Microsoft has spent over a decade swimming against their users interests at this point and during that time frame Linux has been improving its desktop and improving kernel performance. We are now at the point where Linux emulating Window's entire API space for games with worse drivers is dangerously close on performance with none of the privacy invasion and anti user features. Its pretty late in the game for them to start trying to switch back to producing an Operating system users actually want. Users refusing to switch from Windows 10 should have been that wake up call.

I don't think Microsoft can pull this off, I think as mindshare is shifting it will continue to do so and its going to take Microsoft a long time to row back and right now its only talking about doing some minor things. Now Nvidia is developing the drivers on Linux seriously there is every chance this transition snowballs and nothing Microsoft does will be enough.

So still nothing about local accounts, or disabling copilot entirely.

This is basically: we’re doing the absolute minimum possible to claim we’re listening to users while still pursuing exactly what we were doing before. We realized we just need to boil the frog a little slower.

If they were hoping this would help shake microslop, they’re in trouble.

I'm somewhat surprised that Windows is still most of personal computers. In my eyes, it's fundamentally inferior to Linux, and its superficial superiority only comes from the ecosystem, which is to say adoption, not some inherent trait. But then, since Linux adoption didn't meaningfully change in the last 20 years, I'm forced to confront the fact that either I'm wrong about its fundamentals, or the market is able to be irrational for longer than I find reasonable. Either way, Windows in my mind, represents a world I'd like to leave behind. Apple too, btw.

* We're going to make sure we double down on our dark patterns slamming our obnoxious account requirements in your face every chance we get. We'll also make sure to "accidentally forget" any "unfavourable" setting you might have turned to your liking just to make sure you get the best experience we want.

* We're going to keep shoving AI and copilot in your face in every corner of the system whether you want it or not. It's what we want after all. Please subscribe to copilot now or 3 days later.

* We're going to continue vibe coding core system components and interface elements in JavaScript to minimize our developer costs. Just get over it already.

If you want to know how serious to take this, just look at this gem:

> Enhancing Search: [...] Clearer and more trustworthy results, with results from content on your device easy to understand and clearly distinct from web results

So yeah, you still get web results in your search bar, a feature absolutely zero people want and which is just there to fake Bing success, just with a little divider now next to the applications the search failed to find.

No one wants copilot. You can make it an app, but any OS level integration is a non-starter.

My next laptop will be a MacBook Pro.

My Surface Laptop 5 will be collecting dust in case I need it, but that’s highly unlikely.

They're saying all the right things here.

Fixing long-standing complaints, removing Copilot from obnoxious places, improvements to Windows Update and Windows Explorer stability/microstutter/lag, etc.

I congratulate them on seeing sense, and I congratulate Apple on another victory with the Neo. Kind of frustrating that's what it took for Microsoft to finally listen to their userbase.

> More taskbar customization, including vertical and top positions: [...] We are introducing the ability to reposition it to the top or sides of your screen, making it easier to personalize your workspace.

This already existed. You took it away. If anything, you are back peddling and re-introducing it. But I don't care anymore. Made the switch to Linux and don't look back.

I recently had dinner in Bellevue with an individual who holds a relatively senior position within Microsoft’s executive leadership. During our conversation, she emphasized repeatedly that Microsoft does not primarily view its offerings as consumer products. According to her, the company’s leadership is strongly focused on B2B strategy, with revenue growth driven mainly by Azure, AI, and enterprise solutions. Her perspective was that consumer-facing products are not the primary revenue drivers and, therefore, are not central to executive priorities. While this may not be surprising to some, what stood out to me was how emphatically she underscored that the company’s strategic focus is squarely on enterprise customers rather than end users.

That said, this business model has historically proven effective for companies such as IBM. Microsoft allocates its resources toward segments that offer meaningful revenue growth.

To demonstrate the seriousness of their commitment to Windows quality, you can now move the taskbar to the left side of the screen. No no, it's not vaporware, they even included four screenshots. Everyone can rest assured now.

> fewer automatic restarts

No automatic restarts! I understand that in our security patching world that patching and restarting automatically is the default, fine, but there absolutely should be a dead simple way of disabling auto restarts in settings. I'm fine if it pesters me to restart or whatever, perhaps with growing alarm the longer I wait, but it should always be optional in the end. There are just no words for how bad it can be for mission critical workloads when your computer restarts without your consent. Please make disabling this simple.

Talk is cheap, I want to see heads rolling, head of whoever was responsible with the all the disastrous windows 11 decisions. Till then I won't touch windows 11 and I'm not the only one.

Nothing on limiting dependence on online account/services and forced hardware requirements. The rest sounds like every text people could read for decades during Windows installation.

Sorry Microsoft, some people already transfer to a different train because you offered a crazy ride.

> pause updates for longer when needed

> all while reducing update noise with fewer automatic restarts and notifications.

Pause for longer.. why not just stop. And resume when wanted.

Fewer automatic restart. What about no automatic restart.

I couldn't read any further. Mind bended leadership to think this sort of wording after the obvious fiasco would make users hopeful.

I stopped using windows personally 15 years ago. My mental health improved right away. Forced to use Windows at work, I finally got liberated 4 years ago and my mental health got even better. I refuse since then employment forcing me to use this OS. It's a health hazard, always has been.

No ads. No upselling. Being able to completely ignore Microsoft account and install offline. No telemetry if that’s what user decides, no opt-in - single dialog during installation. No dark patterns. That’s what people want.

As a 20+ year Windows user now happily running desktop Linux for about a year - too little, too late. This company has completely lost my trust over the past 5+ years, with all the ads, upsells, silent telemetry, bugs, background process mess, forced updates, poor performance, etc.

It's not only steered me off of Windows, but Azure, Office, and anything else with the Microsoft name on it. I'll do my best to steer family and business customers off likewise.

Trust is earned over years, and whoever the execs are that pushed all these shitty short-term squeezes on their customers, the company now gets to pay the reputational price.

