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Microsoft Operating Systems

Microsoft Readies Big Feature Updates For Next Month and Beyond (windowscentral.com) 40

Windows 11 users will receive significant UI refinements and AI improvements starting next month as Microsoft prepares its September feature drop followed by additional updates through fall. The update, Windows Central reports, will bring customizable lock screen widgets globally after months of European exclusivity, photo grid views in Windows Search, and a redesigned Windows Hello authentication interface.

Copilot+ PCs will gain a revamped Recall application with workflow suggestions and File Explorer AI integration through Click To Do. October and November releases will introduce a larger, customizable Start menu allowing removal of the Recommended section and expanded dark mode support for legacy File Explorer dialogs.

Microsoft Readies Big Feature Updates For Next Month and Beyond

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  • here comes Recall!
  • "Pants down, fist up, pound pound pound!"

  • I thought "announcements" was Apple sacred ground.
    What has the world come to?
  • The Windows 11 desktop is subjectively terrible, if Microsoft wants to offer a significant update allow the UI to be changed, so if you want DWM (I think that's the Microsoft GUI), cool, if you would like to use Gnome, KDE or XFCE, also cool. The best thing Microsoft could do for Windows, allow a user to switch the desktop environment because the current one, is terrible.

    Are they also going to fix the insanely high memory usage? The other day my Windows 11 install was using 6GB of memory doing "nothing"
    • Windows has a weird situation where having more memory can lead to using less of it. If you try to run Windows 10 x64 with 4GB of memory it will run pretty good, but its memory usage is almost maxed out the whole time. It's probably swapping crap in and out constantly, but you don't notice because we all should have an SSD of some sort as the boot drive... this isn't the stone age. But if you have 8GB+, it will end up using most of it for the first 10 or so seconds of booting up, but then drop to ~2.5GB aft

      • I monitored it for a while, and it never dropped below 5.5 GB. The big problem is that I have co-workers who only have 16 GB of memory in the computer, if Windows 11 is taking up 35% of the memory, that's a huge amount. I generally recommend at least 32 GB in any new computer, and I'm not even shying away from 64 GB, just because if you run AI, it can help. Above 64 I need an excellent defence, and to be fair, no one has even tried, or asked for more than 64 GB.
    • You don't have to run explorer.exe. You can set Windows to run some other program. This is how most embedded Windows installs work, instead of calling explorer.exe you set the registry to call your program. Completely plausible to have a 3rd party desktop environment on Windows, though I'm not aware of any general purpose ones.

      • Yeah, LOL, when someone would piss me off years ago I would hack their registry to make the shell notepad.exe.

        • I had two different ones I liked back in the day, a program that would flip the screen upside-down at logon, and a rickroll-style link to loud audio "I'M LOOKING AT GAY PORN!" (when people still had desktop speakers).

    • by nmb3000 ( 741169 )

      Are they also going to fix the insanely high memory usage? The other day my Windows 11 install was using 6GB of memory doing "nothing", nothing as in running no additional programs. I tried to get that reduced, but no matter what I changed it was fairly fixed, to be fair, it moved between 5.5 GB and 6.1 GB, but for what reason?

      What do you want it to do with memory when there are no programs running and the system is idle? Windows is pretty aggressive at using memory for the file system cache, for example, and it will prefetch programs and files that you use often into memory so they're available instantly when you try to access them.

      This is a good thing, not bad. All of this memory can be instantly dumped if a program suddenly requests a bunch of memory for private use. Memory that is not being used for something is wasted mem

      • The problem I run into with such high memory requirements is that if a user only has 16 GB of memory, and they launch an IDE, then Node, and few other tools, they'll be out of memory. I've seen a fairly decent computer being brought to its knees on Windows 11, for seemingly no reason.
    • by TheDarkMaster ( 1292526 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @09:42PM (#65603998)
      The issue with memory in Windows 11 is that the idiots who took over its development continue with the retarded “Windows Phone” mentality, where even if you are NOT using a feature it is loaded anyway and on top of that, this feature is programmed in the most idiotic way possible in terms of resource usage (think electron "apps”).
      • I assume that's the case, but compare Windows 11 to Fedora 42 Workstation. Sitting on the Gnome desktop, with nothing extra installed, 2.1 GB of memory. Where is the other 3.5 GB going on Windows? Windows 11 is nearly 3x Fedora 42, there is no defence for that kind of waste.
  • by Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @03:54PM (#65603240)

    The foundation of all their modern APIs is fundamentally broken (WinRT, ie. COM, ie. working around C++'s flaws by breaking your OS). Thanks to that they needed to de-mothball WPF to have some slightly modern UI framework which wasn't a fucking joke. Meanwhile OneDrive is a fucking disaster, in an age where a modern OS should have had user friendly sync and versioned backup build in for a decade already.

