The 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
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Windows 10 searching the web started it all for me - not AI. Followed by constantly changing/moving the option on how to disable it. Use Edge, Onedrive, help finish setting up your PC (by logging in), constant disrespect of me the user.
W11 local accounts only with terminal hacks sealed the deal along with valves contributions to linux.
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.
It's the movement, a vast Zeitgeist of evil, away from categorizing and organization, and towards Search.
I hate it. I was looking at how to fix the dark screen that resulted from turning on HDR in Windows 11, which some games need at the OS level for some reason, and Search was never giving me the Exact Keyword you need.
Search is always a guessing game, and you end up Googling the answer, it's so incredibly inefficient.
I mean specifically making a poorly organized Settings and just adding a text search box at the top to avoid having to organize it easily.
> The real issue was never AI in Windows It was AI with no clear user benefit.
I find it handy here and there. HOWEVER... There is no clear way to get rid of the thing. MS has added tons of features and then burry them in really obtuse ways to get rid of them if you can at all. That is the core of MS's user backlash. It makes people feel like they are not in control of their hardware. When I feed the machine 32 gig of ram and 8 to 12 is already taken up on fresh start something is seriously broken.
The second issue is people feel windows is not keeping up with its competitors (Linux, MacOS). They are throwing features in. When the benchmarks are where they are slowing yielding to their competitors.
The third issues is backwards compat is not as good as it used to be. They made backwards compat one of their key selling points. That is breaking in hundreds of subtle ways that piss people off. If I am going to lose my software to time rot why am I staying with this thing that randomly changes what the start menu looks like every 6 months and I have to figure out again where they put things. Plus now there is this copilot thing chirping all over the place.
CoPilot is not the issue, it is a symptom. It is the total lack of awareness MS has about its user base. It has been this way since windows 8 first launched. I use windows to launch my software and do things. There are 2 other viable OS's out there that do the same thing. If MS had put an advert into the message popup saying 'hey copilot is ready for your machine would you like to turn it on' they would have probably been in a better position. Instead it is on by default and you just get to deal with it. So now feel like 'gee thanks' hey what about these thousands of other issues? How many times are you going to break remote desktop again? How many weird directx 7/8/9 shims do I need to make my game launch this time? Oh an fix the backwards compat tool. It is broken too.
Windows 11 needs a 'service pack 2' moment. Where they focus on fixing as many bugs as they can. Lower the memory and CPU usage to as low as they can. Fixup the hundreds of backwards compat issues I see all over the net. Just well tested bug fixes.
Notepad had been perfect for 20 years. Morons fucked with it.
You probably wouldn’t like 20 year old Notepad’s habit of leaving Unicode BOMs everywhere, or only supporting CRLF line endings. They did improve it a tiny amount circa Windows 10.
Does Windows 11 Notepad still choke on loading large files?
I used notepad for quick edit of simple files OR copy pasting and removing formatting.
Copilot excluded, who decided that it was a good idea to have multi tab notepad that remembers unsaved files between executions ?
"We solved that, just go into settings to toggle that behaviour !"
Who decided that notepad had to have a full settings page ?
"Just use the feedback hub" ?
So basically, you removed Wordpad and now regret this decision and are slowly turning notepad into Jeff Raskins' Archy ?
I actually liked some of the addictions to notepad, like tabs, reopen files, keeping unsaved files, and the unsaved changes indicator in the tab.
But I think formatting, grammar and ai are going too far for notepad, if I want to do something that need those I would use Word.
They jumped the gun really.
The way the code assistants like opencode / claude / etc are improving with good models, I could easily see some kind of Copilot-like utility driving the whole OS in a pretty useful way to automate all kinds of tasks, just... not today.
Just like Google shoving the shittiest version of gemini into search results, Microsoft is shoving mostly useless half-baked AI features into Windows. There must be some kind of insane culture of just wanting to ship before it's done and assuming users won't notice it's crap, rather than waiting for a truly good experience.
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
> The real issue was never AI in Windows It was AI with no clear user benefit
Much of the way AI has been forced upon the world by MS and the likes makes it very difficult to separate the two. The trend of enshittification leading up to LLMs has also not been a solid basis for trust. So yes, for a lot of people, the underlying technology isn't necessarily an issue, but it's kind of hard to imagine it being presented in a non-problematic way given the above, which I suspect is a big part of why there's a growing sentiment of distaste with anything AI now.