kemotep
4 days ago
Microsoft really needs to get a better handle with the naming conventions.
There is Microsoft Copilot, which replaced Bing Chat, Cortana and uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 and 5 models.
There is Github Copilot, the coding autocomplete tool.
There is Microsoft 365 Copilot, what they now call Office with built in GenAI stuff.
There is also a Copilot cli that lets you use whatever agent/model backend you want too?
Everything is Copilot. Laptops sell with Copilot buttons now.
It is not immediately clear what version of Copilot someone is talking about. 99% of my experience is with the Office and it 100% fails to do the thing it was advertised to do 2 years ago when work initially got the subscription. Point it a SharePoint/OneDrive location, a handful of excel spreadsheets and pdfs/word docs and tell it to make a PowerPoint presentation based on that information.
It cannot do this. It will spit out nonsense. You have to hold it by the hand tell it everything to do step by step to the point that making the PowerPoint presentation yourself is significantly faster because you don’t have to type out a bunch of prompts and edit it’s garbage output.
And now it’s clear they aren’t even dogfooding their own LLM products so why should anyone pay for Copilot?
marssaxman
4 days ago
> Microsoft really needs to get a better handle with the naming conventions.
They really won't, though; Microsoft just does this kind of thing, over and over and over. Before everything was named "365", it was all "One", before that it was "Live"... 20 years ago, everything was called ".NET" whether it had anything to do with the Internet or not. Back in the '90s they went crazy for a while calling everything "Active".
hightrix
4 days ago
To further your argument, look at the XBOX. It is impossible to tell which is the latest model by name alone. Where the playstation is simple, the latest is the 5, the previous was the 4, and the one before that was the 3.
joegibbs
4 days ago
The Xbox One.
"Oh you mean the original one?"
No the one that came after the 360.
"The third one?"
No that was the second one, the One was the third.
"OK what are they on now?"
The Series series.
"The Series series?"
Yeah the X and S. Don't confuse that with the Xbox One X or S, or the 360 S.
"Right but what's the difference?"
The X is better than the S because X is a bigger letter. But they run the same games, but they're different. They're the same though.
ted_bunny
4 days ago
Nailed the "Who's on first?" vibe.
chocochunks
4 days ago
Oh and your Xbox Controller S won't work with your Xbox One S but it will work with your original Xbox.
coffeebeqn
4 days ago
Oh no I just realized the next generation will be called Microsoft 365 Xbox Copilot
pipes
4 days ago
ROG Ally X vs. ROG Xbox Ally X.
Also, it is possibly the worst console name of all time.
I don't even know what Xbox is now, is it a service, is it a console, I'm not even joking really.
Also visual studio code Vs full fat visual studio. Thanks Microsoft you just made it more difficult to web search both products.
Full fat .Net Vs dotnet core Vs standard or is that .net.
lovich
4 days ago
There was also Visual Studio, the Mac app that got renamed and wasn’t the same as Visual Studio, the windows app
Sharlin
4 days ago
There will be an integrated voice LLM that hallucinates advice and "useful" tips as you play and cannot be turned off
CubityFirst
4 days ago
Sharlin
4 days ago
Sigh… Irony truly is dead.
dahcryn
3 days ago
"All you have to do is follow the damn train, user"
debugnik
4 days ago
They'll make cheating bots a first party feature just to sell Copilot.
banku_brougham
4 days ago
Microsoft 365 Xbox X Copilot S
jnaina
4 days ago
It's over 19 years old, but this video is a brutal but hilarious commentary on Microsoft's inherent dysfunction when it comes to product naming and packaging. Still on point decades later.
semi-extrinsic
4 days ago
It will come with 6 GB of RAM, unless you get the Microsoft 365 Xbox X Copilot Dynamics Pro with 13 GB RAM.
pezezin
4 days ago
To be fair, only Sony follows a consistent naming convention. Nintendo's console names also defy any logic, as did Sega back in the day.
OkayPhysicist
4 days ago
Nintendo's strategy isn't the absolute worst. They mostly just give new names to new console designs, with modifiers to specify next-gen-without-major-changes. So the SNES was a next-gen NES, the N64 was its own thing, the GameCube was its own thing, the Gameboy, Gameboy Color, and Gameboy Advanced were iterations on the same thing, DS, DSi, 3DS were all generation steps. WiiU was a next-gen Wii, Switch 2 is a next-gen Switch.
