Waiting for Windows 12 (Premium)

In early February, ahead of the Bing Chat announcement, I predicted that Microsoft would release an AI-focused Windows 12. I based this prediction on a confluence of indicators that gathered steam in the wake of OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT the previous November. In early January, for example, I opined that perhaps AI was “the next wave,” using Terry Myerson’s term for the computing platform that would supplant mobile in the same way that mobile had to the PC. And then barely a week later, I took Satya Nadella’s quote about adding ChatGPT capabilities to “every Microsoft product” literally, welcoming one and all to “the AI era.”

Since then, Microsoft has unleashed a flurry of AI products and services and is on track to fulfill Nadella’s promise over the next several months. But things have been quiet on the Windows 12 front, in part because the software giant has aggressively pushed to get AI capabilities, even lame AI capabilities like Copilot in Windows 11, out the door as quickly as possible. But also in part because Microsoft has never, not once, publicly uttered the phrase Windows 12.

So we have been forced to read the tea leaves.

When Microsoft’s Panos Panay appeared with AMD CEO Lisa Su at CES this past January to discuss the AI capabilities in AMD’s Ryzen 7040 chipset, the conversation devolved into a weird love fest between the two companies and AI. And while the ever-awkward Panay stumbled through a lame litany of ways in which AI might enhance Windows in the future without actually saying anything, he put the idea in my head that a coming Windows version—let’s call it Windows 12—would require an NPU much as Windows 11 requires a TPM. And that this requirement might in fact be what separates Windows 12 from Windows 11.

In March, when Microsoft announced a new Canary channel for the Windows Insider Program specifically to “support preview builds of platform changes that require longer lead times before getting released to customers,” including “major changes to the Windows kernel,” I thought, this is it. This channel is where Microsoft will test Windows 12.

And when Microsoft Build arrived in May, I figured this would be the first logical time for the software giant to discuss Windows 12. But instead, it announced a suite of AI capabilities across many of its products, many using some form of Copilot brand, including one for Windows. Windows 11. And then Stevie Bathiche gave a miracle of a talk in the wake of Panay’s worst-ever presentation, deftly explaining the three types of AI implementations that all apps would use in the future, from copilots that would sit beside current apps to new apps with AI at the center to AI agents that would orchestrate across apps and services. This, surely, was another Windows 12 hint: Because Windows 11 will deliver on the copilot, Windows 12 could deliver on the other two, I figured.

But then the year droned on with no sign of Windows 12 at all. The June anniversary of the original Windows 11 announcement, another ideal time to reveal Windows 12, came and went without a word, and then Panay, the Windows chief, left Microsoft. Microsoft shipped boring build after boring build to the Insider Program’s Canary channel, and rather than being leading edge in any way, these builds often lagged behind the builds in the other channels with not an iota of explanation from the company. And Windows 11’s next big release, 23H2, was kneecapped so that Microsoft could force its customers to adopt Copilot and other AI features; had it waited on 23H2, customers could have deferred the release, and Microsoft, with tens of billions of dollars going down the tubes every quarter towards its AI investments, could not afford for them to wait.

And still no mention of Windows 12. Not a peep.

And then Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit arrived this past week, offering fans of Windows on Arm a final hopeful chance that the company’s Arm-based chipsets will finally offer the mainstream performance that has eluded it for over 7 years. I want to believe. But I’m not convinced, not yet, though it is important to point out that Qualcomm, alone among PC chipset makers, was the first to offer hardware AI capabilities in its SoCs via an NPU (neural processing unit) that AMD and Intel are finally adopting this year. And while the benefits of this chipset are, today, limited and lame, the hope is that coming functional additions to Windows that require or work better with an NPU will lead to that AI era I was talking about back in January. Perhaps there would be some mention of Windows 12 at this event.

There was not.

But there were hints. And with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and corporate vice president Pavan Davuluri each there in some form, I naturally hung on every word. I mean, they have to discuss Windows 12 at some point, right?

Nadella appeared first, albeit in a video meet-up with Qualcomm CEO Christiano Amon that cut into the event’s keynote. For less than 5 minutes.

And he didn’t say much.

This generation of AI, or what Qualcomm calls “Gen AI,” will “augment human capability with computing,” he said. “It will fundamentally change what an operating system is, and what a UI looks like … This is a big UI change … A natural interface.”

So that is mildly interesting. After all, Copilot in Windows 11 is not a big UI change, it’s just a sidebar on the right edge of your display. Perhaps he was hinting at one of the other two AI implementations that Stevie Bathiche revealed at Build. You know, Windows 12. Perhaps.

Or not. Nadella also said that the “marquee experience” for AI would be … Copilot. The first, simplest, and (for now) lamest, of those three implementations. He said it was like the Windows Start button, “the orchestrator of all your app experiences,” which is a bit lofty in the case of that button. But with AI, he said, you can go there (Copilot), express your intent, and it “either navigates me to an application or it brings the application to the Copilot.” You can “learn, query, [and] create,” and this new UI—again, it’s just a sidebar—“completely changes the user’s habits.”

Predictably, Pavan Davuluri had more to say and more about Windows specifically: In the wake of Panay’s departure, he now leads Windows planning and release management. He is, however, largely unknown to me, though he also appeared publicly at Build 2023 this past May. And unlike Panay, he’s an eloquent speaker. This is great for all the obvious reasons, but it also suggests that he’s not going to slip up and reveal more than intended.

And on that note, he talked more than Nadella. But he added only a similar amount of new information. Meaning, not much.

Davuluri discussed how NPUs in PCs would enable “hybrid AI applications,” which is not a new concept. The theory here is that local AI processing will help reduce latency to the cloud and, as important for Microsoft, reduce the need for its AI-capable datacenters to shoulder the entire load at great cost. This combination of local and cloud-based AI capabilities will likely be the norm for the coming generation of AI solutions, as is well understood.

But Davuluri outlined a few other advantages of hybrid AI apps. They will offer “enhanced privacy,” because you can keep private data locally, like how Lenovo’s match-on-print fingerprint readers store your data internally. And he spoke of “extended personalization,” which I see as the central point of his segment in the event keynote.

“As we think about the future of these Windows devices, you will be able to personalize every interaction,” he said, an implicit acknowledgment of Copilot’s role as an “AI companion” and the logical successor to Cortana, which was itself a successor to .NET My Services (“Hailstorm”). “AI is going to be able to orchestrate across multiple apps, services, and devices, functioning as an agent in your life that can connect and keep context across entire workflows.”

And that was about it. A bit more context but not a lot of new information. And certainly no mention of Windows 12.

When is CES again?