Microslop is going to spend 2026 improving Windows 11. It comes after Windows update quality issues and complaints about the operating system.
Please don’t. It’s actually quite funny if you don’t have to use windows at all.
Rebuilding trust for most companies means some bullshit marketing campaign. New catch phrase. Some promotion. It rarely means admitting fault and changing direction. It would take something really huge for that to happen. Perhaps a combination of AI bubble burst, leadership change, shareholder revolt.
Everything anti-consumer in Windows is a deliberate choice aimed at extracting more revenue from customers. This isn’t unique to Microsoft. They exist to make money for their shareholders.
If like me you think a lot of companies have been incredibly short sighted and are burning their brands and customer loyalty for short term gains, just look at the stock prices. Short termism is making a killing for tech companies while the rest of the economy is treading water. Is it sustainable? I don’t think so. Does it matter for Microsoft or any of the other tech companies?
I have been a customer of companies that were awesome for years then sold out and their prices sky rocketed. They were clearly bleeding customers but every time they did they just put the price up more. Some people always stay for some reason. This can go on for years. As long as they keep screwing people faster than people leave they are probably making a lot more money in the short term than they would have made with a longer vision. That is business these days. People aren’t building products for the long term anymore. Now that thinking seems to have moved to companies. Modern business leaders are about gobbling revenues up like a locust plague then moving on to the next pasture.
I read the statement as ‘We’re going to stop announcing controversial changes and spend more money on propaganda firms who will fill your social media with fake users who have a bunch of stories about how trustworthy Microsoft is’
Rebuild trust?
- remove all telemetry
- remove all ai bullshit
- remove ads
- open source the whole code
Then, and only then, we might start to trust again.
GLP2 at least and reproducible builds or bust.
To add to this list
- Remove WebView apps. Eat our own dogfood and use MAUI.
- Go back to the classic Start Menu. Use API to make the whole UI available for customizations
- Get rid of the whole shitty “Settings” menu and go back to the Control Panel.
- Drop backwards compatibility for a bunch of crap. Stop pulling the 1980s forward, let that shit die.
- Address real modern issues with compatibility and performance with current CPUs
- Undo all the vibe coding.
- Focus on stability and performance, not trying to be “An experience”. Windows runs apps, make it do that the best it can.
- For the love of everything holy, take a risk and modernize the OS. This goes back to 8. But as someone who makes Windows Server golden images for multiple platforms, FUCKING CHRIST. Having to use the Autounattend to even get anything started, and that’s often (Even in Azure) just a minimal thing to get some client to do the real work, should tell you there’s a problem. The Autounattend is poorly documented. I learned more from just building a basic VM on different providers and seeing what they figured out. I could write a god damn novel on the shortcomings of the initial installation and customization of Windows, but it’s especially embarrassing for their Server platform
- Stop dropping support for the crap that works. Just so you can sell an inferior subscription version. WSUS being sunset is stupid. Having on-prem WSUS is always going to be faster and easier. You should focus on making that better instead of letting it limp along and then “Oh, we have an overpriced and slower option!” Get bent.
- Azure Local is a really fucking cool idea. That was an god awful pricing as far as I can tell. But neat.
I thought of some of those, but decided to add my point (4) and allow the community to do it right.
Oh no doubt, same. There’s so much to be said. More than any one person should.
- Renew support for Windows 10.
Bullshit.
I have a strong feeling they won’t be removing the spying, AI everywhere, ads, and bloatware. Microsoft views those as positives.
Tech has long been in the era of surveillance capitalism. Windows, Chrome, MacOS/iOS(iAds, NewsApp, notarization security, mediaanalysisd, and the most locked down hardware on earth), Android, the majority of all of the apps in the various walled gardens are all out to extract, analyze and monetize every aspect of our digital lives… which is a lot of our waking hours.
As users of these services we all need to ask ourselves if the companies who now make up the lion-share our retirement savings, who collectively dictate how we view and interact with the world really have anything but their own best interests in mind.
