6 ms·
Their "copilot" brand is so weird and... muddled. There's the AI code assistant thing that github actually started, there's the horrible chatbot maker GUI demo
by isoprophlex 2y ago
Their "copilot" brand is so weird and... muddled.
There's the AI code assistant thing that github actually started, there's the horrible chatbot maker GUI demoware, there's AI stuff you might be able to do with your sharepoint (if only you could get hold of the right ms sales rep to take your money), there's an app that does genai things on your personal MS account... And now there's a Surface rebrand?
That org chart meme about Microsoft being little fiefdoms pointing guns at eachother never stops being relevant.
[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot/microsoft-copilot-studio https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot/microsoft-...
[2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2023/05/02/welcome-to-the-new-era-of-sharepoint-and-onedrive-in-microsoft-365/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2023/05/0...
[3] https://copilot.microsoft.com/ https://copilot.microsoft.com/
And [4] the meme itself, as you really can't convince me the above is the result of a coherent company-wide strategy https://i.insider.com/51dfec8469bedd5e19000017 https://i.insider.com/51dfec8469bedd5e19000017
- wizzwizz4 2y agoThe original [4]: https://goomics.net/62/ https://goomics.net/62/ (and its sequel: https://goomics.net/329/ https://goomics.net/329/).
- isoprophlex 2y agoThat sequel is (also) just wonderfully accurate!
- dweinus 2y ago100% accurate. Impressive
- biglyburrito 2y agoNever heard of this comic before... thank you for sharing!
- chatmasta 2y agoTheir first co-pilot (which still exists) was about pairing a second Xbox controller to your console.
- udp 2y agoAh but is that the Xbox 1, the Xbox One, the Xbox One X or the Xbox Series X?
- voiceblue 2y agoThis is the naming convention you get when you hire engineers based off of “edit distance” Leetcode problems.
- Jenk 2y agoNo, it is the branding you get when you recycle your marketing team every product iteration.
- grepfru_it 2y agoThe two seem to go hand-in-hand
- frankchn 2y agoEngineers named the Xbox One X "Scorpio", which is a much cooler name.
- voiceblue 2y agoIt was a joke about the nature of these names and the nature of that particular problem (and nothing about engineers, really) -- but I guess the downvoters didn't get it.
- wildrhythms 2y agoI thought it was a reference to Microsoft Flight Simulator.
- pelagicAustral 2y agoSee the hellish naming and branding they've done with the .NET ecosystem... It is so convoluted, even people actively developing on their stacks would have and issue figuring out if they are downloading the right stuff.
- Atotalnoob 2y agoNot really. It was a little confusing when they renamed .net core to .net, but most people have moved past it
- neonsunset 2y agoYou see, that just doesn't lend itself as nicely to tribal parroting of worse than mediocre developers here in the comments (if such people are able to code at all).
- mardifoufs 2y agoI mean you literally work on Dotnet, don't you? That's probably why you don't have issues with the naming. I agree that it's currently fine now that it stabilized on the core naming scheme, but I don't see how it was very confusing when there's stuff like ASP.NET Core on framework, and ASP.NET Core on Dotnet core... that's just confusing, especially since other ecosystems don't usually have such a weird naming scheme.
- neonsunset 2y agoIt’s only problem in the eyes of HN because it is low-effort complaint from people who never used .NET and simply repeat what they read elsewhere. It’s just a popular thing to do, to make negative comments like this. Otherwise, this problem is completely made up in terms of anything that happened in last there-four years. And no, I don’t work on .NET save for a few simple contributions.
