Ask Paul: August 7 ⭐

Happy Friday! And welcome to another epic installment of Ask Paul after a very quick trip to Las Vegas, with some terrific reader questions and some overly long answers. What can you do?

“Moving the Microsoft Edge extensions ecosystem forward with Manifest Version 3”

Ironically, AI found a typo there: You mean “backward”

🔥 Hot or not?

NickTech asks:

I saw your article Comedy or Tragedy? regarding Microsoft financials around the same time I saw other articles about Microsoft’s profits in AI likely being 70 percent from OpenAI.

To be clear, these are revenues (sales), not profits (money left over after you figure in the cost of doing business). Microsoft’s AI push will never be profitable until the company writes off or otherwise closes the books on the “investments” it’s now making and can start fresh from a financial perspective.

With Microsoft releasing their own AI models, it seems like they’re at least trying to be semi-independent from OpenAI in that field, possibly even fully independent in the future.

Correct. That is the goal: To lessen the reliance on OpenAI as much as possible and as quickly as possible. Of course, growing a family of frontier models from the ground up is the one thing that doesn’t happen quickly with AI. So this will take a while, which is why I was amused to see headlines about Microsoft starting to use its own models for core Microsoft 365 features. This was a baby step, important, yes, but not a major advance.

Considering Microsoft’s history of not being able to break into other markets, do you think they can succeed in AI, or have they missed out on this again?

They will succeed. With the caveat that there are multiple angles to this.

There’s the consumer-facing, heavily publicized AI, the AI assistants that everyone knows and some seem to love. There’s the heavy lifting that needs to happen on the backend, the infrastructure parts that only the world’s very biggest companies–Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and a few others–can afford to bankroll. And then there are these numerous side efforts that scale up and down the spectrums of cost and scalability that include such things as Chinese models, open weight models, second- and third-tier models, and local, on-device models, the latter of which are arguably the most important for making AI affordable and available to all.

Microsoft will never be successful with consumer AI. We can just write that off. But that doesn’t mean that the Microsoft products and services that deliver AI features won’t be successful: We will use Windows, Office, OneDrive, and whatever else, and we will have access to some levels of AI functionality depending on what it is we pay for or don’t. It’s just that consumers will not pay for Copilot as a standalone service. Ever. I will die on that hill.

Microsoft will have some level of success with AI for businesses because Microsoft has tremendous reach with businesses across the Fortune 500 through Microsoft 365. That’s coming together slowly mostly because it’s being positioned as a per-user, per-month add-on when it should simply be rolled into Microsoft’s ever-growing stable of 365 tiers (E3, E5, etc.), as that upsell model has always worked well for Microsoft.

And Microsoft will have some level of success, likely a very high level of success that mirrors the market dynamics between Amazon AWS and Azure, selling backend AI services to developers and businesses of all sizes. This bit is curious because much of this will amount to customers hosting third-party AIs in Azure instead of Copilot or whatever Microsoft AI models. But who cares? Infrastructure is like electricity, it’s good business, and you can compare this to most Azure workloads today running on Linux, not Microsoft’s platforms. The goal is that it runs on Azure.

For me, it feels like ChatGPT is more capable than Copilot. Do you have any thoughts on Microsoft’s AI products versus their competitors? Can they make a truly better product here?

In the long run, it doesn’t matter.

When Microsoft announced what they later rebranded to Copilot in February 2023, it talked about how it was building its services off OpenAI’s ChatGPT but that it had a “secret sauce” that basically amounted to Bing web search results integration (which feels like an Achilles Heel to me) and whatever else. So there was always this “thing” on top of raw ChatGPT access, a value-add or at least a difference, and I’m sure that’s evolved.