What about bringing back old notepad and improving admin apps?

MMC snapins haven't been touched in years and still can't even sort those columns properly, search and filtering is terrible

Control panel is still not migrated over to settings after 12 years nor you can open two settings apps.

Error messages in modern apps are just the worst, how about printing valuable error messages than "something is wrong"?

Fixing dark patterns like taking over your screen with popups and taking over the application header so you can't close windows unless you go to the task manager. First time opening edge shows a really annoying splash screen + home page is filled with ads.

Also where are 5 second boot times on NVMe SSDs? Anything more is just sloppy.

Just to list a few pet peeves

But let's see if they can even fix things they've mentioned in the post, though that's like 1/4 of the issues that should be fixed.

Feels like screaming "please don't leave us, we will now build what you ask for". On the one hand, this is great to hear, but on the other side I wonder how much this will matter. Apple is now winning on the hardware other than offering a better UX experience. But they also have lost their touch with it over the years!

Remember, Microsoft's goal is to turn Windows into an AI agent that keeps all your data in the cloud, that it can use that data for endless money-making purposes like advertising, and that you pay for with a dozen different subscriptions.

Microsoft will continue to move in that direction in various overt and covert manners, and any so-called responding to what users wants is just a charade.

Listen to their actions, not their words.

When are they going to walk back the deliberate deprecation of the vast majority of PCs that ran Windows 10 fine but do not meet the unnecessary and completely arbitrary hardware requirements imposed by Windows 11? I mean, the performance and AI and taskbar stuff also demonstrates bad judgement, but I really can't get past the Win11 thing.

Nothing in this article made me think they even understand the problem. I don't know what I expecting, though. I mean, the first thing they mention is the ability to move the taskbar around? Oh wow. Yeah, they have no idea what's wrong.

Used Windows since forever because "it just worked for me". Last year switched to Fedora + Plasma, as I started to consider staying on windows was risky.

The feedback/forum tool, has been a thing for years. Submited many bugs that I wanted fixed, and always been ignored.

Thanks, but Im not looking back.

The first thing being different taskbar positions after that emotional “we hear you” speech was peak comedy.

>More fluid and responsive app interactions: Reducing interaction latency by moving core Windows experiences to the WinUI3 framework.

I think this is good, because they're talking about removing (hideously inappropriate) react and other web technologies from core OS components, and using proper native OS calls instead. But I'm not familiar with WinUI3. I only know Win32. Is WinUI3 a flash-in-the-pan system like their other UI attempts, or is it decent and stable?

What is apparent from windows in my opinion is a lack of direction. Ask for feedback when something falls outside of common sense, you ask for feedback when you need another point of view. But windows is currently failing at the most essentials, these should be apparent inside Microsoft as well, and should've been for the last few years.

It is not that everything should stay the same, that is one choice, but there needs to be a steward that says, hey our right click menu on the desktop has an SLA of 100ms to open, it doesn't matter which features you put in there, if something causes it to be slow, kill it.

Can I access basic apps that are table stakes for an OS, an editor, screenshots etc without popups for unrelated nonsense. If you fail at that, then as a user I get confused. I am used to just being able to note down some text, why am I asked to transcribe with Copilot or login to microsoft.

It is clear that the adoption of Copilot was measured in activations, and as such was pushed in as many places as possible, simply because they needed all that exposure to meet their targets. Windows was not just a product but a funnel to other offerings and that cannibalized windows even more than it was previously.

I've got a slight bias, as I haven't had windows installed in about 10 years, but when I've helped my family with their issues, it is clear how much of a shitshow it actually is.

I don't see anything about respecting user preferences. Things that drive me up the wall about Windows: attempting to switch me to Edge, Bing etc after every update. Apple doesn't do that. Also, forcing me to sign in using a Microsoft account as opposed to a local account.

I will give them this one benefit of the doubt. The tone in the blog post is a straightforward one that is rare to see in such communications, without fluff or marketing speak. It's a rare acknowledgment of going a bit nuts with the copilot integrations. It did look like they were trying to see what sticks and presumably the answer is, we can't figure out what did.

Personal computing is a rare niche these days thanks to the majority who have chosen to give over the personal aspect to the privacy hostile duopoly of MS and Apple (while celebrating doing so) who hold the leash.

> More taskbar customization, including vertical and top positions: Repositioning the taskbar is one of the top asks we’ve heard from you. We are introducing the ability to reposition it to the top or sides of your screen, making it easier to personalize your workspace.

I wonder if this will include being able to put it on the non-primary display once again. It's not mentioned, but that was one of the biggest frustrations with Windows 11. It seems their focus is exclusively on single display devices.

It also ruined my flow for my flight sim until I found a workaround. The fullscreen window wishes to launch to the primary display, which means losing the useful bits of the taskbar.

I love what they're saying, but my faith in them is very, very is low.

On the positive side, they added MIDI 2.0, which you can use in live sets Windows will restart in the middle of. :)

MacBook Neo will eat their lunch.

Linux support for video games will eat their dinner.

It's like watching someone wake up with a very bad hangover.

I am doing my part - I managed to get 6 people in my family and friend group off Windows onto Debian last year.

All positive feedback so far :).

Sure it's only a small victory - but a meaningful one to me.

> We are introducing the ability to reposition it to the top or sides of your screen, making it easier to personalize your workspace.

> options when to update

> less horrible and slow file explorer

Finally, a desktop with feature parity of an OS from the year 2000.

Good on them for hearing complaints after 4+ years and addressing some of them.. maybe. They say they will at least.

I'm not sure these problems are solvable once a company gets big enough and incentives completely take over. It's like the hands are trying to sew a parachute while the legs are sprinting towards a cliff.

