If Microsoft wasn't run by tools, they'd see the gap Google and Apple have left behind by locking down their eco systems.

They could be the hero we need by saying we'll make the software and you fully own your device like pc / windows.

But of course they won't, and will just shoot themselves in the dick.

Just like when they ditched explorer we were all like yaay! Then instead of attaching to Firefox they just became another chromium cuck.

Why would anyone take your shitty browser that's just a skin of chrome...

Again, they had the chance to take the pro customer lane and succeed, but they were too inept.

They didn't miss the "wave", they discovered it's just hype and a bubble. They spent a fortune and damaged their core products to try and get in on AI, and have realised it was fools gold that their actual paying customers don't want. This really sums the problem up well:

According to Velloso, less than 3% of paying users actively use Copilot, even though Microsoft has pre-deployed it directly into the Windows 11 taskbar and across the Office suite.

Out of Microsoft’s 450 million Microsoft 365 user base, the company has only managed to convert roughly 15 million paid Copilot seats. This means a staggering 96.7% of users are rejecting the premium AI features, yielding just a 3.3% paid adoption rate. When viewed against Microsoft’s estimated $37.5 billion quarterly AI spending, this is an alarmingly low adoption rate.

I'm sure I'm like many people - I tried Copilot a couple of times; it's ok to make an email or even document text a bit more concise, but that's really it. I don't find it useful; I do all the actual work and then occasionally get an AI to help make it a bit easier to read very similar to a spell check and grammar check. It's not good enough to do anything else; it bullshits and is error ridden and like all the AI I've tried it's really plateaued. I just really don't see where the value in that $37.5bn spent by Microsoft is.

I certainly wouldn't pay for copilot myself. Instead I object to it being rammed down my throat at work, and Windows 11 just being generally awful but not improved. Microsoft are finally making the right noises but the damage is already done.

It's a wave of sewage, few users want to ride it in the first place

this is a decent read. theres honest criticism and not a "m$ sux lol" rant. a someone who can agnostically enjpy tech history, i would like to see how this plays out.

They also probably realized providing free Copilot in Windows would get very expensive quickly, and that not enough users would pay for it.

scales back?

I just got an update that puts a persistent copilot overlay in the corner of Excel, blocking my cells. and the same update seems to have added a context menu that shows up on left click on a squiggle word in Word, which again blocks my document unnecessarily. I use neither of these features. I want neither of these features. I want to use the fucking program to do my goddamn work