Microsoft Could Be Killing the My People Feature in Windows 10

 

One of the interesting features Microsoft introduced in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update was My People. It’s a nifty way of being able to keep your close family, friends and contacts on the taskbar to interact with them quickly and frequently.

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The feature had quite a bit of a rough history, and it could be completely gone soon. According to Microsoft enthusiast Albacore on Twitter, Microsoft will start showing a deprecation notice for the feature in an upcoming Windows 10 19H1 build:

Microsoft will likely phase out My People slowly rather than completely removing it at once, though the company is yet to acknowledge any of this for the time being. Albacore has also revealed some of the other upcoming features coming to Windows 10 19H1, including an Apple TrueTone-like feature that adjusts the brightness of your display based on the surrounding environment.

Microsoft killing the My People feature shouldn’t be a shock at all. The feature isn’t supported by any major services apart from Microsoft’s own apps like Mail and Skype, and the experience of the feature continues to be a lot rougher than Microsoft originally envisioned. It certainly was a cool idea, but the execution? Not so much.

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Conversation 23 comments

  • thalter

    Premium Member
    14 December, 2018 - 11:38 am

    <p>First thing I do when setting up a new system is right-click the taskbar and uncheck "Show People on the taskbar," so I view this as a win. Now if they could just do the same thing with Cortana.</p>

  • maethorechannen

    Premium Member
    14 December, 2018 - 11:40 am

    <p>I think the problem with My People is that it solves "yesterday's problem" – it would have been a great feature back in the heydays of IM on the PC. But even then I'm not sure it's something that should have been baked in to the OS.</p>

  • BoItmanLives

    14 December, 2018 - 11:46 am

    <p>"<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The feature had quite a bit of a rough history, and it could be completely&nbsp;gone soon."</span></p><p><br></p><p>Yeah like being utterly useless and totally pointless–more mobile-wannabe crapware layered onto Windows 10 that everyone ignores.</p><p><br></p><p> Android and iOS is where the world communicates now, too bad Nadella never took mobile seriously.</p>

    • Alastair Cooper

      14 December, 2018 - 12:13 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#381913">In reply to BoItmanLives:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>I don't think it's that he doesn't take mobile seriously, it's that their platform play in that arena had already lost so now they are focusing on apps and services.</p>

    • lvthunder

      Premium Member
      14 December, 2018 - 1:02 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#381913">In reply to BoItmanLives:</a></em></blockquote><p>Clearly you don't work for a business where everyone is in front of a computer for 8 hours a day. Most people in my office use the desktop versions of Skype or Teams to communicate. Even with our remote employees.</p>

      • Atoqir

        14 December, 2018 - 4:39 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#381934">In reply to lvthunder:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Yeah our company is also boring and old fashioned like that.</p><p><br></p><p>I personally await visual studio on my phone so i can be cool and productive at the same time :p</p>

        • TheFerrango

          18 December, 2018 - 2:42 am

          <blockquote><a href="#382030"><em>In reply to Atoqir:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Pfft, old fashioned? We still leave memo notes on each other's desks :D</p>

      • Greg Green

        15 December, 2018 - 11:14 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#381934">In reply to lvthunder:</a></em></blockquote><p>Our larger office where everyone is in front of a computer for 8 hours a day never uses Skype or Teams to communicate. So in the end an anecdote isn't data, it's just an anecdote. Even by MS' numbers Teams is barely a decimal point and Skype, with more than 5 million daily users, is only a single digit fraction of the Office 365 base.</p>

        • fbman

          18 December, 2018 - 2:34 am

          <blockquote><a href="#382165"><em>In reply to Greg Greg</em></a></blockquote><blockquote><br></blockquote><blockquote><em>I think the Skype usage will be inaccurate as companies would properly use Skype for business and not normal Skype to communicate internally.</em></blockquote><blockquote><br></blockquote><blockquote>My employer has 17000 users all using skype for business. We cant communicate outside the company firewall, so those users will not be counted. If you want to communicate outside, you need normal Skype.</blockquote><blockquote><br></blockquote><blockquote><br></blockquote>