- mardifoufs 2y ago
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- EvanAnderson 2y ago> Their "copilot" brand is so weird and... muddled. Microsoft can't brand anything cleanly and unambiguously. "MSN Messenger" / "Windows Messenger" / "Windows Live Messenger" / "Microsoft Lync" "Internet Explorer" / "Windows Explorer" / "MSN Explorer" Windows 95 email client "Exchange" / email server platform "Exchange" "Outlook" / "Outlook Web Access" / "Outlook Web App" / "Outlook.com" / "new Outlook for Windows" "Microsoft Teams" / "New Microsoft Teams" "Office Communicator" / "Microsoft Lync" / "Skype for Business" / "Skype" / "Skype for Business Online" / "Skype for Business for Microsoft 365" The most guffaw-inducing branding, to me, was the recently-announced remote desktop client called "Windows App". That's going to be an easy one for users to search for. (For guffaw-inducing I suppose there's also the Windows 98-era "Critical Update Notification Tool"[0]) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Update#Critical_Update_Notification_Utility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Update#Critical_Update... (Edit: Yikes. I didn't even consider .NET. Windows.NET server. .NET Framework. ASP.NET. .NET Core. Ugh...) More editing because I can't stop myself: "Great Plains" / "Navision" / "Solomon" / "Axapta" / "Dynamics AX" / "Dynamics GP" / "Dynamics SL" / "Dynamics NAV" / "Dynamics 365" / "Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations" / "Dynamics 365 Business Central" More editing because I was egged-on... >smile< "Windows Defender" / "Microsoft Defender" / "Windows Defender Antivirus" / "Windows Firewall" / "Windows Defender Firewall" / "Microsoft AntiSpyware" / "Microsoft Security Essentials" / "System Center Endpoint Protection" Oh, ugh... then there's the whole "Microsoft Proxy" / "Forefront" / "Federated Identity Manager" nightmare. Then there's "System Management Server" / "System Center" and that whole train of products. Edit: Forgot SharePoint "Microsoft FrontPage" / "Site Server" / "Site Server Commerce Edition" / "Office Server" / "SharePoint Portal Server" / "Windows SharePoint Services" / "Microsoft Office SharePoint Server" / "SharePoint Foundation" / "SharePoint Server" / "SharePoint Standard" / "SharePoint Enterprise" / "SharePoint Online" / "SharePoint Designer"
- brazzledazzle 2y agoLet's not forget Azure AD is now Microsoft Entra.
- EvanAnderson 2y ago"Office 365" / "Microsoft 365", too... >sigh<
- whalesalad 2y agomicrosoft is KING of doing this sort of thing.
- onemoresoop 2y agoThe great king of klusterfuck, I agree
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bastawhiz 2y agoCopilot is the new Watson
- runevault 2y agodotnet for me is the most obvious example of how terrible they are at branding. First there was .NET framework which was windows only (note I'm ignoring Xamarian because it was originally not owned by MS). Then they decided to do a reboot with cross platform support and named that Dotnet Core. This was honestly fine. But then we reach late in the 3.x timeframe and they declare for real and for true that Framework is a dead end, and Dotnet Core will be the one true Dotnet moving forward. And to indicate this, the next version will remove Core from the name, skip 4 because it would be too confusing with Framework, and just call it Dotnet 5. I wish they'd stuck with the Core name, if no other reason so if they decide in another 15 years to do a major rebuild again they can just come up with another new descriptor the way Core described the transition away from Framework and towards real cross platform support from MS itself.
- jonathankoren 2y ago> Their "copilot" brand is so weird and... muddled. It’s Watson. Ha ha, only serious. You’re right. It feels like an umbrella brand they’re just tossing around, because AI — and Copilot in particular — is hot in Redmond. I find the new Copilot key funny, because it feels like a pantomime of the Windows 95 keys[0], but with Logitech characteristics. [*] Okay, it’s been 30 years. I haven’t used a Windows computer in almost as long, and so I ask. Do people who use Windows actually use any of those keys? It always seemed weird that you’d need the start menu at a single button press, and the right click menu at a keyboard press felt even weirder. I think I only used the Windows key as a meta under Linux, and I don’t think I ever hit the context menu key out of anything but curiosity.
- isaacdl 2y agoI use the "Windows" key pretty extensively, including to open the start menu (and then type in a search term, i.e. a program on my computer to launch). I also use it extensively for "Windows" (operating system) level shortcuts: Win-R to open a run dialog, Win-E to open Explorer, Win-<left arrow|right arrow> to move/resize windows, etc.) That being said...I use it in basically the same way on Linux, and use the Command (Apple) key on Macs for essentially the same purposes. I don't think I've ever used the "right click menu" key for anything, though. Most modern Windows keyboards don't include it, or have it hidden behind a manufacturer-specific function key.
