Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards | Hacker News Reader

Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards

arstechnica.com

133 pointskens247 comments

The way Microsoft is pushing AI literally everywhere now feels reminiscent of circa 2001 when literally everything was branded '.NET'. Eventually they scaled it back, but it was complete overkill and diluted what the brand was supposed to represent.

What is Microsoft suppsed to represent? I'm not sure their brand has ever been anything more concrete over its total existence other than BASIC/MS-DOS in the beginning, a few long running products (Windows, Office, Xbox, Azure) and that it is involved with user-facing technology.

The brand in question there was ".NET" not "Microsoft".

Microsoft represents a solid, stable, enterprise-friendly, conservative, but still somewhat “innovative” (whatever that means) company. Or at least that’s their brand. Given that a huge part of their value is their long term sales relationships, I’d say they are an extremely brand-reliant company.

You could argue the same for bic (the pen/lighter company). Solid, stable, enterprise friendly (100 packs!) and still somewhat innovative (new kinds of pens, white out, etc).

There are lots of companies you could say this about

I think at this point MS is really representing the enterprise/corporate Office suite as well as being exceptionally annoying with their Browser strategy.

But that's just my IMHO.

Same as it ever was.

> What is Microsoft suppsed to represent?

unreliable software combined with abusive business practices

I've never been able to find a better office suite. The FOSS alternatives and the google suite just don't do it for me.

I also switched back to Windows over Linux as my primary desktop environment.

Am I a victim of abuse?

(Mind you I don't pay for either)

It isn't that Office is abusive or Windows is abusive, it's that Microsoft is.

Word '97 is still my favorite word processor ever. Windows 7 is one of my favorite operating systems. I don't think they're abusive.

What's abusive is how slow Office 365 is. What's abusive is how updates reset all my settings trying to make Office 365 bearable (don't use cloud, save to computer by default, don't show backstage, etc.). What's abusive is FORCING me to combine taskbar buttons on Windows 11. What's abusive (and unreliable) is randomly selecting the whole filename while I'm editing it when the file is on OneDrive.

And that's just the tip of the ice berg.

It's the only thing MS^H^H Bing has that offers a prayer of beating Google at something. Expect saturation.

O mean, GCE vs Azure?

Other than ads, search or mobile OS, I'm not sure where else Google is beating MS. I don't mean to diminish those things, they are important. But ChromeOS is clearly nowhere near displacing Windows (for instance).

New outlook keeps getting worse, while gmail keeps getting better; virtually no one under the age of 40 buys Office for personal use, they all use the google suite, Chrome has an absurd market share. Really the only place they're winning is in the ChromeOS vs Windows fight.

> gmail keeps getting better

Gmail was always a parody of a mail client. Damn, even the demo called Lotus Notes was better.

ChromeOS? I think that's for old-person devices called "laptops"?

These days all people has is a smartphone and it runs Android or iOS, no Microsoft in sight.

> It's the only thing they have that offers a prayer of beating Google at something

I'm guessing their office suite offerings (hosted and desktop) dwarf anything that Google has.

Yeah, I clarified the post to indicate what I actually meant (Bing.)

They would really, really like you to use Bing for search instead of Google. Until the OpenAI partnership started to bear fruit, they had no way to get their foot in that particular door. Now that they do, they will never let us forget it.

From what I’ve seen the AI gimmick has resulted in almost no new market share for Bing. I downloaded it myself and used it a couple of times but the app was buggy on iOS and I can just use ChatGPT for the generative features. I imagine many others felt the same

I think ppl need to realize that Microsoft isn't a uniform monolithic entity. Its a collection of hundreds of products all desperately vying for the attention of the market and of their own enterprise sellers. Anyone inside msft who has a "failing" product like Bing would have looked at the halo around openai and told their dev and marketing teams to drop everything and get some of that glory. To steal Mitt Romneys infamous phrase, companies are people, too.

> It's the only thing they have that offers a prayer of beating Google at something.

Azure's market share would indicate you are wrong about this.

Replace "Google" with "another leading tech player" because they're way smaller than AWS.

