[Rumor] Windows 12 to arrive in fall 2024 with a floating taskbar and a focus on AI

[LukeTbk]

Now you're catching on.

The idea that Windows Copilot and other things they have in mind being called AI is a misnomer is just a strange one, I think Lakados is speaking about something completely different from the news here. Or the idea that machine learning being called AI is a misnomer, why !?

Yea about that. Not that AMD's new 7040 series won't have AI crap in it, but I really doubt it's used for power savings. Considering how well the Ryzen 6850U does on battery and has no AI junk, I really doubt that's the case.

Why do you really doubt that audio-video correction (background replacement, noise removal, auto framing) during a video conference call like that is exactly the kind of things that the Ryzen AI engine help battery life with. That what AMD marketing is selling it for at least:
https://community.amd.com/t5/corpor...-on-windows-11-with-new-developer/ba-p/607847

 

[staknhalo]

Eh there's interchangeability somewhat because to have AI you have to have a machine that learns, so AI tech/ML tech - it's all just data crunching/linking till it starts doing it autonomously

 

[LukeTbk]

Eh there's interchangeability somewhat because to have AI you have to have a machine that learns, so AI tech/ML tech

You can also do algorithmic AI (A lot of NPC video game AI or old chess engine) were coded.

But since raw power got good enough to go the ML route a lot of AI will use it.

 

[DukenukemX]

The idea that Windows Copilot and other things they have in mind being called AI is a misnomer is just a strange one, I think Lakados is speaking about something completely different from the news here. Or the idea that machine learning being called AI is a misnomer, why !?

Either way the mention of AI is just marketing. Most people will probably find a way to disable Copilot because of the privacy issues and the likelihood that it's going to make mistakes. It's just Microsoft driving up analytics.

Why do you really doubt that audio-video correction (background replacement, noise removal, auto framing) during a video conference call like that is exactly the kind of things that the Ryzen AI engine help battery life with. That what AMD marketing is selling it for at least:
https://community.amd.com/t5/corpor...-on-windows-11-with-new-developer/ba-p/607847

Because it can be explained with something simpler like having the GPU doing the decompression which has been around for 20 years. If AMD can maintain that power advantage with other applications like web browsing and etc without any AI garbage, then what? We will soon find out once reviews are out for these new chips.

 

[LukeTbk]

Either way the mention of AI is just marketing. Most people will probably find a way to disable Copilot because of the privacy issues and the likelihood that it's going to make mistakes. It's just Microsoft driving up analytics.

Just marketing, what would count for AI, if saying outloud to your computer draft a proposal from yesterday meeting recording and getting one is not ? Or create a five slide power point based on my current word document and put relevant Internet stock photo or generate them if needed.

Would saying to outlook summarize all the emails I received while in vacation be AI ? I am not sure if it add anything privacy issue wise to the Office 365 users.

It is costly to run just for analytics, I would imagine they will try to couple it to paying customer.

Because it can be explained with something simpler like having the GPU doing the decompression which has been around for 20 years. If AMD can maintain that power advantage with other applications like web browsing and etc without any AI garbage, then what? We will soon find out once reviews are out for these new chips.

There decompression-compression of video going on, but there also noise removal (both for sound and image), background replacement, etc... AMD could be lying a lot (or the material you present) but I am not sure why we would really doubt while showing both an application-hardware combo that almost the most likely to use it.

 

[Wat]

Os/2 warp had a floating taskbar. But, MS innovation, so hip and fresh!!!

 

[polonyc2]

hopefully Windows 12 is closer in terms of UI and features to Windows 10...Windows 11 was Microsoft's attempt at copying the Apple interface

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Now you're catching on.

Yea about that. Not that AMD's new 7040 series won't have AI crap in it, but I really doubt it's used for power savings. Considering how well the Ryzen 6850U does on battery and has no AI junk, I really doubt that's the case.
View attachment 582140

Interesting numbers.

If we take the battery size in Wh and divide by the runtime in hours, we get the average power consumption across that time.

Model	Average Power consumption (W)
i7-1370P	13.5
i7-1365U	12.6
Apple M2 Pro	11.2
Ryzen 7 Pro 7840U	7.5

So, my question is, what were they loaded up with and how much comparative work did they get done for that amount of power used.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

hopefully Windows 12 is closer in terms of UI and features to Windows 10...Windows 11 was Microsoft's attempt at copying the Apple interface

The Windows 11 UI doesn't bother me much after I am done tweaking it. I move the start menu to the left, and change a lot of registry settings to fix right clock annoyances and sidebar annoyances in the file manager.