Although I haven't touched Windows in a few years now, my understanding is that the OS has been having a very rough few months with unstable updates, bricked devices, etc. And yet the first thing they mention is moving around the task bar? Is that really what they want to lead with? It's just baffling. It's also a bit disturbing to see "reduced flicker for file explorer" as a main focus. Just how bad is the Windows experience?

"...we are reducing unnecessary Copilot entry points, starting with apps like Snipping Tool, Photos, Widgets and Notepad."

Great!

The obnoxious behavior of Windows update is the single biggest reason I left the platform over a decade ago. Too little too late for me.

Also there is one huge glaring omission in the article. The sneaky integration of ads embedded in the OS. I have thankfully never experienced this myself since I abandoned Windows before the ads became a thing.

I sometimes have to use Enterprise Windows 11 professionally, but I can’t ever see myself going back to it for any kind of personal computing. Basically Microsoft had a good thing and decided to enshitify it to death.

This is a smoke break before they proceed to ram more AI and subscription model down your throat.

I've used Windows since 3.11 and I am using macOS for 5+ years now for work (requirement).

Switched to Linux on my personal devices 2 years ago and using Ubuntu and PopOS! on two different laptops. I've had very small number of issues. Can't understand people moving to Mac - it is the same messed half backed OS as both Windows and Linux (flavors). With the llms these days, any linux issue is fixable within minutes.

With Linux at least I don't have to worry about privacy.

Go back to Win98 UI, I know it will never happen but can you imagine...

At this point I genuinely think people would be blown away at how much of a functional improvement it would be.

There would also be a lot of bewilderment for the younger generations, and people who aren't interested in actually using computers who don't think it looks "sleek" enough or whatever. But in terms of day to day quality of life, those old UIs just got the fuck out the way, and were obvious when you had to interact with it. I have some earned hate for the underlying windows OS, but in terms of UI and desktop, we didn't know what we had until it was taken away.

This is not serious.

Only a public statement of "deepest possible rethink in attitude" from Satya Nadella would mean a different future for Windows.

Whatever this is - which is mostly weasel words - will fizzle and fade.

No commitment to keeping your machine yours with local only accounts. No commitment to blocking ads. Honestly though, at this point even if they did massive changes and addressed privacy and ownership I would be years away from trying them again. They could pay me and I would say no.

I can't help but think, 90s Microsoft was far from perfect, but they at least seemed to care a lot about the quality of Windows. 2020s Microsoft seems to see Windows as something they can leverage to get themselves in front of whatever the latest tech trend is, never mind what it does to their users' ability to get stuff done.

They may say they're backing off now, but it's hard to trust them. Will they just do the same thing with whatever the next tech trend is?

Lifelong user and 11-year Insider Program participant (i.e., since the literal start of the program).

Just this past January I implemented something on my workstation I should've done a long time ago: outbound filtering all network traffic via so-called 'Windows Defender Firewall with Advanced Security'. I've also skipped more Insider builds in the past two months than I have in the past 11 years.

The only thing keeping me around at this point is the migration overhead and (at least I tell myself) window 'snapping'.

> More control over widgets and feed experiences

More control over ads? The whole widgets screen is quite literally just ads.

I am sus. Optimistic but sus. I am hoping for some combo of:

  - MS doing what they say here. (Uphill battle given the perverse incentives others have mentioned) My gut says Windows is going to be *worse* vs better, and I am willing to settle for stagnating...

  - Linux desktop makers taking UX, ABI/linking compatibility, and "just works" seriously.

Big PR pushback against the Microslop sobriquet.

> "A more relevant Recommended section in Start will surface apps and content you care about most, with clear controls to customize the experience or turn it off"

How about, turn it off by default?

When the context menu in Windows 11 is aggressively worse than the context menu in Windows 10 I'm not sure what quality Microsoft is committed to.

An article like this coming out does not make me feel confident about its quality in the future.

Too little, too late; I've already switched to Linux last November and never looked back.

Microsoft Copilot 365 Operating System App is just trash, plain and simple.

Too little too late, open source Windows 7 and give it a new 10 year LTS commitment then we can talk.

Do they still serve ads when you click the Start button?

Yea I don't believe or trust a single word coming out of that malware company.

It's not an OS anymore. It's an AI that spies on you while you work and sends your information back to servers controlled by intelligence services. Once your data is there, more AIs spend endless resources examining (thinking about) your life, cross referencing your windows behavior with the information they receive about you from data brokers. It's a threat to your personal sovereignty, your corporate/national security, remove it immediately. Switch to Linux.

"What came through was the voice of people who care deeply about Windows and want it to be better."

I gave up a long time ago hoping Windows would get better. At this point, I just hope it does not get worse.

It feels like Windows is old and tired. Remember when Microsoft and Intel seemed unstoppable in the 1990s and early 2000s? The momentum is no longer there. The latest bad decisions around AI for Microsoft are just the straw breaking the camel’s back.

I switched to Fedora as my first full time Linux OS and it’s honestly changed my life.

I can use my computer as a tool to do my craft and I’m not constantly sucked in ai features, news, or external search results, if I don’t want it.

OS stands for operating system, Microsoft is not that for me.

I wouldn’t know how to ever go back. I really hope I’m not forced to for some reason.

I moved over to Linux a few months ago. Absolutely zero issues. My only thought was, "Wow. Why didn't I do this sooner?" There's nothing Windows can do to bring me back at this point.

> Integrating AI where it’s most meaningful, with craft and focus.

Spoken like a true AI.

I actually don't have any particular problems with Windows. It's familiar, it works with everything I do, I don't have a reason to switch.

That said, it's completely rudderless. How important is an operating system anymore anyway when most applications are just an Electron app anyway? What does consumer Windows provide Microsoft anymore besides a gateway to Office 365 and other actually profitable services?

They also clearly fell asleep at the wheel on things like gaming. The future is clearly Linux-based.

And on the hardware front, Microsoft seemed to have given up on their own consumer gear, and their partners have left them out to dry yet again.

