I don’t hate Microsoft or the AI tools they’re pushing heavily, there are use cases and benefits – but I don’t appreciate being excluded from upgrade by a company that historically has prized backwards compatibility and having a relatively open platform, on hardware that works incredibly well, because the CPU might lack an instruction that might make a certain AI feature that I might use, slightly faster even though there’s a capable GPU that should be doing the heavy lifting anyway (but fuck me for knowing that, or having the gumption to think I can make my own decisions).
It’s a grab at the “next big thing” bandwagon and see how much of a slice we can get, despite not checking whether or not anyone actually wants to use it, because it looks good for businesses that need to appease the shareholders by saying they’re rolling out a fleet of AI powered workstations to “better enable their workforce”.
Microsoft have clearly decided that they no longer want to service the consumer market, despite having a “Home” version of Windows 11 and who can blame them after being ahead of the curve repeatedly only to be usurped by the trendy cousin, why put emphasis into entertainment or consumer grade experiences?
They’ll continue to bleed market share until they panic and over-correct in the other direction with a new version of Windows ME, but in the meantime I’ll be getting on with what I need to do over on the Linux side.
I'm ~/ again...
Quaid J Leckey