button makes 1 out of 10 people have a slight preference for Netflix, it still adds up. The real question is how much Netflix is paying NVidia to have it there.

Re: Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards

#252

Post by int_19h »

accrual wrote: post #73
ActionHank wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

looks like it takes the place of the menu key?

I'd rather they take the right Win key. Sometimes I'm able to do quite a bit of work without using a mouse, and having the Menu/right-click key is useful. There's got to be cases were menus are only available via right-click.

Shift+F10 is the standard shortcut to open the context menu in Windows regardless of presence/absence of the Menu key.

Re: Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards

#253

Post by wkat4242 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #71
jjordan wrote: post #6

The way Microsoft is pushing AI literally everywhere now feels reminiscent of circa 2001 when literally everything was branded '.NET'. Eventually they scaled it back, but it was complete overkill and diluted what the brand was supposed to represent.

It's the only thing MS^H^H Bing has that offers a prayer of beating Google at something. Expect saturation.

And not even MS itself. They just invested in OpenAI to jump ahead.

Re: Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards

#254

Post by wkat4242 »

jjordan wrote: post #6

The way Microsoft is pushing AI literally everywhere now feels reminiscent of circa 2001 when literally everything was branded '.NET'. Eventually they scaled it back, but it was complete overkill and diluted what the brand was supposed to represent.

The biggest thing I hate about the marketing is that they call everything CoPilot.

It's extremely confusing to users. Users get free windows CoPilot and wonder why they can't use it to generate PowerPoint presentations because the cool marketing doesn't clarify that that's a $30 a month separate license.

For this reason we actually turn windows CoPilot off. It doesn't really do much for business (it's just chatgpt really which we already offer using a custom integration) and it only causes confusion.

And these aren't the only ones. There's GitHub CoPilot, sales CoPilot (which can talk to Salesforce) and many more. Lots of which have features that won't work with the other iterations.

Another example, CoPilot studio allows you to make custom chat bots similar to the celebrity-tuned bots developed by meta. But no, these don't work in the Microsoft 365 CoPilot. It's such a mess.

Re: Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards

#255

Post by wkat4242 »

chollida1 wrote: post #106
CamperBob2 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the only thing MS^H^H Bing has that offers a prayer of beating Google at something. Expect saturation.

> It's the only thing they have that offers a prayer of beating Google at something. Azure's market share would indicate you are wrong about this.

Replace "Google" with "another leading tech player" because they're way smaller than AWS.

Re: Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards

#256

Post by elric »

pests wrote: post #213
elric wrote: post #170

Great way to mess up muscle memory again. The original addition of the windows (or meta, if you're so inclined) key wasn't too bad, as most keyboards had a blank space there. But then people pushed the Fn. And the menu key. And the bottom row became a mess. With some keyboards having Fn>Ctrl>Win>Alt, while others have Ctrl>Fn>Win>Alt, or a permutation without an Fn key. None of my keyboards have a menu key. And none…

Just don't buy them?

Thanks for that super actionable advice. /s

I'm sure you've noticed that (especially) laptops have virtually no keyboard customization options. Once MS starts pushing this, every laptop peddler will be including them on every keyboard. Which means that once again, the majority of laptop keyboards will get objectively worse.

It's hard enough finding a laptop with all the keys in the right place these days. Adding more pointless keys is just going to make things worse.

Thank goodness for keys being reassignable in sensible operating systems.

External keyboards aren't that big of an issue, I can just build my own and call it a day, but I haven't seen anyone build any custom laptop keyboards.

Re: Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards

#257

Post by accrual »

int_19h wrote: post #252
accrual wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather they take the right Win key. Sometimes I'm able to do quite a bit of work without using a mouse, and having the Menu/right-click key is useful. There's got to be cases were menus are only available via right-click.

Shift+F10 is the standard shortcut to open the context menu in Windows regardless of presence/absence of the Menu key.

Thanks for this! I'll keep it with another handy shortcut, Ctrl + Esc, which is an alternative to the Win key for keyboards that may not have one (e.g. IBM Model M).

Re: Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards

#258

Post by pests »

elric wrote: post #256
pests wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just don't buy them?

Thanks for that super actionable advice. /s I'm sure you've noticed that (especially) laptops have virtually no keyboard customization options. Once MS starts pushing this, every laptop peddler will be including them on every keyboard. Which means that once again, the majority of laptop keyboards will get objectively worse. It's hard enough finding a laptop with all the keys in the right place these days. Adding more…

Yeah, it sucks.

But to call it not actionable advice is just hilarious.

You are 100% able to not buy keyboards that don't work for you or you don't agree with.

This is actionable.

You might have to bring an external keyboard with you everywhere if you can't find a laptop one that works.

Having values requires making sacrafices sometimes. Here is how Richard Stallman reads the web:

"For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I also have not net connection much of the time.) To look at page I send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me. It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time."

Re: Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards

#259

Post by tech234a »

c0wb0yc0d3r wrote: post #225
tech234a wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Windows 10, Windows + S opens search.

Is that different then just pressing the windows key? I just poured the windows key and start typing a query.

I usually just press the Windows key as well. That said, Windows + S displays recent searches.

Re: Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards

#260

Post by saltminer »

k8svet wrote: post #149
layer8 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those aren’t real keys in the sense of having their own keycodes, instead they just map to some other key combination. The Copilot key will presumably be similar (?). These “new keys” are unfortunate, and a regular key that you can remap to whatever you want would be more useful.

This so flagrantly stupid. It's easier to make every KB manufacturer integrate special firmware to have one keypress register as another specific one, rather than plumbing it in as a defined new key that Windows registers a handler for???

Not defending MS, but keyboards already have controllers and have since at least the original PC (probably much earlier than that but I'm not very familiar with old mainframe terminals). Considering how many SKUs already exist for different layouts and the like, this isn't that big of a burden - at most, this requires updated firmware and pad printing layouts, and firmware already changes a decent amount as controllers and membrane layouts are modified for new SKUs and cost-reduction. And it's not like they have to update their existing stock or retool their lines right now, the phase-in will likely take some time.

Also, unless I missed something, I don't think the article says one way or another how this will be implemented. It could be a new scancode or emulate a key combo.

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