Once I do that, it is fine. It isn't the UI that bothers me about Windows 11.

As far as the floating taskbar goes, having the option to have a floating taskbar is great. If someone likes it they should use it, but it is not for me, and I shouldn't have to use it. If it is snappable and becomes like a traditional taskbar when you do, then I have no problem with it. I may not like many things in Windows 12, but the floating taskbar, as long as it is dockable won't be what keeps me from using it.

 

[daglesj]

Apples ML acceleration for job specific tasks is what is giving it the huge battery life

Nothing to do with the fact that when you open up a Macbook it's 75% battery inside?

 

[Aurelius]

Nothing to do with the fact that when you open up a Macbook it's 75% battery inside?

Yeah... the ML acceleration helps, but a huge battery and a very efficient SoC are much more relevant!

 

[OFaceSIG]

Everytime a new Windows OS comes out the world comes to an end. I get it, Microsoft has had some real boners over the years. I personally still am not using 11 at home. I just prefer 10's UI. That being said, sooner or later I know I'll get dragged kicking and screaming into something else. I use linux all the time for VMs. I run BSD based appliances at home. But for the desktop? Linux is terrible, it just is.

 

[Lakados]

Nothing to do with the fact that when you open up a Macbook it's 75% battery inside?

Might be 75% battery but it’s also 1/3’rd the size inside because they are freaking tiny.
Same Wh ratings.

 

[Lakados]

The reality is the age of the operating system is over, everything is either an app or a website at this stage. They all exist in such striking similarity in terms of looks that the end user does t really care, it’s about features and platforms now.
Microsoft knows its users sign up to 3’rd parties for about everything and is handing out that data left and right for those features they provide. IOS, Android, Windows, all of them are sending out craploads of valuable info augmenting things those OS’s lack by default. Be it AI enhanced Spell Check, virtual assistants, chat services, meeting clients, scheduling apps, search services, on and on and on.
The money is in the data those things collect Microsoft knows this, Windows is just a gateway to those services, and Microsoft wants to bring more users online with their first party offerings. Same amount of data being collected, the owner just changes.

Here’s hoping Valve can bring a few big publishers onboard for Proton and more of them support Vulkan first.

 

[sadsteve]

GPU pass through for virtualization has come a very long way.

Most games are GPU bottlenecked long before they are CPU limited and the 5% overhead isn’t an issue at anything sub 4K.

Yep. I run a KVM/QEMU based VM with GPU passthrough for Win10/Win11 and so far, I can't tell the difference between VM gaming and booting directly to Windows gaming.

 

[Lakados]

Yep. I run a KVM/QEMU based VM with GPU passthrough for Win10/Win11 and so far, I can't tell the difference between VM gaming and booting directly to Windows gaming.

I’m doing it with HyperV and VMWare but the overhead is small, the only issue I’ve encountered in a desktop environment is when there is only one GPU. If you have an iGPU for the host system so you can dedicate the discrete one for the VM things work better because of how memory and resource sharing works. But even then as long as you aren’t doing a lot on both at the same time that’s an edge case that newer versions have worked around pretty nicely.

 

[Gorankar]

I never got the UI change for the sake of UI change. Usually it's no better than the old UI, and often enough they actually make it worse. Though I mostly attribute that to the weird, "make everything look like a low rent mobile app", thing that MS and Apple seem to be into the last decade or so.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I never got the UI change for the sake of UI change. Usually it's no better than the old UI, and often enough they actually make it worse. Though I mostly attribute that to the weird, "make everything look like a low rent mobile app", thing that MS and Apple seem to be into the last decade or so.

It's not just them. Just about every website is designed to look like a low rent mobile app these days.

Someone out there is teaching UI designers that this is what people want, and I would like to have a chat with whomever that is.

 

[Bigbacon]

the windows 11 task bar is useless.....why do I need to float now

 

[Domingo]

Honestly, for my uses cases it's not going to do anything dramatically different or new. It's an OS. I just hope it looks good and doesn't try to keep one foot in the past for the people that still want everything to look like Windows NT. Give me something that looks like it has an actual artist on the team. Beyond that, hopefully keep moving all that shit still in the control panel to the settings menu with everything else.

 

[DukenukemX]

But for the desktop? Linux is terrible, it just is.