They probably should have called the WiiU the Super Wii or Wii 2 or something, but on the whole they've got a mostly coherent naming convention.
somat
4 days ago
I would put the would put the wii firmly in the gamecube family line. it's a uprated gamecube with a weird controller.
nes:snes = 6502
n64 = mips
gamecube:wii:wiiu = powerpc
switch:switch2 = armpezezin
4 days ago
Yes, the Wii is essentially an overclocked GameCube with a bit more RAM and as you mentioned, a weird controller.
davidron
a day ago
As a regular human who plays games and doesn't know about chip architectures, one woud probably lump the wii and the switch closer together than the game cube based on the modes in which one can interact with the systems.
Wii is a game cube with a funny controller. Or, wii is a tv-only olde switch.
I appreciate that it has its own name due to being a transitional experience.
Macha
4 days ago
I don’t think Nintendo’s scheme was ever that great as it blurred the difference between variant form factors (Game Boy Pocket vs Game Boy, Game Boy Micro/SP vs Game Boy Advance, DS Lite, 2/3DS XL, Wii Mini), pro models with limited exclusives (Game Boy Color, DSi, New 2/3DS), and full on new generations (Game Boy Advance, 3DS, Wii U).
elzbardico
4 days ago
In terms of naming, no other entity in computing will ever be able to surpass IBM solipsistic naming habits:
System 360 OS/2 DB 2 MQ series. PC
It is like IBM just refused to entertain the idea of having competitors, why should it them name a database by any other name than DB?
adityeah
4 days ago
That is exactly what IBM thought too when they allowed Bill Gates to license the new OS they were supposed to be making for IBM. They had no competition, who are these kids going to sell their OS to?
Fire-Dragon-DoL
3 days ago
You are forgetting Valve!
We got the Steam Controller and the new... Steam Controller.
We also got the Steam machine, as well as the new Steam machine.
Lol
longnighthn
4 days ago
Sony's naming style for its mobile phone series is also terrible.
user
4 days ago
user
4 days ago
binsquare
4 days ago
Some musings from someone who has not worked in microsoft but has in big tech.
This often happens because the people inside are incentivized to build their own empire.
If someone comes and wants to get promoted/become an exec, there's a ceiling if they work under the an existing umberlla + dealing the politics of introducing a feature which requires dealing with an existing org.
So they build something new. And the next person does the same. And so you have 365, One, Live, .Net, etc
josephg
4 days ago
Google Plus was the same. Lots of unrelated google products were temporarily branded as part of google plus for some reason, including your google account and google hangouts (meet).
atombender
4 days ago
That was a very intentional strategy. In hindsight, not a good one, of course, but Plus and its integration across the whole company was blessed by Page and Brin, who were quietly panicking that Facebook could eat Google's lunch by becoming the "start page of the Internet" the moment they integrated search. Which they never did and never appear to have wanted.
canucker2016
4 days ago
The Dev Tools division had Quick- prefix for some tools before settling on Visual- once VB took off.
Then there's DirectX and its subs - though Direct3D had more room for expanded feature set compared to DXSound or DXInput so now they're up to D3D v12.
MengerSponge
7 hours ago
"The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products." -Steve Jobs
arwhatever
4 days ago
Do your teams use the teams feature in Teams?
moomin
4 days ago
There’s got to be solid reasons why they do this and have done so for so damn long. At the very least institutional reasons. At best, actual research that suggests they make more money this way. But as a consumer, I hate it.
estimator7292
4 days ago
Marketing has too much power. They get some hairbrained scheme to goose the numbers and just slam a mandate all the way down the org. Is "Copilot" not getting enough clicks? Make every button say "copilot", problem solved. Marketing doesn't know or care what was there before, someone needs numbers up to get their promotion.
phkahler
4 days ago
>> Is "Copilot" not getting enough clicks? Make every button say "copilot", problem solved. Marketing doesn't know or care what was there before, someone needs numbers up to get their promotion.
So Microsoft isn't bringing copilot to all these applications? It's just bringing a copilot label to them? So glad I don't use this garbage at home.
