6 ms·

The way Microsoft is pushing AI literally everywhere now feels reminiscent of circa 2001 when literally everything was branded '.NET'. Eventually they scaled it

The way Microsoft is pushing AI literally everywhere now feels reminiscent of circa 2001 when literally everything was branded '.NET'. Eventually they scaled it back, but it was complete overkill and diluted what the brand was supposed to represent.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tenebrisalietum 3y ago
What is Microsoft suppsed to represent? I'm not sure their brand has ever been anything more concrete over its total existence other than BASIC/MS-DOS in the beginning, a few long running products (Windows, Office, Xbox, Azure) and that it is involved with user-facing technology.
- jen20 3y ago
  The brand in question there was ".NET" not "Microsoft".
- bbor 3y ago
  Microsoft represents a solid, stable, enterprise-friendly, conservative, but still somewhat “innovative” (whatever that means) company. Or at least that’s their brand. Given that a huge part of their value is their long term sales relationships, I’d say they are an extremely brand-reliant company.
  - lallysingh 3y ago
    You could argue the same for bic (the pen/lighter company). Solid, stable, enterprise friendly (100 packs!) and still somewhat innovative (new kinds of pens, white out, etc).
    - edgyquant 3y ago
      There are lots of companies you could say this about
- antisthenes 3y ago
  I think at this point MS is really representing the enterprise/corporate Office suite as well as being exceptionally annoying with their Browser strategy. But that's just my IMHO.
  - TheCleric 3y ago
    Same as it ever was.
- blibble 3y ago
  > What is Microsoft suppsed to represent? unreliable software combined with abusive business practices
  - cald0s 3y ago
    I've never been able to find a better office suite. The FOSS alternatives and the google suite just don't do it for me. I also switched back to Windows over Linux as my primary desktop environment. Am I a victim of abuse? (Mind you I don't pay for either)
    - torstenvl 3y ago
      It isn't that Office is abusive or Windows is abusive, it's that Microsoft is. Word '97 is still my favorite word processor ever. Windows 7 is one of my favorite operating systems. I don't think they're abusive. What's abusive is how slow Office 365 is. What's abusive is how updates reset all my settings trying to make Office 365 bearable (don't use cloud, save to computer by default, don't show backstage, etc.). What's abusive is FORCING me to combine taskbar buttons on Windows 11. What's abusive (and unreliable) is randomly selecting the whole filename while I'm editing it when the file is on OneDrive. And that's just the tip of the ice berg.
CamperBob2 3y ago
It's the only thing MS^H^H Bing has that offers a prayer of beating Google at something. Expect saturation.
- w0m 3y ago
  O mean, GCE vs Azure?
- HWR_14 3y ago
  Other than ads, search or mobile OS, I'm not sure where else Google is beating MS. I don't mean to diminish those things, they are important. But ChromeOS is clearly nowhere near displacing Windows (for instance).
  - LordDragonfang 3y ago
    New outlook keeps getting worse, while gmail keeps getting better; virtually no one under the age of 40 buys Office for personal use, they all use the google suite, Chrome has an absurd market share. Really the only place they're winning is in the ChromeOS vs Windows fight.
    - hulitu 3y ago
      > gmail keeps getting better Gmail was always a parody of a mail client. Damn, even the demo called Lotus Notes was better.
  - singpolyma3 3y ago
    ChromeOS? I think that's for old-person devices called "laptops"? These days all people has is a smartphone and it runs Android or iOS, no Microsoft in sight.
- avtar 3y ago
  > It's the only thing they have that offers a prayer of beating Google at something I'm guessing their office suite offerings (hosted and desktop) dwarf anything that Google has.
Zetobal 3y ago
Feels more like Google+ to me... push untested features that no one asked for but miss getting the basics right. I mean GitHub/Copilot tells me all the time that it will change the way I develop and everytime I look at windows they are still not able to implement a proper dark mode.
- steve1977 3y ago
  Well they can’t even decide on which frontend framework to use this year it seems…
asdff 3y ago
Its not even microsoft its everyone and their grandmother pushing AI this AI that crap. Really language model this language model that, but we've perverted what AI actually means to the public already so that's great too for technological literacy purposes.
- nxobject 3y ago
  Apple, to their credit, hasn't announcing some generative-AI powered project. Yet. I'd like to think they have an Amish-like attitude to tech fads... hence why they never had a foldable come to market.
  - parl_match 3y ago
    They actually have, but they generally refer to the technology by its more technical terms. Instead of saying "generative ai", they'll say "transformer based predictive text". They have a few things (keyboard, camera, photos app, and some others) that are actually using generative AI but they don't refer to it as such. And as for the folding phone, I think they couldn't build one to their standards. I like the concept but there's a reason they've stayed relatively niche in the market.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    Yes, they have. They haven't announced much in the way of concrete products/features, but they have announced an effort to stuff iOS full of unspecified generative AI ”stuff”, much centered on Apple’s own in-house LLM, and put lots of resources behind it. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-10-22/what-is-apple-doing-in-ai-revamping-siri-search-apple-music-and-other-apps-lo1ffr7p https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-10-22/what-i...
- Arainach 3y ago
  To be fair, customers are part of the hype feedback loop. I have seen actual conversations with non-tech workers that boil down to "when we ask these people what they want AI to do, they say they don't know, but boy do they get excited every time we mention adding AI"
shostack 3y ago
I wonder if we'll see a point in the next few years where we have a keyboard key that only works if you have a subscription to Microsoft to access their AI, which I'm guessing we'll have to do at some point because all of this costs a boat load of computing resources.
wkat4242 3y ago
The biggest thing I hate about the marketing is that they call everything CoPilot. It's extremely confusing to users. Users get free windows CoPilot and wonder why they can't use it to generate PowerPoint presentations because the cool marketing doesn't clarify that that's a $30 a month separate license. For this reason we actually turn windows CoPilot off. It doesn't really do much for business (it's just chatgpt really which we already offer using a custom integration) and it only causes confusion. And these aren't the only ones. There's GitHub CoPilot, sales CoPilot (which can talk to Salesforce) and many more. Lots of which have features that won't work with the other iterations. Another example, CoPilot studio allows you to make custom chat bots similar to the celebrity-tuned bots developed by meta. But no, these don't work in the Microsoft 365 CoPilot. It's such a mess.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