And not even MS itself. They just invested in OpenAI to jump ahead.

Feels more like Google+ to me... push untested features that no one asked for but miss getting the basics right. I mean GitHub/Copilot tells me all the time that it will change the way I develop and everytime I look at windows they are still not able to implement a proper dark mode.

Well they can’t even decide on which frontend framework to use this year it seems…

Its not even microsoft its everyone and their grandmother pushing AI this AI that crap. Really language model this language model that, but we've perverted what AI actually means to the public already so that's great too for technological literacy purposes.

To be fair, customers are part of the hype feedback loop. I have seen actual conversations with non-tech workers that boil down to "when we ask these people what they want AI to do, they say they don't know, but boy do they get excited every time we mention adding AI"

Using AI customer service chatbots really is a hoot. The most egregious examples they add an ai autocomplete service to your replies. So the thing asks you for your email and in the textbox its so very helpfully prefilled bob@example.com that you now need to overwrite with your actual email. Pretty fun to think of the resources consumed delivering this experience too

Are customers really asking for AI soda flavors, tho? https://us.coca-cola.com/products/coke-creations/y3000-limit...

smacking AI on anything is probably an easy promotion for the next couple years

Ding! We have a winner. It is exactly that. No different really from 1999 products slapping Internet on everything or 2020 ones inserting crypto. Most importantly of all, its what investors and stockholders want to see now, and they will punish the stock price of anything that doesnt have an AI strategy.

I wonder if they just pasted their recipe into ChatGPT and asked “how can I make this taste better?”

They did at one point ask for cosmetics with thorium and radium[1], so who knows.

[1] http://museumofradium.co.uk/tho-radia/

I saw post in this general purpose forum where this guy claimed he asked chatgpt to learn about cnc-milling machines and material properties and produce g-code to mill a gear.

People were replying "I dont understand, but thats cool!" etc.

I checked his code and it did circle with G3 and then it did "finishing pass" which was also circle by rotating the chuck or A-axle. When I asked him about it, he just said "Oh, I didn't look at the code"

The new "blockchain". We don't know what problems we want to solve, but we sure know that we need to solve them with AI!

Apple, to their credit, hasn't announcing some generative-AI powered project. Yet. I'd like to think they have an Amish-like attitude to tech fads... hence why they never had a foldable come to market.

They actually have, but they generally refer to the technology by its more technical terms. Instead of saying "generative ai", they'll say "transformer based predictive text". They have a few things (keyboard, camera, photos app, and some others) that are actually using generative AI but they don't refer to it as such.

And as for the folding phone, I think they couldn't build one to their standards. I like the concept but there's a reason they've stayed relatively niche in the market.

Yes, they have. They haven't announced much in the way of concrete products/features, but they have announced an effort to stuff iOS full of unspecified generative AI ”stuff”, much centered on Apple’s own in-house LLM, and put lots of resources behind it.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-10-22/what-i...

I mean sure it's "everybody" but renaming Edge to Edge: AI Browser (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft....) is more over the top than most.

Good lord, that's just ridiculous

“It’s toasted”

Everyone had similar complaints about the cloud and USB, WiFi.

Operating systems before that. DSLs for configuration.

Circle of tech life, Simba.

What does the "AI" button on the keyboard do that compares to universal data and power ports or standardized secure wireless internet?

Not really, it’s literally mostly Microsoft shoehorning AI everywhere and rebranding everything into Microsoft Azure CoPilot <insert shitty product here>

I wonder if we'll see a point in the next few years where we have a keyboard key that only works if you have a subscription to Microsoft to access their AI, which I'm guessing we'll have to do at some point because all of this costs a boat load of computing resources.

The biggest thing I hate about the marketing is that they call everything CoPilot.

It's extremely confusing to users. Users get free windows CoPilot and wonder why they can't use it to generate PowerPoint presentations because the cool marketing doesn't clarify that that's a $30 a month separate license.

For this reason we actually turn windows CoPilot off. It doesn't really do much for business (it's just chatgpt really which we already offer using a custom integration) and it only causes confusion.

