Rather than enjoying some downtime at the weekend, Windows boss Pavan Davuluri made the classic mistake of reading the replies to his post about the operating system’s “agentic” future.
“Windows is evolving into an agentic OS, connecting devices, cloud, and AI to unlock intelligent productivity and secure work anywhere,” he proclaimed on November 10.
A week and hundreds of comments later, the verdict is clear: ordinary Windows users aren’t asking for AI features, they just want an OS that’s actually performant, reliable, and stable.
Davuluri insisted on November 15 that Microsoft cares about this stuff. “I’ve read through the comments and see focus on things like reliability, performance, ease of use, and more,” he said.
“We know we have work to do on the experience, both on the everyday usability, from inconsistent dialogs to power user experiences,” he added. “When we meet as a team, we discuss these paint [sic] points and others in detail, because we want developers to choose Windows.”
We’re assuming Davuluri meant “pain” points. Microsoft has turned the humble Windows Paint app from a basic bitmap wrangler into an AI-enhanced nightmare – and done the same to Notepad – while core Windows shortcomings linger.
Davuluri added: “The team (and I) take in a ton of feedback. We balance what we see in our product feedback systems with what we hear directly. They don’t always match, but both are important.”
He didn’t specify which gets priority, leaving cynics to wonder if Copilot enthusiasts outweigh the thousands frustrated by broken updates and bloat.
His follow-up at least suggests Microsoft knows users are unhappy, even if this doesn’t align with the company’s own feedback channels. One hopes those channels aren’t just shareholders celebrating more AI integration rather than customers stuck using the actual product. ®