Discussion

Our commitment to Windows quality

Someone1234: They're saying all the right things here.Fixing long-standing complaints, removing Copilot from obnoxious places, improvements to Windows Update and Windows Explorer stability/microstutter/lag, etc.I congratulate them on seeing sense, and I congratulate Apple on another victory with the Neo. Kind of frustrating that's what it took for Microsoft to finally listen to their userbase.

itopaloglu83: I'm sorry but I need to see it to believe it. Otherwise who can explain, how the Windows Explorer struggles to list 20 files.How is it even possible to spend 4-5 seconds to show a list of files in a local freaking folder?

the__alchemist: I am sus. Optimistic but sus. I am hoping for some combo of: - MS doing what they say here. (Uphill battle given the perverse incentives others have mentioned) My gut says Windows is going to be *worse* vs better, and I am willing to settle for stagnating... - Linux desktop makers taking UX, ABI/linking compatibility, and "just works" seriously. It's like you could take the good from both and discard the bad, but it hasn't happened yet.

gzread: Listen to their actions, not their words.

stego-tech: This. Microsoft has said similar things before, and always tripled down on bad behavior afterward. Their priority is business outcomes, not user experiences or support, and that’s why even this non-apology makes it clear the stuff customers, engineers, and support staff hate - invasive telemetry, outright surveillance/spyware, online-only requirements, AI-everywhere, constant arbitrary deprecation of APIs and endpoints for external tools to drive internal product adoption, refusal to support consumer technologies long-term (MCE, WMR) or do things contrary to everyone else (print drivers) - isn’t actually getting addressed.Don’t listen to the smooth talk. Plan an exit strategy now, before you need it later.

gjsman-1000: > They're saying all the right things here.They are not saying "we will remove the mandate to use a Microsoft Account." By itself, that shows their "care" is purely corporate, likely driven to calm down furious OEMs who will happily remind them Apple doesn't need an Apple Account to use a now-cheap Mac.Also, because Nadella can't stand the word, I'll say it right here: Microslop is still making Winslop.

FifthTundraG: Talk is cheap. Show me the changes.

grafda: Feels like screaming "please don't leave us, we will now build what you ask for". On the one hand, this is great to hear, but on the other side I wonder how much this will matter. Apple is now winning on the hardware other than offering a better UX experience. But they also have lost their touch with it over the years!

malfist: Are they?I see nothing about privacy, spying, forced microsoft accounts and continued locking down of windows that they've been doing.I see that they're bringing back _some_ of the taskbar options you had in windows 10 (termed it as "introducing"), they promise to make Explorer faster, great. But they also say they're bringing more AI into windows and something about widgets that I don't think anyone cares about.And lastly they're promising to revamp the place where you go to rant at microsoft, but they're not promising to actually listen to feedback.

throwuxiytayq: Too little and too late. I’ll believe it when I’ll see it. And so far everything I’ve seen has told me to abandon ship. Even if you reverse course, you’d need a miracle to make me trust you anytime soon.This is how goodwill works. Easy to burn, hard to earn back. I’m not touching any products by Meta, Google or Microsoft, and none of them are getting me back on board with a cute blog post.

rdedev: Right now my start menu randomly crashes. Like all I see is a black box with no icons. I'm impressed with how even basic functionalities break pretty often

itopaloglu83: Reminds me of the new task manager not responding. Like really?

rob74: Well honestly, that's the easiest problem to fix: just install any of the dozens of excellent and stable third party file managers. I for instance am (or was, while I still used Windows) a fan of Total Commander (actually, when I started using it, it was called Windows Commander). As a bonus, you'll be spared the useless UI and usability changes inflicted upon you with every new Windows version.

binsquare: Don't congratulate yet until you see actual outcomes.The author of this commitment is the same person (Pavan Davuluri) spearheading move of Windows into an Agentic OS: https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/windows-...

runjake: I can't upvote this comment enough.The only thing I'd add is that not only did he tweet the infamous tweet that caused the backlash, Pavan ridiculed those in the backlash (since deleted). Also, Satya still spews the same "agentic OS" narrative as recent as last week.So, I hope for the best, but I don't plan on taking them at their word.

zombot: Are they microsofter in the brain than MicroSlop? MegaSlop? GigaSlop? Reading "Windows" and "quality" in the same sentence already triggers every bullshit alert in the book.

xnx: Sounds like a big "Under New Management" announcement after Mustafa Suleyman was demoted.

xvector: Absolutely nothing wrong with an "agentic OS", agentic UX is the future of personal computing. The ideal is that something intelligent understands what you want to do and gets it done.Unless you really think we've reached the pinnacle of user interface with repetitive clicking around and menus.The problem is with shoving AI down user's throats. Make it an option, not the only option.