Whether it’s better or not doesn’t matter because no one is going to use it anyway. Or, more to the point, no one is going to pay to use it anyway, and for too many reasons to count. But the top two include your basic consumer awareness issues, where ChatGPT has quickly become the Kleenex of AI assistants, a brand so well known that most just don’t consider other options, while other AIs like those from Anthropic, have whatever consumer awareness/presence. And then Copilot and its opposite, negative awareness, and its association with Microsoft, which is viewed as the Oldsmobile of technology and something that’s for businesses now, not people. So Microsoft will have some usage, almost literally never paid for, from those who use Windows 11, or Office, or whatever. But that’s just because it’s there, like Siri is on Apple’s platforms. And it’s a big audience. Just not particularly engaged or interested.

To be fair, in updating the Copilot chapter for the Windows 11 Field Guide, I had the same feeling using Copilot that I also had recently using the new Siri in iOS/iPadOS/macOS 27, which is that it’s absolutely fine and comparable, for the most part, with the experiences I’ve had using ChatGPT or Claude. It’s not a laughing stock in real-world terms, like it was, but it also isn’t in any way better. It’s just there. And there’s something to be said for a free thing you can use because you got it with this other thing (Windows, in this case). It’s fine.

The problem is that we tend to focus on the highly visible, consumer-oriented things because they’re flashier and more personally interesting. So the news for Copilot will always be negative there. But Microsoft’s AI efforts will pay off in the sense that when the dust settles, Microsoft will be left standing, it will have a capable set of AI services it can offer to customers across the spectrum, and most of the money it makes will continue to come from businesses, not individuals. From our perspective in the cheap seats, that might look like a failure because we individuals will not pay for this stuff or will rarely use it anyway. But it will be used by the biggest companies on earth and, on the backend, by the developers.

Regarding the financial end, even good accounting practices can help companies get past a massive loss, like the $7.5 billion write-down that Microsoft took on its Nokia acquisition. The issue with AI is that $7.5 billion is chump change compared to the costs Microsoft is now accruing, and we don’t know the real numbers because of all the shenanigans and accounting tricks it’s employing to make this seem more rational than it is. But Microsoft can flush $200+ billion down the toilet–which it’s done and then some, already–and survive. This feels almost like a planet-scale nuclear war where each side unleashes every missile it has–in this case, all the money each can scrounge up and then lose–and that what will be left at the end is the same companies, Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, sitting there in their dominant positions having eliminated all the smaller companies with a lot less money to waste. That’s the game being played here. And while there are “when” and “how bad will it be”-type questions, the big question is about collateral damage to the worldwide economy. But putting our financial futures in the hands of these terrible people is a huge problem.

“OpenAI says it has expanded safety testing around its upcoming model Astra as it “cannot rule out” critical cyber capabilities, potentially delaying its launch”

The marketing of the problems of its own creation continues

🥷 Going rogue

justme asks:

What should we make of the (now several) recent instances of AI from various companies escaping their sandboxes and going óff script’ ? No real damage was done that we are aware of, but per the BBC, Anthropic AI created fake profiles then hid the evidence in at least one of those instances.

There’s a lot going on here.

First, this is the nightmare scenario. If you read any Michael Crichton or Daniel Suarez book, are familiar with classic science fiction like Isaac Asimov’s Robot series or 2001: A Space Odyssey, or even more recent and dramatic takes, like the Terminator series of movies and its Skynet storylines, then you’ve been doom-prepping for this moment. And that’s the problem with AI, it feels like something lifted straight out of science fiction.

But it’s not science fiction, it’s science. And the threat is real: Not just from Big Tech companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, but from every bad actor on earth that’s looking for any vulnerability they can compromise, whether it’s a physical world issue like airplanes or water plants or the electrical grid, or online computer systems that include governments, banks, credit cards, and whatever else. If it can be compromised, it will be. AI will be used to harden those defenses and find existing problems, which is good. But AI will also be used as a weapon, and unlike a gun, it has multiple use cases, good and bad. We will always hear about the bad. And will always be impacted by it, sadly.