Sharlin
4 days ago
Yes and no, because "Copilot" isn't any single thing, but can mean whatever they want it to mean in different contexts.
fluidcruft
4 days ago
It's marketing but I think they want everything to seem like an integrated platform so they can sell you on creeping into bundles.
Nevermark
4 days ago
Perhaps the "consistent" naming helps them shove more through the Enterprise door.
If a large company has bought into "Co-Pilot", they want it all right? Or not, but let's not make carving anything out easy.
Just a thought.
3acctforcom
4 days ago
This is actually one of their smart decisions. "Copilot" is currently going through the corporate regulators, who know nothing about technology, but I can't buy it until they say everything is Legal.
So once we have signoff then my counterpart in Sharepoint/M365 land gets his "Copilot" for Office, while my reporting and analytics group gets "Copilot" for Power BI, while my coding team gets "Copilot" for llm assisted development in GitHub.
In the meantime everybody just plugs everything into ChatGPT and everybody pretends it isn't happening. It's not unlawful if they lawyers can't see it!
Nevermark
4 days ago
Thanks for validating my intuition!
> In the meantime everybody just plugs everything into ChatGPT
I believe you meant "everyone plugs everything into ChatGPT for Co-Pilot"! A statement with its own useful ambiguities.
It is comical, but I can now make a serious addition to Sun Tzu's maxims.
“All warfare is based on deception.”
“To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”
"Approval is best co-opted with a polysemous brand envelope."
cornonthecobra
4 days ago
It's because Microsoft isn't a software company. They're a marketing company that happens to make software and a few other bits.
We're now on the back end of that, where Microsoft must again make products with independent substance, but are instead drowning in their own infrastructural muck.
wasmainiac
4 days ago
NT..? Good comment made me laugh.
pixl97
4 days ago
>Microsoft really needs to get a better handle with the naming conventions
Microsoft cannot and will not ever get better at naming things. It is said the universe will split open and and eldritch beast will consume the stars the day Microsoft stops using inconsistent and overlapping names for different and conflicting products.
Isn't that right .Net/dotnet
HPsquared
4 days ago
"Microsoft Re-Designs the iPod Packaging" (2006)
christophilus
4 days ago
I’d forgotten all about this gem. I think it was made by some Microsoft employees, too, which makes it even funnier to me.
butlike
4 days ago
That was deeply funny. I can almost smell the inside of CompUSA watching that.
imglorp
4 days ago
Nineteen years ago. Nothing has changed.
anonymars
4 days ago
Many will never know the joy of trying to search for it back in the days when punctuation was ignored (C# says hello too)
Related: https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/windows-servers-iden...
estimator7292
4 days ago
Try going on LinkedIn and searching for C# and .net jobs.
Completely impossible. The search is bad to begin with, but it explicitly ignores anything that isn't a-9.
anonymars
4 days ago
Ha, I stand corrected. Maybe Microsoft could reach out to the owners of LinkedIn to convince them to improve it. Oh, wait...
stackghost
4 days ago
You mean Microsoft Career Copilot 365?
vlowther
4 days ago
Microsoft Active Career Copilot 365 ONE, thankyouverymuch.
josephg
4 days ago
Grow your .NET-work!
semi-extrinsic
4 days ago
No, I think that's Microsoft Viva Career.
anonymars
4 days ago
Shh, they'll hear you!
ksec
4 days ago
Exactly. In the 50 years history of Microsoft, Office ( Year ) was perhaps the best they did.
Nadella might have fixed a few things, but Microsoft still have massive room for improvement in many areas.
adventured
4 days ago
Nadella has the golden ship taking on water right now. He has entirely botched AI top to bottom. He has screwed that up to such a degree that it would be difficult to overstate. If he doesn't correct these mistakes extremely soon, he'll unravel much of the progress he made for Microsoft and they'll miss this generation of advancement (which will be the end of their $3 trillion market cap - as the market has recently perked up to).
There is no tech giant that is more vulnerable than Microsoft is at this moment.
Most document originations will begin out of or adjacent to of LLM sessions in the near future, as everything will blur in terms of collaborating with AI agents. Microsoft has no footing (or worse, their position is terrible courtesy of copilot) and is vulnerable to death by inflection point. Windows 11 is garbage and Google + Linux may finally be coming for their desktop (no different than what AMD has managed in unwinding the former Intel monopoly in PCs).
