Something that comes to mind for me is the old Bill Gates trustworthy computing memo [0], from the era when early windows xp was getting flak for poor security. That was supposedly the turning point where they started those overhauls towards service pack 2 and likewise added a security focus in other products, and they decided they couldn't sneak in easter egg flight simulators into excel any more because it just added opportunities for flaws.

What stands out to me is the organization needs to be accept that change is needed and 'walk the walk', and also that those efforts take time. I've no idea what things are in motion in MS, but I wonder how quickly they can turn the ship, how much momentum is in their current direction and how much force is in turning. Moving the taskbar seems like addressing a loud persistent talking point, but it's one among many. What's the timeline (even though windows version timing seems like 'when they need branding')? Win12? Win13?

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20020204233701/http://www.comput...

I missed the drama! https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/windows-... this thing?

> The ideal is that something intelligent understands what you want to do and gets it done.

Maybe? For a couple of decades, we believed that computers you can talk to are the future of computing. Every sci-fi show worth a dime perpetuated that trope. And yet, even though the technology is here, we still usually prefer to read and type.

We might find out the same with some of the everyday uses of agentic tech: it may be less work to do something than to express your desires to an agent perfectly well. For example, agentic shopping is a use case some companies are focusing on, but I can't imagine it being easier to describe my sock taste preferences to an agent than click around for 5 minutes and find the stripe pattern I like.

And that's if we ignore that agents today are basically chaos monkeys that sometimes do what you want, sometimes rm -rf /, and sometimes spend all your money on a cryptocurrency scam. So for the foreseeable future, I most certainly don't want my OS to be "agentic". I want it to be deterministic until you figure out the chaos monkey stuff.

It all depends on where the the AI is running. The problem with the idea, is that for the majority of Windows boxes where it would be running do not have the bare metal hardware to support local models and thus it would be in the cloud and all of the issues associated with that when it comes to privacy/security. It would be neat, given MSFT's footprint, to look to develop small models, running locally, with user transparency when it comes to actions, but that doesn't align with MSFT's core objectives.

What would an agentic UX look like that is better than the current OS experience?

typing "open hackernews" into copilot instead of clicking the browser and typing hackernews?

99% of OS interactions already boil down to 2 clicks and a search phrase.

> The ideal is that something intelligent understands what you want to do and gets it done.

I think you and I have very different meanings of "intelligent", "understands" and "gets it done"

I think something like this is the goal, and there's still a long way to go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV01B5kVsC0

"Agentic typewriters are the future of typewriting. The idea is that something intelligent understands what you want to type and types it for you. Unless you really think we've reached the pinnacle of typewriter interfaces with repetitive key taps and carriage returns."

See how that sounds a bit silly? It's because it presents a false dichotomy. That our choice is between either the current state of interfaces or an agentic system which strips away your autonomy and does it for you.

There's nothing wrong with an "agentic OS" if it's built on top of a regular good OS.

There's everything wrong when "agentic" means that the regular bread-and-butter functionality of the OS becomes unusable.

Even theoretical AI still has the other mind problem from economics.

Communicating and predicting desires, preferences, thoughts, feelings from one mind to another is difficult.

Fundamentally the easiest way of getting what you want is to be able to do it yourself.

Introduce an agent, and now you get the same utility issues of trying to guess what gifts to buy someone for their birthday. Sure every now and then you get the marketers "surprise and delight", but the main experience is relatively middling, often frustrating and confusing, and if you have any skill or knowledge in The area or ability to do it yourself, ultimately frustrating.

We've already been through this when people a decade ago thought voice was the future of the computer.

When that completely didn't work, we thought that augmented reality was the future of the computer, which also didn't work out.

You need a screen to be able to verify what you're doing (try shopping on Amazon without a screen), which means you also need a UI around it, which then means voice (and by extension agents which also function by conversation) is slower and dumber than the UI, every time.

Meanwhile I have yet to see any brand excited to be integrated with ChatGPT and Claude. Unlike a consumer; being a purely "reasoning-based" agent, they're most likely to ignore everything aesthetic and pick the bottom of the barrel cheapest option for any category. How do you convince an AI to show your specific product to a customer? You don't.

We’ve had computing technology that clearly understands what the user wants to do. It’s called a command line interface. No guessing, no recommendations, no dark patterns, no bullshit.