> "Fundamentally, the concept that your computer can actually look at your screen and is context aware is going to become an important modality for us going forward."
I hate to break it to them but they are the people who make the OS that renders all the content on the screen. They could make it more efficiently context-aware without massive privacy risks, simply by using the information they already have at that moment, and introducing APIs that applications could use to communicate context, under their users' control.
They don't want to do this because they don't want applications or users to have that kind of fine-grained control.
The people when have Alexa and the like in their house tell me they only use it to set timers and play music (and even then, it's 'play my playlist' or something similar. They know it's going to trip on 'play Völlig losgelöst', or even just 'play Peter Schilling' is not unliktly to fail).
Computers have more potential, but if they can't reliably recognise what you say, we've failed before we've even started. And I have little faith that they can reliably act on what you said, never mind what one might have meant.
davydm•5mo ago
No-one is looking to talk to their PC. Most people don't want an AI recording everything they do; many, like me, simply don't want the current gen of hallucinating AIs anywhere near anything important, let alone in a supervisor role on their machine.
How about this, MS: - provide a quick, light OS that just works, with the fewest required services running, and an easy way for people to _opt_into_ extra features instead of having to _opt_out_ every time they get a fresh machine? - bring features people actually want, like the abandoned feature to run android apps via WSL, or a similar layer - prioritise user experience over business concerns, such that the OS shouldn't lag or lose functionality when your advertising streams are interrupted
I feel like MS was making good progress from win7, through 8, to 10, and has dropped the ball with 11 in several regards, not the least of which is abandoning hardware which is still fully capable of serving user needs, for an artificial requirement of requiring a specific generation of cpu, or requiring a TPM, which has been shown to be not necessary for a lot of users. No worries though - the customers you're bleeding will simply move to Linux, or continue to use outdated versions of your software which are vulnerable, giving your company a bad name.
exasperaited•5mo ago
On my little low-powered mini coffee-shop laptop, Windows 11 is both the best Windows it has ever been in terms of smooth usability, and the worst in terms of all the things you have to switch off first in order to get that usability.
RGamma•5mo ago
fsflover•5mo ago
Do most people want to send "telemetry" of everything they do on their computer to Microsoft? I would have said no if Windows didn't remain this popular.