[kemotep]

Microsoft really needs to get a better handle with the naming conventions.

There is Microsoft Copilot, which replaced Bing Chat, Cortana and uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 and 5 models.

There is Github Copilot, the coding autocomplete tool.

There is Microsoft 365 Copilot, what they now call Office with built in GenAI stuff.

There is also a Copilot cli that lets you use whatever agent/model backend you want too?

Everything is Copilot. Laptops sell with Copilot buttons now.

It is not immediately clear what version of Copilot someone is talking about. 99% of my experience is with the Office and it 100% fails to do the thing it was advertised to do 2 years ago when work initially got the subscription. Point it a SharePoint/OneDrive location, a handful of excel spreadsheets and pdfs/word docs and tell it to make a PowerPoint presentation based on that information.

It cannot do this. It will spit out nonsense. You have to hold it by the hand tell it everything to do step by step to the point that making the PowerPoint presentation yourself is significantly faster because you don’t have to type out a bunch of prompts and edit it’s garbage output.

And now it’s clear they aren’t even dogfooding their own LLM products so why should anyone pay for Copilot?

[marssaxman]

> Microsoft really needs to get a better handle with the naming conventions.

They really won't, though; Microsoft just does this kind of thing, over and over and over. Before everything was named "365", it was all "One", before that it was "Live"... 20 years ago, everything was called ".NET" whether it had anything to do with the Internet or not. Back in the '90s they went crazy for a while calling everything "Active".

[hightrix]

To further your argument, look at the XBOX. It is impossible to tell which is the latest model by name alone. Where the playstation is simple, the latest is the 5, the previous was the 4, and the one before that was the 3.

[binsquare]

Some musings from someone who has not worked in microsoft but has in big tech.

This often happens because the people inside are incentivized to build their own empire.

If someone comes and wants to get promoted/become an exec, there's a ceiling if they work under the an existing umberlla + dealing the politics of introducing a feature which requires dealing with an existing org.

So they build something new. And the next person does the same. And so you have 365, One, Live, .Net, etc

[canucker2016]

The Dev Tools division had Quick- prefix for some tools before settling on Visual- once VB took off.

Then there's DirectX and its subs - though Direct3D had more room for expanded feature set compared to DXSound or DXInput so now they're up to D3D v12.

[MengerSponge]

"The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products." -Steve Jobs

[arwhatever]

Do your teams use the teams feature in Teams?

[moomin]

There’s got to be solid reasons why they do this and have done so for so damn long. At the very least institutional reasons. At best, actual research that suggests they make more money this way. But as a consumer, I hate it.

[wasmainiac]

NT..? Good comment made me laugh.

[pixl97]

>Microsoft really needs to get a better handle with the naming conventions

Microsoft cannot and will not ever get better at naming things. It is said the universe will split open and and eldritch beast will consume the stars the day Microsoft stops using inconsistent and overlapping names for different and conflicting products.

Isn't that right .Net/dotnet

[HPsquared]

"Microsoft Re-Designs the iPod Packaging" (2006)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k

[anonymars]

Many will never know the joy of trying to search for it back in the days when punctuation was ignored (C# says hello too)

Related: https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/windows-servers-iden...

[ksec]

Exactly. In the 50 years history of Microsoft, Office ( Year ) was perhaps the best they did.

Nadella might have fixed a few things, but Microsoft still have massive room for improvement in many areas.

[Paradigma11]

My peak experience so far was trying to search if there was an extension of dotnet interactive for visual studio or only for visual studio code.

[DrTung]

I've heard the next version will be called "Visual Active NET Copilot".

[anal_reactor]

I'm "I don't know what Xbox is" years old.

[i80and]

I remember when everything was "Sign in with .NET Passport" as a yoot and just being like "what the hell are you talking about"

[twisteriffic]

Cries in dapper dapr

[pradeeproark]

Are we talking about .NET standard?

[nobodyandproud]

Somewhere and in some universe there was a Microsoft that did so, wreaking havoc across the multiverse.

[whobre]

Not that I disagree, but this is nothing compared to the ".NET" craze in the early 2000s. Everything had to have ".NET" in its name even if it had absolutely nothing to do with the actual .NET technology.

There was also "Active" before that, but .NET was next level crazy...

[anonymars]

I don't know, it seems comparable

Office.com is now "Welcome to Microsoft 365 Copilot"

[isk517]

>>Point it a SharePoint/OneDrive location, a handful of excel spreadsheets and pdfs/word docs and tell it to make a PowerPoint presentation based on that information. It cannot do this. It will spit out nonsense. You have to hold it by the hand tell it everything to do step by step to the point that making the PowerPoint presentation yourself is significantly faster because you don’t have to type out a bunch of prompts and edit it’s garbage output.