tenebrisalietum 3y ago

What is Microsoft suppsed to represent? I'm not sure their brand has ever been anything more concrete over its total existence other than BASIC/MS-DOS in the beginning, a few long running products (Windows, Office, Xbox, Azure) and that it is involved with user-facing technology.

jen20 3y ago
The brand in question there was ".NET" not "Microsoft".
bbor 3y ago
Microsoft represents a solid, stable, enterprise-friendly, conservative, but still somewhat “innovative” (whatever that means) company. Or at least that’s their brand. Given that a huge part of their value is their long term sales relationships, I’d say they are an extremely brand-reliant company.
- lallysingh 3y ago
  You could argue the same for bic (the pen/lighter company). Solid, stable, enterprise friendly (100 packs!) and still somewhat innovative (new kinds of pens, white out, etc).
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    There are lots of companies you could say this about
antisthenes 3y ago
I think at this point MS is really representing the enterprise/corporate Office suite as well as being exceptionally annoying with their Browser strategy. But that's just my IMHO.
- TheCleric 3y ago
  Same as it ever was.
blibble 3y ago
> What is Microsoft suppsed to represent? unreliable software combined with abusive business practices
- cald0s 3y ago
  I've never been able to find a better office suite. The FOSS alternatives and the google suite just don't do it for me. I also switched back to Windows over Linux as my primary desktop environment. Am I a victim of abuse? (Mind you I don't pay for either)
  - torstenvl 3y ago
    It isn't that Office is abusive or Windows is abusive, it's that Microsoft is. Word '97 is still my favorite word processor ever. Windows 7 is one of my favorite operating systems. I don't think they're abusive. What's abusive is how slow Office 365 is. What's abusive is how updates reset all my settings trying to make Office 365 bearable (don't use cloud, save to computer by default, don't show backstage, etc.). What's abusive is FORCING me to combine taskbar buttons on Windows 11. What's abusive (and unreliable) is randomly selecting the whole filename while I'm editing it when the file is on OneDrive. And that's just the tip of the ice berg.