And these aren't the only ones. There's GitHub CoPilot, sales CoPilot (which can talk to Salesforce) and many more. Lots of which have features that won't work with the other iterations.

Another example, CoPilot studio allows you to make custom chat bots similar to the celebrity-tuned bots developed by meta. But no, these don't work in the Microsoft 365 CoPilot. It's such a mess.

"On an up-to-date Windows PC with Copilot enabled, you can currently do the same thing by pressing Windows + C. For PCs without Copilot enabled, including those that aren't signed into Microsoft accounts, the Copilot key will open Windows Search instead"

Just tried Windows + C on my Win 10 machine; it brings up a dialog that helpfully informs me "Cortana in Windows as a standalone app is deprecated."

I guess Windows 10 is not considered up to date per se…

Tip: you can use https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher to make it open the clock instead.

(just built a new PC and Windows 11 was quite awful w/ stock UX)

On Windows 10, Windows + S opens search.

Is that different then just pressing the windows key? I just poured the windows key and start typing a query.

I usually just press the Windows key as well. That said, Windows + S displays recent searches.

>Just tried Windows + C on my Win 10 machine; it brings up a dialog that helpfully informs me "Cortana in Windows as a standalone app is deprecated."

smirks

I'm sure this button will share the same fate come 2030, 2034. That said, I'm curious what GNOME and MATE will do with it -if anything.

Maybe Space Cadet style modifiers will make a comeback!

I'm surprised it's not easier to find HYPER key caps to replace CAPS.

I've been binding my caps to escape for a decade. There was a moment there where ChromeOS pointed out the vestigal nature of the caps key, and a blog post went viral in hacker circles about the history of the Hyper key. I ran Karabiner until Apple added ESC binding to Preferences.

I can chord Esc+A and ESC+S to Quick Open and Command Palette (respectively) in my editor, and then I get an easy escape key for the rest of the time.

Caps Lock is very handy for all of us who need to switch between US English and our own native keyboard layout(s). That new button might also be repurposed for that eventually.

Or a DE-wide dialog for Unicode support with current day UX (please I just want to hit a key and search/choose a symbol to enter, not having to remember thousands of possible codes, or having to open a lackluster character map application, or having to use a convoluted and hardly intuitive compose key).

https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/18/8798313/toshiba-2015-lapt...

Translation: Someone at Microsoft is already getting very, very worried about the return on all this investment they've put into generative AI.

Even with dozens of silly integrations like this they'll still make their investment back handily

I disagree, as I see there's huge momentum to push AI onto edge like "AI PC" initiative

between SW & HW companies

Even if generative AI does see huge uptake, that does not guarantee that Microsoft's implementation is the one that everyone uses. And, even if Microsoft's is the one that everyone uses, that does not guarantee that they make money of of it.

For further examples of money-losing products that changed the world, see the entire history of our crazy industry.

And they have no useful levers to pull, so they invent a useless one and yank it as hard as they can.

We all know exactly what's causing this, and we all know exactly how it'll turn out. How do we collectively tell them to knock it off? The industry needs some mechanism to stage an intervention, perhaps once they've cooled down a little from their present mania.

> How do we collectively tell them to knock it off

The “easiest” might be an antitrust suit. Forcing or bundling (or apparently advertising) one product with another runs afoul of anti-bundling laws, and there’s an argument to be made for windows and openAI/copilot to both be monopolies.

Now, who has a dozens of millions lying around to fund such a suit?

>And they have no useful levers to pull, so they invent a useless one and yank it as hard as they can.

From my understanding, Bing hasn't stolen any marketshare from Google since integrating ChatGPT. I think this could.

Pressing a key is easier than typing in Google.

If I wanted a keyboard with an "internet button", I could buy one, all the way back to the beige era.

I don't.

Microsoft's goal is to have copilot present and monitoring everywhere you input data & interact with Windows (CP is always ready to help!)

This will provide an unprecedented layer telemetry gathering for Microsoft, including personal and sensitive data that wasn't as reliably available before.

Achieving one of the Gold Rings of surveillance is a powerful motivator.

