Another Brick in the Wall (Premium)

Yes, I’ve made a career out of Microsoft’s inability to communicate effectively. But this is a serious and ongoing problem that needs to be addressed. Case in point, the recent confusion around a Mute/Unmute feature that Microsoft announced for Windows 11 but then delayed until a future update.

I know. It doesn’t seem like a big deal. And it isn’t really. It’s just one tiny example in a sea of many examples of Microsoft not communicating effectively to its own customers, causing confusion, and then disappointing its biggest fans when it doesn’t come through on what it originally promised.

So let’s just step through this. It won’t take long, but I hope the decision-makers at Microsoft will at least take these words to heart: you are losing our trust because you do this kind of thing all the time.

Microsoft unveiled the Mute/Unmute feature as part of its Windows 11 reveal last June. It was just one of many features, and I suspect that many people forgot about it as the summer dragged on and enthusiasts excitedly tested the first build, experiencing the new Windows 11 user interface and other new features for the first time.

But I didn’t forget. Indeed, small as it is, I regarded this feature, which Microsoft officially calls “Mute and unmute,” as one of Windows 11’s best additions. After all, many PC makers provide dedicated keys on their keyboards for this very use case, but … many do not. Having a global microphone toggle makes sense. Especially in these pandemic days of never-ending conference calls.

And to be clear, Microsoft discussed this feature many times.

During our initial briefing with the software giant, media was told that “you can now easily mute and unmute your microphone directly from your taskbar.”

And at that time, Microsoft CEO Satay Nadella appeared in a Wall Street Journal video in which it was described as “a universal mute button that lives in the system tray so you don’t always have to go digging in whatever video calling app to mute yourself.”

These types of explanations made me, and many others, believe that this feature was truly global: that you could literally toggle the PC’s microphone by clicking this icon in the taskbar. But when Windows 11 shipped, this feature was not available. Yes, a microphone icon does appear whenever you use the microphone. When you click it, the Settings app loads and navigates to Privacy & security > Microphone. Ah well, it will work correctly one day, right?

Hm.

Here’s the thing. This feature was never going to provide global mute/unmute capabilities. Instead, developers must use new APIs, specific to Windows 11, to add this capability to their applications. So the makers of Zoom and other apps could literally choose to ignore this if they want, forcing you to continue using their own apps to control your PC’s microphone.

We know this because Microsoft’s official Windows 11 requirements page notes tha...