Matisyahu's Blog

I finished work then headed off for a 11.6km power walk which I did in around 1 hour and 50 minutes then I arrived home, had a big glass of cool water then jumped into the shower. I love this time of the year where it isn’t too hot and you can go for a walk with tracksuit pants and a t-shirt with the temperature just at that right level of warmth where it is warm enough to wear a t-shirt but not too warm to the point you end up sweating profusely. I guess I’m lucky in that I go for my walk after 10pm when the day starts cooling down at around 8pm

I was reading through the fall out from the ‘announcing Windows is becoming an agentic OS’ that was posted on X/Twitter only for the head of Windows to hear people, to put it politely, voicing their concerns about the future direction of Windows. It appears that Microsoft have learned nothing from the Windows Vista and Windows 8 debacle – if you lose the tech enthusiasts, who also are product boosters (see NPS and the role that customers who are ‘promoters’ play in promoting your brand), then you lose your ability to win over the non-tech savvy audience who make up the majority of consumers out there. The tech enthusiasts tend to be the ‘friend whose good with computers’ and what they have to say carries weight – you lose them then you lose their willingness to advocate on behalf of your company to their friends and family.

Well, after receiving constructive criticism he then took onboard the feedback and made the appropriate changes…ah ha, I almost got you, nope, they didn’t change direction but instead paid lip service that Microsoft was listening and then double down on the idea that as end users we’re idiots and we need masterful geniuses such as the head of Windows to take it upon himself to make those critical decisions and lead us to the promise land of features we didn’t know we needed. I’d love to meet the people he apparently talks to who are demanding this agentic OS vision he has because survey after survey show that consumers don’t care about AI (only 7% of phone users consider it to be a factor when purchasing a phone) so who is demanding what they’re pushing? an example of shoving something down a customer’s throat relentlessly and then eventually they’ll give in and embrace it?

I can see that they’re working on improving the user interface consistency, making the system more reliable regarding drivers and trying to move things into the user space where possible but ultimately they’ll have to start to deliver on this promises then maybe then their most loyal fans will star to cut them some slack. When neglected the core competencies of your operating system then it shouldn’t be surprising that there are a sizeable number of enthusiasts who see this fixation regarding AI and agentic operating system as a distraction from what Microsoft should be focusing on – making sure they get the basics done well before branching out into other areas.