Whatever harvesting your specific personal creative written output for profit without compensation is called, that’s not telemetry. Telemetry is usage statistics. This is bulk theft of your copyrighted works at scale.

I don't relaly disagree with the sentiment that it is vvery unsavory, buuuttt to play devil's advocate:

1) copyright infringement is not theft 2) ai training is probably going to be rendered fair use

> ai training is probably going to be rendered fair use

More like an explicitly enumerated exception.

What about the MS Office key and Emoji key? Those were definitely added after 1994.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/using-the-office-k...

Random keys are added to keyboards all the time. In this case Microsoft is requiring it from all their PC vendors.

Oof. This should be more like a media key than a required key. I view it like a "Volume up/down" key, it's nice but not essential. Although it's probably much less useful than a volume key.

You could say the same about the Windows key itself. Many did.

You mean the super key or command key...

This should really be the top comment in the whole thread because almost all of the comments I've read so far are missing this point.

Yes, _keyboard manufacturers_ are allowed to add/remove any keys that they want. But most PC users are not buying keyboards from third-party vendors. They are buying them as part of the whole PC from OEMs like Dell, HP, and Lenovo. And the Windows OEM license agreements for those vendors state (to paraphrase), "If you want to ship Windows on your systems, you have to include the Windows and Copilot keys on the keyboard."

And it follows that keyboard manufacturers _want_ to have their keyboards include all the same keys as the OEMs so that they can claim complete compatibility with the OEMs, possibly to the point of calling the keyboards Microsoft Windows(TM) Compatible on the box.

Shame on Ars for this. Would have thought they would be better. ESPECIALLY since the "since 1994" is not important for the headline at all, but they just wanted to pull something out of their ass to embellish the headline, but actually ended up making it wrong by doing so.

I miss terse but descriptive headlines. Everything now has to be 11/10 wild or clickbait that doesn't actually give a full piece of information.

I believe the key (maahahaha) is the requirement.

Microsoft famously required the Windows key for branded OEM computers/laptops, and now they're trying to require a Copilot key. We'll see if it flies.

I wished OEMs just crossed their arms and required Microsoft to pay a fee for each keyboard with this silly key...

That's effectively what "happens" but it's reversed; Microsoft gives a 'discount' if you're OEMing with the key ...

Perverse incentives all the way down. I remember having to work a bit to find "Apple" keyboards that would have the correct words because the Windows key was confusing (and in the wrong place until OS X easily supported remapping).

I see the word "clickbait" on HN so often it's lost all meaning. The headline is fine, not 11/10, and not wild.

"Microsoft is adding a new key to PC keyboards" - true, descriptive.

"for the first time since 1994" - provides context to the weight of the decision of adding a new key, absolutely fine.

The headline is not wrong, this is the first key added that will be required as part of the standard keyboard layout since 1994. No shaming needed.

> "the company told us that the key isn't mandatory now, but that it expects Copilot keys to be required on Windows 11 keyboards "over time."

It's not mandatory, and there is a chance it never will be. Just like the office key.

It's not mandatory yet, but they expect it to be.

I don't recall seeing similar statements from Microsoft about the office/emoji/etc. keys being expected to be mandatory. Was there statements along those lines?

> this is the first key added that will be required as part of the standard keyboard layout since 1994.

Is it? I thought they are just remapping the right menu key and putting a new logo on it.

Also they added a Cortana key a few years ago.

It must be in the press release because other media sites are reporting the same thing. Also Microsoft did not invent the Super/Meta key aka Windows key.

As mentioned elsewhere, this key will be required as a part of the standard Windows keyboard layout. This is not true of other recent keys (emoji, office, etc.).

Apparently they didn’t push the Cortana key either. And they say it will “eventually” be required. As a keyboard manufacturer why would I listen to Microsoft? Why would I add a key that supports a product I see no benefit from? Just so I can trend even though my customers don’t want it?

I ask because this makes the “Microsoft is going to require it so the other keys don’t count” argument useless. Who cares what Microsoft requires for their own hardware?

> As a keyboard manufacturer why would I listen to Microsoft? Why would I add a key that supports a product I see no benefit from?