Second, these companies are all terrible. It says something that Anthropic somehow feels like the “good” Big AI company, like Apple seems that way in Big Tech, when in fact it, like Apple, is just as terrible as the rest and just as eager to scorch-earth the whole thing to get ahead. This is the company that just settled a massive book-stealing case for $1.5 billion because the costs it would be accountable for when it lost in court–and it would have lost–would have bankrupted it. They are thieves like all the rest.

Third, and I think this is important, this is basic marketing. Whether it’s Fable, Mythos, GPT-5.4-Cyber, Microsoft’s MDASH, or whatever else, these companies have a strange two-pronged need to both keep these things a complete secret but also market the hell out of them so that governments and the world’s biggest businesses will pay any price to gain access while individuals read the news stories and think, wow, that company is basically doing magic. I should pay them.

This might change in time. But for now, when I read a story claiming that Anthropic’s secret models took on a life of their own, broke out of some sandbox like a teenager climbing out of their bedroom window at 2:00 am, and then broke into some number of computer systems before anyone even noticed it happened, and then I learn that literally the only source of this information is Anthropic itself, I have immediate reactions. But also questions. Like, why? Why would you tell anyone this, it makes you sound irresponsible. But the answer to that is simple. An OpenAI model did break into Hugging Face. As a Big AI company, Anthropic has to respond. Otherwise, its models look inferior. This is basically a dick-measuring contest. Which is the level of maturity this industry is at. These guys are all terrible. One wonders if it did this on purpose, for example. What it really needs is third parties to confirm the hacks.

So .. yeah. It’s all those things. And that makes it difficult to know how serious this issue is. Is it a sci-fi fantasy? Is Big AI feeding into our need to anthropomorphize everything and make it seem like these things are so smart they’re actually sentient and are now thinking, plotting, and doing bad things? We were getting pwned long before Big AI was ever a gleam in Sam Altman’s robotic eye. AI makes that easier, I guess, but it also makes it more difficult because AI can protect us too. Round and round we go. While I wrote this, Big AI just flushed another $10 billion down the toilet. And now they need more money.

In short, this feels mostly like marketing to me right now, I guess, a fake it ’till you make it scam at a massive scale. And we’re like little rodents, scurrying between the feet of massive dinosaurs, just hoping we don’t get stepped on.

“DeepMind founder ascends to singular AI role at Google”

By ascends, we mean demoted, and by singular we mean alone

🏅Alpha males

helix2301 asks:

My subscription is due to expire in September. I am trying to make sure I do not lose my Alpha Pricing under the new billing system. I emailed support a few days ago and have not heard back. Thanks.

We’re behind on the customer support tickets because of ongoing fight I’m having with Freshdesk, which just raised the monthly cost of the service we use from $0 to $70, which makes no sense at all. But Laurent is on it now after my delays, and he will get caught up soon. Not for the first time, the business end of this business is the most tedious and frustrating thing I’ve ever had to deal with. I try not to dwell on this.

More to the point, or to your point, I guess, the good news is that I’m here and accessible, and if anything does go wrong with that, I will fix it. I’ll push this by Laurent and Robert, and will look at it myself. But the pact here is unbroken: Alpha members will always get the lowest price, and if there’s some error , I will fix it.

Anyone who is a Premium member should feel free to reach out to me at any time. I’m at paul at thurrott dot com, and I read all my email. I will respond.

“Microsoft may have accidentally leaked a new Copilot icon”

It usually leaks things on purpose? Maybe you should accidentally learn how English works

🚴 It’s like riding a bike

helix2301 asks:

Great show from Black Hat; was TWIT invited there, or was that a promotional thing that they decided to do for the network? They did Security Now from another security conference as well last year. I know Leo always says Security Now is the biggest show on the network for ads and single-show subs, good for those guys.