- jonathankoren 2y agoHuh. You’re right. Some keyboard have both windows and the menu key, and others have only one menu key. I don’t know if this means Microsoft relaxed their “Made for Windows” standards, or higher profile manufacturers don’t care.
- ptx 2y agoThe menu key was always useless anyway, because shift+F10 does the same thing.
- michaelbuckbee 2y agoIt's a real shame as well since the Surface line of PCs started as such a clean break and has devolved into a confusing mess.
- EvanAnderson 2y agoThat name was cursed from the start, too. The original "Microsoft Surface 1.0" was tabletop platform that got renamed "PixelSense"[0] years before there was a "Surface" tablet computer. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PixelSense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PixelSense
- Findecanor 2y agoI recall it was renamed to PixelSense right when the Surface tablets arrived. Then they named an entire input device line "Surface" as well. When you search for "surface keyboard" you will get results for desktop keyboards and type-covers for tablets.
- TylerE 2y agoDo you expect anything else from the company that introduced "Plays For Sure" branding over a wide ecosystem, only to kill the ENTIRE thing (not just the branding) less than 5 years later? (as in, all purchased content became unplayable)
- qingcharles 2y agoI was peripherally involved around that time. Trying to go through in my head what caused a lot of that, it feels like meetings were MBA heavy and light on engineering and design; whereas other startups have had more balanced meetings where the grunts could push back against the totally out-of-touch ideas of the pointy-hairs. (I think where I was working we pushed back hard enough on this name that it never got launched... www.webaudionet.com was a really, really bad name: https://web.archive.org/web/20020401235841/http://www.webaudionet.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20020401235841/http://www.webaud... )
- JMiao 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- notatoad 2y agoStill one of the funniest pieces of corporate stupudity ever. And not just because they killed it. Even when they introduced it, the "plays for sure" brand meant music that couldn't be played on the ipod or most mobile phones. That it quickly came to mean music that couldn't be played anywhere was just the icing on the cake.
- partiallypro 2y agoI don't find it all that confusing, most of them work similarly and I don't see how you could call them different things. I just hate that their logos aren't uniform. The Windows & Bing logo is a rainbow color (looks awful), and the Edge version is blue and green (looks way better). It's not remotely comparable to their other branding flubs (Teams, .NET, etc). I wish they would have kept the Cortana and Continuum brands. Recall is basically what Continuum should have been, why not just keep the name? Co-pilot works for naming in some cases, but when you look at the GPT 4o voice demo that seems like the Microsoft white labelled version should be Cortana. Cortana's biggest fault was mostly that it wasn't very good, and the things it was good at required the Cloud...but with the new AI chips, some of that can be offloaded and work much faster. It's like when they added Cortana to Xbox and killed the other voice commands. Then it just became a very slow process when the old on-board model was way faster. Even the voice commands became longer "Xbox on" to "Hey Cortana, turn on my Xbox" then having to wait for it to ping a server and come back to your device.
- outside1234 2y agoMicrosoft is a "student body left groupthink" company. We once named EVERYTHING "Active" something, then EVERYTHING ".NET" something. This is just the latest in a long line of tradition of groupthink.
- orph 2y agoIt made sense when I named GitHub Copilot, since that product was a passive addition to your regular workflow. The name was sticky enough that they've run with it, misunderstanding or ignoring that fundamental metaphor.
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- cromka 2y agoThis is what happens when engineers borrow the concepts previously created by dedicated teams. Happens a lot with UX/UI, too.
- lannisterstark 2y agoI can almost guarantee you that this was a sales exec decision rather than an engineering decision.
- isoprophlex 2y agoIn my perception, Github Copilot is the OG. The first one, amd the only product in that list that is actually making my life better.
- senordevnyc 2y ago[dead]
- nxobject 2y agoI await Copilot+ .NET Plus! 365 Home Professonal Plus.