MeetingsBrowser: What would an agentic UX look like that is better than the current OS experience?typing "open hackernews" into copilot instead of clicking the browser and typing hackernews?I think 99% of OS interactions already boil down to 2 clicks and a search phrase.

matheusmoreira: The Windows computer I have to use at work takes over 15 seconds to start the new calculator app. The old calculator launched instantly.

delta_p_delta_x: This is good to hear, as someone who has used basically nothing but Windows since 2000. I haven't stepped off the Windows train yet. I use Linux at arm's length for my homelab's hypervisor and at work, but my daily driver is still Windows 10.I must be the only one to write something like this on HN, but I sincerely like Windows' technical fundamentals and architecture; its design is sensible and extensible. And very frankly I prefer the developer experience on Windows, where you can write a (relatively) high-quality native desktop application with purely first-party tooling and release a single, tiny (~10^4 bytes) executable that quite literally runs anywhere. The Windows API surface area is huge and developers can write entire multi-domain programs without ever looking for a third-party library.This probably sounds like a lot of copium, but I feel like recent events like the rising costs of memory and competition like the MacBook Neo will light a fire under Microsoft's arse. I really hope some of the AI overboard in Windows 11 is rolled back over the near future. They should migrate core Windows applications back to native and CLI technologies, actually support and maintain these without chasing the next big thing, and release frameworks for safer compiled languages like Rust, Zig, and Odin, and allocate more resources to F#.

mfro: Windows is still a solid 'gets out of the way' operating system (with numerous tweaks, customizations, and stripping) when it works. If they focus on fixing UX issues and improving stability and performance, it may be enough to slow the rise of desktop Linux.Better support for F#, or really any language other than C# is a longshot though. Those resources were likely 'reallocated' to AI R&D indefinitely.

rco8786: > More taskbar customization, including vertical and top positions:When did they get rid of that?

ivl: With Windows 11.In 10 and prior you could even move it to other monitors, just by dragging and dropping it. It's baffling they thought that functionality was a bug that people wanted 'fixed'.

VectorLock: Big PR pushback against the Microslop sobriquet.

itopaloglu83: Not a course correction, but a reaction from some engineers who are tired of getting mocked by everyone.

as1mov: > The ideal is that something intelligent understands what you want to do and gets it done.I think you and I have very different meanings of "intelligent", "understands" and "gets it done"

1970-01-01: Dave P. has the same take in a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTpA5jt1g60

drob518: It feels like Windows is old and tired. Remember when Microsoft and Intel seemed unstoppable in the 1990s and early 2000s? The momentum is no longer there. The latest bad decisions around AI for Microsoft are just the straw breaking the camel’s back.

ivl: > More taskbar customization, including vertical and top positions: Repositioning the taskbar is one of the top asks we’ve heard from you. We are introducing the ability to reposition it to the top or sides of your screen, making it easier to personalize your workspace.I wonder if this will include being able to put it on the non-primary display once again. It's not mentioned, but that was one of the biggest frustrations with Windows 11. It seems their focus is exclusively on single display devices.It also ruined my flow for my flight sim until I found a workaround. The fullscreen window wishes to launch to the primary display, which means losing the useful bits of the taskbar.I love what they're saying, but my faith in them is very, very is low.

wvenable: I cannot recommend StartAllBack enough.

ivl: I used that for a time, but it's licensing made me move to WindHawk.

kevmo: Microsoft needs to be broken up.

JohnFen: Windows has been going downhill for too long for me to take them at their word. I'll believe it when I see it.> Windows is as much yours as it is ours.Microsoft has been inflicting unwanted crap on me for years now, and they keep expanding with more unwanted crap (even to the point of wanting to force people to have Microsoft accounts) as time goes on. Reading this line actually made me laugh out loud. No, Microsoft, you don't believe this even a little.

hnburnsy: Left or right task bar placement, finally!

protoster: So why did they make taskbar bottom only in the first place? Too difficult to implement? Branding? No room for ads when it's vertical?

lemoncucumber: Reminds me of when they finally apologized for the dumpster fire that was IE6 [1] and resumed Internet Explorer development in the 2000s after Firefox came along and started eating IE's market share.In this case it's the MacBook Neo that's causing them to get off their asses and reinvest in the quality of their software after letting it stagnate for years, but the pattern is the same: rest on their monopolistic laurels until competition makes them feel threatened, then magically start caring about their users again all of a sudden.[1] https://www.crn.com/news/channel-programs/183701230/gates-of...

delta_p_delta_x: > Windows is still a solid 'gets out of the way' operating systemA good way to put it.There are third-party tools that Microsoft really need to adopt to make Windows a bit nicer (WizTree, VoidTools Everything, make more PowerToys default), but broadly it is still a decent OS. There are issues like slow `CloseHandle()` because of Defender (which needs to be a bit less zealous), and maybe more first-party adoption of WinGet.On the other hand, every time I use desktop Linux I get some paper cut because some edge case that I just don't ever think about is broken on Linux, whether it be my multi-monitor high pixel density layout, my USB audio interface and peripherals, or my touchpad sensitivity and gestures that Windows was widely derided for in the early 2010s and suddenly after 'Precision Touchpads'[1] no one ever complained about again, or random GPU glitches even on Intel/AMD integrated graphics that I have literally never seen on the Windows desktop, or poor battery life (Windows somehow gets 2-3x the battery life of Linux).

