Microsoft is on the run. After announcing Recall as the big feature of its new Copilot+ PCs, the company seemed ill-prepared for a backlash. But many people just don’t trust a feature that takes screenshots of their PCs every five seconds, despite Redmond's promises about privacy.
Now, after announcing various changes to Recall that promised to make it more secure, Microsoft says it’s delaying Recall and will be testing the feature with Windows Insiders before it launches publicly. In other words, Copilot+ PCs won’t have their big flagship feature when they arrive next week.
It’s a big mess for Microsoft. The only shock is how surprised company representatives seem by the public reaction. But it's a glaring example of how people don’t trust tech companies, especially Microsoft.
Microsoft Wants You to Love Windows
Back in 2015, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella laid out his big goal for Windows: “We want to move from people needing Windows, to choosing Windows, to loving Windows. That is our bold goal with Windows.”
More than nine years later, most people still don’t love Windows. And when I say people, I mean PC users—the people who use Windows every day!
Many people love the PC hardware and software ecosystem. They rely on Windows. They may love parts of Windows—that trusty old desktop, the powerful keyboard shortcuts, the excellent window management, and the amazing backward compatibility with so much software.
But do they love Windows as a product? Let’s be honest. Most PC users are not excited for new features. After so many years of strangely intrusive updates to Windows 10, which saw all kinds of features that went nowhere (My People, Paint 3D, Windows 10 S, I could go on), people have tuned out. In fact, they’re wary when Microsoft unveils a big change to Windows. What will Microsoft break this time?
In fact, when Microsoft announced it would add its Copilot AI to the Windows 11 taskbar, many Windows 10 users were happy that it would be limited to the newer OS. Months later, when Microsoft said it would add Copilot to Windows 10, the reaction was a deep groan.
Microsoft just added another new “feature” to Windows 10: sports scores and stock price movements on the lock screen. Want to get rid of them? Sorry! Then you can’t see the weather on your lock screen anymore! Very few PC users “love” that sort of thing.
(Credit: Microsoft)People Don't Trust Microsoft
Microsoft has lost the trust of PC users over the years. It’s hard to even begin to explain all the reasons.
For one thing, Microsoft has added more and more advertisements to Windows. It really ramped up starting in Windows 10, which famously came with Candy Crush Saga pinned to its Start menu. Today, Windows comes with an obnoxious feed of viral stories, pop-ups for Edge and Bing, nags to set up OneDrive, and other nuisances.
When Microsoft pushes a new way of doing things, the company often seems more focused on the stick rather than the carrot. Take local accounts, for example. Microsoft keeps blocking workarounds that let you set up Windows with a local user account. (You can still set up Windows without a Microsoft account, but it’s become more complicated.) Windows is better with a Microsoft account in a lot of ways, sure, but the company is more focused on stopping you from using a local user account than convincing you of the advantages of an account.
The company doesn’t even respect a lot of your choices. Windows will always use Edge and Bing for certain things, like starting a search from the Start menu, no matter which browser and search engine you tell it you prefer.
Who's That Changing Things in the Background? Oh, It's Microsoft
While Microsoft says Recall is just for Copilot+ PCs and it will be your choice whether to use it or not, people have valid reasons to be skeptical. For the record, I think Recall will stay on those Copilot+ PCs because it needs a powerful neural processing unit to do the work and it would be extremely slow on existing PCs. But as I said, people notice when Microsoft announces something and then changes its mind.
Windows sometimes activates settings and changes things behind your back, too. Earlier this year, Microsoft Edge was slurping up browsing data from Chrome installations without permission. Microsoft said it was a bug, and it was fixed. But it begs the question: Why wouldn’t people assume Recall might be enabled in the background thanks to another “bug"?
Microsoft also loves dark patterns that encourage you to select the options it wants you to, all under the guise of giving you a choice. Windows 11 initially made it very confusing to change your default web browser, removing the one-click browser change option found in Windows 10. The company went back on that and has made it easier to change your default browser.
