Technology

Windows XP's UI philosophy was great: one could always find what they needed within a two-clicks distance. Everything just went downhill after that. If they ever fix Windows, it will probably look a lot like XP again.

Or just make settings that aren't total dumb bullshit for which you need Ai to find anything.

I'm already used to windows settings randomly changing in particular for sound input outputs... So now there will be an AI changing them on top of that?

RNG control panel?

How about you make settings easier to find instead? That is, if it wasn't deliberate to dictate the users a preset.

linux time.

When I was a child I actually learnt quite a bit about my computer by reading all the settings of Windows XP and customizing them.

I hope this doesn’t prevent someone from the next generation to do the same thing…

I remember when MS made the perfect control panel in Win 2k and XP then spent the next 20 years making it worse and worse just because.

And here we are.

Microsoft would absolutely love it if people had zero computer literacy and had to ask an AI for help to perform even the most rudimentary of tasks.

Because then the AI becomes indispensable.

Organise Settings better, put common features front and centre?

Why is finding my IP address so hard on a Windows machine? Its either open settings app and click down 3 layers deep or open a pwsh prompt and either ipconfig or Get-NetIPAddress.

Linux click network applet in most desktop environments. Even MacOS option + click network icon

I'll tell my AI agent to go into the registry and disable itself.

Hey Windows, set my taskbar to run vertically along the left side of my screen. 🖕

It feels like Microsoft is really going all in on this AI trend. Probably because they are well aware that they missed/were late to every major trend since the 90s (e.g. the Internet, music players, smart phones, gaming consoles,...) and they don't have that much to lose any more with Windows' inferiority becoming more and more apparent. So they are probably going for the high risk, high reward strategy where they will either lose the desktop OS market completely (in the likely case AI turns out to be just a regular hype cycle) or win big by being early (in the unlikely case that AI turns out to be much better than it looks like right now AND having expertise with this will help with better versions of this once they show up).

I don't like how computing was cool and clean internally, if a bit harsh, like in Star Wars EU or even Foundation (the Foundation would do dishonest things, probably on the track to our reality, but already less), and now it's becoming arcane, poisonous, messed up and oppressive like in Stargate SG-1. In the goauld part. Can we not be goauld slaves pls?..

If you have to supply your users with AI support to figure out how to configure your OS, you might be doing something wrong.