Microsoft’s plan to turn Windows into an agentic operating system has been met with massive backlash online. When the Microsoft President of the Windows and Devices division announced the next Microsoft Ignite developer and professionals conference, AI made up the cornerstone of the announcement.
Windows is evolving into an agentic OS, connecting devices, cloud, and AI to unlock intelligent productivity and secure work anywhere. Join us at #MSIgnite to see how frontier firms are transforming with Windows and what’s next for the platform. We can’t wait to show you!
Users responded in droves and the general tone was very negative. Many asked Microsoft to focus on the features and things that matter, like creating a stable operating system that offers top-tier performance.
The chief of Microsoft’s Windows division limited comments, which drove the discussion elsewhere, but did not seem to turn it down.
Then, after a few days, Davuluri published a reply on Twitter to one developer comment in particular. In the command, Gergely Orosz stated that he could not see any reason for software engineers to pick Windows “with this weird direction they are doubling down on” and an operating system that “doesn’t look like anything a builder who wants OS control could choose”.
In the reply, Davuluri claimed that Microsoft was being swarmed by feedback and that Microsoft was listening and that Microsoft cares deeply about developers.
We know we have work to do on the experience, both on the everyday usability, from inconsistent dialogs to power user experiences. When we meet as a team, we discuss these paint points and others in detail, because we want developers to choose Windows.
We know words aren’t enough, it’s on us to continue improving and shipping
This time, the comments were as brutal as the first time. X user JimBobSquarePant’s comment is representative for the general tone of replies.
It really is hard to believe that to be the case given the disconnect displayed in your previous post upon which you received overwhelmingly negative feedback.
I’ve been a Windows user since I was a small child, I’m a Microsoft MVP and develop almost exclusively on Windows but even I am considering Linux as an alternative. The quality of the software of the OS (and other Microsoft products) is in real, visible decline.
In short, commenters complained that the quality of the Windows operating system is deteriorating, and that Microsoft is not listening nor caring about developers or power users anymore.
Closing Words
Judging from the past ten or so years of Windows development, and especially the past couple of years, I’d be surprised if Microsoft would actually start listening and change course, or at least focus more development resources on improving the stability and performance of the Windows operating system.
What about you? Feel free to leave a comment below.
MSFT will thrive regardless; it’s basically a monopoly; folks who say, “I am seriously considering moving to Linux,” sometimes do so with an eventual return to Windows–for whatever reason.
I read the comment, “I’m going to Linux.” And users do; soon thereafter, maybe one year, I read the comment, “Linux is great, but I’ve returned to Windows.” Or I’ll read a number of negative complaints about Linux not having this or not having that. It’s almost as if they’ve been paid by MS to switch and then complain about Linux and return. Odd!
Or some users, regardless, will always complain, complain, negative, negative and play the victim of some cruel conspiracy to ruin their lives. They actually give that much power to Windows. “Oh, if I had the perfect OS, I could have done this or that.” So their entire life is ruined because they couldn’t learn to work with Windows or Linux.
“Microsoft is not listening nor caring about developers or power users anymore.”
MS is a business, and their user base does not consist of developers or power-users. Developers and power users have plenty of tools at their disposal to modify Windows to their liking. That they don’t only shows their ineptitude; they need MS developers to do it for them.
Most of what you say is factual and I agree with you in terms of linux and people returning but the fact that they were so frustrated that they would even attempt to move to linux really spells disaster for windows. Just like smoking, some people are not capable of quitting on the first go but eventually they will be. It might be the second or third time they try.
One of the biggest problems with Linux is that there are not always available pieces of software for it. More times than not you will find yourself saying “I wish there was a linux version of this software” rather than “I wish there was a windows version of this software” which is just one of the problems.
Linux also needs to simplify things down to a more consistent work flow with a GUI.
I will make a quick example. MPV as a player is nice but as far as configuring it then its a pain. What could be achieve with a simple GUI must be done by a series of string edits in notepad and addition of several files, scripts, etc which are scattered around everywhere and often does not work as well as expected not to mention the probability of working exactly as expected on the first time is not as high as one would expect. Yes, its great as a power user for those that are on that level but there is a middle ground. Some things are completely unnecessary as is the case with having to resort to such things as well as terminal.
Another thing I faced when dabbling with MPV was outdated scripts with poor documentation or simply just unsupported.
With all that said all that and much of the issues for linux can be resolved by simply having a larger install base and more developers that may focus on point and click operations and GUI’s and with all that comes software that can be ported from Windows to Linux if not by developers of closed source software themselves or a fork for open source software to Linux.
Microsoft does not care about its user base, they care more about shareholders but not before their first and foremost concern, their bottom line.
I do feel that if there are too many hoops to jump through because Microsoft insists on making it more difficult then it marginalizes their user base. Such is the case with offline accounts. Yes, its still possible but at some point people are getting tired of having to adjust to find more or other hoops (loopholes) to jump through simply because Microsoft wants to control and monetize every single aspect of your computing life.
What we need Microsoft to do is to create a solid basis for an OS without so many layers of garbage. Microsoft could easily prompt you at installation to decide if you would like co-pilot, recall, edge, window media player, windows store, etc etc to be installed or made part of your OS. Heck they could even make it a switchable option at download from the ISO level and in effect allow a compiled version of your choices come directly from Microsoft. The options are there but Microsoft has absolutely no interest in facilitating anything that benefits its users as it flies directly against their profit margin so that in of itself is an admission of how little they care about the user base and their experience as they know if they would do it a much larger percentage of people would opt not to have the additional garbage that nobody asked for, wanted or needed.