Someone should be charging at them with a new take on Office, right now. This is where you slice them in half. Take down Office and take down Windows. They're so stupid at present that they've opened the gates to Office being destroyed, which has been their moat for 30 years.
wing-_-nuts
4 days ago
I am no big fan of MS, and especially not a fan of W11, but you're operating under the false assumption that their users are still their most important customers.
MS's bottom line doesn't depend on how happy users are with W11, especially not power users like ourselves. W11 is just a means of selling subscriptions (office, ai, etc). The question isn't 'are users happy' it's 'will OEMs and business continue to push it?'. The answer to that is almost certainly yes. OEMs aren't going to be selling most pcs with ubuntu included any time soon. Businesses are not going to support libreoffice when MS office is the established standard.
Maybe apple could make inroads here, but they don't seem willing to give up their profit margins on overpriced hardware, and I don't think I've ever seen them release anything 'office' related that was anywhere near feature parity with MSO, and especially not cross platform.
shawnz
4 days ago
If their whole business is based around being an established standard and making users happy is not a relevant goal, then why do anything at all? They already are an established standard, so why would they bother taking any further actions whatsoever, making any changes or rolling out any new products? Clearly they are trying to achieve something, right? So what is it?
bluGill
4 days ago
It is about making specific high value users happy. If the rest of us are unhappy - we don't matter. They know for most people ubuntu or whatever isn't a realistic option and so they can take whatever money they can get from those people. Sure a few people like me will run *BSD or linux, but we are a footnote not worth their time.
The only danger is every once in a while one of those little footnotes becomes large enough to be a problem and you lose the market of those who do matter as well. While there are many obvious examples of where that happened, there are also a lot of cases where it didn't.
2snakes
4 days ago
It used to be empowering everyone to achieve more.
JoBrad
4 days ago
Agree that someone should double down on competing with Office, but that alone won’t take them down. MS has spent decades listening to what SMB to large companies need, and has layers of absolute domination to bolster their lead. As an example, they have a stranglehold on catering to the Governance, Risk, and Compliance market. The most die-hard Linux folks I know turn to AD the minute they need to manage users and devices at scale. Need visibility into what is happening both remotely and locally, across your enterprise? MS has the typing and a smart sales deck that explains how you really just need another comparatively small investment to make your board sleep better at night. And that’s not even going into the license shenanigans they play to make Azure competitive against other clouds, for hosting MS-owned tools like Windows and SQL Server.
canucker2016
4 days ago
Excel is the lynchpin. But you need to have a story for handling the other Office apps functionality. That's table stakes these days.
rayiner
4 days ago
Did they put the Teams people in charge of AI?
HPsquared
4 days ago
You mean Microsoft® Office™
Paradigma11
4 days ago
My peak experience so far was trying to search if there was an extension of dotnet interactive for visual studio or only for visual studio code.
simplyinfinity
4 days ago
the interactive console is built into Visual Studio, no extension needed
DrTung
4 days ago
I've heard the next version will be called "Visual Active NET Copilot".
anal_reactor
4 days ago
I'm "I don't know what Xbox is" years old.
neogodless
4 days ago
It's a music app. I thought that much was obvious.
Tempest1981
4 days ago
Can I pair it with my Zune?
throw20251220
4 days ago
yes, directly through the Windows Phone using a Silverlight 1.0-enabled appliance
estimator7292
4 days ago
Seeing the name Silverlight in the wild did untold psychic damage. Excuse me while I crumble to dust.
akiselev
4 days ago
I think it’s an Adobe Flex app now.
neogodless
4 days ago
Pretty sure you can just ask Cortana to pair Xbox Music with your Zune.
anonymars
4 days ago
Do you mean Xbox One? Or Xbox One X? Or Xbox Series X? Or maybe Xbox Series S?
Seriously, how?
lazzurs
4 days ago
About a year ago I had to buy a new Xbox. It took me time to figure out what model I had and what the new models are. It’s the least intuitive marketing on the market.
anal_reactor
4 days ago
ROG Xbox Ally X.