  • Elan Gabriel

    14 December, 2018 - 11:50 am

    <p>"<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">It certainly was a cool idea, but the execution? Not so much."</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">That is true for Windows 10 as a whole. My people needed UWP app, no one cares about UWP, so it's dead.</span></p>

  • waethorn

    14 December, 2018 - 11:53 am

    <p>Good.</p>

  • Cdorf

    Premium Member
    14 December, 2018 - 1:00 pm

    <p>Microsoft didn't even fully support My People. It never integrated with Outlook- we used a GPO to turn it off so as not to confuse our users.</p>

  • lvthunder

    Premium Member
    14 December, 2018 - 1:00 pm

    <p>Microsoft didn't even completely support it. I think it would have been good if Teams had supported it.</p>

  • Patrick3D

    14 December, 2018 - 1:32 pm

    <p>It's like there are consumer advocates and business advocates at Microsoft in a constant tug of war for the desktop experience, all the meanwhile Microsoft doesn't know it has advocates.</p>

  • bbold

    14 December, 2018 - 2:31 pm

    <p>I don't understand why MS likes to kill off features. Why not keep it onboard and just introduce a 'toggle switch' for this in settings.. If people want it, they can have it. But why kill something if it works for some people but maybe not for others? A logical idea would be to just hide it and allow its use in settings if the user wants it.</p>

    • irfaanwahid

      15 December, 2018 - 12:22 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#381978">In reply to bbold:</a></em></blockquote><p>A feature that is loved (used) by the minority, it is very difficult for Microsoft or any software development company to support and maintain it, from resources point of view.</p><p>It is easy to have a toggle for on/off but they still have to support/maintain it with every new OS version.</p>

  • gregsedwards

    Premium Member
    14 December, 2018 - 3:41 pm

    <p>What's Albacore's track record on this stuff? I'm just saying…I hadn't ever heard of the Twitter handle before the other day. Somebody like Walking Cat has proven him/herself to be pretty a reliable source over the years. Otherwise, it seems like quite a lot of speculation that just plays into people's biases and expectations.</p>

  • NT6.1

    14 December, 2018 - 5:40 pm

    <p>You won't be missed. The first thing I do after a fresh install is hide this useless thing. LMAO!!!</p>

  • MacLiam

    Premium Member
    14 December, 2018 - 7:01 pm

    <p>I never used it, so I don't really care if they deprecate it or not. One advantage of its complete departure would be to recapture icon space on the systray/task bar.</p><p><br></p><p>Speaking of deprecation, if they wanted to turn off the gigantic empty box that obliterates half or more of my desktop whenever I go to the Cortana search field, that would be OK with me. Or at least give me the option of seeing <em>only </em>the old single-column presentation of relevant hits when I need to find something. The current enhanced search thing ls like a dollar solution to a nickel problem. Less is more!</p>

  • Xatom

    14 December, 2018 - 9:12 pm

    <p>Just another example of something no one wanted going away. Windows is increasingly reminding me of the lines from 6th Sense. They only see what they want to see. They don't know they're dead.</p>

  • Tony Barrett

    15 December, 2018 - 11:02 am

    <p>Another feature literally no-one actually asked for, yet MS added. This will go the way of many other <em>features </em>over time. If MS just concentrated on what was important, Windows 10 would be a far better OS overall, but they just seem to get caught up in this bi-annual feature update mess, where they think they HAVE to deliver new features – all the time. They need to take a year off, forget new features, and just double down on the basics. If they get them right, they'll have a far more stable OS to build off of.</p>

    • lethalleigh

      15 December, 2018 - 11:28 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#382162">In reply to ghostrider:</a></em></blockquote><p>Didn't MS state 1809 was just that? An update focussed on security and stability. </p><p><br></p><p>That turned out well. s/</p>

  • TheFerrango

    18 December, 2018 - 2:44 am

    <p>Wouldn't trust any new feature until it's been supported for at least three years. I already got burned with Rooms on WP. And WP itself. And Zune. And Cortana to a degree.</p><p><br></p><p>Farewell "My People" feature.</p>

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