Me and my family still cannot believe that I bought a Macbook this week.

I used Windows since Windows 95 (back in '96, I was 5 years old).

But still having regular blue screens come back with Windows 11..

I am better off selling my 64GB of RAM, than Windows Defender eating a third of it at random times

Interesting headline. And I start reading as a MS skeptic. Maybe they finally got it? Maybe MS have realized why Windows really is so crappy. I read the first entry, bolded, in the bullet list. It reads “ More taskbar customization, including vertical and top positions”.

I press snooze and get on with my day

I started laughing out loud uncontrollably when I got to this point:

> Craft

> To us, craft is the discipline that turns functional products into loved ones through usability, polish, coherence and refinement.

> This year, you will see us invest in raising the bar on the overall usability of the experience, with more opportunities for personalization, less noise, less distraction and more control across the OS. That includes being thoughtful about how and where we bring AI into Windows, leading with transparency, choice and control, so that new capabilities enhance the experience rather than complicate it.

Windows will never be 7 again. It will never be 2000. Wake up

Is this April fools?

The fix is upside down UI?

The question here is what metric at Microsoft was bad enough for them to make a post like this?

They have spent, ... I guess like 10+ years?..., for fixing the slowness and bloated functionality of the File Explorer.

I still don't know how to create a native app so inefficient that, it needs to take more than 500 milliseconds to open a directory

I'm at a large enterprise outfit, and "shoving things in your face" has been a problem with large software suites for a long time, long before the AI craze. I keep telling my skip level leadership that we need more User-Experience "mob goons" that have authority across product domains to (metaphorically) beat the living daylight out of bad "PM-brained" ideas.

Since we're going for rainbows and puppies. I'd like a control panel that isn't tied into the explorer shell.

I'd wish they did a more modular OS (explorer, browser, etc), keep it simple and streamline installing requirements as needed.

I heard in windows 12 they transform the task bar into a task triangle! They are being careful not to over promise, but the innovation is coming!

Windows 11 performs like a pig, it’s full of unnecessary notifications and apps that constantly seek attention, copilot isn’t useful, I feel like I’m being spied on, the UI is weird.

It could be turned into a great OS if they simply remove some things. Get rid of the ads, make copilot an optional component, stop trying to sell 365, let me turn off telemetry, etc.

> We are introducing the ability to reposition it to the top or sides of your screen, making it [the taskbar] easier to personalize your workspace.

Ehm, what? Windows XP had this feature. Pretty sure that Vista and 7 did too. I had plenty of friends who used the taskbar in non-standard edges.

Did they recently REMOVE the feature and are now bragging about introducing this "new" feature, or am I missing something?

Too little too late.

Interesting how often they use the word „craft“. For me, a sign that AI fatiguge is a real issue, not only among Windows users. Good, maybe a small, first step towards down-regulation of the hype.

I didn't switch to linux because windows was bad. I was running LTSC IoT Enterprise and selectively ran scripts from AtlasOS.

What finally pushed me to linux was because specifically in my narrow usecases it's just plain better, but if we were to completely ignore that, even if linux was worse, I just don't want to support evil companies anymore.

Now I'll admit that this is what AI would say, but it's not always about what is better, it's about sending a message, a message that microsoft appears to have heard loud and clear, however, we will have to see if this is just PR or not.

Overall some potential here, if they follow through, but it's amusing that the first bullet point is essentially "more new surface we can accidently break".

I don't really use windows for anything except games (still on windows 10 for as long as possible).

I did not know you can't move the taskbar in windows 11... I literally lol'd. That type of shit is why I dumped gnome 3 a long time ago.

Sounds like a big "Under New Management" announcement after Mustafa Suleyman was demoted.

the plan should be simple:

fire most of your leads & new programmers.

hire back anyone willing to come back with competence.

return to the Windows 10 LTSC codebase.

try again.

Microslop strikes again with lies.

If they actually fix start menu search in addition to giving back the left side taskbar, I'll be pretty happy. I very much doubt they will though.

> Faster and more dependable File Explorer: ... more reliable performance for everyday file tasks.

This would be great. It's still easy to freeze up File Explorer when moving thousands of files. The same operation from the command line works fine.

Think they burned what little trust anyone has in them over the last couple of years.

I have zero windows machines now and no promises will change that.

I grew up on Windows, switched to Mac (college and beyond), and over time, have come to hate Windows. It feels like it doesn’t have a user’s best interest in mind. I’m just there to have Copilot or XYZ service shoved down my throat. I’m not sure Mac is actually any less sinister but at least it feels less so.

From the title I thought this might be a reaction to the "Microslop" epithet and a commitment to increase code quality and reduce bugs.

Guess not.

It's a shame, I'd appreciate more than a single 9 of uptime from GitHub (luckily I don't need to interact with anything else Microsoft related)

It's got to be somewhat depressing working on a household name product in its trashy downturn. Surely you can't have the pride in your work that an equivalent employee once would have.

The cadence these topics were written in was so Apple keynote video that I had Tim Cook's voice presenting it in my head. I hope that's not just me.

More in the topic. Good that Windows Update will suck less. Did the Discover-something-or-other-imply less start-memu ads, I couldn't tell..

> This includes the ability to skip updates during device setup to get to the desktop faster...

There's only one complaint that practically everyone has regarding what's required "during device setup," and it's not updates. I can't say I'm shocked that it's being ignored.

We used to be able to make any folder a popup menu on taskbar, including any subfolders. Served the need for quick shortcuts to whatever we need within 2 clicks. Sorely miss it in Win11.

Isn't this the same company that fired most of their QA people few years back?

Their commitments here seem to try to bring windows back to what it was when they still had their QA teams.

I want to believe but I can't. We know how much product decision there is in there putting business on top of quality. Doing shady stuff and having at least weird round tables. Putting a spy on everyone's house.