But I actually had in mind the Windows app named "Xbox".
phkahler
4 days ago
Don't forget Xbox 360, which precluded everything 365.
josephg
4 days ago
Well, it is a smaller number. I can't wait for the Xbox 370, just to one-up office.
commakozzi
4 days ago
I disagree. They need an Xbox 180... get it?
gosub100
4 days ago
It's the successor to IXBox
i80and
4 days ago
I remember when everything was "Sign in with .NET Passport" as a yoot and just being like "what the hell are you talking about"
twisteriffic
4 days ago
Cries in dapper dapr
pradeeproark
4 days ago
Are we talking about .NET standard?
jslaby
4 days ago
No, we're talking about copilot core, not copilot framework
nobodyandproud
4 days ago
Somewhere and in some universe there was a Microsoft that did so, wreaking havoc across the multiverse.
whobre
4 days ago
Not that I disagree, but this is nothing compared to the ".NET" craze in the early 2000s. Everything had to have ".NET" in its name even if it had absolutely nothing to do with the actual .NET technology.
There was also "Active" before that, but .NET was next level crazy...
anonymars
4 days ago
I don't know, it seems comparable
Office.com is now "Welcome to Microsoft 365 Copilot"
isk517
4 days ago
>>Point it a SharePoint/OneDrive location, a handful of excel spreadsheets and pdfs/word docs and tell it to make a PowerPoint presentation based on that information. It cannot do this. It will spit out nonsense. You have to hold it by the hand tell it everything to do step by step to the point that making the PowerPoint presentation yourself is significantly faster because you don’t have to type out a bunch of prompts and edit it’s garbage output.
Everyone I know who use AI day-to-day is just using Copilot to mostly do things like add a transition animation to a Powerpoint slide or format a word document to look nice. The only problem these LLM products seem to solve is giving normal people a easy way to interact with terrible software processes and GUIs. And better solution to that problem would be for developers to actually observe how the average use interacts with both a computer and their program in particular.
jug
4 days ago
The craziest thing was how Microsoft took the super established brand from decades, and renamed Microsoft Office to Microsoft 365.
I'm not sure if it's named Microsoft 365 Copilot nowadays, or if that's an optional AI addon? I thought it was renamed once more, but they themselves claim simply "Microsoft 365" (in a few various tiers) sans-Copilot. https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/buy/compare-all-micr...
timr
4 days ago
> There is Github Copilot, the coding autocomplete tool.
No, there is Github Copilot, the AI agent tool that also has autocomplete, and a chat UI.
I understand your point about naming, but it's always helpful to know what the products do.
mgkimsal
4 days ago
> No, there is Github Copilot, the AI agent tool that also has autocomplete, and a chat UI.
When it came out, Github Copilot was an autocomplete tool. That's it. That may be what the OP was originally using. That's what I used... 2 years ago. That they change the capabilities but don't change the name, yet change names on services that don't change capabilities further illustrates the OP's point, I would say.
HarHarVeryFunny
4 days ago
To be fair, Github Copilot (itself a horrible name) has followed the same arc as Cursor, from AI-enhanced editor with smart autocomplete, to more of an IDE that now supports agentic "vibe coding" and "vibe editing" as well.
I do agree that conceptually there is a big difference between an editor, even with smart autocomplete, and an agentic coding tool, as typified by Claude Code and other CLI tools, where there is not necessarily any editor involved at all.
almosthere
4 days ago
all of these companies are going to follow each other's UX patterns for the rest of time.
georgeven
4 days ago
It was actually nearly 5 years ago!
mgkimsal
3 days ago
Thanks... 2 years felt a bit too recent. I think I was trialing copilot in late 2022, and then got turned on to ... codeium/windsurf in late 2023. The years are merging together now. :/
timr
4 days ago
That's silly. Gmail is a wildly different product than it was when it launched, but I guess it doesn't count since the name is the same?