Everyone I know who use AI day-to-day is just using Copilot to mostly do things like add a transition animation to a Powerpoint slide or format a word document to look nice. The only problem these LLM products seem to solve is giving normal people a easy way to interact with terrible software processes and GUIs. And better solution to that problem would be for developers to actually observe how the average use interacts with both a computer and their program in particular.

[jug]

The craziest thing was how Microsoft took the super established brand from decades, and renamed Microsoft Office to Microsoft 365.

I'm not sure if it's named Microsoft 365 Copilot nowadays, or if that's an optional AI addon? I thought it was renamed once more, but they themselves claim simply "Microsoft 365" (in a few various tiers) sans-Copilot. https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/buy/compare-all-micr...

[timr]

> There is Github Copilot, the coding autocomplete tool.

No, there is Github Copilot, the AI agent tool that also has autocomplete, and a chat UI.

I understand your point about naming, but it's always helpful to know what the products do.

[mgkimsal]

> No, there is Github Copilot, the AI agent tool that also has autocomplete, and a chat UI.

When it came out, Github Copilot was an autocomplete tool. That's it. That may be what the OP was originally using. That's what I used... 2 years ago. That they change the capabilities but don't change the name, yet change names on services that don't change capabilities further illustrates the OP's point, I would say.

[jacquesm]

GPs point is that it is confusing, I guess point well made?

[mirekrusin]

...it gets better:

GitHub Copilot is a service, you can buy subscription from here https://github.com/features/copilot.

GitHub Copilot is available from website https://github.com/copilot together with services like Spark (not available from other places), Spaces, Agents etc.

GitHub Copilot is VSCode extension which you can download at https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GitHub.c... and use from VSCode.

New version has native "Claude Code" integration for Anthropic models served via GitHub Copilot.

You can also use your own ie. local llama.cpp based provider (if your github copilot subscription has it enabled / allows it at enterprise level).

Github Copilot CLI is available for download here https://github.com/features/copilot/cli and it's command line interface.

Copilot for Pull Requests https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-for-pull-requests

Copilot Next Edit Suggestion https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-next-edit-suggestion...

Copilot Workspace https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-workspace/

Copilot for Docs https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-for-docs/

Copilot Completions CLI https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-completions-cli/

Copilot Voice https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-voice/

GitHub Copilot Radar https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-radar/

Copilot View https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-view/

Copilot Labs https://githubnext.com/projects/copilot-labs/

This list doesn't include project names without Copilot in them like "Spark" or "Testpilot" https://githubnext.com/projects/testpilot etc.

[mikkupikku]

> so why should anyone pay for Copilot?

The execs buying Microsoft products are presumed to be as clueless as the execs naming Microsoft products.

[dec0dedab0de]

You are describing everything Microsoft has done since at least the late 90s.

[bluedino]

Things were named fine back then. Small Business Server, Office, Frontpage, Internet Information Server, Visual Studio...

[rubslopes]

> It cannot do this. It will spit out nonsense.

It's unbelievable how bad they failed at this. If you do the same with Claude or ChatGPT via simple web interface, they get miles ahead.

[itissid]

My colleague works in a functional role for a medium sized SaaS company(1000-5000 employees), working with banks, family offices, hedge funds. They use teams and copilot, they all hate it.

One thing that I don't know about is if they have an AI product that can work on combining unstructured and databases to give better insights on any new conversation? e.g. like say the LLM knows how to convert user queries to the domain model of tables and extract information? What companies are doing such things?

This would be something that can be deployed on-prem/ their own private cloud that is controlled by the company, because the data is quite sensitive.

[ajcp]

Databricks Genie is excellent from my experience, and provides for all your listed requirements.

[raincole]

> Microsoft really needs to get a better handle with the naming conventions.

AI really should be a freaking feature, not the identity of their products. What MS is doing now is like renaming Photoshop to Photoshop Neural Filter.

[beart]

That's a great analogy, but could be taken one step further. Because Adobe would also have to rename the rest of their products to come close to what MS is doing.

  - Adobe Neural Filter Acrobat
  - Adobe Neural Filter App (previously photoshop)
  - Adobe Neural Filter Illustrator
  - Adobe 720 Neural Filter app
  - etc.

By the way, why is app lowercase in "the Microsoft 365 Copilot app"? Is it not part of the trademark but even they couldn't deal with how confusing that was?

[skfiehcusjcn]

People already do pay for it: office 365. It’s just like getting cloud storage with the subscription. OneDrive has been one of the better cloud storage options for consumers.

Also, a great use is Microsoft Forms I was surprised with the AI features. At first I just used it to get some qualitative feedback but ended up using copilot to enter questions Claude helped me create and it converted them into the appropriate forms for my surveys!

Objectives -> Claude -> Surveys (markdown) -> Copilot -> MS Forms -> Emailed.

Insights and analysis can use copilot too.

