Whatever legitimate places AI has, inside an OS ain't one

Opinion Making software would be the perfect job if it wasn't for those darn users. Windows head honcho Pavan Davuluri would be forgiven for feeling this of late as his happy online paean about Windows becoming an "agentic OS" was met by massive dissent in the comments. "Agentic schmentic, we want reliability, usability, and stability" was the gist.

Davuluri replied with a classic "we hear you," admitting there was work to be done on those points, but rather curiously claimed that there had to be a balance between what user feedback said and what his team heard through "other channels." Nicely imprecise, but capable of a precise parsing in one respect at least: reliability, usability, and stability aren't coming first. If they were, he'd say so. He doesn't. They're not.

Microsoft is in the business of engineering, and engineering has its rules. All design is ...