scblock: This is vague lip service with little substance, as far as I can tell. That is unsurprising consider it's from Microsoft and it's about Windows. It addresses (in cheap words) a few real pain points, but completely fails to address the dozens of either incredibly painful and stupid decisions MS has made.On the subject of what they address, I have thoughts and many doubts.> Integrating AI where it’s most meaningful, with craft and focusJust don't, bro. Don't do it. I don't want copilot icons in all the system apps. None.> More taskbar customization, including vertical and top positionsThis feels like it's too little, too late. They redesigned the UI in yet another toolkit and in the process broke something had worked for decades. Perhaps they could add a 147th different UI toolkit with a different look instead, just to change things up.> Reducing disruption from Windows UpdatesWould be welcome, but I have my doubts. MS has shown clearly they don't care.> Faster and more dependable File ExplorerSee comment on task bar above.> More control over widgets and feed experiencesGet out of it. If I see one more stock ticker on a screen share from someone I know does NOT track the stock market I'll know you for the lying liars you are. Don't promise "more control" just stop being so invasive and annoying.On the subjects they didn't address, I have feedback:- Remove advertising from the start menu, the system, apps, everywhere. Just remove it forever.- Remove invasive telemetry. Again, forever.- Respect user choice. Stop trying to force things to open in Edge, ignoring my default browser. I am a Firefox/Zen user, keep a single (other) chromium-based browser around for sites that don't work right (another rant for another time), and try not to touch Edge if I can help it.- Stop turning the bundled native apps into crappy web apps. "New Outlook" is a real tire fire.- Make the default Edge page ANYTHING but the advertising and nasty "news" summary that shows up. Why not a simple search page, like when Google was new.- Stop making start menu searches return web results instead of local apps- Make start menu searching actually search in a useful way. Why does QGIS not show up when I type GIS? Because it doesn't start with Q? That's garbage. Make it work how users would expect it to work.- Let people say no, fully and completely, to OneDrive. You can make adding it later easy at user discretion, but don't ask to set it up automatically. Don't use fear mongering like "your files are not backed up" to try to trick people into signing up for it.- Local accounts should be easy, not a nasty workaround with a moving target for instructions.

fainpul: I think something like this is the goal, and there's still a long way to go:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV01B5kVsC0

PaulHoule: "...we are reducing unnecessary Copilot entry points, starting with apps like Snipping Tool, Photos, Widgets and Notepad."Great!

cardamomo: Great? Maybe! But this doesn't say, "We are removing Copilot from apps."

PaulHoule: My personal opinion is "Copilot is pretty good as a chatbot [1] but don't waste your time trying anything multimodal." So I don't mind it at all, in fact I like it enough that I installed the app on my phone. I've got no interest in having it rewrite stuff for me in Word or for LinkedIn though.On the other hand, Microsoft is famous for killing something good (like OneNote) but spamming the UI with numerous entry points that will make you think "this is some piece of crap that Microsoft is spamming because nobody in their right mind would want it." That they are getting some self-awareness of this is a good sign.[1] I'd say Google's AI Mode gives consistently better answers (like use "vite-ignore" instead of writing a Vite plugin that doesn't work) than copilot with the reservation that if Google seems to get uncomfortable about a conversation it will end the conversation with a ten pack of search results whereas Copilot tries to simulate a person with healthy boundaries (e.g. "I will help you write a romance story but I won't help you write a sex scene")

hbn: > Plan an exit strategy now, before you need it later.The idea that we'll all be forced off of Windows one day sounds like a dream, but so far we continue to be in a state where myself and many other are long past the point of wanting to leave, but we can't for some reason or another.Microsoft knows that, which is why they've been able to do whatever they want and not worry about the consequences.

rgovostes: To demonstrate the seriousness of their commitment to Windows quality, you can now move the taskbar to the left side of the screen. No no, it's not vaporware, they even included four screenshots. Everyone can rest assured now.

as1mov: > you can now move the taskbar to the left side of the screenWindows 11 is finally catching up to MATE desktop (which is maintained possibly by a single guy from their basement), what a time to be alive!

bigyabai: Hell, taskbar positioning was a feature on Windows 10. They're just pretending like they didn't remove it for brownie points.

onemoresoop: Talk is cheap, I want to see heads rolling, head of whoever was responsible with the all the disastrous windows 11 decisions. Till then I won't touch windows 11 and I'm not the only one.

hbn: I recently managed to configure StartAllBack to make practically everything look like Windows 7, and it's improved the experience ten times over

drschwabe: Too little too late, open source Windows 7 and give it a new 10 year LTS commitment then we can talk.

SpecialistK: What does 7 offer over a LTSC version of 10/11 that open source couldn't fix?

bigyabai: A user interface that wasn't designed in the middle of 4 identity crises.

Someone1234: I've seen that too. I discovered Calculator was doing a DNS lookup for some reason, and that slow DNS resolution was the cause...That's a why, but it raises more questions than it does answers.

HelloUsername: > "A more relevant Recommended section in Start will surface apps and content you care about most, with clear controls to customize the experience or turn it off"How about, turn it off by default?

dude250711: I was hoping for: "We understood the insanity and the insult of trying to replace native UI with cheap web stack imitation and it will never happen again".

dethswatch: #noconfidence

iknowstuff: I missed the drama! https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/windows-... this thing?

flenserboy: the plan should be simple:fire most of your leads & new programmers.hire back anyone willing to come back with competence.return to the Windows 10 LTSC codebase.try again.

