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Microsoft postpones Windows Recall after major backlash — will launch Copilot+ PCs without headlining AI feature

https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/microsoft-postpones-windows-recall-after-major-backlash-will-launch-copilot-pcs-without-headlining-ai-feature

Windows Recall will arrive at a later date, available in preview "in the coming weeks."

Microsoft postpones Windows Recall after major backlash — will launch Copilot+ PCs without headlining AI feature

61 comments

NegativeLookBehind

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How this usually goes:

Introduce new controversial feature
Backlash
Postpone deployment
Soften public opinion with marketing, rename product, change minor features, etc
Deploy product regardless
Enshittification complete (Until next time!)

QuantumSoul

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You forgot put the option back in a random windows update without prior knowledge

NegativeLookBehind

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Yup, you’re right. I had a bullet for that originally, but changed it.

octopus_ink

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You are absolutely correct. All the focus groups and consultancies that were surely involved in something like this and we're supposed to believe the backlash was a surprise?

This is what is happening at Redmond right now:

MudMan

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This is hilarious.

I love the faith, too. Like, of Microsoft, of all people. The "your Xbox is your cable box now" Microsoft. The "Here's mandatory Kinect, the Wii killer" Microsoft. The Windows Me Microsoft. The "Windows 8 is now a touch OS" Microsoft.

I gotta say, you guys really give tech companies the benefit of the doubt. I've seen too much, perhaps.

In that vein, let me propose a more accurate picture: https://img.movieboom.biz/movie/screen/681/19.jpg

octopus_ink

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I love the faith, too. Like, of Microsoft, of all people. The “your Xbox is your cable box now” Microsoft. The “Here’s mandatory Kinect, the Wii killer” Microsoft. The Windows Me Microsoft. The “Windows 8 is now a touch OS” Microsoft.

The EEE Microsoft...

In that vein, let me propose a more accurate picture:

Unless not attaching one was your punchline, I think you forgot to attach one. :)

MudMan

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No, I did. I can see it.

Welcome to the Fediverse, where me attaching a picture and you seeing the picture are not necessarily the same thing.

Hey, I am an equal opportunity criticiser. Fedia/Kbin/Lemmy suck at this.

I added a text link, at least, but that's already way too far to go for that joke.

octopus_ink

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Ah thanks. I think you underestimate them, they've proven they are capable of executing even if everything hasn't landed.

But I'm never unhappy about a Spaceballs reference. 🙂

MudMan

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Before I had to try twice for Fedi reasons, I was mostly pushing it for the joke.

But honestly, this is so on brand for MS. They came up with a superficially marketable idea, botched the execution, then botched the marketing even harder. Then Apple came up with the same feature and everybody liked it.

The idea that this is them playing the long game is hilarious. Not only is that not how big software companies work, it is definitely not how MS works. People just want to sound worldly and cynical and instead come across paranoid and delusional. The idea that everybody working on this knew it sucked and they shipped it anyway is extremely plausible.

Can they execute? Sure! But can they also get stuck failing to push back on a bad idea until they end up shipping something nobody likes? Often, objectively. And almost always subjectively because they also consistently suck at branding their stuff, both the good and the bad.

eltrain123

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You also forgot that the first mover takes the heat, then all the other competitors quietly roll out the same feature with no or minimal backlash…

1984

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Entire tech industry does this over and over again. The only way to stop dancing along is to switch to Linux instead of praying to Microsoft or Apple corporations.

NegativeLookBehind

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All hail Linux, the One True King

MudMan

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At some point I'm gonna get bored of reminding people of this.

Hey, remember Timeline?

That's how you know this isn't how it works.

ChaoticEntropy

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Did MS derive any particular benefit from Timeline? It was a lot more localised as far as I recall. Recall seems geared to give them a lot more data that they could monetise.

MudMan

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Nope, it's the exact opposite. Timeline looked a lot more like Apple's Recall equivalent they're rolling out. It monitored your activity, not just your screen, and then stored the output on the "cloud" so it could be shared across computers.

I don't want either, but if you ask me if I want my screen recorded on-device or my logged activity shared across all machines and stored on MS's servers I'll take Recall any day.

So my point is, Timeline didn't "soften" anything. It went away on the launch of Win11. And nobody was "softened" because when it resurfaced as "Recall" everybody freaked right out immediately all over again. Bad ideas are bad ideas. You can wait for people to get over minor inconveniences or tradeoffs, or just live with whatever percentage of people find something to be a dealbreaker if the value you extract from it is way higher than the business you lose. But a bad idea is a bad idea.

Also my point: people here don't know how to take a win. Recall is gone, I'd expect it to never come back, unless Apple does MS's job for them and when it resurfaces it works exactly like the Apple feature that works exactly like Recall without anybody freaking out about it.