I've been using Linux on my desktop for over a year and it isn't terrible. Do I run into problems? Yes of course, but I also did with Windows. The main problem with Linux is using applications made for Windows. It rarely works out perfectly. I played God of War from start to finish with no issues, but when I came back to play the game I find that it won't start anymore. It will once I use wine-staging-tkg, but the proton build had stopped working for some reason. Otherwise Linux Mint is a better experience than using Windows 11. Not only I can setup my UI the way I want, which looks a lot like Windows 7, but I don't have to worry about viruses. It's funny watching my fellow online gamers panic that an addon may contain a virus, while I laugh at them in Linux.

 

[OFaceSIG]

I've been using Linux on my desktop for over a year and it isn't terrible. Do I run into problems? Yes of course, but I also did with Windows. The main problem with Linux is using applications made for Windows. It rarely works out perfectly. I played God of War from start to finish with no issues, but when I came back to play the game I find that it won't start anymore. It will once I use wine-staging-tkg, but the proton build had stopped working for some reason. Otherwise Linux Mint is a better experience than using Windows 11. Not only I can setup my UI the way I want, which looks a lot like Windows 7, but I don't have to worry about viruses. It's funny watching my fellow online gamers panic that an addon may contain a virus, while I laugh at them in Linux.
View attachment 582530

I work in IT all day. Have for nearly two decades now. As stated in my prior message. I don't mind using Linux or BSD where it makes sense for me. But on the desktop I just can't. I need *nearly* trouble free gaming. That simply doesn't happen with Linux. I know Steam is working hard to fix that, but that's just steam.

I don't have the energy to mess with that after I get home.

 

[Domingo]

How often are tech savvy people still getting viruses? I haven't run into malware, personally, in more than a decade. Maybe longer. I have coworkers that click those "your Outlook password has expired" phishing emails, but those are OS agnostic.

 

[Hikaru IchijoSL]

Wake me up when they put the 10 start menu back. I plan to go with 10 until the end.

 

[socK]

How often are tech savvy people still getting viruses? I haven't run into malware, personally, in more than a decade. Maybe longer. I have coworkers that click those "your Outlook password has expired" phishing emails, but those are OS agnostic.

Never. This is so exceedingly rare unless you are doing something dumb - at which point I'd classify that person as not tech savvy.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I've been using Linux on my desktop for over a year and it isn't terrible. Do I run into problems? Yes of course, but I also did with Windows. The main problem with Linux is using applications made for Windows. It rarely works out perfectly. I played God of War from start to finish with no issues, but when I came back to play the game I find that it won't start anymore. It will once I use wine-staging-tkg, but the proton build had stopped working for some reason. Otherwise Linux Mint is a better experience than using Windows 11. Not only I can setup my UI the way I want, which looks a lot like Windows 7, but I don't have to worry about viruses. It's funny watching my fellow online gamers panic that an addon may contain a virus, while I laugh at them in Linux.
View attachment 582530

I've been using Linux as my primary desktop OS since ~2001. I wouldn't have it any other way.

The only part of the experience that is not superior to any version of Windows I have ever used is gaming, so I dual boot for just that, and have a Windows 10 install dedicated to games with nothing else installed.

I honestly don't understand what people are talking about when they say that Linux sucks on the desktop. Only thing I can think of is that they haven't used it in 20 years and are basing that judgment off of older experiences, or that they maybe tried some weirdo experimental or special purpose distribution that wasn't quite suitable for what they were trying to do.

I work in IT all day. Have for nearly two decades now. As stated in my prior message. I don't mind using Linux or BSD where it makes sense for me. But on the desktop I just can't. I need *nearly* trouble free gaming. That simply doesn't happen with Linux. I know Steam is working hard to fix that, but that's just steam.

I don't have the energy to mess with that after I get home.

Ahh, OK, that makes more sense. I kind of agree with that, which is why I still dual boot. It is better than it has ever been, but it is still not great.

I don't generally consider games to be part of the desktop experience though. When I think of "the desktop experience" I think of web browsing, authoring documents, editing pictures, encoding videos, etc. etc. etc. Gaming feels separate to me.

 

[Lakados]

Now you're catching on.

Yea about that. Not that AMD's new 7040 series won't have AI crap in it, but I really doubt it's used for power savings. Considering how well the Ryzen 6850U does on battery and has no AI junk, I really doubt that's the case.
View attachment 582140

A few things with this though.
The 7840U is a 28w part vs the M2 Pro being a 45w part, so while it itself uses 60% less energy it only manages to beat out the M2 Pro by roughly the same amount when scaled for Watt Hours, it is also worth noting that the 7840U is 25%-40% slower than the M2 Pro. And the M1 and M2 architectures do not adjust power usage they are flat 45w, and the 7840U can scale from 12-30w draw.
The AMD 7840U also does have the AMD AI XDNA cores so I assume they have something to do with their test here. I would want to see what Windows build they used for that test and if it was making use of those XDNA cores
But yes the 7840U is the first real competitor to the Apple M series silicon, and it looks to be a pretty capable chip, I am hoping Dell can get them in their Latitude 5000 series for October, because that would be a no-brainer for the fleet update this year.