For now, I am so bitter about windows, that I just want it to stop being a thing

this is sum' schizo article writing. totally deviates from the history of reality.

I've never seen a more impressive effort to carry on as if the elephant is, in fact, not in the room.

>Windows touches more people’s lives than almost any technology on Earth. Every day, we hear from the community about how you experience Windows. And over the past several months, the team and I have spent a great deal of time analyzing your feedback. What came through was the voice of people who care deeply about Windows and want it to be better.

>Today, I’m sharing what we are doing in response.

Just these words are already off putting. The extremely careful wording to avoid anything minimally resembling recognizing an issue.

It's ok to say we fucked up. It's empowering. Not being able to do it is a huge red flag.

> As part of this, we are reducing unnecessary Copilot entry points, starting with apps like Snipping Tool, Photos, Widgets and Notepad.

So they threw a lot of spaghetti at the wall, and this is the bit where some of it falls off.

Funny, I just bought Start11 from Stardock for side taskbar placement. It was the oddest choice to remove that feature. On an ultrawide monitor it just makes so much sense.

I feel like this commitment to Windows quality post is actually just copilot generated slop.

Someone in the comments here said nobody loves Windows. I probably did love Windows 7. I felt that it was the best of all worlds, huge support for hardware, basically rock solid on good hardware, gaming performance was fantastic.

In my opinion, Windows has spiraled downwards ever since 7. So much so that I finally switched to Linux permanently. Windows 11 and the forced AI integration was the absolute last straw for me.

The only thing that had really kept me on Windows lately was the gaming side of it. As I've gotten older, the games became less important. Now Proton pretty much gets me compatibility on 172 of 173 games in my steam library. Sure I had to search and find and compile my own controller driver, but it wasn't super painful, probably beyond the realms of an average user still.

Second raters working on a third rate operating system, offer fourth rate ameliorations for problems, their fifth rate product managers introduced.

It’s Better To Ask For Forgiveness Than Permission

Can we all just appreciate the sheer amount of writing and re-writing and executive review that had to go on to make this blog post go out? Goodness, I can smell the hand-wringing and political battling represented by these words through the wire. Incredible stuff.

This is so depressingly off-base and wrong-headed.

It completely ignores the huge UI regressions Windows has suffered over the last... 20 years?

Windows's UI ineptitude has reached crippling levels. Application windows lack title bars, so you frequently don't know what application you're looking at. Applications lack menus; critical functions are scattered all over the place behind hamburger buttons... and sometimes even further, under a "more" item in the menu the hamburger invokes (try saving a file you're viewing in Edge).

Applications eschew the tidy, readily comprehensible, familiar, and efficient File dialog in favor of a bizarre text-based pane consisting of crude, unlabeled boxes and horizontal lines... with no context as to where you are in the file system.

Then there are the baffling functional regressions. Here's one that wastes my time daily: You can't select multiple files in Explorer and say "Open with." WTF, this was old hat 30 years ago. Want to open several PNGs in Photoshop? NOPE, not anymore!

Just dismal.

So, you're giving us back features that we've had since Windows 95, but shittier?

Recently got an HP ProBook for a relative to replace his old 2011 ThinkPad with Kubuntu 24.04 and I was shocked how laggy and unusable Windows 11 was. Every menu has tons of latency, programs take forever to start, even something simple like Rufus. File Explorer is a laggy mess, the whole OS feels like you are walking through mud. After a reboot there was a fullscreen message about "finish setting up the device" (??? it's already set up) with the only options being Confirm and "Remind me in 3 days". Thankfully my relative was comfortable with Kubuntu and all his files were there (and frankly we were too lazy to set everything up from scratch again) so I just cloned his old drive and Kubuntu runs like a dream! I'm not someone who would advocate for Linux because it still has very rough edges (even more so than 10 years ago somehow) and has a higher learning curve but Windows 11 is unbelievable bad. I switched to macOS roughly around Windows 11's release so my only other experience was at work (where I constantly complain about the TWO context menus!!!).

The last performant Windows version was Windows 8, despite its UX flaws. It actually made old computers faster and it started going downhill with the very first Windows 10 Technical Preview. I doubt that MS will reach that level of performance and stability again.

For gods sake, your users is not your unpaid qa.

Whatever, I'm just counting the time until I can drop windows entirely... right now I just need it for gaming, but I'm thinking maybe Valve's OS will be the replacement

to me it went off the rails when I couldn’t get local search from the start menu in windows 8.1

In Ctrl+f t find "remove copilot"... Wasn't in there. Thumbs down

Back in the Longhorn (that is, Vista) days, I was friends with an engineering manager on the core desktop services team. He told me about how the "combine icons" in taskbar feature came to be. I think it came out after XP? mmm. I think yeah it came in Vista right after XP. Or was it one of the XP service packs? Anyhow, it was endlessly introduced by PMs, and endlessly cut after obnoxious reviews. Per this guy he just coded it one day and pushed it into daily build. Got in a lot of trouble but it made it.

Glad they're putting taskbar back into whatever sides. I despise my work Mac's single location at the bottom, wasteful waste of space. I've had icons on the left since Windows 95 and I like them there.

They feel like they're scrambling for any form of relevance when in reality that ship has long since sailed.

Dave P. has the same take in a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTpA5jt1g60

MSFT @ 52-wk low. Quality go up as they cling to fundamentals?

I'll believe it when I see it. But I hope I will, I don't want to be cynical.

Back a decade or so, the Visual Studio experience was terrible, the team promised they were going to fix a lot of it, I didn't believe them, and they actually delivered. No VS is not perfect. But it was on a downward spiral and they got it out.

I hope they deliver now, and bring back my inner Windows fan which they eroded and then killed with the abomination that is current Win11.

I think for a lot of people is already too late

Windows is just a wonderful box of chocolate that keeps expanding. You never know what you get, all brilliant frontier tech innovations like Edge, Bing, the calculator, vertical taskbar, and now the highly intelligent Copilot, up there fighting with OpenCode, CC and others...!