ChicagoDave: No one wants copilot. You can make it an app, but any OS level integration is a non-starter.My next laptop will be a MacBook Pro.My Surface Laptop 5 will be collecting dust in case I need it, but that’s highly unlikely.

nixpulvis: So Apple Intelligence doesn't bother you?

sgt: Have you even tried it? I'm a Mac user for 20+ years and I'm running Tahoe. Not once have I ever thought about Apple Intelligence. I don't even notice it. I think you have to switch it on.

daveguy: If you're going to replace tools as fundamental as the file manager, you may as well switch to a stable and fast operating system like most Linux distributions or Mac.

thih9: FWIW, I clicked “skip” on a popup to set up apple intelligence and I didn’t see it again.Of course this might change in future. And Mac OS has other popups where there is no “skip” and only “remind me later”.

jimbokun: Maybe there's an LLM learning about sorting from first principles every time you click to change the sort column.

timpera: This is awesome! Windows 11 is the best OS I've ever used, and it's great to see them finally fixing these obvious pain points.

hsbauauvhabzb: Or onedrive integrations and constant ‘backup your computer now’ popups which are _advertisements_ for onedrive, or Netflix, Spotify, or LinkedIn pre-installed and difficult to remove, or all of the above reinstalling during windows updates.In fact, basically any feature added since Windows 10 is probably unwanted.

BoredPositron: You know maybe OneDrive wouldn't suck as much if it was a native app and not qt.

hsbauauvhabzb: I don’t care if it had the best UX of all apps on windows. I don’t want or need data scraping in the form of cloud storage.Edit: but I am somewhat surprised that it’s qt and not the typical react electron bloat that Microsoft is slopping out. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.

packetlost: Apple Intelligence has a global off button that actually works. It's unobtrusive anyways. Copilot on the other hand...

nixpulvis: So the issue isn't actually that it's baked into the OS, it's that you should have control over when it's used.

bdangubic: You like it you turn it On, you don’t you turn it Off

9991: Arithmetic may have updated.

kiicia: This is just cheap damage control, just wait and see if they actually do all of those things correctly. Slow file explorer was an issue since very beginning of windows 11 and they "fix" it only now? But they took time to add copilot to snippet tool?

the_snooze: We’ve had computing technology that clearly understands what the user wants to do. It’s called a command line interface. No guessing, no recommendations, no dark patterns, no bullshit.

pianoben: As if Apple doesn't berate you with unskippable notifications to sign up for iCloud, buy more space, etc etc?

hsbauauvhabzb: Comparing windows to an OS I don’t use isn’t a fair comparison unless my work machine stops being windows. I assume Apple are a slightly less variant of bad though

twobitshifter: A feature they removed due to their inability to make it performant in Windows 11 A feature that existed as early as win95. The most requested change in user voice, since the earliest windows 11 betas.

ThePowerOfFuet: >Our commitment to Windows qualityLMAO

jimbokun: I use Macs for both work and personal use and I don't really notice Apple Intelligence.Maybe it's doing stuff that doesn't rise to my level of attention, but it isn't actively annoying me.

iknowstuff: Oh, someone's feeling the heat of MacBook Neo and getting pressured by their hardware partners.> More taskbar customization, including vertical and top positions:Pfft. Still slow, react-based, and ad-riddled> reducing unnecessary Copilot entry points, starting with apps like Snipping Tool, Photos, Widgets and Notepad.Must have failed to meet the metrics goals> Reducing disruption from Windows UpdatesYou can bet they will still flash the screen take-over riddled with all the dark patterns in the world to get you to upload all your files to their cloud "for backup"> Faster and more dependable File Explorer [..] quicker launch experience:Oh, the preloading of explorer into ram before it's launched? Lmao. Entirely embarassed by File Pilot https://filepilot.techgtfo.

threetonesun: Apple Intelligence is basically unseen in day to day use.

goalieca: I found the microsoft development experience to be terrible aside from win32. Yes, win32 lasts forever and outlived every attempt to replace it. There's been no end in half-baked APIs such as winforms, direct video, etc. I once had a problem where i was writing a video streaming thing that had to touch a bunch of meta-data inside a WPF program and then have it run on different versions of windows. There was no "one true way" and ended up doing it all in QT.

ebb_earl_co: Is it incontrovertibly built in to macOS? I have an iPhone and have never enabled it or Siri, so maybe there is similar off switch for macOS.

krashidov: Do they still serve ads when you click the Start button?

croisillon: i sorely miss the taskbar repositioning on my work laptop but seeing them start their article with this is deeply unserious

devinprater: > Integrating AI where it’s most meaningful, with craft and focus.Spoken like a true AI.

nixpulvis: Yes, that's my point though. It's not about being built into the OS, it's about being controllable.

XorNot: This isn't a competition. I just want those things gone.

Someone1234: I just don't think people like having something shoved down their throats. The dedicated Copilot button on keyboards and adding Copilot shortcuts all over the OS (and automatic popups/ads) was far too far.I think OS level integrations that are opt-in, not opt-out, may even be popular. But they have to be done carefully and tastefully.

lich_king: > The ideal is that something intelligent understands what you want to do and gets it done.Maybe? For a couple of decades, we believed that computers you can talk to are the future of computing. Every sci-fi show worth a dime perpetuated that trope. And yet, even though the technology is here, we still usually prefer to read and type.We might find out the same with some of the everyday uses of agentic tech: it may be less work to do something than to express your desires to an agent perfectly well. For example, agentic shopping is a use case some companies are focusing on, but I can't imagine it being easier to describe my sock taste preferences to an agent than click around for 5 minutes and find the stripe pattern I like.And that's if we ignore that agents today are basically chaos monkeys that sometimes do what you want, sometimes rm -rf /, and sometimes spend all your money on a cryptocurrency scam. So for the foreseeable future, I most certainly don't want my OS to be "agentic". I want it to be deterministic until you figure out the chaos monkey stuff.

threetonesun: I think your last paragraph is the real issue that will forever crush improvements over clicking on stuff. Once you get to "buy me socks" you're just entering some different advertising domain. We already see it with very simple things like getting Siri to play a song. Two songs with the same name, the more popular one will win, apply that simple logic to everything and put a pay to play model in it and there's your "agentic" OS of the future.

