It’s a little sad being a fan of tech these days. AI is consuming the world’s art and emotion and spitting out slop, and it’s driving up the price of just about every piece of consumer electronics as it does.
If you don’t need to upgrade your computer anytime soon, then you’re in a good spot - except Windows 11 is doing its damnedest to be a mess of Copilot and bugs. While Microsoft is moving to improve things (with Windows head honcho Pavan Davuluri promising big changes back in March), it feels as though we might be better off nuking the whole thing from orbit.
A bloated mess
In an update published last week, Davuluri shared a number of changes the team had made in the months since committing to improving Windows 11.
It’s well worth a read, but what strikes me are the elements that feel so foundational to Windows. Windows 11 is almost 5 years old, and yet the team is now working on a “faster and more dependable File Explorer” and allowing “more taskbar customization”.
In many ways, these feel like table stakes. These are things that should have been hammered home a long time ago, and it shows how disconnected from its consumers’ reality Microsoft is at this point. People have been using Windows 11 and calling for a smaller memory footprint for 8GB machines, and now Microsoft is finally on board.
The Copilot-addled, bloated mess that Windows 11 has become can no longer be considered the price to pay for a more modular, customizable OS than its Apple or Linux contemporaries.
My MacBook Air M3 is the device I reach for to do work, despite having a beefy gaming rig with more RAM than I know what to do with. It’s perhaps unsurprising that Microsoft can’t seem to pick a lane.
The company is all about AI now, but not long ago it was being able to run Android apps on Windows, before that it was mixed reality and before that it was Cortana.
The company keeps chasing trends while ignoring what many customers want
The company keeps chasing trends while ignoring what many customers want: A steady, stable, secure OS.
Recent updates have helped fix those cracked foundations, but I fear Windows 11 might be too far gone, even with the upcoming option to uninstall AI models from Copilot+ PCs, the app toggles, and more.
I don't know if it can rebuild
Back in 2024, former Windows developer Andy Young showcased how even with 128GB of RAM, Microsoft’s Search Bar was a laggy mess and causing major issues when just trying to find something.
In the months that followed, Microsoft fixed it, but it took one of their own to put them on blast to achieve it. It’s almost as if the staff there aren’t using Windows 11 day-to-day; seeing adverts, the constant Copilot interjections, and more.
That makes me think that it’s run its race, and that the company is moving to Windows 12 (or at least thinking about it), almost certainly with a sizeable AI component.
Do you agree? Or are you happy with Windows 11? Drop a message in the comments with your thoughts.
One only has to look across the platform divide to see that Apple has taken its own kickings in recent years. Customers became so used to the thoughtful updates to macOS that something like the borders of windows not lining up was seen as a huge issue as part of the Liquid Glass rollout last year.
Windows 11’s modularity has always been one of its strengths: It’s a gaming platform, it’s a workspace, it’s somewhere you can install something for everything and get what you need done. But in recent years, it’s lost its way big time, and I feel like Microsoft simply doesn’t know how to turn this massive ship around without rebuilding it all from scratch.
But hey, those are just my thoughts. Do you agree with me? Or are you happy with the way Windows 11 is running for you? Drop me a message in the comments with your thoughts.
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