It's worse than that. On my corporate mac when I try to login with Entra, the only option I get is a hyperlink to 'experience Copilot on the web'.
Also, it seems like all the Copilot 'connected experiences' are really just a chat window without any real integration with the applications they are embedded in. Claude is more useful in Excel than Copilot.. how? Microsoft's consistently incoherent and hobbled rollout of Copilot is why I find Anthropic's offerings so much better. It just allow me to get stuff done.
My one hope was that Copilot would solve the Microsoft documentation tarpit by leveraging enormous context to root out the answers to my questions. When chatGPT can finally one-shot Microsoft product queries with the correct platform, release, license, and 'gotchas'.. I'll know we've hit AGI.
"Also, it seems like all the Copilot 'connected experiences' are really just a chat window without any real integration with the applications they are embedded in."
I was triple-booked today. Two of the meetings in question should have had significant overlap between attendees. I figured, hey, there's this Copilot thing here, I'll ask it what the overlap is, that's the sort of thing an AI should be able to do. It comes back and reports that there is one person in both meetings, and that "one person" isn't even me. That doesn't seem right. One of the autocompleted suggestions for the next thing to ask is "show me the entire list of attendees" so I'm like, sure, do that.
It turns out that the API Copilot has access to can only access the first ten attendees of the meetings. Both meetings were much larger than that.
Insert rant here about hobbling 2026 servers with random "plucked out of my bum" limits on processing based on the capabilities of roughly 2000-era servers for the sheer silliness of a default 10-attendee limit being imposed on any API into Outlook.
But also in general what a complete waste of hooking up an amazingly sophisticated AI model to such an impoverished view of the world.
> When chatGPT can finally one-shot Microsoft product queries with the correct platform, release, license, and 'gotchas'.. I'll know we've hit AGI.
In that case a simple few lines of whatever language you prefer would class as "AGI". Here's a sample session using the non-existing oracle.sh tool;
oracle.sh 'tell me how to do ${thing} in Microsoft ${product} and which licence requirements that brings'
(computer noises)
oracle: Avoid using Microsoft ${product}, use one of the alternatives listed in this web search:
https://search.engine.org/search?q=alternatives%20to%20Microsoft%20${product}
Main difference, electron bundles all of chrome with every app. WebView2 can do that, but the recommended route is one that shares the runtime across multiple apps (what ms does). So you end up with just 1 webview2 on the system + your app specific code ultimately significantly shrinking the distribution size.
What is the reason they don't use the WebView2? Microsoft Teams uses WebView2, surely it should be enough for Copilot. This defeats the whole point of having WebView builtin and shipped with the Windows 11.
If I was to speculate, this is the result of "rank n' yank" where the performative productivity is more important than actual productivity. If true it says something about why AI is pushed hard by Microsoft, it make performative productivity much more easier.
Except that was done to save disk space (according to https://jeffpar.github.io/kbarchive/kb/063/Q63777/, "When EDIT.COM is executed in MS-DOS versions 5.0 and later, it invokes QBASIC.EXE with the /EDITOR switch", whereas this installs a whole new copy of the Edge browser (850 MB) on a system where in 90+% of cases it's already installed...
I'm forced to use Copilot at work. I can't resize the font size and there is usually a delay when typing in it for the first time. In Outlook, it often opens the side panel on its own.
First thought: 'i wonder what the app is made from'.
Followed by looking at the exe in a hex editor...
Oh that looks like edge .. renaming the file and the rest is HN history
Any webpage you see is really just chromium.
All new product you see from today startups are really just post request to the cheapest inference provider
There are only two big instances that work any more, everybody is aware of them including twitter, and they exist only because twitter allows them as a safety valve for upper middle class people who believe that political consumption is a thing that works.
By the grace of Musk, a few thousand* 1) nerds who don't register on any invasive social media and 2) libs with the admirable self-control not to spend all day on twitter yelling about twitter, get a tiny trickle of nitter that can be cut off at will.
Meanwhile, we're on ycombinator.com.
Boycotting is not a thing that works under monopoly (especially with "free" products.) Monopolies boycott you.
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[*] I'm making this up, it could literally be hundreds, not even thousands. I don't think nitter has a sane caching strategy, and if it were more than a few users the servers would catch on fire.
