MICROSOFT, HOW CAN YOU BE SO, SO BAD?

Microsoft, how can you be so, so bad?

Online games news Tedious Retro Gamer, 10-10-2024
Online Games Bay

Microsoft just rolled out its upgrade of their AI-based tool called Copilot. Or should I say "downgrade"? Because their users are somehow unhappy with the changes that were made, and it is another example of Microsoft shooting themselves in the foot without any reason to do it.

If you never used Microsoft Copilot, it is an AI chat tool, which provides you with answers to prompts you enter. It is basically similar to ChatGPT, in a sense of being identical because ChatGPT technology was used in the Copilot tool. Despite initial scepticism, I have tried this tool, it was not great, but sometimes it was useful to find some general data that you would spend hours looking for on the Internet. It had a pretty useful option of storing your past "conversations" so you could return to them, remove them or review them. And they all lived happily ever after.

Well, not "ever after" per se, but for some time. Until recently they started to introduce people to the new version. When I say "introduce" I mean, of course, force people to. And when I say "new version" I mean a completely different tool. Now, all the little details that were useful before are gone, to make the whole thing more "immersive". So... basically, it looks like a string of messages that you would send from your phone. They are not stored in any list, they cannot be deleted, they are harder to review, often impossible to find the part you are looking for, so fun all around.

But also something else happened - the reason I used to use Copilot was that often the answers had links to further read, explained some details of the answer, etc. Yup, they are gone too. What you get right now is the very basic answer, detached from any previous conversations, with no external sources, no explanations, just a short reply, sometimes a bit superficial. I guess it’s not a big deal, right?

The users are to blame
Well, the Copilot users think otherwise, and you can find enough of their comments how they hate the changes made to the tool. They do not like the UI, they miss the functions that were removed, and they complain about the poor quality answers they get now. So, of course, Microsoft reacted positively to the feedback, by... blaming the users, who clearly do not understand how much better, warm and immersive the new UI really is. And as for poor quality answers, they suggested that users are just not smart enough to put in the correct prompts, so they started Copilot Academy to educate those idiots. I paraphrased a bit their statements. But only a bit.

The preliminary suggestions were that Microsoft is doing the downgrade to push more people to pay their 20 USD per month subscription of CopilotPro, which would actually make sense. But, as it turned out, most of the complaining users were already paying for the Pro version, and they are even more unhappy with the changes.

Why people hate Microsoft?
Recently Microsoft started a forceful switch of users to their new Outlook mail program, no matter if they were happy with their previous product. Why? To introduce them to the wonderful world of ads. They are trying to force or trick people into switching from Windows 10 to Windows 11 because... oh yeah, because then they could become the consumers of the ads. Now, they forcefully switched all Copilot users to a newer and worse version of the product, which raises an interesting question: why people hate Microsoft so much? Surely not because their products and services are getting worse and worse with every update, right? What villain ever has hidden his shady plans behind an innocent event, right?

Copilot was not perfect, I often used it to solve some work-related problems and the tool got the tendency to get stuck in a loop - it was providing me with a solution A, which solved problem 1, but not problem 2. When informed about this, Copilot was offering solution B, which covered problem 2, but not problem 1. When informed about this, Copilot would switch back to solution A, and so on, and so on. It was not perfect, but was helpful and easier to use than browsing through hundreds of websites. I’m not exactly an idiot, I know AI is expensive, if they would introduce me to a reasonable paid subscription, I would consider that.

But now, that they downgraded the product in order to force me to pay the 20 USD per month, that is a slightly different matter. I mean if I could move back to previous version in exchange for money, again, I would consider that. But since I know they broke the whole product, no matter if you pay for it or not, what is the point? Like I mentioned before, I’m not exactly an idiot, then why would I pay for something that is worse than what I was using for free? Why would I switch to Windows 11 and watch forced ads, if I could still use Windows 10 without ads? Why would I use new Outlook, when Thunderbird is perfectly fine and free?

Is anyone actually in charge?
Microsoft went a long way from an operating system potentate to a pathetic swindler, who will do anything to trick users into switching to their "new" products that are worse than the old ones. I mean, even with the Copilot - you had a decent enough product, all you had to do is convince people (like me) it is worth paying for it. And, at least in my case, it would not take a lot of convincing to reach that goal. But the bullying people into installing their new products and the "we are not the problem, you are" attitude is not the way forward.

I mean, you would imagine a huge company like Microsoft, with decades of experience on the market, would have a single person that would know you cannot force someone to like you. If people don’t even want to use your new product for free, how you plan to make money out of it? The ads will cover the lost income? The dropping number of users means less ads displayed, meaning less income, so... what next? More ads? This will decrease the number of users even more? More invasive ads?

10-10-2024