Petter1

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Lol, apple is not logging what your doing, the apple AI just has access to that data directly, no need to copy data from apps you already Control. AppleAI is just a Process that has Access to a lot of data, un fact, any data that any app offer through the API Apple Designes. So that means the AppleAI sees only what the dev of the app want the AppleAI to see. Best case, you can set what you want to give appleAI access to in each app.

I want to ask you, where do you see the difference to Spotlight? Spotlight is also a Process that scanns all your data..

MudMan

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For the record, MS also had stated that users can exclude specific applications from Recall and devs can exclude specific screens or content from being recorded.

I'm not sure that "Apple already indexes and has unfettered access to all your granular data" isa good defense, either. That's... worse. Although for what it's worth it does seem like this AI thing is way more intrusive than Spotlight, in that it's not just searching keywords inside files it can parse, it is connecting data from multiple sources to generate context about you, some of which is being processed off-site. I don't think it's as easily expoitable as the 1.0 version of Recall MS described, but if your concern is with an AI or a corporation having access to information, or to compromising information being accessed through easy search by anybody with local access... well, yeah, it's all degrees of bad here.

Didn't you and I already litigate this in a different thread? I'd rather not rehash that.

Petter1

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It is not defence for god sake 😂 I wanted to Point out, that apple has not planned to add somthing like recall to their Systems.

Recall is not the same as copilot!

Racall is not the same as AppleAI.

But AppleAI is pretty much the same as Copilot.

AppleAI does nothiing, if you don‘t use a Feature that sends a promt to it.

Copilot neither.

Only the recall Feature Collecting data that did not exist before that Feature started.

And I think apple has not more data now with appleAI about you than before. If they want your data, iCloud has it all, either you use apple and don‘t care or not. Suddenly stopping to use Apple devices because of AppleAI makes no sense, most likely the same for Microsoft, if recall is opt in.

MudMan

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I don't think that's correct. Recall will not draw any data from any app you don't actively display onscreen. In fact it will not draw any data you don't specifically display on screen. Apple's Recall will know about data that is stored in applications whether you open it or not, as it's been explained, but it will work with specific applications drawing from specific data (and it does also look at your screen, although it's not clear if it does that constantly or on demand).

Just to quote the current Apple Intelligence landing page. This is posted by Apple itself as promo materials:

Apple Intelligence empowers Siri with onscreen awareness, so it can understand and take action with things on your screen. If a friend texts you their new address, you can say “Add this address to their contact card,” and Siri will take care of it.

Awareness of your personal context enables Siri to help you in ways that are unique to you. Can’t remember if a friend shared that recipe with you in a note, a text, or an email? Need your passport number while booking a flight? Siri can use its knowledge of the information on your device to help find what you’re looking for, without compromising your privacy.

Seamlessly take action in and across apps with Siri. You can make a request like “Send the email I drafted to April and Lilly” and Siri knows which email you’re referencing and which app it’s in. And Siri can take actions across apps, so after you ask Siri to enhance a photo for you by saying “Make this photo pop,” you can ask Siri to drop it in a specific note in the Notes app — without lifting a finger.

That sure sounds to me like Siri now looks at you screen, logs your past activity, or at least searches through pre-existing system logs of your activity, and has access to and processes all your information.

Again, Recall and "AppleI" will both draw different sets of data, but they are both drawing new data at the system level. And they're both making context inferences on your data. Sure, the process is different, they each have issues the other doesn't (MS's 1.0 version had glaring security holes and it's too human-readable, Apple's version is sending your data to a server for processing, instead of being all on-device), but it's fundamentally doing the same thing with the same startling access to your data. Both companies insist they're not logging your data anywhere outside your device. To me, that's not enough in either case.

brbposting

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Apple's Recall equivalent

Makes me think of Rewind.ai but you’re referring to how Siri can use context from your screen when you ask it? A feature distant from Recall/Rewind.

Might be missing something.

MudMan

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They just announced an AI integration across the entire OS for iOS, iPadOS and MacOS. Basically they'll log all your activity and feed it to multiple AI models to let you ask for what you want, as they describe it. It mostly looks like Timeline but with AI search and assistant features bolted on to it.

They did a good job of not making it sound as creepy as Recall... but it kinda is.

brbposting

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Gotcha, made a couple posts about their announcements.

Techies - AI skeptics - seem widely impressed (per ArsTechnica and Hacker News and Mastodon posters). Since your description is at odds with my understanding, I will review some more details. Thanks.

MudMan

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Yeah, I've been talking for a few days about how bizarre it is to see the difference in reception to what is conceptually a couple of very similar features. It's nuts how good Apple are at selling this sort of stuff almost with zero correlation to what it is that they're selling.

Which is, I suppose, why nobody will ever bring up having said that the Vision Pro was an iPhone 1.0 moment. They know who they are.

Or maybe I'm giving them too much credit and they aren't that good. Admittedly MS did an amazing job at making this Recall thing seem as unappealing as possible at every step, so... maybe the bar was just that low.

