Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

windowscentral.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 385 posts

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

#51

Post by pjmlp »

neilalexander wrote: post #10

I would think that if they actually spent the time and money fixing the core functionality of their core products (like Windows and Office) that they might have a much easier time promoting things like Copilot. Instead they leave their users wondering why they're so hell-bent on shoehorning AI into a Start menu that takes whole seconds longer to open than it should or into Windows Search that regularly fails to find…

Exactly, even those of us that like Windows have a hard time talking about it when Microsoft treats it so badly, I really miss Balmer era in regards to Windows.

The only good thing that came out of Satya era has been the Windows Terminal and WSL.

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

#52

Post by watwut »

coldpie wrote: post #40
neilalexander wrote: post #10

I would think that if they actually spent the time and money fixing the core functionality of their core products (like Windows and Office) that they might have a much easier time promoting things like Copilot. Instead they leave their users wondering why they're so hell-bent on shoehorning AI into a Start menu that takes whole seconds longer to open than it should or into Windows Search that regularly fails to find…

Microsoft is a public company. That means their primary product is not products or services, it's their stock. Selling products & services can be an advertisement for their stock, but there are other methods of convincing people to buy their stock, too. Currently the stock market only wants stocks that have "AI" associated with them. It doesn't matter whether users like it or not, because having a viable business is…

That is not what stock market is. A company does not have to focus on stock price and stock price is not its primary product.

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

#53

Post by elpakal »

Not just about the products imho. I do some consulting for law firms who typically use the MSFT stack, and I was excited about the private ChatGPT services in Azure, because from my (admittedly limited) sample of law firms, nobody likes using Copilot and LLMs need to be private/secure. The amount of outdated and poor quality documentation for Azure services is amazing given how nascent these services are.

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

#54

Post by devinprater »

Lol the Copilot app isn't even that useful on iOS for a blind person. On Android, you type something in, hit sent, and the app pipes the pure output of the AI, Markdown formatting and citation markup included, to the screen reader. That's at least something. I mean it's crumbs, yes, but we blind people are very, very used to crumbs.

On iOS, you type a message and send, and... nothing.

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

#57

Post by Hasz »

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…

this is just not true. Building great products with average talent is a sign of great management, and it's been done before in both business and sports. moneyball is about this idea at some level.

Plenty of SV is building below average products with exceptional talent.

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

#58

Post by pjmlp »

dylan604 wrote: post #37
zubiaur wrote: post #27

Their copilot stuff is such a mess. Over promising, dressed with marketing slop on top of an under-performing product. However; their azure offerings are somewhat decent. AI Search is getting quite decent, access to Open AI models served through foundry is quite the differentiator (although the rate limits are an issue), their reference architectures are very helpful and their ancillary services, like document intell…

> Their stuff is such a mess. Over promising, dressed with marketing slop on top of an under-performing product. Updated as it was almost close to being a generic comment about AI overall.

See WinUI after Project Reunion announcement 5 years ago, unfortunately fits exactly the same description, and we are way past COVID to use that as an excuse.

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

#59

Post by lateforwork »

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.

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

#60

Post by samrus »

Spivak wrote: post #22
neilalexander wrote: post #10

I would think that if they actually spent the time and money fixing the core functionality of their core products (like Windows and Office) that they might have a much easier time promoting things like Copilot. Instead they leave their users wondering why they're so hell-bent on shoehorning AI into a Start menu that takes whole seconds longer to open than it should or into Windows Search that regularly fails to find…

I will say that with enough group policy and sysinternals turning absolutely everything off, turning all of the settings to maximum performance lowest flashiness, no web results, killing Cortana with reckless abandon my Windows installation is actually what I would consider to be snappy. I was surprised. It doesn't make it any better that Microsoft does this, but as a piece of practical advice, it seems like it can b…

All that tinkering is getting you dangerously close to daily driving linux. And the advantage there is that the maker isnt actively trying to get in your way
Post reply on HN