As a keyboard manufacturer, you don't have to see any benefit from the product you support. The question is only will the incremental costs be more than offset by the incremental gains in sales. If MS requires the key, that's 90% of the market (really rough number), so it makes sense to add it. If MS and your competitors add it, it may make a significant percent of your customers go elsewhere. Even if they don't want the key, just because they think your keyboards are old.

Ah so aggressive keyboard trendsetters control the market then. It’s more likely that these keyboards will be a rarity. And when people see a keyboard with this key in a few years they’ll think, “what a weird old keyboard you have”.

> Also Microsoft did not invent the Super/Meta key aka Windows key

AFAIK the Windows key generates a CTRL + ESC - so not a modifier key like Super/Meta.

This doesn't seem to match what I sparsely remember about USB HID; At least on my computers I remember Super generating SUPER_L (wayland) or VK_LWIN (w32) - E0 5B scancodes.

At least on Linux you can have bindings CTRL + ESC and SUPER_L be different things if you want.

This does seem to work and is news to me. Windows 11, Leveno laptop. Control+ESC does in fact open the start menu. But none of the other windows key shortcuts work - control+ESC+D did not bring me to desktop, but bookmarked current page in the browser I had open.

So maybe not so cut and dry.

How is that they thought adding a keyboard shortcut to open LinkedIn would be good use for a new key?

Because people will accidentally push the button and be sent to LinkedIn. Good for their stats. Computers are no longer being built to do what you want them to, but what the software maker wants you to do with them.

I cancelled Netflix years ago. I just got a new Shield TV remote with only a Netflix button and it is constantly getting hit. I probably hit it 5+ times a night. I wonder what they learn from that.

FYI you can remap that button to open another app, or two (different actions for press vs hold). I use an app called "Button Mapper"

Open it up and put a small bit of kapton tape on the circuit board beneath that button to prevent it from making contact. Then it will do nothing, forever.

If that button makes 1 out of 10 people have a slight preference for Netflix, it still adds up. The real question is how much Netflix is paying NVidia to have it there.

Those aren’t real keys in the sense of having their own keycodes, instead they just map to some other key combination. The Copilot key will presumably be similar (?). These “new keys” are unfortunate, and a regular key that you can remap to whatever you want would be more useful.

This so flagrantly stupid. It's easier to make every KB manufacturer integrate special firmware to have one keypress register as another specific one, rather than plumbing it in as a defined new key that Windows registers a handler for???

That’s what MS did with their own keyboards. Maybe they are actually defining a new key code for the Copilot key? It’s stupid either way.

Not defending MS, but keyboards already have controllers and have since at least the original PC (probably much earlier than that but I'm not very familiar with old mainframe terminals). Considering how many SKUs already exist for different layouts and the like, this isn't that big of a burden - at most, this requires updated firmware and pad printing layouts, and firmware already changes a decent amount as controllers and membrane layouts are modified for new SKUs and cost-reduction. And it's not like they have to update their existing stock or retool their lines right now, the phase-in will likely take some time.

Also, unless I missed something, I don't think the article says one way or another how this will be implemented. It could be a new scancode or emulate a key combo.

I for one am highly annoyed at new keys generating a combination, since that means they can't be mapped to some more useful function.

... though I've just realized that with Wayland, detecting key events is quite unreliable since half of them are eaten by the compositor ... oddly, they aren't even reliably eaten ...

Because everyone loves brand marketing on their keyboards...

Microsoft would incur far less wrath if they would stop letting their marketing department run their company.

You’re going to get shocked when you find the Windows key on most keyboards.

Sorry, I assumed the implied word 'more' was obvious to everyone who has used a computer keyboard in the last 30 years.

And an Apple key on a bunch of others.

It hasn't been an "Apple key" since 2010 or so. On all recent machines, it's just labeled as "Command", with the ⌘ symbol.

Ah yes, the well-known U+2318 Place of Interest Sign :D

They've been using that symbol on the Command key for the last 40 years. It's probably safe to call it "well-known" by now.