ChaoticEntropy

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"We listened."

01189998819991197253

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They did. That's how they know this tactic works.

Linkerbaan

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And they will be sure to make every "mistake" people warned them about in stage 2 when they reach stage 5.

NutWrench

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5.1 Toggle the customer's opt-out setting back to opt-in every time there's a Windows update.

5.2 Remove the opt-out setting completely.

ArtVandelay

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GOTO 1;

werefreeatlast

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Holf off the release, half of America is currently in the restroom....

gravitas_deficiency

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Lmao they recalled Recall

stoy

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In a few years time we will recall when Microsoft recalled Recall, but we will have to wait for a a few decades longer to get to Total Recall.

JackbyDev

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A small conspiracy theory of mine is them trying to disassociate the term windows recall with negativity. But it backfired hard lol.

capt_wolf

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Next update: Well, we never actually removed the feature because it's already irrevocably engrained in the file system. It can't be turned off or opted out of because it'll cause your hard drive to explode. Instead, we've buried it so deep that only hackers, malware, the government, and Facebook will be able to make use of it.

DoucheBagMcSwag

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Microsoft: we can't turn the always online feature on the Xbox One off.

They never learn

tigerjerusalem

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Not good enough, it should have cancelled the feature altogether.

Gradually_Adjusting

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The tech industry is so invested in "AI" at this point that if it admits defeat, the bubble will pop.

seven_phone

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Even the cancellation is not good enough. The fact that this was even entertained shows how disconnected Microsoft is from the real world. If they can get this so wrong what else are they getting wrong.

avidamoeba

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Security. 😅

01189998819991197253

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That's never really been a priority for them. Can you get something wrong that you weren't trying to get right in the first place?

Ephera

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They did tell their employees to prioritize security above all else, right before not doing that.

seven_phone

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So by implication they have not been telling their teams that since when, Windows95?

Ephera

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Yeah, that was basically my reaction, too. There was also some news that the CEO would now be taking responsibility for security, which had me similarly questioning what the hell they were doing so far.
Surely, the CEO is responsible for everything. So, did they just completely forget that security is also part of that?

mojoaar

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Could not have said it better myself.

homesweethomeMrL

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It’s hard to appreciate how much like catnip/crack AI is inside micro$oft.

They think they’re going to corner the market on AI before it ever actually does anything. No matter that 90% of people want absolutely nothing to do with it. As our de facto tech lords, they’ll tell us what we want. lol

seven_phone

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But even if that is their semi-delusional master plan why scupper it by association with such a bad idea. There was not one person in all the hours of talk they must have spent on this that wondered if every device taking a screenshot every few minutes was a good idea. No matter the security it will be breached and this feature could be astoundingly destructive.

homesweethomeMrL

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That’s the crack effect. AI is a helluva drug. For every 10 developers and team leads who pointed out what a horrifying clusterfuck it would inevitably become, there were two senior directors or one VP who thought they could advance up the ladder by supporting it.

I don’t doubt that the majority of M$ employees are properly embarrassed about the whole thing. Not that that has ever mattered with regard to corporate direction.

variants

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Welp the wake up call already pushed me to linux, finally

Allero

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Congratulations!

Welcome to the Penguinland

snooggums

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I fully expect it to be running in the background with the interface part the user can see turned off.

jeena

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As we say in Germany: 'Aufgeschoben ist nich aufgehoben!'

01189998819991197253

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And for those that don't sprechen die Deutsch, "postponed is not canceled!"

gravitas_deficiency

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Ah, neat! The wordplay is definitely stronger in German, which I’m sure is why it became an idiom in the first place.

Matriks404

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The fuck are Copilot+ PC's? Are they regular PC's with Copilot+ branding?

Dudewitbow

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pcs with enough NPU compute power to run copilot locally in a reasonable performance level.

e. g with AMDs current laptops, the 7840 can do 10 tops, the 8840, which is core config/gpu wise, effectively the same cpu but with a larger NPU, pushing it to 16 tops for AI use.

outside of ai use, the one benefit to ai is that igpus are better and more of a focus, so expect low end laptop gaming to get a lot better.

Xatolos

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They are PC that have NPUs (Neural Processing Units) in the CPU/SoC, and a few other requirements.

Here are the specs required.

Petter1

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They are ARM based

tootoughtoremember

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Nope, Windows will still not be my next PC. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, you can't get fooled again.

cheese_greater

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Its kinda funny this happened with iCloud e2ee. Backlash, then much of it now is convergently encrypted but they still have the filenames and checksums/hashes for everything (which is emphatically not e2ee or at at least zero-trust as implied by the designation) and they never really needed the contents anyway. All the deets are in the metadata which is only "standard" (un)protected.

vegaquake

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Good, now keep it that way

cyberpunk007

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They won't