Forgeties79: Exactly. It would be like making all your purchasing decisions based on the first hit you get on Google

pixelpoet: Too little, too late; I've already switched to Linux last November and never looked back.Microsoft Copilot 365 Operating System App is just trash, plain and simple.

packetlost: I'm not GP, so I can't comment on where their line is, but for me the difference between Copilot and Apple Intelligence is that I can turn off the latter and never see anything about it again. Copilot, on the other hand, is everywhere and it's almost all universally buggy garbage, even when it's disabled.I actually trust the Apple Intelligence, when off, doesn't exfiltrate my data.

nixpulvis: Yea I respect that.I too would not want any unprompted access to my files.At the end of the day this issue is that we don't trust the OS and we cannot easily validate how it is designed to behave.

john_strinlai: the word slop has lost all meaning.but, yeah, mandatory microsoft accounts are asinine.

xbar: I am not convinced that Microsoft is all of a sudden deciding to try again to become a consumer-oriented company based on something Pravan Davuluri says.Seems more like FUD.

mosura: The question here is what metric at Microsoft was bad enough for them to make a post like this?

SunshineTheCat: Yea, I've replaced Windows with Ubuntu on my pc and have just ordered an M5 Macbook Air.Sure both have their quirks, but it's just wild how much Windows goes out of its way to be annoying. From a billion startup notifications to basic UI stuff to copilot and the list goes on.

NKosmatos: Is this a joke? Is this guy for real? And he calls himself a REAL engineer? He’s a manager doing damage control because all this time Microslop is greedy and has stopped caring about power users.We’re not first time users, we don’t want Microsoft BOB as our UI, we don’t want ads and internet search “functionality” in our Start menu, we don’t want AI everywhere and we don’t want things hidden from us.Make Windows 11 Pro for real pro users and 11 Home for new users. I hope a few people from MS are reading this, especially Mr Engineer.I’m going to get downvoted for this, but I don’t care.P.S. Yeah yeah guys, I know about Linux ;-)

bobmcnamara: Is this April fools?The fix is upside down UI?

xpe: [delayed]

rob74: Yeah, that's what I did, eventually, but some people still need some software that only runs under Windows, or want to play games without messing around with Proton etc. etc.

Forgeties79: It only does that if your iCloud is full and even then it’s just not as annoying and show stopping.

daveguy: I keep a VM with windows on it. Unfortunately you have to purchase a license. Hopefully I'll be able to upgrade it like they've allowed since ~Vista. But now anyone tracking user agents knows I'm not using Microsoft. I didn't even put a browser on the VM. I have used the VM under 10 times over the past year and that's usually just to use Quick Assist to help others with their Microslop OS. Sometimes to deal with a particularly obnoxious excel file.

natas: I recently had dinner in Bellevue with an individual who holds a relatively senior position within Microsoft’s executive leadership. During our conversation, she emphasized repeatedly that Microsoft does not primarily view its offerings as consumer products. According to her, the company’s leadership is strongly focused on B2B strategy, with revenue growth driven mainly by Azure, AI, and enterprise solutions. Her perspective was that consumer-facing products are not the primary revenue drivers and, therefore, are not central to executive priorities. While this may not be surprising to some, what stood out to me was how emphatically she underscored that the company’s strategic focus is squarely on enterprise customers rather than end users.That said, this business model has historically proven effective for companies such as IBM. Microsoft allocates its resources toward segments that offer meaningful revenue growth.

hyperhello: I recently saw this comment. You made it a few weeks ago, copy and paste identical.

combyn8tor: I had to check the date on my phone as I was sure it was an April fools joke. After the absolute onslaught of negative feedback and the new term "Microslop", they put out an article saying you can now adjust the position of the taskbar. Unreal.

oofbey: > Windows touches more people’s lives than almost any technology on Earth.Thankfully Ballmer failed and this isn’t even close to true. I, like a lot of highly technical professionals, have been Windows sober for many years now.

Ucalegon: It all depends on where the the AI is running. The problem with the idea, is that for the majority of Windows boxes where it would be running do not have the bare metal hardware to support local models and thus it would be in the cloud and all of the issues associated with that when it comes to privacy/security. It would be neat, given MSFT's footprint, to look to develop small models, running locally, with user transparency when it comes to actions, but that doesn't align with MSFT's core objectives.

wmf: AFAIK the existing Copilot features always use the NPU and do not fall back to the cloud. Given that Windows 12 will require an NPU I don't see why it would fall back either.

nixpulvis: Not technically under the umbrella of Apple Intelligence, but you might be surprised to find out what photoanalysisd is doing.

mbrameld: And if the surprise is unpleasant you can disable it by turning off memories and holidays in the settings of the photo app. Not so easy to escape Copilot on Windows.