(Early Apple keyboards didn't have an Apple logo on the command key either! That was added in 1986 on the first ADB keyboard -- it was added for compatibility with the Apple IIgs.)

I think I remember calling it the butterfly key at some point.

It's hard to buy a TV with a remote control that has no streaming provider buttons. I guess that's where they are getting the idea from.

Microsoft was having these ideas since before being a streaming provider was even possible as a business - see for example the windows key.

And these keys end up not doing anything because the service dies or something.

The responses here feel a little jaded to me. I'm not a fan of the corporate-driven nature of the change, but I do think "could we do something more useful with the menu key?" is a fair question and the answer is almost certainly yes.

AI has limitations and yada yada but use cases for the Menu key seem slim, and I'd get more mileage out of an "answer a stupid question where I'm okay with a probability of it being right" button.

How long would it take to swim from Florida to France? Why is the hole on cans of soda indented? Why do some fundraisers collect tabs from cans instead of the whole can?

I'm sure you can configure a keyboard to do that now (and likewise, you can likely restore Menu's former function), but for the average user who doesn't even know that's an option Menu is a waste of space.

AI might not even be the best option to replace Menu, but I do think it's worth talking about replacing it.

People are jaded because of MS's history. Some of us didn't realize that they are still forcing OEMs to do nonsense like this.

> "could we do something more useful with the menu key?"

I think the answer is "open PowerToys Run"

Ooh, I've never seen that before. That would make perfect sense; I'd probably use it more than the AI. The current keycaps even still make sense.

> Microsoft is adding a new key to PC keyboards

Not to mine.

> A quick Microsoft demo video shows the Copilot key in between the cluster of arrow keys and the right Alt button, a place where many keyboards usually put a menu button, a right Ctrl key, another Windows key, or something similar

I barely use any of those keys, especially the menu key.

Just Microsoft's marketing department doing what they have alwasy done.

looks like it takes the place of the menu key?

I'd rather they take the right Win key. Sometimes I'm able to do quite a bit of work without using a mouse, and having the Menu/right-click key is useful. There's got to be cases were menus are only available via right-click.

You can turn on mouse keys which let's you move move and click the mouse (left and right) using the numpad.

Shift+F10 is the standard shortcut to open the context menu in Windows regardless of presence/absence of the Menu key.

Thanks for this! I'll keep it with another handy shortcut, Ctrl + Esc, which is an alternative to the Win key for keyboards that may not have one (e.g. IBM Model M).

> I barely use any of those keys, especially the menu key.

I need it in situations where I don't have a working mouse. eg: new virtual machine without extensions or where where I'm debugging mouse issues.

I complained about this as well since I use it for automation but SHIFT+F10 does the same thing.

I gave my friends the following advice.

Push yourselves away from AI trend tools and learn what is what before falling into this trap.

In the era of AI those who can think, draw, write, code and be the best in their craft without it will rule the rest. Simple and clear. Prompting is not a skill which will differentiate (except for AI devs, as a part of fine-tuning the model's output).

The real danger of AI is not getting agency ang killing us (yet).

The real danger, in my view, is normalization and trust into technology which "hallucinates" and obtains a formidable property with a name "The Black Box".

Don't get me starting on privacy.:)

Terrible advice. This is like telling people not to use an IDE because auto-complete isn't always right. Or not to use document templates because they aren't finished.

Github Copilot can - in some domains - make me 30% more productive. Once it becomes commonplace and the legal issues are sorted, luddites who refuse to use it will be left in the dust.

Good analogy - people that only know how to code using an ide are usually the worse. Those who thrive are those that know and understand things. If 30% of your job can be done by a procedural generator then your work is worthless. Probably because you do stuff you dont understand, and will be freed to focus on more important things - such as luddites or who killed biggie.

There are at least four issues with your comment:

1. The weird implication that people who use tools are doing so to make up for lack of skill. This is so obviously misguided I'm not sure where to start.

2. Dismissing AI as "a procedural generator". It's clearly much more than that.

3. Assuming that the 30% of my job that AI does is the valuable bit. It isn't. AI mainly relieves the tedious stuff at the moment (looking stuff up, typing semi-repetitive code, etc.).