Microsoft may or may not have a "problem" with naming, but if you're going to criticize a product, it's always a good starting place to know what you're criticizing.
adastra22
4 days ago
Gmail is basically the same today as when I signed up for the beta. It’s a mail app.
timr
4 days ago
Copilot is basically the same today as when I signed up for the beta. It’s a coding app.
kortilla
4 days ago
Gmail is almost identical today as it was when it first launched. It just has fancier JavaScript
falsemyrmidon
4 days ago
[dead]
jacquesm
4 days ago
GPs point is that it is confusing, I guess point well made?
timr
4 days ago
Only if the naming confusion kept them from actually bothering to understand what the product is?
kemotep
4 days ago
The confusion is when I say “I have a terrible time using Copilot, I don’t recommend using it” and someone chimes in with how great their experience with Github Copilot is, a completely different product and how I must be “holding it wrong” when that is not the same Copilot. That Microsoft has like 5 different products all using Copilot in the name, even people in this very comment section are only saying “Copilot” so it is hard to know what product they are talking about!
timr
4 days ago
I mean, sure. But aside from the fact that everything in AI gets reduced to a single word ("Gemini", "ChatGPT", "Claude") [1], it's clearly not an excuse for misrepresenting the functionality of the product when you're writing a post broadly claiming that their AI products don't work.
Github Copilot is actually a pretty good tool.
[1] Not just AI. This is true for any major software product line, and why subordinate branding exists.
kemotep
4 days ago
I specifically mention that my experience is with the Office 365 Copilot and how terrible that is and in online discussions I mention this and then people jump out of the woodwork to talk about how great Github Copilot is so thank you for demonstrating that exact experience I have every time I mention Copilot :)
nananana9
4 days ago
Naming confusion is a pretty good predictor that it's not worth understanding what the product is.
jacquesm
4 days ago
Apparently, so yes.
mirekrusin
4 days ago
...it gets better:
GitHub Copilot is a service, you can buy subscription from here https://github.com/features/copilot.
GitHub Copilot is available from website https://github.com/copilot together with services like Spark (not available from other places), Spaces, Agents etc.
GitHub Copilot is VSCode extension which you can download at https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GitHub.c... and use from VSCode.
New version has native "Claude Code" integration for Anthropic models served via GitHub Copilot.
You can also use your own ie. local llama.cpp based provider (if your github copilot subscription has it enabled / allows it at enterprise level).
Github Copilot CLI is available for download here https://github.com/features/copilot/cli and it's command line interface.
Copilot for Pull Requests https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-for-pull-requests
Copilot Next Edit Suggestion https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-next-edit-suggestion...
Copilot Workspace https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-workspace/
Copilot for Docs https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-for-docs/
Copilot Completions CLI https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-completions-cli/
Copilot Voice https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-voice/
GitHub Copilot Radar https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-radar/
Copilot View https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-view/
Copilot Labs https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-labs/
This list doesn't include project names without Copilot in them like "Spark" or "Testpilot" https://githubnext.com/projects/testpilot etc.
eulers_secret
4 days ago
Since we're talking about GitHub Copilot I'll lodge my biggest complaint about it here! The context window is stuck at 128k for all models (except maybe Codex): https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/264153 and https://github.com/anomalyco/opencode/issues/5993
This absolutely sucks, especially since tool calling uses tokens really really fast sometimes. Feels like a not-so-gentle nudge to using their 'official' tooling (read: vscode); even though there was a recent announcement about how GHCP works with opencode: https://github.blog/changelog/2026-01-16-github-copilot-now-...
No mention of it being severely gimped by the context limit in that press release, of course (tbf, why would they lol).
However, if you go back to aider, 128K tokens is a lot, same with web chat... not a total killer, but I wouldn't spend my money on that particular service with there being better options!
perryh2
4 days ago
This is the first time I've read about this. Thank you. I never noticed because OpenCode just shows you the context window usage as a %.
Octoth0rpe
4 days ago
I'm currently using GitHub copilot via Zed and tbh I have no idea which of these this relates to. Perhaps a combination of
> GitHub Copilot is a service
and maybe, the api behind
> GitHub Copilot is VSCode extension
???
What an absolute mess.
almosthere
4 days ago
Might be a good time to start a Copilot Copilot company that manages all your copilots.
3acctforcom
4 days ago
You want a mess?
Put together a nice and clean price list for your friends in the purchasing department.
I dare you.
jacquesm
4 days ago
That's a feature, not a bug.
mikkupikku
4 days ago
> so why should anyone pay for Copilot?
