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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

#281

Post by jll29 »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #271
ZeroConcerns wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely! There are so many scenarios where they could actually add some value, and they're fulfilling, like, exactly none of those? Even in Visual Studio Enterprise, their flagship developer product, the GPT integration mostly just destroys code regardless of model output. I truly cannot fathom how any of that made it past even a cursory review. Or how that situation would last for over 6 months, but, yet, here we…

LOL Since DECADES Outlook is _not_ capable of putting the first(!) just(!) useful datetime-stamp found in an email which says "calendar" or something in the text when pressing CTRL+R: This function creates a calendar entry from the current email with current receiver list, but default-date/time is alwsys set to the current even if recipients last ansewer was simply "lets do: 11am" - why does even this simple shit not…

Agree 100%. Don't train a 100-billion parameter neural transformer if you can solve it with a bash one-liner.

Use your human intelligence and save our planet!

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

#282

Post by Der_Einzige »

lateforwork wrote: post #59
outside1234 wrote: post #8

Microsoft has a problem that they hire the middle block of talent in the market. They do not chase the top 20% most expensive nor the bottom 20% least expensive. But this also means they end up with average products. They don't have the talent to do something exceptional. This has worked well for them when they can just come in and copy something (say AWS in Azure) and not pay the innovation cost, but AI seems differ…

That’s exactly what happened. For the past decade, the crème de la crème went to Google and Meta, which offered nearly double what Microsoft paid new graduates. Microsoft hired the next tier, after the top talent had already been skimmed off by Google and Meta.

Intel/AMD hired 2 tiers below MS. Intel's "great place to work" corporate propaganda was known as "Great place to leetcode" by engineers there.

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

#283

Post by tialaramex »

WhyOhWhyQ wrote: post #203

I personally never found Microsoft software anything but shoddy: Microsoft word, internet explorer, power shell, outlook, powerpoint... these all make me shudder... I'll give them visual studio, that one is pretty good. I think Excel is fine. Skype was okay I guess. Anyway, I think the shoddiness can't really be the actual threat to Microsoft given their track record.

When I joined my current employer, a few years ago, one of the things I thought might be good was that for the first time in a fairly long career I'd be using Visual Studio.

Previously I'm a vi or vim user for everything, for many years.

But I can say after a few years experience I'm not really impressed. It's too big and too slow. It has a few things I kinda like, a lot of half-working things I'd love if they worked consistently (e.g. some things I work on can be debugged, some can't, experts might know why but I don't) but as they are they're too unreliable to really change how I do things - but overall it's not enough to e.g. miss VS when I'm writing my own stuff, still in vim on Linux.

Actually all of the Microsoft technologies I've run into were disappointing with only two exceptions which I'll get to. Powershell felt like they hadn't really learned the right lessons from the Unix shells for example, and Entra ID (called "Azure Active Directory" when I started caring) is a confusing mess.

Two exceptions: 1. C# is a pretty good language. Mostly it's a better Java. Is that amazing? Not really, but it's still pretty good, it delivers reasonable performance, there's a large ecosystem, I don't hate writing it.

2. Azure itself has to have a way to "cut off" payments because Microsoft sold a product where students can get a limited amount of credit. The student doesn't have any money, so if they had $50 of Azure credit and Microsoft lets them spend $85 before turning off all the Azure systems that credit was funding, well, too fucking bad - Microsoft eats the $35 loss. Accordingly Microsoft are better (not perfect, but better) than AWS or Google's thing at actually turning stuff off when it exceeds what you asked to spend.

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

#284

Post by akomtu »

andy99 wrote: post #30

Big corporate AI products are all currently stupid bolt-ons that some committee decided solved a problem. When the internet came out, did many legacy companies lead the way with online experiences, figuring out what the real killer apps now that everyone was connected were? I don’t know for sure, but I doubt it, I think it gave rise to some of the present crop of big tech, and others reinvented themselves after the u…

Big corpos have reached the stage where they can hire ex-politburo apparatchiks from the soviets or china, straight into C-suite roles, and nothing will materially change.

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

#285

Post by thevillagechief »

immibis wrote: post #118
stackskipton wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most companies I’ve been at that use Teams over Slack is not “We can’t get contract for Slack” but “We have Teams included, why would we pay for Slack?” - Accountant

I guess Microsoft lost this battle, at least at some companies, because I'm now at one that uses Slack and Google, with no dependency on Microsoft Office.

Teams was clearly never meant to be used as a standalone product. It was a pretty effective defense play. Block other competitors from gaining a foothold.

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

#286

Post by andybee »

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...…

What do you mean 0 items? When you expand it gives you options to write a message or interact with search. Seems like its a you problem.

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

#287

Post by kuerbel »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #183
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?

That would make an interesting SCP...

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

#289

Post by pch00 »

Microsoft’s early/rushed attempt at AI (the various things called “Copilot”) does start to feel like how they lost the mobile wars. They had a tech fairly early (Windows Mobile) but utterly failed to execute on it and ultimately, allowed a competitor to dominate with a better product.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. With the sums of money involved it could end up being make or break?

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

#290

Post by jedberg »

IcyWindows wrote: post #91
guluarte wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Onedrive, that useless app that creates a mess in the desktop if you have a laptop and a desktop like most users

Most users do not own two computers.

No, but the biggest users who pay the most do.
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