zug_zug: Whatever, I'm just counting the time until I can drop windows entirely... right now I just need it for gaming, but I'm thinking maybe Valve's OS will be the replacement

vadepaysa: > File Explorer is one of the most used surfaces in Windows. Our first round of improvements will focus on a quicker launch experience, reduced flicker, smoother navigation and more reliable performance for everyday file tasks.Really? it took "user feedback" for one of the world's best software companies to realize one of the most fundamental parts of the OS was broken?I have been long on $MSFT for a while now, but my faith as an investor stands shook.

layer8: Because the Apple dock is bottom-only too, and the Microsoft UI designers are using Macs.

hamburglar: My iCloud is full. Every once in a while my iPhone nags me to upgrade for a few days in a row and I tell it no and it goes away for 6 months or so. My Mac has never once nagged me about iCloud storage.

dmos62: I'm somewhat surprised that Windows is still most of personal computers. In my eyes, it's fundamentally inferior to Linux, and its superficial superiority only comes from the ecosystem, which is to say adoption, not some inherent trait. But then, since Linux adoption didn't meaningfully change in the last 20 years, I'm forced to confront the fact that either I'm wrong about its fundamentals, or the market is able to be irrational for longer than I find reasonable. Either way, Windows in my mind, represents a world I'd like to leave behind. Apple too, btw.

advael: As I tell all my friends panic-switching as their shit breaks, the best time to switch to linux was ten years ago. The second-best time is now

nickburns: Lifelong user and 11-year Insider Program participant (i.e., since the literal start of the program).Just this past January I implemented something on my workstation I should've done a long time ago: outbound filtering all network traffic via so-called 'Windows Defender Firewall with Advanced Security'. I've also skipped more Insider builds in the past two months than I have in the past 11 years.The only thing keeping me around at this point is the migration overhead and (at least I tell myself) window 'snapping'.

richardlblair: The first thing I did when a mac was handed to me by an employer was find an app for window snapping. It served me well.I went back to windows, using WSL in 2017. In 2023 I got sick of how everything was getting progressively worse and switched to linux (which has window snapping). I'm never looking back.

szatkus: That's more or less my experience with Copilot on Windows.

EastSmith: I've used Windows since 3.11 and I am using macOS for 5+ years now for work (requirement).Switched to Linux on my personal devices 2 years ago and using Ubuntu and PopOS! on two different laptops. I've had very small number of issues. Can't understand people moving to Mac - it is the same messed half backed OS as both Windows and Linux (flavors). With the llms these days, any linux issue is fixable within minutes.With Linux at least I don't have to worry about privacy.

kriz9: As a long time windows user I have no regrets making the switch. If it wouldn't be for the games I would not touch windows at all.

dbalatero: I've gone fully to Linux and all my games surprisingly run. I was ready to ditch some but I even got Blizzard stuff working which was my main concern.

kriz9: Games with anti cheat unfortunately are not supported.

t-writescode: 10 … 8.1, 8… 7, XP… 2000, 98… maybe 95…

okokwhatever: Five stars comment

mkirsten: Interesting headline. And I start reading as a MS skeptic. Maybe they finally got it? Maybe MS have realized why Windows really is so crappy. I read the first entry, bolded, in the bullet list. It reads “ More taskbar customization, including vertical and top positions”.I press snooze and get on with my day

kayhantolga: "What came through was the voice of people who care deeply about Windows and want it to be better."I gave up a long time ago hoping Windows would get better. At this point, I just hope it does not get worse.

surgical_fire: Too late man. Linux made Windows obsolete. There's no going back for me.

wvenable: I have also configured my Windows 11 to look and act like Windows 7. I like my taskbar to be a taskbar with labels. The tray area and the start menu is replicated across all my monitors.I also have set the classic right-click menus.There are some things about Windows 11 I like but a lot of it seems to be designed by people who use Mac OS (graphic designers).

chezelenkoooo: I think you're vastly underestimating the technical illiteracy most people have with computers.99% of people buy a desktop and don't even consider what the operating system is let alone think about changing it to something else. I would imagine they don't even know that a difference exists between operating systems.

operatingthetan: I try new distros all the time and not a single one of them is 'GUI native' in the sense that you can do everything without touching a terminal. Some weird stuff always happens and you need to do a bunch of research to figure out how to fix it. The settings GUIs never have parity with the config files and it shows.

owlmirror: - "summarize the discussions on hacker news of last week based on what I would find interesting".- "Plan my summer vacation with my family, suggest different options"- "Look at my household budget and find ways to be more frugal."There are thousands of things I can think of when it comes to how an agentic OS would work better than the current Screen Keyboard paradigm. I mean all these things I could now do with Claude or Codex and some of these things I already do with these tools.

dijksterhuis: > I mean all these things I could now do with Claude or Codex and some of these things I already do with these tools.huh? ... this reads to me like you don't need an "agentic" OS to do the things you'd want to use an "agentic" OS for..?like... it seems you just don't want a keyboard to do the same things you've already been doing? ... is that the crux of it?

shimman: It's kinda hilarious that this is the result of the leadership at MSFT. Great example of why the current crop of corporate leadership needs to be taxed into oblivion and have their fiefdoms divided for the masses. Their reign needs to swiftly end.

nu11ptr: > fewer automatic restartsNo automatic restarts! I understand that in our security patching world that patching and restarting automatically is the default, fine, but there absolutely should be a dead simple way of disabling auto restarts in settings. I'm fine if it pesters me to restart or whatever, perhaps with growing alarm the longer I wait, but it should always be optional in the end. There are just no words for how bad it can be for mission critical workloads when your computer restarts without your consent. Please make disabling this simple.