    They don't need AI integration ... they need AGI, so the AI can fix Windows for them. All Nadella can do is count the money he stumbled on from the cloud transition, while the foundations of Windows rot.

  • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @03:56PM (#65603246)

    And just when I thought moving to Win11 (for some of my systems) might not be so bad.

  • Yay more bloat to add to the existing bloat! I'm going to have to submerge my laptop in liquid nitrogen just to install this update, otherwise it'll run so hot that the fan will cause it to lift off and fly away.

  • by JustNiz ( 692889 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @04:15PM (#65603298)

    Seriously, is thee any fucking way at all to stop/remove all the AI in windows?

    • by zlives ( 2009072 )

      windows 7

      • You kid, but I've been running a Windows 7 box all along for certain programs I need. It never crashes (thanks to MS not "updating" it any longer), it's incredibly snappy on 6th gen hardware, and it's a pleasure to use. Microsoft lost their way.

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Microsoft lost their way.

          Indeed, they have. And there is no fixing this. They need to die. The sooner the better.

    • Seriously, is thee any fucking way at all to stop/remove all the AI in windows?

      More seriously, are you actually seeing any AI in Windows? I can't find any. I don't see a Copilot logo anywhere (I turned it off). When I press windows + C (which is the same as the Copilot button) it simply opens search (I turned copilot off there too), I don't have Copilot enabled on startup (That's also trivial to turn off).

      Yes this can all be stopped trivially. Even Recall has a simple toggle switch to completely disable it.

  • by gabrieltss ( 64078 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @04:17PM (#65603314)
    And you have NO option to say "no I don't want these updates". YOU get them CRAMMED down your throaght. And Windows 11 runs the installs whether you like it or not.

    Can't we get Microsoft charge under the RICO statute????
  • by PPH ( 736903 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @04:20PM (#65603322)

    Playing "Guess where we hid the command bar/ribbon now?"

  • And they won't violate my consent an reinstall it at random? Nice! Sign me up. I've been waiting for that ""feature"".

  • by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @04:47PM (#65603380)

    Microsoft does way too much redecorating. I didn't need a fresh icon and it didn't need to move to a new spot.

    A focus on security would be nice.

    • Microsoft does way too much redecorating. I didn't need a fresh icon and it didn't need to move to a new spot.

      Redecorating keeps a system looking "fresh" for the common plebs. They do it because it actually helps sell Windows as a current up to date latest tech. Braindead users actually think unchanging systems are somehow left behind in the tech world and start looking elsewhere. Redecorating actually has return on investment when marketing to non-power users. You won't understand, most people on Slashdot won't, I don't either.

      A focus on security would be nice.

      Oh we have that. New OS level passkey, disk encryption, all enforced via hardware securi

      • https://windowsforum.com/threa... [windowsforum.com]

        "Elevation of Privilege (EoP) Vulnerabilities: Accounting for 40% of the total, EoP vulnerabilities remain the most prevalent"

        TPMs, Passkeys and Disk Encryption do not fix software flaws that lead to compromise.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      A focus on security would be nice.

      Microsoft cannot focus on security, because they do not understand security. That applies both on the tech side and the economic side. All they can do is make empty promises, when they have screwed up massively, again.

  • Remember when if you didn't want a shitty "upgrade", you could choose to just not install the new version of the software? When such "updates" weren't forced down your throat because, even on Windows, because you owned your computer? When drastic changes to operating systems that affect how people use them was limited to major releases?

    Microsoft remembers, and they hated it. They are so close to customers being fully accustomed to forced updates that they don't want. The next step is to convince users t

  • by karmawarrior ( 311177 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @07:45PM (#65603808) Journal

    Every product "update" these days seems to be an announcement about how they're making it shittier. "Hey, we're adding more AI! And we're going to take screenshots of everything you do! And we're going to delete random files! And we're going to move the taskbar to the center of the screen! Good news, no more Start Menu! Great news, you can now pay $10 a month!"

    It fucking sucks.

    Imagine if restaurants did this. "Hey, that burger you like? We're now adding pineapple and ranch sauce! And we're only raising the price by $5! And to make it easier, no customizations, everyone gets pineapple and ranch!"

    I HATE THIS FUCKING UNIVERSE.

  • All these constant "updates," adding and removing features and changing UI elements, are all part of trying to convince customers that the operating system, itself, "needs" to be SaaS.

"If that makes any sense to you, you have a big problem." -- C. Durance, Computer Science 234

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