23H2, Microsoft Teams (Free), And an Inability to Communicate Effectively (Premium)

Microsoft’s laughable inability to communicate effectively reached absurd heights today with the release of Windows 11 version 23H2. But it’s not just the product or the non-existent “Fall update” we were promised. There’s also a little problem with the one “major” new feature in 23H2 that didn’t ship previously in preview form.

I am referring of course to Microsoft Teams (free). Microsoft has a branding problem when it comes to this free consumer version of Teams, and the release of Windows 11 version 23H2 today doesn’t change that in the slightest. In fact, it may have just gotten more confusing.

But let me back up for a moment as recent history plays into this story.

Microsoft announced in September that it would preempt 23H2 by releasing most of its new features ahead of schedule to customers on Windows 11 version 22H2. But even that announcement was miscommunicated: Yes, those features would ship before 23H2, but they would ship only in preview form, meaning that most users wouldn’t get them, let alone even learn about them.

Worse, those new features would ship in preview form twice for some reason, once in September and then again in October. (The only difference between the two releases was that the first used Controlled Feature Release technology to randomly deploy new features whereas the second had all the new features enabled by default for everyone.)

Today’s public release of the 23H2 update once again brings all those new features to Windows 11 users, albeit in non-preview form for the first time, ensuring that everyone will get them. If your PC is compatible with Windows 11 version 22H2, you’re getting 23H2 immediately. It’s that simple.

Just kidding! As Microsoft boogeyman John Cable explains, there is still a small possibility that a “safeguard hold” could delay the delivery of this update to your PC. Hilarious.

On that note, I’d like to think I’m not an “I told you so” kind of guy, but I now have some evidence to the contrary.

On the day of that September Microsoft event, as we listened to different people from the company tell us different stories, I did what I always do and stated the truth as simply as possible: This “Fall update” or whatever the heck Microsoft was trying to call it at different times of the day was nothing less than 23H2. And the fact that Microsoft has still not actually shipped that update to Windows 11 customers—remember, a preview update is not an “update,” it’s a preview update—to this day proves my point: 23H2 is here now in stable. And the Fall update, for lack of a better term, is not.

(Will the Fall Update ever ship? Meaning, will it ever ship in non-preview form in stable? Who can say? What’s the potential user base for this thing now that 23H2 is out and is compatible with the same 22H2-based PCs? That was rhetorical.)

You know where I stand on this kind of nonsense: It doesn’t help anyone. But that’s what Microsoft does these days. They talk. Garbage comes out. What they say is going to happen does not happen. I try to make sense of it. And my success rate has only gone down this year. As I noted in First 23H2 Update is Now Available for the Windows 11 Field Guide E-Book, “it’s been an unprecedented year of chaos, change, and uncertainty” when it comes to Windows 11 updates. It sure has.

But the free, in-box version of Microsoft Teams is one thing we haven’t discussed much. It lands neatly into this communications discussion.

Here again, we need to look back at a bit of history.

In late 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Microsoft introduced an interesting feature called Meet Now to the Windows 10 Taskbar. Meet Now was the perfect solution for that troubling year, a good idea: It allowed anyone using Windows 10 to make free audio and video calls with anyone in the world using Skype technologies, and from a competitive standpoint, it was an attempt (albeit a failed attempt) to stem the pandemic-era growth spurt that Zoom enjoyed.

When Microsoft announced Windows 11 in June 2021, it announced that this “new” OS would integrate with Teams, not Skype, and that a “Teams panel” would replace Meet Now. In typical Microsoft form, however, this was miscommunicated. That panel would be called Chat (or, depending on whom you asked, Chat with Microsoft Teams), and it would be one of a handful of weird new “items” (not shortcuts) pinned by default to the Taskbar. Features related to this, like Taskbar mute/unmute and sharing were promised but not delivered until over a year later.

Chat, like Meet Now, was just a friendly front-end to the underlying app (the free, consumer version of Teams in Windows 11, and Skype in Windows 10). But Chat, like Meet Now, did nothing to improve the usage of that underlying app. Worse, the free, consumer version of Teams never had a chance. Microsoft didn’t just name its front-end inconsistently, it made the mistake of reusing the Teams brand with a product that almost literally no one would ever use. It was not a good idea. For all of the popularity that the commercial version of Teams enjoys, the free Teams in Windows 11 has been utterly ignored by users.

And now it’s gotten worse in Windows 11 version 23H2.

Before this release, the free, consumer version of Microsoft Teams in Windows 11 was called, wait for it, Microsoft Teams. The same name as the commercial product. The free, consumer version of Microsoft Teams was configured to auto-start when you signed in to Windows 11—another brilliant example of forced usage and disregard for user needs—and so those who installed the “real” Teams, the commercial version, had two apps with the exact same name auto-starting every time they signed in. Two apps with the exact same name and very, very similar icons.

But don’t worry, Microsoft fixed it. Microsoft renamed the real Teams to, wait for it, “Microsoft Teams (work or school).” Problem solved! Now it was obvious which one you needed to disable in Task Manager’s Startup apps interface.

Anyway, Windows 11 version 23H2 is here. And in the build-up to this release and the non-existent “Fall update,” we were told to expect a new version of Teams in Windows 11. This version of Teams would be pinned to the Taskbar like a normal app, not a weird “item”—its spot was taken by Copilot, it seems—and it would be called Microsoft Teams – Free. It would arrive in 23H2, not the Fall update. Which, again, did not exist anyway.

Well, it’s here now. Except that Microsoft now calls this app “Microsoft Teams (free),” not “Microsoft Teams – Free.” And it actually has a Chat-like front end that’s nearly identical to its predecessor that Microsoft now calls the “mini Teams window.” You don’t toggle between the mini and normal Teams windows, they’re separate. They can both be onscreen at the same time. Or you can use either one. You just have to close the one you don’t want manually, I guess.

I guess because I, like all of you, will never use this app. And yet, inexplicably, this app, which is not a new app but is rather obviously just an updated version of the previous app, has gotten some new features—sorry, new “experiences”—today too. I don’t know why.

Also odd about that announcement is that it also discusses other Teams updates, meaning updates to other Teams apps. And among them is, wait for it, something called “the free version of Microsoft Teams.” Is this … Microsoft Teams (free)? As it turns out, yes it is. Sort of: “The free version of Microsoft Teams” is really the free versions of Microsoft Teams: This refers to those versions of Teams on Windows 11, iOS/Android, and the web. The versions you can use with a Microsoft account (as opposed to a Microsoft Work or School account).

Or as Microsoft calls it on its own website, Microsoft Teams. Which as you can see from the URL is also referred to as “Teams for home.”

Perfect.