So why did they make taskbar bottom only in the first place? Too difficult to implement? Branding? No room for ads when it's vertical?

I was expecting a 404

Reminds me of when they finally apologized for the train wreck that was IE6 [1] and resumed Internet Explorer development in the 2000s after Firefox came along and started eating IE's market share.

In this case it's the MacBook Neo that's causing them to get off their butts and reinvest in the quality of their software after letting it stagnate for years, but the pattern is the same: rest on their monopolistic laurels until competition makes them feel threatened, then magically start caring about their users again all of a sudden.

[1] https://www.crn.com/news/channel-programs/183701230/gates-of...

Microsoft deserves credit where credit is due. Windows Insider is a great program that takes a lot of effort to manage, and this mea culpa is a response to community feedback .

Windows is a fabulous operating system. I encourage people to see it as a tool and as an engineering marvel, rather than as an enemy or target of ridicule. I’ve been tremendously productive on Windows, and I have run every desktop OS , including Gentoo (when it used to take 2+ days to compile), BeOS, OS2 , Redhat on Power PC, FreeBSD and loads of niche operating systems.

If you like Operating systems, and hate Windows, I encourage you to read Show Stoppers about Dave Cutler making NT. It’s an amazing accomplishment, and will probably convert you from a Windows hater to an NT Kernel appreciator.

Funny how Windows copies KDE (features and trajectories), almost 18 years after KDE 4.0/4.1. Also makes me feel old.

they joke with us. What we want is just a pure basic Windows experience without AI things make everything slower and not secure. What they give is taking the taskbar to left - right - top

Ctrl+F "ads"

Nothing

So, we can move the taskbar, more AI, and some paint-flashing fixes

> We are introducing the ability to reposition it to the top or sides of your screen

No, you mean reintroducing a capability that was standard in Windows for 20+ years? Stop acting like this is some new innovation being introduced in Windows 11.

Just a handful of things that all were taken for granted in Windows previously, doesn't even scratch the surface of issues with Windows 10/11, which removed tons of useful stuff and added garbage nobody wants.

Forced to use Windows 11 at work (well, or a Mac, but Windows 11 is just barely the lesser of two evils) and I hate it. I continue to use Windows 7 at home, which remains the best workstation OS and likely will forever.

Too. Fucking. Late.

At work, I'm switching to Mac for the first time in my life. At home, I'm already gaming on Linux. Windows is dead to me.

I was hoping for: "We understood the insanity and the insult of trying to replace native UI with cheap web stack imitation and it will never happen again".

#noconfidence

If you had to commit to Windows quality you'd have done so a few decades ago.

Also, Linux (via Android, micro computers everywhere and the vast internet) touches way more lives then Microsoft.

At this point in the article I realized I didn't care one bit and stopped reading

> More taskbar customization, including vertical and top positions:

When did they get rid of that?

Honestly he should go back to his country and build something for his people.

Three years too late, in my case. I've moved on.

Oh goody. I left windows but this really makes me want to come back: More control over widgets and feed experiences!

What a list of bangers!

Highest priority is moving the toolbar???

Too little too late. Linux can finally handle 90% of the gaming I want to do, and I'm willing to "suffer" not being able to play the other 10%.

Microsoft has proven itself the undisputed king of enshittification and a blog post will not change my mind on that.

Maybe my grandkids will give it a shot.

> Windows touches more people’s lives than almost any technology on Earth.

You could skip the "almost" if you had stuck to your guns on Windows Phone. It was a good phone OS, and we could have done without the iOS/Android duopoly, but MS chickened out.

Embedding your signature at the end of a blog post is such a bullshit executive move. You just know this guy has been playing corporate politics for the last 30 years.

Please don't tell me you're falling for it?

This is too little and too late, but you must give them credit for having the introspection ability to even go this far. Yes, the bar for microsoft is so low as to be handicap-accessible.

Glad I made the move to Linux when I did. The taskbar being moveable would've passed as satire if it wasn't an offical post.

This is awesome! Windows 11 is the best OS I've ever used, and it's great to see them finally fixing these obvious pain points.

Is this a joke? Is this guy for real? And he calls himself a REAL engineer? He’s a manager doing damage control because all this time Microslop is greedy and has stopped caring about power users.

We’re not first time users, we don’t want Microsoft BOB as our UI, we don’t want ads and internet search “functionality” in our Start menu, we don’t want AI everywhere and we don’t want things hidden from us.

Make Windows 11 Pro for real pro users and 11 Home for new users. I hope a few people from MS are reading this, especially Mr Engineer.

I’m going to get downvoted for this, but I don’t care.

P.S. Yeah yeah guys, I know about Linux ;-)

Bro Linux gaming is where it’s at - windoze is cooked

Key message at Microsoft:

“Windows has lost its way! Move the task bar!”

I recently took a vow to sneer less but it's really hard not to.

There are two wolves that live inside the Windows brain - Apple and Linux (yes, two wolves).

On one hand, Windows has pressure to be something that "just works" like an iPad used to be - users can't screw it up. This is what enterprises want for the daily drivers of their massive user populations.

OTOH, Windows has pressure to be this highly customizable tool for savvy high-agency individuals. This is what we all want.

I can empathize with both needs, for sure, but it is a constant war. They're doing alright, considering.

Left or right task bar placement, finally!

> File Explorer is one of the most used surfaces in Windows. Our first round of improvements will focus on a quicker launch experience, reduced flicker, smoother navigation and more reliable performance for everyday file tasks.

Really? it took "user feedback" for one of the world's best software companies to realize one of the most fundamental parts of the OS was broken?

I have been long on $MSFT for a while now, but my faith as an investor stands shook.

> Desktops showing the taskbar positioned on the bottom, top, left and right side of the screen

Welcome to the 90s?