4. Trying to make yourself feel better by asserting that people who use IDEs are worse than you, or that I don't understand my work. Rather pathetic.

I don't think autocomplete is comparable with generative code processes. Using AI as a helper in analytics and documentation, yes.

But how knowing to code without AI will leave me in the dust? I will know less? Or I will be so slow that the management will oust me?

After measuring my "performance" trough corporate timer for code per minute?

Discussing it here won't change whatever happens in a couple years.

Whatever happens in a couple of years will be 10-20 percent from projected marketing hype.

> I don't think autocomplete is comparable with generative code processes.

It absolutely is. That's the main way Github Copilot works.

> Or I will be so slow that the management will oust me?

They probably won't oust you but they will notice that your colleagues are much more productive than you and your salary will fall behind.

Focus on high value work that can't be automated is terrible advice?

Nevermind that hailing this machine -- owned by some faceless profit-driven entity -- as an "expert" of all fields will eventually leave people open to mass manipulation on an even higher order than search engines already do.

I get so tilted at the idea of a specific OS vendor having a dedicated keyboard button on all non-apple computers.

And now they are doing it again, wild.

I'm not a huge fan it has a Windows logo printed on it, but there are good usability reasons for the key, even on non-Windows systems, and there was just a big hunk of empty space between Ctrl and Alt before. So nothing is really lost for non-Windows users. It seems to me there are more pressing matters to get angry about than the logo on a keyboard.

And whether we like or not not, Windows is the dominant desktop OS, so "OS operations key" having the Windows logo i not entirely nonsensical really. Almost every non-technical person uses Windows, and even within the technical crowd Windows is probably the most common system.

Bit less of a case for the "Copilot key", although it remains to be seen if "becomes mandatory over time" will come to pass.

I knew someone would bring up the utility of the key as a meta-modifier.[0]

Sun keyboards had a diamond to mark that key, which is better to my mind than a third party commercial OS logo.

I wouldn't even mind if it was the keyboard manufacturer logo.

[0]: https://deskthority.net/wiki/File:Suntype7sf.jpg

I got custom keycaps for unrelated reasons that have that on the super key and I wondered what it was.

Comically to me, it has both the diamond and Apple's command key logo. Windows is the only one missing.

Originally that diamond was the Sun logo, which was diamond-shaped.

I use my windows keyboard on a mac, if that key wasn’t there then I’d have to get a dedicated Mac keyboard.

I'm not suggesting removing the key, merely that every OEM who dares to ship windows being required to place a 3rd party key is myopic.

It can even make the laptops/PC's look dated if the OS logo changes.. which has happened.

FWIW, on a Das Keyboard, the Windows keys have a little Das logo on them, rather than a Windows logo.

> big hunk of empty space between Ctrl and Alt

This empty space can be a feature for emacs users who use the outside of their opposite palm for actuating the ctrl or alt keys.

I personally gave up on this approach years ago because it was only viable on my IBM model M which is hard to transport. Instead now I always remap caps to ctrl, that way no matter what keyboard I'm using it feels familiar.

The Logitech K860 keyboard doesn't have the Windows logo on the Windows key. It has "opt" and "start" along with undecipherable half-a-stew-pot icon:

https://www.imore.com/ergo-k860-split-ergonomic-keyboard-rev...

...mostly just posting this to hear what others might think that icon represents.

That symbol represents an alternative and indicates the function of the key. Its used on Apple computers.

IE: alt

Ah, so it is maybe graphically similar to the double-throw switch schematic symbol.

https://wiringengineabt.z19.web.core.windows.net/double-pole...

Or a railroad switch.

Tangentially: The reason Windows is more popular than Linux is because of momentum / existing familiarity and because Microsoft employees are paid to do the annoying work needed to finish that last 5% of the user experience.

As we approach the entire OS being accessible and controllable through a voice interface / LLM, well, that's pretty fun and sexy and is something that open source contributors are more willing to work on. If the Windows interface is "just talk to the computer", and the Linux interface is "just talk to the computer", why wouldn't people switch to Linux? If Grandma can use Linux as well as Windows, why not use Linux?

