* Kiosk Mode via the shell launcher delays logon times from <5s to 30-180s - just by turning it on, even if it doesn’t actually enable kiosk mode!
* Local changes via registry keys don’t “stick” consistently, even when the machine is entirely offline
* Offline activations using hardware keys fail across vendors without anyone knowing why (other than Microsoft, for the cost of a support call)
* Existing Windows 10 powercfg scripts and config files do not work with Win11. Our workaround was manually calling the exact same command twice, back-to-back, to force-apply a change.
* Installing language packs via the command line by any means available (Powershell’s add-windowscapability, DISM’s package installer, lpksetup, etc) do not actually populate the GUI with those packs as an option until we reinstall them from the GUI again.
* Adverts are everywhere, even on IoT LTSC Enterprise
Honestly, Microsoft completely lost the plot as to what an operating system is supposed to do in favor of turning it into an advertising and user surveillance machine masquerading as a useful OS.
I hate it.
If MS rehires their QA teams and listen to the people on the ground, I'd imagine the very same devs who put AI in Notepad would be very happy to give us features we actually want.
Obviously this is a complete failure of governance. The very first thing they should have considered was whether or not these features made sense in the ways that they were being added. There should not be any necessary work to "rollback" features that do not make sense, because they should have not built them in the first place.
Even if we accept at face value that AI has made generation of code significantly cheaper, that doesn't justify the existence of worthless code. Taste comes from knowing what not to build.
Right now Windows is an unstable mess, filled with things that shouldn't have been built. The question Microsoft should ask themselves is why they built them in the first place, and how they will prevent this from happening again.
It seems like everyone except MS themselves knows why: they got tunnel vision from Azure and AI, and completely forgot about what actually made them successful.
Hell they even burnt down one of the most famous brands in the world, MS Office, for zero reason other than to try and whitewash their Copilot name. The marketing guys who made that decision urgently need to find another line of work, because literally a Labrador licking his balls all day would have resulted in a better outcome.
The PMs are completely asleep at the wheel, when they aren't actively self-sabotaging.
or, everyone has career aspirations for which they need to demonstrate impact, relevance and in shipping products. Since the current hype is AI, making and being part of the AI hype means career advancement (at the time).
My Labrador says a/ he’s neutered c/ dogix user b/ his teams always begin with empathy: people (and retrieves) over outcomes
I just want to be productive, not fly a plane.
Wathever problems windows have today, retro compatibility was always a strong point in favor of windows. Breaking it with such a change in the kernel, would make most of its users even bitter than they are today.
That is just completely illogical and betrays a complete lack of understanding of how Windows works. Most problems people have with Windows are in the user mode, and not in the kernel. The pain of reverting straightforward UI/UX/vendor-provided application code that is probably version-controlled and tagged for specific historic Windows releases is 'too high', so, therefore, let's do something that's even higher cost, and...
> windows 13 or 14 will just be a linux distro
Ugh, not this again. It looks like this train of thought will never leave HN commenters who probably have never seriously actually used or programmed on Windows. Literally every week I see 'Windows should keep the same user mode and move to the Linux kernel'.
You guys know what another Linux kernel running a locked-down user mode stack is called? Android.
Where I work, there have been a lot of pushback where that BS doesn't make a lick of sense (the crown jewel of BS request atm: "let's put AI in the bootloader").
Good governance "should" also mean that those kinds of pushback are encouraged.
CEO: Put AI everywhere/
Engineering Staff: There's a lot of places where it doesn't make sense to do this.
CEO: Do it or find somewhere else to work.
The problem of pushback at the lower levels is that it is completely ineffective when the top levels are set on something.
Sure they want to hide their embarrassment at this second, but I'm not hearing any vision for a future where they make a product designed for someone like me. They don't want me anyore and they've made that quite clear through generations of hostile decisions
How so? The forced feeding of AI is what Satya called for.
As an OS, Windows died with 10.
W11 local accounts only with terminal hacks sealed the deal along with valves contributions to linux.
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.
Forms of it are very powerful and have a lot of uses for sure. But there seems to be an enormous amount of top-down “figure out how to fit AI into our product/processes” for both producers and consumers.
I’m not sure why I need to know the history of screenshots that is Recall. Maybe this was simply the best they could do?
That said, Windows 11 is such an AI-fueled privacy dumpster fire that it’s getting replaced by Linux on my gaming PC this month. Then I’m only stuck on Windows for work, and even then I can still write code on Mac or Linux.
Is not only AI bullshit in my notepad.
The excess adds, intrusive online stuff, terriblee performance for basic tasks like the File Explorer or even opening a menu.
Making everything a damn web page...
One clear example is outlook. Talk wathever you want, outlook, is the indistry standart for e-mail. And while not perfect it was very usefull. Then they keep pushing the new interface on everybody throats. The new interface takes like 1 gb of RAM when in use, agaisnt 200mb of the traditional one, while offering less options. Why would anyone who really cares about e-mail use that shit? People who just casually use e-mails dont use Outlook, they use the webmail.
They choose to ignore the users, and push top down changes into them. But the market dont really works this way for most people. Not every tech company needs to be like Apple.
It’s not an AI problem but rather a ram stuff down users throat even when they clearly don’t want it problem.
See broken start menu that does a web search instead showing your apps. See forced online install. See one drive everywhere.
Toning down the AI a bit won’t be enough
Microsoft have been de-investing in its own companies to put more money into AI. Yes, they have made cuts on highly profitable business to burn money on AI. I hope that they reverse before they fire everyone that was able to build useful software.
They are doing dumb shit for about 5 years now, and killing MS Office, a brand thats market leader for more than 30 years prooves that anybody who had conservative opinion on how software should be built have already abandoned the ship or was kicked out of it.
Now is being run by "visionary" marketing people, and the only way left is down.
Windows 10 released with the ability for the user to not consent to updates REMOVED
the direction of travel from that point on was clear
consent was no longer necessary
the OS is purpose is no longer to serve the owner of the computer, it is there to serve Microslop's whims
and that was the point I went full linux everywhere
Now I'm curious: will the executives, paid millions because they are visionaries well ahead mere mortals like us, be fired for this pathetically stupid strategic push?
(sarcasm)
Which makes me believe that their "walk back" is just to change the packaging of the same old "slop" being shoved down their customers throats.