They are so far off track. I'm basically never leaving Windows 10.

Talk is cheap. Show me the changes.

"Repositioning the taskbar is one of the top asks we’ve heard from you".

Tell us why it was removed in the first place, why it takes years to put it back and it's still future promises as of March 2026. That's just a clown show.

This is good to hear, as someone who has used basically nothing but Windows since 2000. I haven't stepped off the Windows train yet. I use Linux at arm's length for my homelab's hypervisor and at work, but my daily driver is still Windows 10.

I must be the only one to write something like this on HN, but I sincerely like Windows' technical fundamentals and architecture; its design is sensible and extensible. And very frankly I prefer the developer experience on Windows, where you can write a (relatively) high-quality native desktop application with purely first-party tooling and release a single, tiny (~10^4 bytes) executable that quite literally runs anywhere. The Windows API surface area is huge and developers can write entire multi-domain programs without ever looking for a third-party library.

This probably sounds like a lot of copium, but I feel like recent events like the rising costs of memory and competition like the MacBook Neo will light a fire under Microsoft's arse. I really hope some of the AI overboard in Windows 11 is rolled back over the near future. They should migrate core Windows applications back to native and CLI technologies, actually support and maintain these without chasing the next big thing, and release frameworks for safer compiled languages like Rust, Zig, and Odin, and allocate more resources to F#.

I love how the second half of this article is obviously just an AI slop agenda. That entirely speaks to how much microsoft "cares".

Frankly, the things they've listed as action items for the future are things that they should have been doing FROM THE BEGINNING.

Like, how on earth was

> Faster and more responsive Windows experiences

NOT a part of just the general release cycle of a major windows update? How was it they didn't notice that the file explorer experience in 11 was noticeably worse than windows 10 and the same hardware?

We all know the answer, it's because the highest priority wasn't a good UX, it was to make sure copilot was integrated into everything.

So long as microsoft management doesn't prioritize performance (and they clearly do not) this is just a natural endstate of any software. If you aren't focusing and paying your developers to make things faster and smoother, you'll get this sort of high memory consumption and janky applications. Making things not janky requires someone in management to care about that.

Microslop can commit, but I don't think they can get fix bloatware. Adding customer feedback form isn't going to fix it.

Weren't you able to move the taskbar to the top in like Windows 98 and XP? So they deliberately took away a feature, are adding it back after years, and selling this as "see we listen to our users!!"

Windows has been going downhill for too long for me to take them at their word. I'll believe it when I see it.

> Windows is as much yours as it is ours.

Microsoft has been inflicting unwanted crap on me for years now, and they keep expanding with more unwanted crap (even to the point of wanting to force people to have Microsoft accounts) as time goes on. Reading this line actually made me laugh out loud. No, Microsoft, you don't believe this even a little.

I'm reading this thread and I'm absolutely shocked that people are still advocating for Ubuntu for anything. It was a more user-friendly choice with more up to date packages maybe 15 years ago than the beloved Debian at the time, but that was long ago. Even then I wasn't one to put it on servers unless I had to for whatever reason, it just wasn't stable.

RHEL is mostly what you will see @ Corpo, with some occasional SUSE for Europeans. Given that Fedora is the upstream for RHEL (and no snapd), it is quite well supported. AFAIK, it's also what Linus Torvalds has ran for a long while now.

If the people in charge of Windows have to solicit customer feeedback to fund out what’s wrong, then I guarantee you the real problems won’t be fixed.

These people don’t even know their own product.

Something tickles me about describing the forced inclusion of Copilot as “entry points” in things like Notepad. It reveals Microsoft’s intentions SO precisely.

They aren’t trying to add Copilot in useful ways for their users. They’re forcing it into Notepad when they know it doesn’t fit there, because it might be your “entry” into their slop generator.

User experience be damned, these shareholders must have their value.

> Windows touches more people’s lives than almost any technology on Earth.

This can not possibly be true, in several dimensions/metrics. I understand that this is mostly marketing bluster, but holy cow are they delusional here.

What about:

- native quick launch bar

- killing telemetry

- killing UI kludge

- permitting non-MS apps again

Reminder: companies don't go on PR blasts without cause. Being cynical about tech companies is always a good bet.

This reads like the way they'll try to implement is

""" ok copilot, implement these changes, make no mistakes """

Having learned absolutely nothing from their existing sins.

Am I wrong in thinking that Windows 95 had the ability to reposition the task bar either horizontally or vertically? And someone actually chose to lead with that.

Oh, someone's feeling the heat of MacBook Neo and getting pressured by their hardware partners.

> More taskbar customization, including vertical and top positions:

Pfft. Still slow, react-based, and ad-riddled

> reducing unnecessary Copilot entry points, starting with apps like Snipping Tool, Photos, Widgets and Notepad.

Must have failed to meet the metrics goals

> Reducing disruption from Windows Updates

You can bet they will still flash the screen take-over riddled with all the dark patterns in the world to get you to upload all your files to their cloud "for backup"

> Faster and more dependable File Explorer [..] quicker launch experience:

Oh, the preloading of explorer into ram before it's launched? Lmao. Entirely embarassed by File Pilot https://filepilot.tech

gtfo.

we've heard that before.

Too late man. Linux made Windows obsolete. There's no going back for me.

It's crazy how windows blew its dominance isn't it?

Even for gaming, the only reason why I would stick with windows is not an issue anymore. Thanks to Steam gaming just works on Linux. I'm using Omarchy and it's very easy.

I can't see ever going back to windows personally.

> Windows touches more people’s lives than almost any technology on Earth.

Thankfully Ballmer failed and this isn’t even close to true. I, like a lot of highly technical professionals, have been Windows sober for many years now.

I am not convinced that Microsoft is all of a sudden deciding to try again to become a consumer-oriented company based on something Pravan Davuluri says.

Seems more like FUD.