The execs buying Microsoft products are presumed to be as clueless as the execs naming Microsoft products.
dec0dedab0de
4 days ago
You are describing everything Microsoft has done since at least the late 90s.
bluedino
4 days ago
Things were named fine back then. Small Business Server, Office, Frontpage, Internet Information Server, Visual Studio...
kalleboo
4 days ago
That was back when they were going wild naming everything "Active". Active Desktop made sense, Active Directory? What made that "Active". ActiveMovie? It's just a video playing framework... ActiveX?? X?? ActiveSync, I don't want my sync to be active. ActiveStore was apparently a thing?
rvnx
4 days ago
It's like ChatGPT, that goes with "Sora", instead of "Image Generation", which would have been very clear
rubslopes
4 days ago
> It cannot do this. It will spit out nonsense.
It's unbelievable how bad they failed at this. If you do the same with Claude or ChatGPT via simple web interface, they get miles ahead.
itissid
4 days ago
My colleague works in a functional role for a medium sized SaaS company(1000-5000 employees), working with banks, family offices, hedge funds. They use teams and copilot, they all hate it.
One thing that I don't know about is if they have an AI product that can work on combining unstructured and databases to give better insights on any new conversation? e.g. like say the LLM knows how to convert user queries to the domain model of tables and extract information? What companies are doing such things?
This would be something that can be deployed on-prem/ their own private cloud that is controlled by the company, because the data is quite sensitive.
ajcp
4 days ago
Databricks Genie is excellent from my experience, and provides for all your listed requirements.
raincole
4 days ago
> Microsoft really needs to get a better handle with the naming conventions.
AI really should be a freaking feature, not the identity of their products. What MS is doing now is like renaming Photoshop to Photoshop Neural Filter.
beart
4 days ago
That's a great analogy, but could be taken one step further. Because Adobe would also have to rename the rest of their products to come close to what MS is doing.
- Adobe Neural Filter Acrobat
- Adobe Neural Filter App (previously photoshop)
- Adobe Neural Filter Illustrator
- Adobe 720 Neural Filter app
- etc.
By the way, why is app lowercase in "the Microsoft 365 Copilot app"? Is it not part of the trademark but even they couldn't deal with how confusing that was?ikr678
4 days ago
'app' isnt part of that trademark, but on other products (Windows App) it is.
Searching the store or a company portal for one of these rebraned apps returns dozens of hits because 'windows', 'copilot', '365' and 'app' are all common words in most application descriptions.
skfiehcusjcn
4 days ago
People already do pay for it: office 365. It’s just like getting cloud storage with the subscription. OneDrive has been one of the better cloud storage options for consumers.
Also, a great use is Microsoft Forms I was surprised with the AI features. At first I just used it to get some qualitative feedback but ended up using copilot to enter questions Claude helped me create and it converted them into the appropriate forms for my surveys!
Objectives -> Claude -> Surveys (markdown) -> Copilot -> MS Forms -> Emailed.
Insights and analysis can use copilot too.
Main thing to remember is the models behind the scenes will change and evolve, Copilot is the branding. In fact, we can expect most companies will use multiple AI solutions/pipelines moving forward.
rustyhancock
4 days ago
Yes. Similarly I have Gemini through having 2TB space on Google Photos.
I have 2TB with OneDrive too via a Family Office account and I've got no good reason to have the large gapps space.
A ChatGPT account and pay for two Claude accounts.
Netflix, Disney+, Prime.
How did this happen to me?
Perhaps I should sign up to one of those companies that will help me close accounts I keep seeing advertised on YouTube?
nunez
4 days ago
It's the same with Gemini for Google Workspace.
I asked it to create a slide deck for me, within Slides, based on a block of notes I wrote. It wouldn't do it. The chat assistant at gemini.google.com wouldn't do it either. They told me how to do it step by step though...which I knew how to do already. Useless.
I also tried the `AI()` Sheets function to fill a range in based on some other data in the sheet. It doesn't accept other ranges, even if you use the &CELL_REF& notation.
9x39
3 days ago
For being supposedly the same models with how close MS and OpenAI supposedly are, it's bizarrely bad.
I was trying to just get an Excel function dialed in with some IFs and formatting weirdness. The licensed Microsoft 365 Copilot built into Excel tried several times and failed miserably. One screenshot to ChatGPT (5.1?) and it was one-shot.
I'm not even sure it's the same models any more. It feels years behind. Maybe they limit it or cripple it somehow.
