back to article Microsoft cancels universal Recall release in favor of Windows Insider preview

Microsoft has cancelled the wide release of Recall – the controversial tool for Copilot+ PCs that takes regular snapshots of a machine to create a record of everything users do with their machines – and will instead make it available only to Windows Insiders for the foreseeable future. Recall was announced on May 20, when …

  1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "available only to Windows Insiders"

    Until the day that Borkzilla screws up again and rolls it out to everyone including Windows 7/10 users.

    And I love that Borkzilla "discovered" that Recall could run on configs that didn't actually conform to its initial previsions. Oh, and yeah, the whole on by default thing.

    Way to go to stay true to your normal form of not having a clue . . .

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "available only to Windows Insiders"

      "If McDonald’s were run like Microsoft, one out of every hundred Big Macs would give you food poisoning, and the response would be, We're sorry, here’s a coupon for two more." ... an old thought from Mark Minasi

  2. alexinalnwick

    "Microsoft resolutely backed Recall for 17 days, but on June 17 the mega-developer caved"

    They do stuff in the future now?

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      No, that's just El Reg who has let slip that it has a portal it can use to see what's happening in the near future.

      They could see further, but it would require a nuclear power plant . . .

      1. David 132 Silver badge
        Happy

        And to paraphrase (the alt text from) an old XKCD, they could see into next month, but couldn't hear anything over all the screams.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      They do stuff in the future now?

      Their testing, mostly.

  3. simonlb Silver badge
    WTF?

    I Still Don't Understand Why

    What value does Recall add to the OS? Is it even needed? Is this something users have been campaigning to have added to Windows? Who even thought it was a good idea?

    If Microsoft were actually paying attention and wanted to do something useful, they'd be:

    • Fixing the broken Start menu
    • Removing all telemetry and adverts
    • Making local search the default with web search an option to include if you want it
    • Adding themes to give you a Win 2000, XP, Vista, Win 7, Win 8.x, Win 10 UI complete with the correct icons and sounds

    There's probably a lot more but those would be a start.

    1. theOtherJT Silver badge

      Re: I Still Don't Understand Why

      But they don't want to do something useful. They want to make more money.

      Constantly slinging ads at you and running a series for forced upgrades achieves that, at least in the short term until they piss off enough people that there's finally sufficient momentum to see customers abandon them en masse.

    2. Zippy´s Sausage Factory

      Re: I Still Don't Understand Why

      I suspect that three letter agencies are loving the idea, and are putting pressure on MS devs to leave a handy back door into it. I can imagine a lot of countries with reason to be suspicious of American three letter agencies are starting to get itchy feelings just reading about this.

    3. Jet Set Willy

      Re: I Still Don't Understand Why

      Fixing the broken Start menu

      Don't see the problem. Anything I want to access quickly is already bookmarked/shortcutted (if that's a word)

      Removing all telemetry and adverts

      100% agree, but mine is blocked on the router. Not entry-level for many people so this needs to change

      Making local search the default with web search an option to include if you want it

      Agree again - what do I care if "Bing" (Google) finds an web article about ABAP development on a two stack SAP PI/PO system? I've already written the thing I'm after.

      Adding themes to give you a Win 2000, XP, Vista, Win 7, Win 8.x, Win 10 UI complete with the correct icons and sounds

      Could not care less what an environment looks like, as long as it is not photos or animated. Plain old background if I can get it, otherwise I'll cover with other windows.

      As a Windows LUser, I appreciate being kept abreast of these developments. Windows get's a lot of shit but I prefer it over Linux because I can make stuff happen with a right-click. Not a case-sensisitive, drawn out command line scrawl. Of course, I don't keep anything private on a Windows server - I'm not completely stupid.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I Still Don't Understand Why

        I'm not completely stupid

        I remember my Mum saying that to a shop manager once, during a dispute over a faulty item.

        His straight-faced and carefully emphasised reply was "Madam, I didn't say you were completely stupid".

        1. David 132 Silver badge
          Happy

          Re: I Still Don't Understand Why

          Anyone saying that to my mum would have been subjected to one of her Withering Stares, which would have an effect on them akin to what happened to the Nazi at the end of Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade (“he chose… poorly.”)

      2. Richard 12 Silver badge

        Re: I Still Don't Understand Why

        The main problem with Start is that it flattens the folder structure.

        So anyone with two or more versions of an application cannot figure out which shortcut to click, as they're exactly the same.

        Yet if you look in the underlying filesystem, Bar and Bar are clearly in Foo 1.2 and Foo 2.0 folders - just deliberately hidden from you.

        Worse, a lot of very common line of business software has a weird name that you can't remember, but is in a folder of the memorable name. Which you can't see anywhere.

