Agentic Windows
I ran across an article today about a post on Twitter by Pavan Davuluri, who is the current head of Windows for Microsoft. I just had to comment on it in long form.
So, what is this amazing comment?
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!
My first instinct? This is great news for Apple and Linux!
My second instinct? This is great news for Apple and Linux!
OK, stepping back for a second here.
In my mind, yes this is a great reason to give Microsoft and Windows the ole heave-ho. It’s more than that though. Windows has retained its market position because it’s annoying, but still mostly functional on a base level. It’s like the Internet that way. As long as it’s marginally workable and already there, people will use it because it’s just more annoying to go out and replace it with something else. Microsoft has managed to get away with a great deal of enshittification based on that alone. This could be a step too far though.
Microsoft has already thrown in features like Recall, which is something very few people wanted and was an absolute nightmare for personal privacy. It was received so badly that they pulled it back and then quietly put it back when no one was looking. This “agentic” Windows sounds even worse than that. As some of the comments spelled out unequivocally, no one wants this. Microsoft is doing it anyway.
I think we can all assume that this is not going to work offline, or it’s not going to work well offline. So, we’re going to have a version of Windows where half the functions don’t work without an Internet connection, full of ads, and chewing through processor and memory to give us slop we don’t ask for? There are going to be people that keep using this, but I need to assume that this is going to push a lot more people past their limits.
Zorin recently capitalized on Microsoft discontinuing support for Windows 10 by releasing their newest version on the same day. It was a pretty solid strategy for them. A smart one. All Microsoft’s moves to implement AI in virtually everything is giving their competition more opportunities to pull users from Microsoft. Linux is an obvious choice since people can just put it on the computer they already own and be back up and working within hours. Given, this won’t work for everybody, but for your average person walking the street who uses their computer for browsing and an occasional game or something, it’ll be perfectly fine. Other people could just jump ship entirely and run over to Apple. That comes with it its own set of challenges, but you can walk into a store in most large cities and buy an Apple computer. That’s going to give it a leg up on Linux unfortunately.
All this “agentic” garbage could very well be Microsoft shooting itself in the foot. Probably both feet. It remains to be seen if it’s enough to get people to leave the platform, but there are better and less stupid options out there. Maybe Microsoft will figure this out before that happens. Maybe not.
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