If everything they are doing, adding and restricting users from doing is so great then why would they be so scared to allow it to easily be removed or bypassed?
HDR10 @ 2K resolution, 120MHz G-Sync, DLSS, Raytracing, upscaling of older media and games, this is what I want and oh, MY FUCKING PRIVACY BACK!
Show me a linux distro, or any other OS for that matter, that I can put on my current intel/nvidia hardware and smoothly run CP2077 on it with all those features working and I’ll toss windows in the garbage can and never look back.
If someone would just step up and offer us a viable alternative the masses could easily switch too, we’d all jump from the M.$ ship like rats from a fire.
Les montagnards disent “Quand tu tombes c’est chute, et quand tu chutes c’est la tombe”
translates to
Mountain people say “When you tumble it’s fall, and when you fall it’s the grave”.
(In French, “tomber” means “to tumble”, and “tombe” means “grave”)
Microsoft is obviously tumbling. When, now, experts, developers, MVPs are complaining as basic users with perhaps tougher arguments than that of profanes, Microsoft’s Agentic OS odyssey together with an OS which is increasingly problematic in other aspects, not to mention its built-in tracking and advertisement, its obsession with its Microsoft Account as a requirement, the bill is inflating. What next? At the best a master switch to enable/disable totally OS built-in AI, at the worst stubbornness on the account that the masses, even their most talented, ignore the nirvana pointing at the horizon and are to be forced for their own good. Nirvana or mirage?
Personally, as many others, I’ll be over with Microsoft once the current PC gets on its knees. It’ll be then Linux. AI has gotten corporations leaders hysterical. Billions of dollars invested with no ROI at this time. Bubbles happen to explode.
This will change nothing.
As long as there is money to be made and it is coming in fast enough they will not change.
The product is no longer the OS, it’s the customer/consumer the OS is just the vehicle to facilitate their goals to which to monetize your data and you.
Everything is designed to facilitate that even the web store as it was also an attempt to create a walled garden and obviously more telemetry.
– Download Teams? Yep, tied user account to windows.
– Forcing online account for more data extraction, tracking, profiling etc.
– Forcing Co-pilot (AI) to weaponize their large install base to train their AI to (in their eyes) become the market leader and horde in all that sweet AI bubble money.
If anyone thinks they are simply going back to some level of sanity that is somewhat acceptable then you’re kidding yourself.
All they are going to do is double down and insist that this is the path forward and we’ll take it and like it. They may just tread lighter this time around and offer more lip service.
The truth is that all these companies are surrounded by people that are foaming out of the mouth over AI. They all encourage each other to go down this path. No amount of words will sway them. The only thing that will cause them to change direction is for them to lose so much of their user base that it seriously affects their bottom line causing shareholders to also go into a panic. As we have seen in the case of Netflix and other companies pushing anti consumer things that none of this is likely to happen and it will only get worse.
Some people might say that their heads are so far up their ass they can hardly breath.
Regrettably, Microsoft is switching to subscription model, and they will change only if they fail to be more profitable with it. For me as “power user” I can live with it as long as developers issue programs that declaw Windows of ads, annoyances and 99% of tracking. As soon as Windows experience becomes unbearable, I am jumping a ship. There is nothing that Windows is introducing is so groundbreaking that I can not comfortably live without.
This whole online lifestyle is a bit beyond me. I know it dates me to say this, but I yearn for the good old days when we went down to the local pub, getting inebriated along the way sometimes, but there was a certain logic in that too along with some good looking girls along the way.
Now it seems that everyone is glued to a smartphone like it’s some kind of drug that they can’t live without. Relationships are built by looking for your next girlfriend/boyfriend on some app or other. And then when users can’t find one they get really upset and like Chicken Little and the Sky is Falling they despair and seek solitude in some designer drug or other.
Is Microsoft responsible for this? To a certain degree, yes even though their paltry attempt at conquering the smartphone market died a sudden and well deserved death dumping Nokia along rhe way in which they’d invested $7.2 billion back in 2013, but were incapable of turning into a profitable and ongoing concern. And now they’re heading in fits and starts to the next useless itineration without any forethought or concept of where it’s going to lead. How many billions of $$$ down the tubes will it take this time to make them realize that AI is not the way forward since we really don’t want to lead our lives this way.
The problem is that even if it is unpopular and they lose a chunk of users it will not really cause them any issue as they continue to mitigate that loss by increasing their monetization methods and then on selling your data to third parties.
They are also using you to train AI which is an ever evolving all consuming product which not only refines and absorbs knowledge but also allows Microsoft to leverage that knowledge against similar companies to become a leader and then implement its AI in larger corporate settings at a cost to those companies which then use that data and knowledge of AI to delete jobs and real innovation. Within Microsoft much of this is already happening as AI is being used to code.
I truly have no interest in AI as I believe it has larger ramifications for society in general and will negatively affect the way in which we think, feel, develop and function.
Keep in mind that it is in these companies to market such garbage at you to believe and embrace it.
That’s their job but you yourself must be capable of descerning what is good for you and if it is of actual benefit to you in the long run.
Essentially the only thing that will change in terms of microsoft when it comes to their current path is that they will refocus their marketing team to try to convince you that this is all great. They will not turn back at all.