        Not a problem if you use it every day, but a major issue when you only use it for month-end tasks...

        There are many other issues, of course. A lot boils down to an apparent assumption that nobody has more than about ten applications installed.

        1. Dimmer Silver badge

          Re: I Still Don't Understand Why

          “apparent assumption that nobody has more than about ten applications installed.”

          And they already installed them for you.

      3. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

        Re: I Still Don't Understand Why [Private Stuff on a Windows 'Server']

        Every MS-Windows PC can be a 'server' via the administrative C$ share. Does your IT department run nighttime backups of users' PC documents ('My Documents', 'My Photos', etc. pseudo-folders)?

        My private stuff stays on my personally-owned, full-disc-encrypted, Linux laptop, and I don't print my private stuff at work. That way, it stays ... not totally-private, but reasonably-private.

    4. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

      Re: I Still Don't Understand Why [Windows Themes]

      Microsoft did create manga-style mascot characters for some of their products. Windows 7 had (family name) Madobe (given name) Nanami, Silverlight (remember Silverlight? Remember that product?) had Hikari somebody-or-other, Azure had Claudia somebody-or-other ('Claudia', 'cloudy', 'the Cloud', geddit? The Japanese names were similarly related: 'mado'=='window', 'hikari'=='light'), and so forth.

      MS made an entire theme pack available for Madobe Nanami. It included recordings of a Japanese voice actress, for various Windows events -- "battery low", "starting up", "shutting down", etc. -- in Japanese, in a saccharine-cutesy voice.

      (I had downloaded the theme pack, extracted the audio files, and installed them on my work PC to counter-annoy my annoying officemate. And I removed them when I got a different officemate a couple weeks later. {evil grin})

      So, do the theme packs count as 'improvenents'?

    5. Grogan Silver badge

      Re: I Still Don't Understand Why

      I like a brute force filename search that takes wildcards (and operators, ideally). No smoke and mirrors like indexing databases (with one exception that I'll mention in a sec) or meta data. For me, I always have an idea where something would be, and how to search for it so most desktop search facilities are bollocks to me.

      I've hated Windows search since Windows XP. The ordinary "find files and folders" search interface was better. Show me the matches, with paths to the files.

      So... I had a utility in my tool chest called locate32 (at the time both 32 and 64 bit versions available, haven't used it in a long time as I'm not working on Windows computers anymore). Yes, based on the Unix locate utility, but with a GUI. It used an indexing database exclusively, but it would generate and update them in seconds or a few short minutes if starting from scratch on a system with a lot of files. Therefore, it was practical to update the database immediately before use. If you did that, you would get absolutely instant results with all the information I want displayed in columns (and full paths in a column is the most important to me). It took wildcards and operators. It was a standalone program, just run it and update database, so if I had to find something on computers I was working on I'd just copy that directory and use the utility.

      I'm a long time Linux user, and an example of something that makes me sick is that "baloo" indexing daemon that would be enabled by default in a KDE/Plasma installation. I use the "find" utility to search. It can do very clever things with switches and parameters. I don't even install slocate on systems (and remove it if I get a server with it installed... I hate that cron job)

  4. Sam not the Viking Silver badge
    Pint

    It's only a tool......

    I know it's a controversial opinion, but I used to find Windows helpful, facilitating access to a number of other features which made my workday useful and productive. I became rather an expert on it (in my limited fashion). Through Windows I ran a variety of local and remote devices which in my line of business saved a lot of production, time and money. It was important that it just 'worked' and didn't require constant nurturing.

    Now, I feel completely lost with features in Windows I don't want and being a bit of a dinosaur, can't see a use for. We make things. Technical products, not cutting edge but not far off. We used to (still do) strive to make things leaner, faster, better, cheaper..... You only sell what the customer wants to buy. Competition is a tough driver. It's a lesson others might learn?

    Anyway, it's Friday ----->

    1. DoctorNine

      Re: It's only a tool......

      "..Competition is a tough driver. It's a lesson others might learn?..."

      That's problem, old spud. There's no effective competition in the OS market. Because everything is proprietary. I think the quickest cure to poor OS design would be to enforce interoperability in the constituents of the OS by legal mandate. Approach it like electric grid standards. Then you might see some competition. That won't ever happen though. The people who have all the money and influence, want to be able to siphon their share off the user like they always have. So it will continue.

    2. 0laf Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Re: It's only a tool......

      You're not alone.

      Abnout 3000yr ago as the meme says Window actually got quite good. Windows 2000 was a solid operating system that (to me anyway) was slick on reasonable hardware of the day, fairly intuitive, much more stable than its predecessor and largely got on with the job of being an OS without getting in the way.

