It’s a nightmare scenario for Microsoft. The headlining feature of its new Copilot+ PC initiative, which is supposed to drive millions of PC sales over the next couple of years, is under significant fire for being what many say is a major breach of privacy and security on Windows. That feature in question is Windows Recall, a new AI tool designed to remember everything you do on Windows. The feature that we never asked and never wanted it.
Microsoft, has done a lot to degrade the Windows user experience over the last few years. Everything from obtrusive advertisements to full-screen popups, ignoring app defaults, forcing a Microsoft Account, and more have eroded the trust relationship between Windows users and Microsoft.
It’s no surprise that users are already assuming that Microsoft will eventually end up collecting that data and using it to shape advertisements for you. That really would be a huge invasion of privacy, and people fully expect Microsoft to do it, and it’s those bad Windows practices that have led people to this conclusion.
I see no broken backs here. People have been composing songs about Bill Gates being a faggot (I’m not homophobic, that was just the climate back then) since he entered the general conscience. Microsoft being both clumsy and criminal has been the butt of too many jokes since Windows 95 at least.
I’m too young to remember anything older than 98SE, but I remember that when XP came out, people were complaining that it’s slow ugly shit as compared to 2K, and it felt that if MS doesn’t change the general direction, people will remain on older stuff or move to alternatives, Vista was hated so badly that everybody suddenly forgot the hate for XP, 7 was first advertised as something sky cool and impossible, then turned out to be kinda mundane, but usable. Actually with every Windows OS new brand there’s an outrage. With every MS big news there’s an outrage. They always deliver the opportunity.
TL;DR - Hoping that MS will kill itself is stupid.
The thing is, during the 95/98/ME/XP/Vista days Microsoft had less competition in the consumer computing space, smart phones weren’t really a thing, and a PC was “the” way to get online. Nowadays everyone and their dog has an iPhone or Android device instead, and ever dwindling numbers of people even bother to have a PC anymore. So in modern times, there is a nonzero possibility that on a consumer level at least, Microsoft might finally slide into irrelevance. That’s not to say they’ll go out of business anytime soon, but they might not be able to remain the Microsoft we’ve known so far for too many more years.
Nerds use Linux. A lot of people who want to buy an off the shelf computer that “just works” buys a Mac. And everyone else just uses their phone for everything.
Microsoft doesn’t actually do anything (except make the XBox, I guess) that non-corporate users give a shit about except “make computer machine go” and “stupid subscription ribbon bar program I need to use to open files work sends me.”
This is why M$ has been so gung-ho about their path to enshittification in recent years, I’m sure. This is a profitability thing. They see the writing on the wall that just selling operating system and office suite licenses to rubes is not going to remain a profitable business model much longer. Instead, they have to scrape and datamine and sell adds and push subscriptions and all the rest of it for alternative recurring revenue, because no member of the public will willingly pay for a Windows license anymore. I sure as hell won’t… If I need Windows, I’ll pirate it. And there’s no way they are shifting as many OEM licenses as they were in the early 2000’s. People aren’t buying computers like that anymore.
They make their money in azure now. AzureAD, cloud services, intune (managing win/mac/android even Linux). Windows and office are just hobby projects compared to the revenue those generate.