With a record like this one, people might wonder: Why wouldn’t Microsoft design the Recall settings in a way that might confuse you into enabling it in the future?
(Credit: Microsoft)All About the Cloud—Until Recall
Recall is also weird because it’s a bit of a shift for Microsoft. For years now, Microsoft has been pushing Windows users toward the cloud.
If you follow Microsoft’s recommendations, you sign in with a Microsoft account, sync your files to Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage, use a subscription-based version of Office through Microsoft 365, and sync your browsing data through Edge. Microsoft is moving more and more things to the cloud. In fact, Copilot relies entirely on cloud servers, just like ChatGPT.
Then, Microsoft announces Recall, an AI feature that will take screenshots of your PC every five seconds on a Copilot+ PC. But, Microsoft says, "Don’t worry! All this data will be stored locally on your PC itself. It will never be sent to Microsoft. Everything happens on your PC."
Let’s be honest: This is a huge change from all the other features Microsoft is adding to Windows. It’s no surprise that Windows users didn’t “get the message” about Recall being local because Microsoft has been moving as much as it can online for years. And, even as Microsoft insists it’s all local, people who don’t trust Microsoft and have paid attention to all the times the company has done a 180 may wonder whether that decision will change.
It's Not Just Microsoft
While I’m talking about Microsoft here, the reality is that many people don’t trust tech companies in general, and with good reason. Consider the current criticism of Google’s Gemini AI telling people to eat rocks. Remember how backlash led Apple to axe its on-device photo scanning back in 2022? We don’t talk about that latter incident much anymore, but it shows even Apple isn’t off the hook.
Tech companies have squandered the trust placed in them. But this Recall mess is all on Microsoft. It's in a uniquely bad spot compared with Google and Apple. When those companies unveil new features, there’s some degree of excitement. But Windows users often aren’t excited for Microsoft’s announcements. People expect Google and Apple to unveil interesting big new features (even if some of those new features aren’t great or are wildly expensive), while the expectation of Microsoft is it will unveil strange updates that cram advertising into the nooks and crannies of your Windows operating system.
What Would It Take to Love Windows?
What was the last big new Windows feature that really changed how you used your PC in a positive way? I write about Windows professionally, and even struggle to answer that question. I suppose the upgraded window snapping with Snap Layouts in Windows 11 was pretty nice.
While people are skeptical of new features in any technology product they use, they’re extra skeptical of Microsoft and Windows. Apple just announced Apple Intelligence, which will in some cases send your data to Apple’s servers for AI processing. That’s arguably less private than Recall, which Microsoft says will keep all your data local. But there’s more outrage over Recall than Apple Intelligence. Apple has built more trust with its users than Microsoft. Apple users anticipate new features and presuppose that they could be useful. The company also has a reputation of looking out for users' privacy.
Windows users have been trained to expect that new features often get in the way and make it more difficult to use their PC—and that Microsoft wants to upload everything it can to the cloud. Is it any wonder that PC users don’t love Windows?
The Recall Drama Hurts Windows on Arm
This whole circus sideshow Microsoft created around Copilot+ PCs with Recall is a shame because there’s so much else interesting about them, like the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X PCs that are about to come out. Yes, Microsoft is pushing them as Copilot+ PCs with AI features.
AI hype aside, these Qualcomm Snapdragon X PCs appear to be the first truly competitive Windows on Arm PCs. They will supposedly give Apple’s M-series MacBooks a run for their money and be a huge upgrade in battery life over current Intel and AMD laptops. It’s taken more than a decade to get here.
Even if you don’t care about AI features, it looks like the competition is forcing Intel to step up its game with its new Lunar Lake processors. That’s good news for everyone.
But hardly anyone is talking about that. We are all still talking about Recall.
Let’s hope the reaction was a wake-up call in Redmond. It’s easy to say you want people to love you. Doing the day-in, day-out work to earn that love? That’s the hard part.