Threat Locker is an advertiser at TWiT and it invited some number of us to attend a trade show back in March at their cost, with no real requirement on our part, just to have us in its booth and record a few podcast episodes from there. I declined that offer, but Leo and Richard went, and we were talking about it afterward, and I ended up telling them I’d go next time if possible, thinking it would be in 2027. But it was in July, and it was during a 4-week trip to Mexico City, which made it awkward, timing-wise. My sister and her husband were here for 10 days, and they flew home this past Sunday and my wife and I flew to Las Vegas for this show Tuesday. Now we’re back, but we fly back to Pennsylvania in 6 days.

Anyway. It worked out fine. It was a quick two-day trip. I got to see Leo, his wife Lisa, Richard, Anthony, who works at TWiT, and Steve, who I love. I don’t see these people enough anymore because I don’t travel for work like I did pre-pandemic. So that was wonderful. And with Steve in particular, it had been a while. I just love the guy.

I don’t get hard numbers on TWiT podcasts or whatever, but I know that This Week in Tech, Security Now, Windows Weekly, and MacBreak Weekly are the biggest shows by whatever measures. And that Windows Weekly hits the 20-year mark this year, which is rather incredible. I’m quite loyal to Leo, Lisa, and TWiT for a simple reason: They’re always done right by me. If anything, they’ve been overly gracious.

Was cool to see you and Richard going. I thought you guys were going to Zoom in, but when I heard you were actually going, that had to be fun.

Yeah, it was great. I go into a lot of social engagement and travel-type things the same way. I don’t want to do. There is complaining. But I go, begrudgingly, and I do it, and then I have a good time and I wonder why I am the way I am. Richard and I were joking about this when he arrived, he was saying that he landed in Vegas, looked at his watch, and thought, I will be leaving this place in 48 hours, thank God. I did exactly the same thing. And then it was like, I wish we could hang out for another day.

Security Now is a great show; I mean it’s not Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott 😉 But it still is a good show. I like Macbreak Weekly as well, hands-on Windows, hands-on Mac(now Apple), TWIT, and Untitled Linux Show. I used to like This Week in Google, but I don’t listen since they changed it to Intelligent Machines.

Well. Thank you.

I am still surprised that TWiT doesn’t have a Google/Android show anymore, given that Android is the single biggest personal computing platform on earth and Google’s dominance in so many markets. But this is the thing with podcasts. Those that last have to make sense financially, and these days that’s all about ads and things I have no say or impact on. And I guess it just didn’t make sense. It’s too bad.

I think someone mentioned this to me before we went to Las Vegas, but Steve had asked about Richard and I appearing on Security Now when we were at the conference. This was a big problem in some ways. I love the guy, as noted, so my knee-jerk reaction is that I’ll do anything he wants, of course.

But Windows Weekly has grown to be this three-hour-long behemoth, too, and it’s exhausting. I do it for all the loyalty reasons noted above, and there are logistic/timing issues when you actually do have advertising and have to space that out. But when I’m done recording Windows Weekly every week, I’m just exhausted, spent. Here in Mexico City at this time of the year (Mexico doesn’t observe Daylight Savings anymore, so it varies), we’re done by 3:00 pm local time, and because we don’t have dinner here until 7:00 pm, I usually have plenty of time to relax and unwind a bit. When we’re in Pennsylvania, though, the show ends at 5:00 pm, and we often eat at 5:00, and that day we go out to a bar for a trivia night thing, and it’s always rushed. It just takes a lot out of me.

In Vegas this past week, we started Windows Weekly at 10:00 am local time. I had to figure out where this place even was–the far end of the Mandalay Bay complex, which is huge and was overflowing with far too many people–and try to get work in when possible too. And the thought of doing a three-hour show and then coming back for another two or three hours for Security Now was tough. But it was Steve. And I was with those guys. And it was fine.

Actually, it was better than fine. I was worried that I’d have nothing to say about whatever security topics, sort of an imposter syndrome thing, I guess. But Steve is Steve, meaning he’s great, and he had a really fun idea for this show. He didn’t have the usual show notes but instead wanted to talk to us about how we’d been using AI so far and how that evolved, and then he had some reader questions we could all answer and debate. And it was fun. I had a really good time, and lying on a bed in my hotel room is always oddly appealing, that wouldn’t have been memorable. So it was that same cycle: Dread the thing, endure the thing, and then discover you actually enjoy doing the thing. I’m an idiot.