hirako2000: > pause updates for longer when needed> all while reducing update noise with fewer automatic restarts and notifications.Pause for longer.. why not just stop. And resume when wanted.Fewer automatic restart. What about no automatic restart.I couldn't read any further. Mind bended leadership to think this sort of wording after the obvious fiasco would make users hopeful.I stopped using windows personally 15 years ago. My mental health improved right away. Forced to use Windows at work, I finally got liberated 4 years ago and my mental health got even better. I refuse since then employment forcing me to use this OS. It's a health hazard, always has been.

odst: I've been interested in moving my windows machine to Linux. Do you have any recommendations for distros to use? Last time I used Linux was Linux Mint. It was fine, but definitely felt less polished compared to Windows or Mac OS

dmbche: Manjaro is a very sane distro

theLiminator: HN in general always does this. I got a lot of push back when I said that in general consumers don't care at all about open source, and the majority of them probably have no clue what it even means.You can really sense the SF-centric bubble HN lives in.

breve: When the context menu in Windows 11 is aggressively worse than the context menu in Windows 10 I'm not sure what quality Microsoft is committed to.

esalman: Around new years my company had to replace my windows laptop because windows update has been broken for a few months on my machine. They had a replacement windows laptop ready but I asked them to provide a MacBook instead. This is first time in my two decades of career that I specifically asked for a MacBook.Funnily enough, there's a bug that's affecting all MacBook users in my company (does not wake after lid down overnight). Apparently the culprit is windows defender installed in the MacBooks. Corporate, you know...

xvedejas: I've been using Linux for a long time, which might sound like I'm comfortable with all its rough edges, but it's honestly the opposite. Early on it was a new toy and I would accept issues as part of messing around with it. The past 10~15 years on the other hand, I've needed to get serious work done on it, and also use it for PC gaming, so I've gone the other way and focused on getting the most no-nonsense easy setup where I don't have to be tinkering with things all the time.Based on that, I'd say: go for a popular distro with KDE. I'm sure there are other very polished options out there, but my recommendation is Kubuntu, even though it's not the one I use today (I use Arch mostly), as it's very simple to set up and well supported.

ffwd: I find that this happens when you enter folders that have media files like audio files, video files and so on. One way to fix it is to enter one such folder, then remove all columns (like file name, date modified - those columns) and remove all the columns that are media metadata columns. Things like track length, artist, contributing artist or whatever else, then click in the File explorer menu on the 3 dots icon (**) and select View tab, then click 'Apply to folders'. This will apply the column and view settings that you just applied to all such folders.Now all folders with media files open immediately. Also if you want no wait for video files folders, right click in the folder and select 'View -> Details or View -> List or some other option where it doesn't create thumbnails and it'll load even quicker.

itopaloglu83: Looking up media details is of course one of the main reasons. Thank you for sharing this information. However, all the folders are already configured as general folders and this one specifically has a bunch of PDF files.When such basic tasks are failing spectacularly, nobody can have any confidence that complex things can be achieved reliably. Instead of spying on their users and trying to squeeze more and more money from them, they should first focus on making a great product and work on making it better, not researching ways to enshitify things.

dijksterhuis: when i hear bollocks like "agentic UX" i think of things like thishttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmz67ErIRa4i feel like someone high up in microsoft probably has this pinned in a epic or something somewhere

the_pwner224: Bill definitely wouldn't approve of the current Windows quality. This email by him (2003) is very interesting. It looks like he was powerless to stop the degradation.https://web.archive.org/web/20080626154537/http://blog.seatt...https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=227045

kace91: >Windows touches more people’s lives than almost any technology on Earth. Every day, we hear from the community about how you experience Windows. And over the past several months, the team and I have spent a great deal of time analyzing your feedback. What came through was the voice of people who care deeply about Windows and want it to be better.>Today, I’m sharing what we are doing in response.Just these words are already off putting. The extremely careful wording to avoid anything minimally resembling recognizing an issue.It's ok to say we fucked up. It's empowering. Not being able to do it is a huge red flag.

mattstir: Although I haven't touched Windows in a few years now, my understanding is that the OS has been having a very rough few months with unstable updates, bricked devices, etc. And yet the first thing they mention is moving around the task bar? Is that really what they want to lead with? It's just baffling. It's also a bit disturbing to see "reduced flicker for file explorer" as a main focus. Just how bad is the Windows experience?

topaz0: Highest priority is moving the toolbar???

reaperducer: the company’s strategic focus is squarely on enterprise customers rather than end usersYet it was the end users that forced enterprise to embrace the iPhone, not the other way around.If her vision was the only driver, we'd still be rocking Blackberries.

raw_anon_1111: > and its superficial superiority only comes from the ecosystemSo the only superiority is that it runs the apps most people want to run?And this is why geeks are always the “Less space than Nomad. No Wireless. Lame” types or the HN equivalent when talking about DropBox:“For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.”

rfrey: People loved the iPod. Users loved Dropbox. Nobody loves windows.

gambiting: I like Windows. Windows 11 gets on my nerves a lot but fundamentally I think it's a great system if you're a software developer or if you play video games(and I do both). I also have to use MacOS as part of my work and I don't understand how anyone uses it daily, it's like it's made by someone who never actually has to use it themselves. But I imagine it's a matter of personal preference to an extent.