I can say I have a few 6850Us in the fleet and I am impressed overall with them, doing very light work like watching videos or long zoom meetings the battery life is fine, but the second you launch a dozen Chrome tabs, a few Excel spreadsheets, and a couple of Adobe documents along with Outlook and the rest of the day to day their batteries plummet, not something the M1s do (I don't have any M2s in the fleet). The AMD 6850U though is far better than any of the Intel mobile chips I have from that same generation though so it is a huge leap forward, but I still have more people here wanting to make the change from Windows to Apple than I have the capacity to support currently so Microsoft, AMD, and Intel working together to step up their game is a win for everybody no matter how you want to frame it.

 

[Lakados]

Interesting numbers.

If we take the battery size in Wh and divide by the runtime in hours, we get the average power consumption across that time.

Model	Average Power consumption (W)
i7-1370P	13.5
i7-1365U	12.6
Apple M2 Pro	11.2
Ryzen 7 Pro 7840U	7.5

So, my question is, what were they loaded up with and how much comparative work did they get done for that amount of power used.

According to the test it was just one Microsoft Teams meeting from start to finish.

 

[IcePickFreak]

My main computer use is CAD and gaming - two things Linux really falls flat on. Not really thrilled about all the "features" they keep adding to Windows, I just need an OS to run the programs I want to actually use, so the OS situation as a whole is a solid "meh" from me.

 

[rgMekanic]

I really don't understand what Microsoft's issue with UIs are.

They've got a bunch of 20 somethings working there that don't understand that not every device is a touchscreen. Seen it in games recently to moving to an "icon based UI"

Fuck all the way off.

 

[Lakados]

I've been using Linux on my desktop for over a year and it isn't terrible. Do I run into problems? Yes of course, but I also did with Windows. The main problem with Linux is using applications made for Windows. It rarely works out perfectly. I played God of War from start to finish with no issues, but when I came back to play the game I find that it won't start anymore. It will once I use wine-staging-tkg, but the proton build had stopped working for some reason. Otherwise Linux Mint is a better experience than using Windows 11. Not only I can setup my UI the way I want, which looks a lot like Windows 7, but I don't have to worry about viruses. It's funny watching my fellow online gamers panic that an addon may contain a virus, while I laugh at them in Linux.
View attachment 582530

I run more protective measures in and around my Linux systems than I do on my Microsoft ones by a long shot, last I checked almost every major data breach in the past 5+ years has had a Linux server at its core.
But yes desktop day to day... Where are your "gamer" friends getting these patches from that they honestly have to be concerned about it containing a virus?

 

[LukeTbk]

I honestly don't understand what people are talking about when they say that Linux sucks on the desktop. Only thing I can think of is that they haven't used it in 20 years and are basing that judgment off of older experiences, or that they maybe tried some weirdo experimental or special purpose distribution that wasn't quite suitable for what they were trying to do.

Could be having an issue with hardwares experience, which could be more common.

They've got a bunch of 20 somethings working there that don't understand that not every device is a touchscreen. Seen it in games recently to moving to an "icon based UI"

Fuck all the way off.

I doubt this is nearly close to the reality to the 20s something Microsoft employee, those youngling are more likely to be Neovim linux purist that never even use a mouse than every device is a touchscreen type.

They went from making Windows 8 attempt to make a really good opensource Terminal

 

[DukenukemX]

I work in IT all day. Have for nearly two decades now. As stated in my prior message. I don't mind using Linux or BSD where it makes sense for me. But on the desktop I just can't. I need *nearly* trouble free gaming. That simply doesn't happen with Linux. I know Steam is working hard to fix that, but that's just steam.

I don't have the energy to mess with that after I get home.