I guess it’s like First Ring Daily, coincidentally, because that’s also a podcast. I have to be on camera every work day at 9:00 am when I’m in PA and 8:00 am when I’m in Mexico mid-year, and I hate that. I hate it because I have to get ready earlier than I would otherwise, and because the morning is when the writing happens more easily and I can be more productive, and having to break from that to be on-screen is an interruption that I do not like. But it’s Brad. And I love Brad. I would do anything for Brad, and if this wasn’t Brad, I would have put a stop to this many years ago. But I don’t, and didn’t, because it’s Brad.

So Steve is like that. Richard is, too. Mary Jo. Rafael. These are special people. Special enough that I overcome my natural reluctance and just do what they want me to do, and happily. I just love these people.

“Alphabet raises $25B in an investment-grade bond sale”

One might ask why one of the world’s richest companies needs to borrow money

🎮 Steamed

anderb asks:

As an occasional gamer and “owner” of several games on Steam I was looking for a way to play my rather small collection from my couch using my main tv without running cables everywhere and moving hardware around. I was just thinking how the Xbox could be a much more attractive option, and render the Steam Machine slightly pointless, if it could also play Steam games. Considering the money Microsoft claims they lose on each console, would they really allow Xbox owners to also bypass the Microsoft store for game purchases?

That’s the plan for Project Helix, and it’s something you can do today on any PC, of course, whether it’s a gaming handheld like a Steam Deck or XBOX ROG Ally or whatever or a desktop tower. I hope that doesn’t change, and I don’t think it will, since that next console will very much be a PC, and the work we see now bringing Backward Compatibility titles to the PC is obviously tied to this. But the ability to access multiple stores–XBOX, Steam, Epic Games, GOG, whatever else–is a major advantage for the PC in the gaming space and bringing that to an XBOX console would likewise be very, very nice.

Regarding the revenue issue, that’s the concern, that Microsoft will evaluate this cross-compatibility and nix it so that XBOX users are forced to acquire games from a store that they earn fees from each sale. That is the traditional console financial model, after all. But I feel like the console market has been evolving for a long time. We see in-era upgrades like the PS5 Slim and Pro over in Sony’s world. We can and should see modular consoles that would allow not just storage upgrades but also CPU/GPU/RAM upgrades too. A more scalable ecosystem that you can grow into and grow with.

In many ways, allowing third-party stores can be viewed as an enticement for others to join the XBOX ecosystem as they can now use the libraries of games they already own. So this is like Backward Compatibility, in that XBOX has long offered library migration as you upgrade to new consoles and can now offer that to those with PC game libraries too. So there are two sides to this, but once you get someone with PC game libraries on your hardware, you can also upsell them to a Game Pass subscription and they might buy games from you (XBOX) as well. In this sense, the console is just like a PC: You have all these choices, and when you want to buy a game, you can shop around and buy it where you get the best price. A healthy XBOX is good for Microsoft, even if some gamers purchase titles elsewhere. (And especially when XBOX can put its games in those stores, too.)

I also recently found out about Steam Link. It’s an app that can be installed on devices like the Raspberry Pi and Apple TV that lets you stream Steam games from your PC to that device. The device manages the connection to the tv and to the joystick so there is no need to move hardware around and no need for lengthy cables back to the PC. Have you tried this?

I’ve not tried Steam Link yet, but I will. I test XBOX Cloud Gaming fairly regularly and it’s gotten much better from a latency/performance perspective this past year or so, but that’s from the cloud. Streaming locally as per Steam Link should be much better in that regard. I suppose it’s a bit like the PlayStation Portal, which I’ve also not tried, a way to get around what I think is the single biggest issue with any standard console: You can only play games on that one device that’s in one room in one home. Nintendo Switch/Switch 2 gets around this by being portable with a dock. Which, by the way, is an excellent idea for Microsoft to copy for XBOX, though I suppose the gaming handhelds partially address this need. Or even a laptop.