Are they microsofter in the brain than MicroSlop? MegaSlop? GigaSlop? Reading "Windows" and "quality" in the same sentence already triggers every bullshit alert in the book.

Let me use Windows 10 for 10 more years. You're full of shit Microsoft.

“We hear you and will improve quality” is bullshit code. It means “we figured out our strategy long ago and you’re not it”.

still no QA lol

It’s frankly embarrassing that they have to come out and say that they are going to make Explorer “faster and more dependable.” It’s amazing how badly they fucked up the most basic function of managing a graphical operating system.

I don't want to be just purely negative but I refuse to believe the sentiment of this post. For years they have been told that windows have pretty shit annoying features which they keep implementing and only thing they did was implement more absolutely useless chatbots all over the place. I do not belive that this is genuine effort to making a better product or answer to ongoing massive enshittifaction of microsoft products to squeeze more money. Maybe people started to leave them for Apple and they noticed?

Microsoft needs to be broken up.

If Cosmic desktop would be finished, I would now be on Linux. But instead, I am back on Windows 10. Linux desktop is just not there yet. I will either skip Windows 11 and go to 12, or finally end up on Linux by necessity. Looking at the direction of Microsoft and Windows, I think there is no chance for 12 to be a good operating system that I would want to use. I know I can milk Windows 10 for another 5-8 years without any issues. So, we'll see. But then again, there is also HarmonyOS and who knows where *BSD desktop will be and other OSs that might come up. Maybe nVidia will make their own Linux based OS. Or Google. I think this is the direction the OSs are heading towards. The domination of Microsoft and Apple is near its end and if big corporations step in and centralize the completely broken world of linux desktop into few solid distributions, we can have nice things again.

So now that Apple released Macbook Neo, Microsoft has started to care about Windows quality after a decade?

Too little and too late. I’ll believe it when I’ll see it. And so far everything I’ve seen has told me to abandon ship. Even if you reverse course, you’d need a miracle to make me trust you anytime soon.

This is how goodwill works. Easy to burn, hard to earn back. I’m not touching any products by Meta, Google or Microsoft, and none of them are getting me back on board with a cute blog post.

> Receiving updates should be predictable and easy to plan around, so we’re giving you more control.

I can't remember when Update became so intrusive and aggressive - Vista? - but it was the top annoyance for me personally.

If Microsoft leadership thinks that they took a wrong turn in the last few years, they are in for a rude awakening (I hope). They took a wrong turn in the late 90s. Probably earlier than that. They have managed to stave off all user feedback for 30 years through litigious bullying and strict vendor lock-in. This isn't about the taskbar, man. This isn't even about Copilot.

The pushback which you are only now starting to perceive is being caused by an entire generation of Microsoft intentionally and actively positioning itself in conflict with its customers.

I understand that once you have a million customers, you can't really treat them right anymore. But Microsoft has not given a single shit about customer feedback, even in aggregate for decades now.

As I read this, all I can think is "too little, too late." I have watched in my workplace Windows go from being a product that we are happy to purchase to yet another piece of technology that we would simply replace were we not yoked to it.

I guess even now they probably still don't care. Microsoft will continue printing money until the sun burns out.

lol who is this guy talking to

>Our commitment to Windows quality

LMAO

This is vague lip service with little substance, as far as I can tell. That is unsurprising consider it's from Microsoft and it's about Windows. It addresses (in cheap words) a few real pain points, but completely fails to address the dozens of either incredibly painful and stupid decisions MS has made.

On the subject of what they address, I have thoughts and many doubts.

> Integrating AI where it’s most meaningful, with craft and focus

Just don't, bro. Don't do it. I don't want copilot icons in all the system apps. None.

> More taskbar customization, including vertical and top positions

This feels like it's too little, too late. They redesigned the UI in yet another toolkit and in the process broke something had worked for decades. Perhaps they could add a 147th different UI toolkit with a different look instead, just to change things up.

> Reducing disruption from Windows Updates

Would be welcome, but I have my doubts. MS has shown clearly they don't care.

> Faster and more dependable File Explorer

See comment on task bar above.

> More control over widgets and feed experiences

Get out of it. If I see one more stock ticker on a screen share from someone I know does NOT track the stock market I'll know you for the lying liars you are. Don't promise "more control" just stop being so invasive and annoying.

On the subjects they didn't address, I have feedback:

- Remove advertising from the start menu, the system, apps, everywhere. Just remove it forever.

- Remove invasive telemetry. Again, forever.

- Respect user choice. Stop trying to force things to open in Edge, ignoring my default browser. I am a Firefox/Zen user, keep a single (other) chromium-based browser around for sites that don't work right (another rant for another time), and try not to touch Edge if I can help it.

- Stop turning the bundled native apps into crappy web apps. "New Outlook" is a real tire fire.

- Make the default Edge page ANYTHING but the advertising and nasty "news" summary that shows up. Why not a simple search page, like when Google was new.

- Stop making start menu searches return web results instead of local apps

- Make start menu searching actually search in a useful way. Why does QGIS not show up when I type GIS? Because it doesn't start with Q? That's garbage. Make it work how users would expect it to work.

- Let people say no, fully and completely, to OneDrive. You can make adding it later easy at user discretion, but don't ask to set it up automatically. Don't use fear mongering like "your files are not backed up" to try to trick people into signing up for it.

- Local accounts should be easy, not a nasty workaround with a moving target for instructions.

lol microslop

"Our Commitment to Gaslighting Everyone with Corporate Marketing Language"

“Improved Feedback Hub” is a code for “The corner that we told the plebs to scream into was close enough to the executives that they could hear some of the angry swearing, so we moved everyone over to a padded room in the basement where they can’t bother anybody.”

Lol

It's very telling that the very first feature listed is that you can position the taskbar on the bottom, top, left and right side of the screen.

Can I change it's color, too? Amazing! /s

Microsoft appears completely bereft of creativity and innovation now.