Main thing to remember is the models behind the scenes will change and evolve, Copilot is the branding. In fact, we can expect most companies will use multiple AI solutions/pipelines moving forward.

[rustyhancock]

Yes. Similarly I have Gemini through having 2TB space on Google Photos.

I have 2TB with OneDrive too via a Family Office account and I've got no good reason to have the large gapps space.

A ChatGPT account and pay for two Claude accounts.

Netflix, Disney+, Prime.

How did this happen to me?

Perhaps I should sign up to one of those companies that will help me close accounts I keep seeing advertised on YouTube?

[nunez]

It's the same with Gemini for Google Workspace.

I asked it to create a slide deck for me, within Slides, based on a block of notes I wrote. It wouldn't do it. The chat assistant at gemini.google.com wouldn't do it either. They told me how to do it step by step though...which I knew how to do already. Useless.

I also tried the `AI()` Sheets function to fill a range in based on some other data in the sheet. It doesn't accept other ranges, even if you use the &CELL_REF& notation.

[9x39]

For being supposedly the same models with how close MS and OpenAI supposedly are, it's bizarrely bad.

I was trying to just get an Excel function dialed in with some IFs and formatting weirdness. The licensed Microsoft 365 Copilot built into Excel tried several times and failed miserably. One screenshot to ChatGPT (5.1?) and it was one-shot.

I'm not even sure it's the same models any more. It feels years behind. Maybe they limit it or cripple it somehow.

[GaryBluto]

>There is Github Copilot, the coding autocomplete tool. There is also Github Copilot, the subscription, that lets you use Anthropic, OpenAI and Google models.

[basch]

They will never get better until naming things is a C-Suite level respected position.

I think I could clean up their existing mess if they want help.

Jedd outlines my credentials well here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17522649#17522861

[hbn]

> There is Github Copilot, the coding autocomplete tool.

It's also an LLM chat UI, I don't know if it's because of my work but it lets me select models from all of the major players (GPT, Claude, Gemini)

https://github.com/copilot

[JumpCrisscross]

I’m not a gamer. But it still strikes me as wild that they let go of the Cortana moniker.

[dramm]

It's the horrible "IBM Watson" marketing of our time, and I expect will do as badly for Microsoft as Watson did for IBM.

[0xbadcafebee]

This isn't a Microsoft thing, it's a big dumb corporation thing. Most big corporations are run by dumb executives who are 100% out of touch with the customer (though even if they were in touch, they wouldn't care). Their only consideration is the stock price. If adding new names to things, chanting the magic spell "AI" over and over, and claiming the new name will make them more money can cause the stock price to increase, that's what they'll do. (Making customers happy doesn't make the stock price rise; if it did, we'd all be a lot less depressed and a lot richer)

[krzyk]

> There is Github Copilot, the coding autocomplete tool.

It is a coding everything, autocomplete, ask, edit files and an agent (claude code like).

[p0w3n3d]

Sorry for a question out of topic, but is there still an offline office license available? So you buy it and have it locally?

[felixg3]

There is also Security Copilot, which I accidentally enabled and got a 3000€ invoice by azure. Thanks, M$!

[adamrezich]

> Laptops sell with Copilot buttons now.

Is it the context menu key? Or did they do another Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Win+L thing?

[lionkor]

Oh no it's a new key and it's on your keyboard.

[sandos]

Github copilot is not just autocompletion, its a chat/agent thing in VS Code.

[Foobar8568]

It reminds me of IBM and Watson, most likely the same brain rot at the top.

[boredatoms]

Its long term microsoft culture to be horrific at external naming

[rdsubhas]

So I guess the same situation as with Google Gemini.

[hoppp]

They are vibing the naming probably

[codethief]

Don't forget Azure Copilot :)

[racl101]

Have you seen their Xbox line up?

[NuclearPM]

Xbox one series X

They sucks at names.

[NuclearPM]

And I can’t edit this mistake…

[solumunus]

Classic Microsoft.

[dobin]

Like Microsoft Defender, which is now Defender Antivirus, or Defender for Endpoint if you have a real license. You will also get Defender for Identity, and maybe Defender for Office 365, which is probably not ASR. And Defender for Cloud, not to be confused with Defender for Cloud Apps.

[bandrami]

Can somebody give me a TLDR on what the "copilot button" does? I've never had one of those laptops and have never understood that. Does it just start the AI front-end? Does it power up the NPU?

[sebazzz]

It is just a button. Default it starts the Copilot app which is really the Office app that already existed but now with the copilot tab preselected. Also that Copilot runs in the cloud and doesn't use your NPU.

The only thing until now I've found using the NPU are the built in blur, auto frame and eye focus modes for the webcam.

[Oras]

You need to see how many times they changed AI related services in Azure. It’s a shit show.

[major505]

This is what happens when you let all decision to the marketing team without any supervision. They became full retarded.

Marketing need as much supervision as a toddler in a cristal store.