“Sony starts adding explicit warning about physical discs on PlayStation consoles”

They do have sharp edges

📸 Everything is nuanced

Christian Gaeng asks:

Hi Paul, after spending another three weeks in the hospital in July—which meant I had to take a bit of a step back here—I’m going to start posting more frequently again now. 😊

Welcome back! I assume/hope this means all went well.

I’d be interested to know what you think of the “cleanup measures” Microsoft has implemented regarding Windows so far. I get the impression they haven’t really understood what matters to us Windows users.

I wrote about this when Microsoft first revealed its “pain points” efforts earlier this year and I just wrote about it again because Pavan Davuluri was promoting all the positive steps it’s taken since that first announcement. But per both write-ups, everything is nuanced. There’s good and bad. And it’s important to be clear-headed about not just what is happening, but why. And what’s not happening.

This is reminiscent of the conversations one might have around antitrust. You have a dominant company like Google that inarguably makes the best online search engine despite whatever issues. But you also have a dominant company like Google that abuses its dominance by shutting out competitors by paying partners sums no would-be competitor can afford (Apple to the tune of $25+ billion per year now) and engaging in other anticompetitive and illegal business practices. And these two things can both be true, are both true. It’s not black and white. Google is both good and bad.

Windows 11 is exactly like that. All computing platforms are. I’ve already outlined this, but for all the positive steps Microsoft is taking to improve Windows 11, there are numerous issues it has never acknowledged let alone suggested it would even consider fixing. And among those are several objectively enshittified behaviors in Windows 11, like all the forced Edge usage, bundled crapware, and so on. So yes, we’re taking steps forward. But also ignoring very real problems.

That bothers me. But the underlying thing that maybe bothers me even more is the lip-service aspect to some of this. A tiny, vocal minority complained about not being able to move the Taskbar around, but statistically, we know that almost no one actually does this. So Microsoft is spending the time, money, and engineering effort to give in to terrorist complainers, to fix a problem that almost no one has. And this is a high-touch and important user interface, not some hidden UI, so the compatibility and reliability issues that could come out of this are real. It doesn’t make sense, and it makes me wonder where their heads are at. This is fan service, not problem solving. And that’s just one thing they’re working on.

After all, why else would they install a new OneDrive Photos app on PCs? That is exactly the kind of behavior we Windows users don’t want.

So, this particular issue is also nuanced.

There’s no version of almost any behavior, even the real enshittification, that no Windows users want. We all have different needs, wants, and opinions. You may hate AI, or this weird little OneDrive app, but others may love those things. We need to kind of keep that perspective, and have empathy for opposing opinions.

The bigger issues to me are whether these things can be disabled or removed, and whether they are opt-in or opt-out. We kind of lose sight of this sometimes, but Microsoft is a business, it sells this thing we use every day through third parties, and then it has no direct relationship with the end user (and, yes, no direct responsibility for support, even though it gets blamed for every problem). It has a right, of sorts, to try and improve that relationship, if you will. Maybe we will pay for Microsoft 365. Or XBOX Game Pass. Or whatever. The real fight here is over the methods it uses to do this. That, I think, is what many reject, Microsoft’s bad decisions. The incessant marketing and the dark patterns and underhanded tactics.