- beachy 2y agoPerhaps borrowing from IBM's Watson strategy of flooding the zone with marketing shit.
- jeroenhd 2y agoThe thing about Copilot is that outside of the developer niche, nobody knows the term. The vast majority of Microsoft's customer base will recognise neither the Xbox feature nor the Github product. In the same way, their .NET naming has never bothered anyone they actually care about selling stuff to. It's a tad annoying for developers, but nothing more than that. I find the way they renamed their Office products every five years much more baffling. Consumers probably don't care beyond "office" but I'd expect them to protect their business clients from their ever changing names for office products at least.
- jetrink 2y agoIt's not a terrible name either. Assistant would be better, but they can't use that name[1] of course... I'm having a hard time thinking of something else that instantly communicates this idea of an intelligent subordinate aide that doesn't have negative associations. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant
- Atotalnoob 2y agoIt’s not just negative associations. I believe GitHub had a blog post where they went into why they chose copilot. The answer was more of subtly conveying its output needed to be checked
- jeroenhd 2y agoPersonally, I think Microsoft wastes the name "Cortana" on their mediocre Google Assistant competitor. I haven't really seen Copilot do much copiloting, it mostly seems to answer questions and follow instructions. Maybe Windows 12 will be different, but I kind of doubt it.
- accidbuddy 2y agoI agree, and it's strange to see 'Copilot' everywhere. By the way, does anyone know how the development/update of GitHub Copilot is going? I tried to look for a blog from the engineering team or something similar, but I can't find anything.
- wslh 2y ago> Their "copilot" brand is so weird and... muddled. Again the .NET effect, unsearcheable for decades. The COM[1] could be just bad luck. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Component_Object_Model
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- thomasjudge 2y ago(posted before) Microsoft on Microsoft marketing (from 2006ish) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k
- lallysingh 2y agoWindows Surface Copilot for Workgroups 360.Net It's kind of like those cryptographic keys they use a dictionary for: a nonsense noun phrase representing a number. Perhaps they're just encoding a SKU?
- cka 2y agoI think you meant Azure Windows Surface Copilot for Workgroups 360.Net. Everything at Microsoft is Azure now.
- themagician 2y agoCopilot is a game-changer in coding, helping developers with real-time suggestions and code snippets. However, it's controversial because it relies on large datasets scraped from public code repositories. This raises intellectual property issues and concerns about algorithmic bias, as Copilot's suggestions are influenced by that data. Despite that, it's super useful, but Microsoft needs to address the legal and ethical issues around data usage and bias to keep it on the right track.
- kixiQu 2y agoYeah, but they're definitely gonna fix it by sponsoring a multi-headliner pop punk tour! (Real: https://www.summerschooltour.com/ https://www.summerschooltour.com/)
- TwoNineFive 2y ago> you really can't convince me the above is the result of a coherent company-wide strategy Well that was an ignorant thing to say given how widely famously Microsoft implemented it's stack ranking system and the toxic culture it produced (as intended). This is exactly the result of that strategy. People who thought it had gone away are mostly parroting Microsoft propaganda. I live here in town with these people. You don't get hired without having "Microsoft morals". It's all a desperate gold rush to find out who is going to get promoted.
- edgefield 2y agoYes, and additionally the Copilot 360 user interface is a mess, processing time is slow, and the quality of results is poor. Using the Chat GPT or Claude interface produces much quicker/better results.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- guiambros 2y agoNot much has changed in 18 years... Microsoft Re-Designs the iPod Packaging - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k
- mhh__ 2y agoA Microsoft employee did once joke to me that if Microsoft had invented the holy grail it would be called the Microsoft life preserver 3.4 Pro+ or something like that
- DeathArrow 2y agoThey could have learned something from Apple. iBrain, iBrain Pro, iBrain Pro Plus, iBrain Ultra, iBrain Ultra Max.
- Elfener 2y agoCopilot is also the name of a windows (and presumably xbox console) feature that allows you to combine multiple controllers and have them show up as one device.