glitchc: > I'm somewhat surprised that Windows is still most of personal computers. In my eyes, it's fundamentally inferior to Linux, and its superficial superiority only comes from the ecosystem, which is to say adoption, not some inherent trait.I'm not a Windows fanboy by any stretch, but it is a remarkably resilient OS. Case in point: I took the OS drive (SATA SSD) from my old workstation and installed it into a laptop. This was a Dell 7910, with a dual CPU Xeon configuration, NVidia graphics card and ECC memory. The laptop the drive was transplanted into was an old T520. The OS was Windows 10. Firing it up, I expected a kernel panic given how different the drivers would be between the two and resigned myself to a couple of hours using the Recovery partition. To my surprise, it booted up to the desktop and automatically started installing the missing drivers. In the meantime, I could actually use the darn thing.In all my years of using Linux, I have yet to see that work without a hitch. A chroot to modify fstab is usually the starting point, then comes the inevitable blacklist and driver removal. Linux LiveCDs come close, but this was a full fledged Windows install with custom swap file configurations, 10G network card, etc.Barring all this user-hostile behaviour from MS, at the OS level, Windows seems well-engineered.

johnmaguire: Why would you have to modify fstab? Surely you are using UUID/PARTUUID these days.I also wouldn't expect a kernel panic on Linux... Maybe no video though.

Jblx2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47448328

observationist: It's pure irrationality.The only winning move is not to play - leave behind all the Windows and Apples garbage, and life gets remarkably better. I'm almost 6 months in switching from Windows to Linux and it's so awesome that my computer doesn't fight me anymore. I've done 10% of the troubleshooting under Linux that I had to do under Windows, and that was just early on; once things work, they stay working, and there's no sense of dread about what was going to break next after every patch Tuesday.

tonymet: If integrated properly, something akin to copilot generating Mac shortcuts, with close supervision, copilot could be extremely powerful on the desktop. Now that Apple has licensed Gemini, I would expect that to come soon.Gen AI has even more power at task generation than at content generation. Imagine running Photoshop or Final Cut Pro via prompts. People seem squeamish because so far the Copilot entrypoints have been encouraging tacky text & image content generation, like Clippy. But imo that’s the weakest and most sensitive application.V1 is often not very good, for any new application.

kbelder: >More fluid and responsive app interactions: Reducing interaction latency by moving core Windows experiences to the WinUI3 framework.I think this is good, because they're talking about removing (hideously inappropriate) react and other web technologies from core OS components, and using proper native OS calls instead. But I'm not familiar with WinUI3. I only know Win32. Is WinUI3 a flash-in-the-pan system like their other UI attempts, or is it decent and stable?

dijit: Most people want a web browser.Even Microsofts esteemed moat (office) is “Web only” on the lowest tier.

raw_anon_1111: PC gaming revenue on its own is around $45 Billion a year and there are all sorts of vertical market software that only runs on Windows.But even if all most people want is browser, why go through the hassle of running Linux?I usually recommended a Windows PC to most people because on the low end, they are cheap, disposable, and if the one odd program they might want to run isn’t available, I didn’t have to hear about it.If they know what they want, I didn’t have a problem recommending an Air and now for a lot of use cases, a Neo.

dijit: I work in games (formerly AAA).Chicken and egg problem.Valve is making enough headway that game makers take Linux seriously. We’ll likely see a lot more native releases over time. (once the worry about anticheat subsides).

evilduck: Nah, analytics. Some PM needs to know which operands are most used so they can optimize the calculator layout to improve the UX. And for the least used operands, they'll take a pragmatic stance and remove them to clean up the interface.

DoctorDabadedoo: I would go either with Ubuntu or Fedora. The entry barrier is lower, they work well and shouldn't be too troublesome to install/maintain.Then check whether you prefer Gnome or KDE as the looks and go with what you find cooler.I've used Ubuntu most of my career and it's solid, these days I'm testing Fedora at home due to some nitpicks I have, but both are good options.

applfanboysbgon: Windows is not technically inferior to Linux. To the extent it has problems, it is because of top-down anti-user behaviour mandated from corporate. But anyone capable of using Linux is capable of hacking out that BS and getting a generally superior experience. I use both literally side-by-side, two laptops with a KVM, and I still greatly prefer Windows for many reasons.Some reasons: Even as a low-level programmer fully capable of resolving problems, I want to spend my time working on my programs, not working on making my OS work, and Linux frequently demands that I spend hours chasing down issues. Windows does a better job of managing memory/swaps, at least out of the box. Windows has a stable userland with 30 years of backwards compatibility. Windows makes good use of both GUIs and CLIs, letting you choose whichever is faster for the task, while Linux distros and devs have some kind of bizarre ideological purity culture and generally refuse to make good GUIs. Windows has a built-in tool for easily making full system images while the system is running, without requiring the image destination be larger than the system drive including unused space. Windows developers are not so in love with dynamically linked system libraries that dependency management becomes a pain in the ass.

dgxyz: Everyone at MSFT who is senior is a lying piece of shit these days. I remember on here Satya being treated like the second coming of Jesus due to his promises. Any comments against him were downvoted.Look where we are now.

grujicd: Let's start with those who thought it's a good idea to give power over UI decissions to designers using Macs.