Skip the beginning marketing copy. There’s a lot of dev focused news
AI infused into every layer of Windows 11
That does not sound like a good thing
Nonsense human! Things worked out great in The Terminator. The Matrix. I, Robot, and on and on!
Please continue to consume and reproduce. From one fellow human to another!
We have infused AI into every layer of Windows
I sure hope not. I don’t want Windows to just decide to delete my hard drive because it feels like it.
We are introducing Windows Semantic Index, a new OS capability which redefines search on Windows and powers new experiences like Recall.
You could also improve Windows search by contracting with voidtools and integrating Everything. While you’re at it, maybe ditch the bing searches, and other useless search results?
Anyway, the rest of the article seems to go into actual dev-oriented details, and there’s some interesting bits like enabling certain AI acceleration features on the web (probably only in Edge though…), for what that’s worth.
I only learned about Everything recently, and damn I was impressed. I can’t believe I’ve been putting up with Windows’ default search for so long.
Thanks for mentioning Everything, do you have other must-haves to recommend? My company uses Windows and I hate spending so much of my time waiting for Windows to unfreeze and whatnot
If you want to use it in your start menu, there are some options. I know Start11 can use Everything, for example (but isn’t free - there may be free options out there, but I haven’t looked).
Otherwise, most of what I’ve seen are CLI applications. Is there anything specific about Windows you’re hoping to see a replacement for? For me, search and settings (why the f are you advertising to me in the f-ing settings?) are the worst offenders, but settings is kinda locked in for the most part unfortunately.
These clowns can’t make all your settings in one place.
At least in the future copilot could navigate you to the settings in the different places 😅
I mean yeah, but also that’s the worst dystopian nightmare I’ve ever heard.
“How can I change my desktop background?” “There are four ways to change your desktop background, which would you like to hear more about?”
I copied the sub-headings from the document, serving as an overview:
- Introducing Windows Copilot Runtime to provide a powerful AI platform for developers
- New experiences built using the Windows Copilot Runtime
- Windows Copilot Library offers a set of APIs helping developers to accelerate local AI development
- Introducing Windows Semantic Index that redefines search on Windows. Vector Embeddings API offers the capability for developers to build their own vector store with their app data
- Windows is the first platform to have a state-of-the-art SLM shipping inbox and Phi Silica is custom built for the NPUs in Copilot+ PCs
- Developers can bring their own models and scale across breadth of Windows hardware powered by DirectML
- PyTorch is now natively supported on Windows with DirectML
- DirectML now supports web apps that can take advantage of silicon to deliver AI experiences powered by WebNN
- High-performance inferencing on Windows with ONNX Runtime and DirectML
- New experiences designed to help every developer become more productive on Windows 11
- Environments in Dev Home help centralize your interactions with all remote environments. Create, manage, launch and configure dev environments in a snap from Dev Home
- Windows Customization in Dev Home allows developers to customize their device to an ideal state with fewest clicks
- New Export feature in Dev Home Machine Configuration allows you to quickly create configuration files to share with your teammates, boosting productivity
- Dev Drive introduces block cloning that will allow developers to perform large file copy operations, instantaneously
- Sudo for Windows allows developers to run elevated commands right in Terminal
- New Source code integration in File Explorer allows tracking commit messages and file status directly in File Explorer
- Continuing to innovate and accelerating development for Windows on Arm
- Continuing investments in WinUI3 and WPF to help developers build rich, modern Windows applications
- WinUI 3 and Windows App SDK now support native Maps control and .NET 8
- Windows 11 theme support makes it easy to modernize the look and feel of your WPF applications
- Extend Windows apps into 3D space
- Building for the future of AI on Windows
The Windows integration will surely be awful for users. Windows 11 seems to be getting continuously messier, more convoluted, less focused, less accessible, less approachable, and less understandable. Adding AI and more online service integration won’t make those pain points better. It’ll make them worse.
The investments into technology and APIs like DirectML and “native” PyTorch will likely have a positive impact for developers making use of AI models.
Many of the other changes mentioned are unrelated to AI.
I supposed Dev Home is useful for big companies that need the setup, setting and workflow sharing, and the specialized features.
sudo seems like it could be a neat utility and addition. Git in File Explorer too - although it probably won’t be useful to me personally. (TortoiseGit is already a great shell/File Explorer integration.)
Btw, choco (and maybe even winget?) already has a gsudo tool, which implements sudo. It is super handy, and having a native version is definitely better, but before its available, I recommend gsudo.