Although I wouldn't be surprised at all if it turned out that the last nitter instances were being run from "X" headquarters as a project to track and study individual behavior (When do nitter users join X? When people quit X, do they still use nitter? When do people who have X accounts use nitter to conceal what they're looking at? Which accounts are especially popular for nitter users? What are the political opinions and demographics of nitter users, etc...). Or instead of X, it could be feds doing the same thing.
If so, they would have plenty of processor and the real user numbers could be tens or hundreds of thousands.
who regurgitates pro-billionaire talking points and thinks the poor just need to lift themselves up by their bootstraps, with some christian persecution complex sprinkled in
Is this a joke? You proclaim your support for a party that proudly posts AI-generated pictures of Obama as a monkey, shits out vitriol-filled messages on literally every holiday, and sends the gestapo to execute American citizens in the streets, and then you demand civil discourse? I'm sorry but that ship has sailed, there is no reason why someone should maintain a civil discussion with you.
It's not projecting when it's based directly on your comment history. I used to spout the same things about two decades ago. Hopefully you wise up at some point.
The dismissal is based on decades of lived experience and seeing the same things over and over again. You aren't attempting to engage in good faith and clearly aren't interested in discussing anything more in-depth so my dismissal seems to be well placed.
Also, it seems like all the Copilot 'connected experiences' are really just a chat window without any real integration with the applications they are embedded in. Claude is more useful in Excel than Copilot.. how? Microsoft's consistently incoherent and hobbled rollout of Copilot is why I find Anthropic's offerings so much better. It just allow me to get stuff done.
My one hope was that Copilot would solve the Microsoft documentation tarpit by leveraging enormous context to root out the answers to my questions. When chatGPT can finally one-shot Microsoft product queries with the correct platform, release, license, and 'gotchas'.. I'll know we've hit AGI.
I was triple-booked today. Two of the meetings in question should have had significant overlap between attendees. I figured, hey, there's this Copilot thing here, I'll ask it what the overlap is, that's the sort of thing an AI should be able to do. It comes back and reports that there is one person in both meetings, and that "one person" isn't even me. That doesn't seem right. One of the autocompleted suggestions for the next thing to ask is "show me the entire list of attendees" so I'm like, sure, do that.
It turns out that the API Copilot has access to can only access the first ten attendees of the meetings. Both meetings were much larger than that.
Insert rant here about hobbling 2026 servers with random "plucked out of my bum" limits on processing based on the capabilities of roughly 2000-era servers for the sheer silliness of a default 10-attendee limit being imposed on any API into Outlook.
But also in general what a complete waste of hooking up an amazingly sophisticated AI model to such an impoverished view of the world.
In that case a simple few lines of whatever language you prefer would class as "AGI". Here's a sample session using the non-existing oracle.sh tool;
Asking seriously, not snarkily. That’s my understanding but maybe I’m wrong about it.
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview...
So a lot more can be done with an electron app, while still staying mostly in the web based comfort zone.
Last time I checked, Copilot in Outlook did not have access to my calendar data.
It seems to actually use a modified copy of Edge in a subfolder.
Edit: OP edited out the political message from their post
By the grace of Musk, a few thousand* 1) nerds who don't register on any invasive social media and 2) libs with the admirable self-control not to spend all day on twitter yelling about twitter, get a tiny trickle of nitter that can be cut off at will.
Meanwhile, we're on ycombinator.com.
Boycotting is not a thing that works under monopoly (especially with "free" products.) Monopolies boycott you.
-----
[*] I'm making this up, it could literally be hundreds, not even thousands. I don't think nitter has a sane caching strategy, and if it were more than a few users the servers would catch on fire.
Although I wouldn't be surprised at all if it turned out that the last nitter instances were being run from "X" headquarters as a project to track and study individual behavior (When do nitter users join X? When people quit X, do they still use nitter? When do people who have X accounts use nitter to conceal what they're looking at? Which accounts are especially popular for nitter users? What are the political opinions and demographics of nitter users, etc...). Or instead of X, it could be feds doing the same thing.
If so, they would have plenty of processor and the real user numbers could be tens or hundreds of thousands.
I run my own bitter instance which mostly works although it has to be restarted frequently due to it claiming to be 'out of tokens'.
who regurgitates pro-billionaire talking points and thinks the poor just need to lift themselves up by their bootstraps, with some christian persecution complex sprinkled in
You aren't fooling anyone, except maybe yourself
How about conservatives have some civil discourse with the nazis in your political parties.