GaryBluto
4 days ago
>There is Github Copilot, the coding autocomplete tool. There is also Github Copilot, the subscription, that lets you use Anthropic, OpenAI and Google models.
dramm
2 days ago
It's the horrible "IBM Watson" marketing of our time, and I expect will do as badly for Microsoft as Watson did for IBM.
basch
4 days ago
They will never get better until naming things is a C-Suite level respected position.
I think I could clean up their existing mess if they want help.
Jedd outlines my credentials well here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17522649#17522861
hbn
4 days ago
> There is Github Copilot, the coding autocomplete tool.
It's also an LLM chat UI, I don't know if it's because of my work but it lets me select models from all of the major players (GPT, Claude, Gemini)
JumpCrisscross
4 days ago
I’m not a gamer. But it still strikes me as wild that they let go of the Cortana moniker.
0xbadcafebee
4 days ago
This isn't a Microsoft thing, it's a big dumb corporation thing. Most big corporations are run by dumb executives who are 100% out of touch with the customer (though even if they were in touch, they wouldn't care). Their only consideration is the stock price. If adding new names to things, chanting the magic spell "AI" over and over, and claiming the new name will make them more money can cause the stock price to increase, that's what they'll do. (Making customers happy doesn't make the stock price rise; if it did, we'd all be a lot less depressed and a lot richer)
krzyk
4 days ago
> There is Github Copilot, the coding autocomplete tool.
It is a coding everything, autocomplete, ask, edit files and an agent (claude code like).
p0w3n3d
4 days ago
Sorry for a question out of topic, but is there still an offline office license available? So you buy it and have it locally?
felixg3
4 days ago
There is also Security Copilot, which I accidentally enabled and got a 3000€ invoice by azure. Thanks, M$!
sandos
4 days ago
Github copilot is not just autocompletion, its a chat/agent thing in VS Code.
adamrezich
4 days ago
> Laptops sell with Copilot buttons now.
Is it the context menu key? Or did they do another Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Win+L thing?
lionkor
4 days ago
Oh no it's a new key and it's on your keyboard.
adamrezich
4 days ago
Apparently it's Win+Shift+F23.
1718627440
3 days ago
The issue is less that it is a new key and more that the menu key is missing instead.
Foobar8568
4 days ago
It reminds me of IBM and Watson, most likely the same brain rot at the top.
boredatoms
4 days ago
Its long term microsoft culture to be horrific at external naming
rdsubhas
4 days ago
So I guess the same situation as with Google Gemini.
hoppp
4 days ago
They are vibing the naming probably
racl101
4 days ago
Have you seen their Xbox line up?
codethief
4 days ago
Don't forget Azure Copilot :)
solumunus
4 days ago
Classic Microsoft.
NuclearPM
4 days ago
Xbox one series X
They sucks at names.
NuclearPM
2 days ago
And I can’t edit this mistake…
bandrami
4 days ago
Can somebody give me a TLDR on what the "copilot button" does? I've never had one of those laptops and have never understood that. Does it just start the AI front-end? Does it power up the NPU?
sebazzz
4 days ago
It is just a button. Default it starts the Copilot app which is really the Office app that already existed but now with the copilot tab preselected. Also that Copilot runs in the cloud and doesn't use your NPU.
The only thing until now I've found using the NPU are the built in blur, auto frame and eye focus modes for the webcam.
bandrami
4 days ago
I got one of those Asus ROG laptops that bragged about having an NPU and I kept trying to figure out how to access it until I realized they just meant the integrated Ryzen GPU (which is also responsible for getting anything rendered by the discrete Nvidia GPU to the actual display). Also its alleged 16G of video memory included a mapped 8G of system RAM. I miss when vendors at least pretended to be honest.
dobin
4 days ago
Like Microsoft Defender, which is now Defender Antivirus, or Defender for Endpoint if you have a real license. You will also get Defender for Identity, and maybe Defender for Office 365, which is probably not ASR. And Defender for Cloud, not to be confused with Defender for Cloud Apps.
Oras
4 days ago
You need to see how many times they changed AI related services in Azure. It’s a shit show.
major505
4 days ago
This is what happens when you let all decision to the marketing team without any supervision. They became full retarded.
Marketing need as much supervision as a toddler in a cristal store.