      XP added a bit of flair to the brutalist architecture of 2000 but again largely got on with the job of being an OS and working to make your life easier.

      Win7 is arguable the turning point from where the Windows operating system was a tool designed to help you work to being one big trojan horse given to you to allow you to be exploited by microsoft.

      And from then on Window OSs have effectively become more and more abusive in favour of the supplier.

      W11 seems to be MS giving up on any pretence and basically telling us "You work for us, your existance is only tolerated to train our products". They've gone full Black Mirror.

      Now I hate doing anything with IT when I'm not being paid for it but even I'm getting to the point where my desktop will being going to Linux soon. MS shittifications have finally tipped the balance over my laziness.

  5. druck Silver badge
    Devil

    If anyone thinks...

    ...that this has gone away, don't be so sure. As with many other stupid ideas, that even the general public can see are bad, it will be come back eventually with a different name, and a slight tweak to the way it works, probably also losing the opt in/out along the way.

    1. Andy Non Silver badge

      Re: If anyone thinks...

      The general public probably won't even think twice about the feature when buying their next Windows machine. They may not even know the feature exists or wouldn't care if they did.

      1. 0laf Silver badge

        Re: If anyone thinks...

        But are many people actually buying windows PCs any more? I freely admit to being out of touch on this.

  6. xanadu42
    Facepalm

    Recall of Recall...

    I cannot recall a time when a recall of (a) Recall has ever been initiated...

    Unless I recall incorrectly

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Recall of Recall...

      Don’t forget that Total Recall from 1990 was recalled in 2017, and as the main protagonist says, ‘I’ll be back.” Unless I have recalled that incorrectly….

      1. xanadu42
        Mushroom

        Re: Recall of Recall...

        But wasn't that "recall" because of some Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey mind f*ck?

        1. David 132 Silver badge
          Happy

          Re: Recall of Recall...

          I’m reminded of the classic Onion article - from back when they were funny - “Ford Recalls Chrysler Minivans” or something similar.

          1. jospanner Silver badge

            Re: Recall of Recall...

            good news, The Onion is under new ownership

  7. Howard Sway Silver badge

    On Thursday, the wounded software titan took another step backwards

    It's gone from Total Recall to Total Embarrassment. Trying to force this on everybody, without thinking through the consequences, has caused a lot of damage to their already less than stellar reputation, especially as so many people quickly spotted the disastrous consequences and they didn't, or ignored any internal reservations in their enthusiasm to market a new feature.

    The whole thing should be canned, too many of the fundamental risks of doing it cannot be mitigated.

    1. Like a badger

      Re: On Thursday, the wounded software titan took another step backwards

      The only thing that matters to MS is their share price, and stupid ideas don't harm that. In fact, all MS leaders need to do is waffle on about how Recall is "AI enabled" and the share price goes up. Looking elsewhere at how idiot shareholders have voted to give circa $50 billion of their money to Elmo and diluted their future returns to boot, it's quite clear that US equity markets are simply dysfunctional.

      Customers, sales, market share, innovation, true R&D, those are all soooo yesterday. P/E ratios, ROCE, et al, no those mean nothing. All that now counts is how an exec prattles to the shareholders. It's pretty close to religion.

    2. Plest Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Re: On Thursday, the wounded software titan took another step backwards

      "has caused a lot of damage to their already less than stellar reputation"

      With 90% of the world's business desktop's running it, do you think MS give a rat's arse? Every company is on the rack for the desktop , Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Teams, SQL Server , C#, .Net apps by the ton to name just a handful, MS could send someone out to punch everyone's mum in the face and businesses would still keep coughing up the subs every 12 months!

  8. crediblywitless

    The two examples "what was that website last week?" and "where is that email?" are already pretty comprehensively solved anyway.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      "what was that website last week?" isn't solved by default - websites get updated, neglected, DoSed, and forum posts get deleted etc. I'm not saying an OS-wide screen grabber from Microsoft is the answer, but the problem does exist. If it didn't, we wouldn't need archive.org or the Wayback Machine.

      I can think of lots of genuine use-cases for Recall-like functionality if implemented in a more limited fashion and under the user's informed control. I.e, opt-in, per app basis, only active during certain hours of the day, whitelists and black lists of sites, data only stored and processed on local machine, Dara deleted after a period of time, not coded by Microsoft etc etc.

      1. Jimmy2Cows Silver badge

        What on Earth did Dara do to you that warrants deleting him?

        1. James O'Shea Silver badge

          He voted for Corbyn.

          1. Paul Herber Silver badge
      2. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

        Is it Worth it?

        Presume what you asked for was implemented.

        With all those options, how likely is it that MS would code at least one of them wrong in a way which created a security hole? How likely is it that a user would misconfigure one of those many options in a way which would create a data leak?