It depends on the games you play. World of Warcraft for the most part works perfectly fine, as I use Kron4ek's Wine Staging TKG builds. Eldin Ring also just works on any Wine version, including Proton of course. Valorant though requires Windows 11, including Secure Boot and TPM2.0. There are ways around this, but I wouldn't try it just for the level of gymnastics needed to run this game. On the flip side Fallout 3 runs perfectly fine on Linux, while on Windows 10 I've had to do a lot of hacks to get the game running stable. Cyberpunk works perfectly fine on Linux, but not the mods. For whatever reason the game can't see any mod, including the mod that organizes it for the game. There is a method to fix it, but I didn't feel like doing it considering how much I hated the game.

So yes, Linux gaming is harder. One the flip side using Linux Mint is better than Windows 11. I don't have bloat installed, and I don't have to deal with Microsofts ads. Also yes Windows 10 showed me ads for Office 365 and OneDrive. I also don't need to worry about Windows anti-virus deleting programs it thinks is a virus. I also love not having startup crap that's trying to take my attention if I ever reboot my PC. I also don't have to worry about Windows 11 and trying to move the start button back to it's correct location, which is the bottom left.

How often are tech savvy people still getting viruses? I haven't run into malware, personally, in more than a decade. Maybe longer. I have coworkers that click those "your Outlook password has expired" phishing emails, but those are OS agnostic.

It never happens. The benefit is not having the anti-virus software, which will mistake a file for a virus and remove it. I'm also less afraid to click on links and download something that I know won't have any effect on my machine.

But yes the 7840U is the first real competitor to the Apple M series silicon, and it looks to be a pretty capable chip, I am hoping Dell can get them in their Latitude 5000 series for October, because that would be a no-brainer for the fleet update this year.

I have a feeling that Intel's Meteor Lake will be even better.

 

[Lakados]

It depends on the games you play. World of Warcraft for the most part works perfectly fine, as I use Kron4ek's Wine Staging TKG builds. Eldin Ring also just works on any Wine version, including Proton of course. Valorant though requires Windows 11, including Secure Boot and TPM2.0. There are ways around this, but I wouldn't try it just for the level of gymnastics needed to run this game. On the flip side Fallout 3 runs perfectly fine on Linux, while on Windows 10 I've had to do a lot of hacks to get the game running stable. Cyberpunk works perfectly fine on Linux, but not the mods. For whatever reason the game can't see any mod, including the mod that organizes it for the game. There is a method to fix it, but I didn't feel like doing it considering how much I hated the game.

So yes, Linux gaming is harder. One the flip side using Linux Mint is better than Windows 11. I don't have bloat installed, and I don't have to deal with Microsofts ads. Also yes Windows 10 showed me ads for Office 365 and OneDrive. I also don't need to worry about Windows anti-virus deleting programs it thinks is a virus. I also love not having startup crap that's trying to take my attention if I ever reboot my PC. I also don't have to worry about Windows 11 and trying to move the start button back to it's correct location, which is the bottom left.

It never happens. The benefit is not having the anti-virus software, which will mistake a file for a virus and remove it. I'm also less afraid to click on links and download something that I know won't have any effect on my machine.

I have a feeling that Intel's Meteor Lake will be even better.

Could be, but that would be one hell of a leapfrog for Intel. They need a break though so I’m rooting for them, we seriously need some competition in the mobile space because what we currently have isn’t sufficient.

 

[Armenius]

How often are tech savvy people still getting viruses? I haven't run into malware, personally, in more than a decade. Maybe longer. I have coworkers that click those "your Outlook password has expired" phishing emails, but those are OS agnostic.

I haven't gotten a virus in 20 years since I was last downloading and running pirated software fast and loose. I have never run anything but Windows operating systems on my personal machines since 3.11

 

[staknhalo]

Yeah I haven't ran AV on my own comp since ~2006 when even then I just liked demo'ing/comparing products (not counting how MS now forces Windows Defender AV to ON no matter what even if disabled via Group Policy or registry - only option is to rip it out by booting into Linux and deleting files or making a custiom ISO with ntLITE - thanks MS )

Common sense is the best AV

 

[Comixbooks]

the windows 11 task bar is useless.....why do I need to float now

Yeah floating task bar I'll install in no matter what I might wait a while for Nvidia driver updates had a bad experience with Windows 10 not meshing with my 1080ti it was a blurry mess hurt my eyes.

 

[Comixbooks]

 

[Comixbooks]

Yeah but can you make the Taskbar vertical?

 

[Bigbacon]

i just realized today that in windows 11, right clicking something no longer has text for copy/paste stuff, just icons. I sat there thinking they removed the option completely until I realized that. are people so stupid now that can't read and need icons for everything?

I can't even ungroup the task bar items in windows 11. It is just a piece of crap the task bar in 11 its borderline useless.