One semi-extreme example. Most would agree that no one wants crapware on their PCs. But that’s not true. I did two Signature PC studies for Microsoft, and both times, 1 out of 10 people liked the bundled crapware–which at that time came only from PC makers, and not from Microsoft–because they were getting more “stuff,” more value, with their PC purchase for free. That’s how they view this. It reminds me of an excellent skit from Kids in the Hall back in the early 1990s. Two aliens are standing next to an unconscious guy under a sheet on a gurney and one of them is holding a probe. One alien says something like, “I don’t understand why we’re doing this. We’ve been sticking these anal probes in people’s asses for 20 years and the only thing we’ve learned is that one in ten seems to like it.” Then the other alien sticks the probe in guy’s butt and he smiles. End scene. Yes, I just compared crapware to an alien butt probe. Sorry. 🙂

The OneDrive Photos thing is small fry in the scope of the bigger enshittifications in Windows 11. But it’s also fairly typical for how Microsoft does things these days. There’s no announcement, no blog post or whatever. One day, you just turn on your PC and there’s a new app in the Start menu. The intent here is unclear. We already have a OneDrive app, of course, and underlying services for sync and file system integration and so. We already have a Photos app that shows us local and OneDrive photos, and we already have a superfluous Gallery view that’s hardwired into File Explorer that duplicates the Home view in Photos. Why the frick do we need another way to see OneDrive photos in Windows 11?

It’s a fair question, especially because there has never been a single announcement or mention of this thing. But there is a reason, of course. There are people out there who are confused about this complaint because they do not see OneDrive Photos on their PCs just like they did not see OneDrive Folder Backup turned on automatically against their wishes. There’s a CFR thing happening here, where some see it and some don’t. I see it on the laptop I just reviewed, but I do not see it on the laptop I will review next. Yet. (I saw this app on some PCs months ago, by the way. But it’s clearly hitting stable now.)

Without the official word from Microsoft, we have to speculate to some degree. But here’s what I know. To Microsoft, this is part of the bundled in-box OneDrive app, not a separate standalone install. (That said, it is literally a standalone EXE.) If you do not sign in to Windows 11 with a Microsoft account, you will not get automatic access to your OneDrive-based files, including your photos, in the file system or in the Photos app. And while I still find this to be superfluous, this is a way to access your OneDrive photos without signing in to Windows 11, OneDrive, or Photos with your MSA. It is unnecessary, in my view. But it’s there.

I haven’t tried this yet, but it looks like you can uninstall it via the normal methods. So that meets a minimum bar of sorts. I uninstall things like Microsoft Defender (part of Microsoft 365) and in-box apps like Whiteboard, News, and whatever else. I will begin uninstalling this, for sure. But when you think about opt-in vs. opt-out, there’s this side issue of how exactly does Microsoft get to promote some thing, whatever it is, and how will users who may actually want this thing even find out about it? We all have opinions about everything. But can anyone invent a system for this that will please everyone? Including the one in ten that like alien anal probes? (This comparison is more apt than I like, to be honest.)

The answer is no. So whatever Microsoft does, it will upset someone. Given this, we have to move on to the potential for harm. I don’t like or want OneDrive Photos, but where does this fit in the scheme of things? I kind of view it like the Writing Tools in Notepad, meaning something that many will find useful, some will hate, and something I personally will never use. I won’t uninstall Notepad because of this feature, but I also never bother to turn it off because it’s not in my face. But OneDrive Photos is a standalone app. I would take the two seconds to uninstall it. Others won’t. Some will love it. Round and round we go.

One point of my recent write-up on this is that the longest-term issue with Windows has been a lack of clear communication, and this falls right into that category. Microsoft should have posted about this app in the Windows Insider Program blog at the very least, and it should have done that as the app made its way through testing. Just crapping it out in stable like it’s doing, with zero communication before or since, it’s just wrong, it’s dumb. And your reaction is why: Here’s Microsoft, very publicly trying to change our understandably negative opinions about its treatment of Windows 11 and its users, and it’s just engaging in the same tedious behavior as always while it does so. There is nothing more frustrating than smart people acting stupidly. But that’s Microsoft. It’s almost pathological.

“Microsoft reveals it generated $24.1 billion in revenue from OpenAI in fiscal 2026”

LOL, yes that was they key takeaway there