Most people would say no but “what am I supposed to do?”. People really need to understand that power like the kind that these mega-corps have is only taken and basically never surrendered willingly. Vote with your dollars now and for as long as it takes to see the fall of these vile companies.
Seems they’re figuring out you can’t sell ads and AI on your platform if nobody wants to use your platform.
If Microsoft walks back their use of AI in the development of Windows, that would be a major admission of failure on their part.
But it will probably help prolong their market dominance a great deal. Because up until they started destroying their own OS, all they needed to do to remain on the top was literally nothing.
As positives for them ;)
Okay, that’s easy: remove all the LLM slop. That’ll start fixing it. Then get the ads out of the UI. Get rid of the MS account requirement, and make all updates optional. For a stretch goal, go back to making an OS that only does what the user tells it to, and doesn’t have any function to phone home without direct user input.
Too funny. They’d need to go back to Win95 for all that.
XP would be enough.
No, man. Windows 7 for lyfe!
Think back… XP had many complaints at release too, wasn’t till sp2 or sp3 it was actually decent.
XP is also when they introduced the activation server.
Also true
You couldnt unzip 2 files at once. Not untill service pack 1.
Wait, you didn’t just use PKWare zip & unzip? Or WinRAR?
I couldn’t afford WinRAR
98SE would mostly work.
“Fuck this shit…”
lol
Lmao, even
Also, hi from bazzite, which runs the vast majority of games I’m interested in flawless, and usually with even better performance than W10 (let alone W11)
Hello! I am using bazzite-dx at the moment. I don’t even game much, just doing dev work.
I wake up to a bright flashing of my phone.
It is 3am, damn I forget to turn my phone to silent.
I can’t resist the urge, who would text me this time of night??!?
“hey I have been thinking about you, you know I think we could work it out together. I will spend 2026 improving myself I promise. Please baby I miss you”
“go to bed Microslop, you are drunk and you are the one that wanted the divorce because you left me for Al” I text back frustratedly and turn my phone to silent.
I want a divorce and I’m keeping Clippy
My 4 part plan to put Microsoft back on track.
1: Re-open support for Windows 10 until at least 2 years after the release date of the next version of Windows.
2: Commit to making the next version of Windows less intrusive, cleaner, more reliable, and a small as technically possible.
3: Fully fund the open source projects that Microsoft relies on for their products.
4: Make Co-pilot an optional toolkit that runs in the background, with tight, easily configured controls and hook-ins to other applications and data.
Please put me in charge of Microsoft. I’ll do it for a measly 10 million dollars a year. You’ll save so much on my salary alone, you practically can’t afford not to hire me.
Win10 is dead. There no going back.
There’s no next version. It’s all iterative.
I agree that they should lean into open source though.
Rebuild trust… by integrating more mandatory and default-on server-based features?
And the fixes will be vibe coded too.
I already moved to Linux, and I’m not going back.
Migrating users might be a few, but they rarely go back. A few users monthly eventually become a lot!
It seems like we’re at a real turning point for Linux adoption. I’m an Apple nerd, but I love seeing people switch to Linux and write about what a (mostly) positive experience it is. Cheers to my fellow nerds getting off the screaming pile of garbage MS if forcing on people who just want a computer that works.
After a win11 forced updated made my nontech 75 years old father laptop nearly useless he ask me if linux could give it a second life i’ve been a user for at least 15 years so i was more than happy to install it
His laptop is like a new one sure he had to learn a little after so long on windows but it’s mostly really user friendly now except for some minor problem everything work out of the box (wifi,bluetooth,printer etc)
I doubt microslop could ever get most new linux user back once they get the hang of it
Been a linux user for a solid 9 years now. Never going back!
Microslop is going to spend 2026 improving Windows 11.
Why bother? Just upgrade everyone to Windows 10.
Upgrade everybody to Linux Mint. Problem solved.
Or a distro using Wayland for higher end PCs.