        Finally, how likely is it that the time this feature saves you outweighs the time you put into configuring it securely?

    2. Snapper
      Stop

      Wheras.....

      The problems start when the abusive partner finds out that a lawyer/refuge has been contacted.

      The problems start when I want to send confidential quotes/contracts/medical information to someone else and THEY have it turned on.

      Will I deal with that company or person again? Probably not *if* there is any way of finding out.

      Will I add a disclaimer to the top of every email and .PDF I send to the effect that the recipient is is required to let me know in writing that they have switched Recall off, and if they intend to switch it back on for ANY reason they have to give me five working days notice before doing so and immediately destroy all and any documents including the original emails that I have sent them?

      Fuck yes!

      Am I a hypocrite because I have a computer myself. No, because I use computers and other devices that don't run Windows and I will never do so.

  9. Alan Bourke

    Oh it'll be back ...

    they're postively doing the backstroke in a swimming pool full of AI Kool-Aid now ...

  10. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
    Linux

    For some interesting reading ...

    ... I recommend wandering over to Windows-oriented "news" sites and taking a gander at the Recall coverage. For example this article refers to it as a "powerful new feature" without mentioning the privacy concerns. They also take a moment to hype the AI/Copilot+ PC at the end. It makes me really happy that The Register exists so that we get a viewpoint that's not just fawning over the output of giant corporations.

    In other news, I have a 2 TB SSD arriving soon to receive a fresh Linux installation as I hopefully begin my migration away from Windows.

    1. Random person
      Linux

      Re: For some interesting reading ...

      The penultimate paragraph of the article on "Windows Central" that you linked to reads as follows

      > While Windows Recall is powerful, it has also proven controversial. Many raised concerns about the security and privacy implications of such a feature. While the data is all stored locally and is never sent to the cloud, security experts warned that malicious actors could do a lot of damage if they managed to obtain a PC that was logged in. Windows Recall would have essentially placed a plethora of information on a platter, though that proverbial platter would only have been accessible with someone who could log into the PC.

      Before you ignore because you believe that I am a Windows fanboi, I have used Linux for years and *nix systems at work more a lot longer.

      I hope you find whichever distribution you select useful and helpful in getting things done.

  11. Kev99 Silver badge

    Has anyone yet to see a REAL reason for COPILOT and its ilk to exist?

    1. Jimmy2Cows Silver badge

      Despite being a massive skeptic of anything "AI", I have seen some reasonably promising results in Visual Studio with Github Copilot. For mundane stuff the autocomplete can be remarkably accurate. Sometimes it's completely wrong and not what I'm intending, occasionally it gives pure garbage that wouldn't have a hope of compiling, but it guesses my intentions enough of the time for it to be a valid time saver.

      Of course, that's for relatively simple things, generic things, where there's probably a lot of similar examples already in the training corpus. The more niche the thing you want to do, they less accurate it becomes. Still experimenting to find what it's good at and where it falls over.

      Is it the answer to every dev's prayers? Hell no. Will it put us all out a job? Not in a million years. Can it help speed things up a bit? Seems plausible. It's just another tool in the arsenal. Use it knowing it's limitations and you can be a bit more productive.

      Does it live up to the massive hype and carefully crafted examples showing 10x productivity gains? Abso-fucking-lutely of course not.

    2. Dave 126 Silver badge

      > Has anyone yet to see a REAL reason for COPILOT and its ilk to exist?

      The creator of Swift, Chris Lattner, has spoken about how uses it. He says having Copilot create a line of code for him to review and edit is quicker than him typing the line himself.

      1. navarac Silver badge

        It's the morons that don't review and edit code that bother me. They'll just accept the code 'as is'.

        1. 0laf Silver badge

          When the beancounters decide copilot is good enough they'll pay off 90% of the develpment staff and noone will have time to review every bit of copilot code.

          Or they'll hand off coding to non-coder cheap unqualified, "AI whisperers" and whatever shit get produced will go into production.

  12. Jimmy2Cows Silver badge
    Pint

    meaning more PCs might therefore at risk once the tool was widely released

    Classic! Author deserves a pint for that one.

  13. NanoMeter

    Recall the recall

    Fair enough.

  14. thexfile

    Clippy must be laughing his azz off.

  15. Inkey
    Gimp

    Blobby

    A large blob with a tentickle in all parts of the OS,with a huge vulnerabilty surface ?......

    this has Pottering all over it .....

  16. Ropewash

    It will be back. It will harvest data. It will be monetized.

    It will also be abused to hell and back by every TLA or other miscreants, but what isn't?

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I stand by my previous comments : "Microsoft deliberately announce stupid policies in order to generate cover for what they are really up to".

    So, what ARE they up to?

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