CamperBob2 3y ago

It's the only thing MS^H^H Bing has that offers a prayer of beating Google at something. Expect saturation.

w0m 3y ago
O mean, GCE vs Azure?
HWR_14 3y ago
Other than ads, search or mobile OS, I'm not sure where else Google is beating MS. I don't mean to diminish those things, they are important. But ChromeOS is clearly nowhere near displacing Windows (for instance).
- LordDragonfang 3y ago
  New outlook keeps getting worse, while gmail keeps getting better; virtually no one under the age of 40 buys Office for personal use, they all use the google suite, Chrome has an absurd market share. Really the only place they're winning is in the ChromeOS vs Windows fight.
  - hulitu 3y ago
    > gmail keeps getting better Gmail was always a parody of a mail client. Damn, even the demo called Lotus Notes was better.
- singpolyma3 3y ago
  ChromeOS? I think that's for old-person devices called "laptops"? These days all people has is a smartphone and it runs Android or iOS, no Microsoft in sight.
avtar 3y ago
> It's the only thing they have that offers a prayer of beating Google at something I'm guessing their office suite offerings (hosted and desktop) dwarf anything that Google has.

Zetobal 3y ago

Feels more like Google+ to me... push untested features that no one asked for but miss getting the basics right. I mean GitHub/Copilot tells me all the time that it will change the way I develop and everytime I look at windows they are still not able to implement a proper dark mode.

steve1977 3y ago
Well they can’t even decide on which frontend framework to use this year it seems…

asdff 3y ago

Its not even microsoft its everyone and their grandmother pushing AI this AI that crap. Really language model this language model that, but we've perverted what AI actually means to the public already so that's great too for technological literacy purposes.

nxobject 3y ago
Apple, to their credit, hasn't announcing some generative-AI powered project. Yet. I'd like to think they have an Amish-like attitude to tech fads... hence why they never had a foldable come to market.
- parl_match 3y ago
  They actually have, but they generally refer to the technology by its more technical terms. Instead of saying "generative ai", they'll say "transformer based predictive text". They have a few things (keyboard, camera, photos app, and some others) that are actually using generative AI but they don't refer to it as such. And as for the folding phone, I think they couldn't build one to their standards. I like the concept but there's a reason they've stayed relatively niche in the market.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  Yes, they have. They haven't announced much in the way of concrete products/features, but they have announced an effort to stuff iOS full of unspecified generative AI ”stuff”, much centered on Apple’s own in-house LLM, and put lots of resources behind it. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-10-22/what-is-apple-doing-in-ai-revamping-siri-search-apple-music-and-other-apps-lo1ffr7p https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-10-22/what-i...
Arainach 3y ago
To be fair, customers are part of the hype feedback loop. I have seen actual conversations with non-tech workers that boil down to "when we ask these people what they want AI to do, they say they don't know, but boy do they get excited every time we mention adding AI"

shostack 3y ago

I wonder if we'll see a point in the next few years where we have a keyboard key that only works if you have a subscription to Microsoft to access their AI, which I'm guessing we'll have to do at some point because all of this costs a boat load of computing resources.

wkat4242 3y ago

The biggest thing I hate about the marketing is that they call everything CoPilot. It's extremely confusing to users. Users get free windows CoPilot and wonder why they can't use it to generate PowerPoint presentations because the cool marketing doesn't clarify that that's a $30 a month separate license. For this reason we actually turn windows CoPilot off. It doesn't really do much for business (it's just chatgpt really which we already offer using a custom integration) and it only causes confusion. And these aren't the only ones. There's GitHub CoPilot, sales CoPilot (which can talk to Salesforce) and many more. Lots of which have features that won't work with the other iterations. Another example, CoPilot studio allows you to make custom chat bots similar to the celebrity-tuned bots developed by meta. But no, these don't work in the Microsoft 365 CoPilot. It's such a mess.