Sometimes it feels like were converging on AGI faster than we are a universal GUI library.

(Insert joke about the year of Linux.)

> The reason Windows is more popular than Linux

The reason Windows is more popular than Linux is the mountain of software and device drivers developed for it.

Which I realize is chicken-and-egg, but also...it's a really big chicken.

The placement of the key will vary, but in some cases, it will replace the right CTRL key or Menu key, a Microsoft spokesperson told BI [1]

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-ai-button-pc-keybo...

Well, if they replace the "menu" key with anything else, that won't have any impact on me as I never use it.

I use right Ctrl only for Ctrl-Break, but still I’d be furious if it disappeared.

Is that to restart the diskette loader when switching from your 3.5" to 5.5" ?

Close, for cancelling the build on Visual Studio. :)

Great way to mess up muscle memory again. The original addition of the windows (or meta, if you're so inclined) key wasn't too bad, as most keyboards had a blank space there. But then people pushed the Fn. And the menu key. And the bottom row became a mess. With some keyboards having Fn>Ctrl>Win>Alt, while others have Ctrl>Fn>Win>Alt, or a permutation without an Fn key.

None of my keyboards have a menu key. And none of my laptop keyboards have a right Win key. There really isn't any room for another garbage key there.

Don't get me started on how the home/end/insert/delete/pgup/pgdown cluster got massacred and merged with the arrow keys. Some keyboard designers really have no respect for the people who actually use their products.

Just don't buy them?

Thanks for that super actionable advice. /s

I'm sure you've noticed that (especially) laptops have virtually no keyboard customization options. Once MS starts pushing this, every laptop peddler will be including them on every keyboard. Which means that once again, the majority of laptop keyboards will get objectively worse.

It's hard enough finding a laptop with all the keys in the right place these days. Adding more pointless keys is just going to make things worse.

Thank goodness for keys being reassignable in sensible operating systems.

External keyboards aren't that big of an issue, I can just build my own and call it a day, but I haven't seen anyone build any custom laptop keyboards.

Yeah, it sucks.

But to call it not actionable advice is just hilarious.

You are 100% able to not buy keyboards that don't work for you or you don't agree with.

This is actionable.

You might have to bring an external keyboard with you everywhere if you can't find a laptop one that works.

Having values requires making sacrafices sometimes. Here is how Richard Stallman reads the web:

"For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I also have not net connection much of the time.) To look at page I send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me. It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time."

> Don't get me started on how the home/end/insert/delete/pgup/pgdown cluster got massacred and merged with the arrow keys.

Worse than that is how the arrow keys are often different sizes nowadays. That one actually influenced my current choice of laptop, all my arrow keys are the same size.

I hope this is implemented as an additional modifier instead of a macro type key combo. The more modifier keys on typical keyboards the merrier!

Ha ha, I'm just already thinking of the possibilities...

    Shift-CoPilot-C

Clippy resurrects, "how may I help you today?"

What happens when you plug this keyboard into a Linux box? Is it just another Meta/Super key, except one that doesn't support combinations? Is it using one of the reserved USB HID keyboard scan codes? Or is it a separate device driver just for that one key?

The "Office Key" which I have never seen just did CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+WIN together.

It would be nice if this key somehow was actually usable.

I would imagine it is just another key completing a circuit, no additional magic so it should be as remappable as any other key.

I have feeling it will be the menu key with a different keycap.

It'll do whatever they spec it to do.

The good news is, whatever they spec it to do will be available to Linux and other OSes because there's really no practical way to spec something Linux couldn't handle as well as Windows without risking antitrust action over something far too stupid to justify such a thing.

The bad news is that people do sometimes do dumb things with keyboards for no reason. I'm using a Dell laptop here. I'm used to the common Fn key on the laptop keyboard mapping the Left Arrow to Home and the Right Arrow to End. Instead this keyboard maps Fn-F11 to Home and Fn-F12 to End. No problem I sez to myself, I'll just map Fn-Left and Fn-Right myself. I've got a number of keyboard customizations already set up anyhow. Alas. The Fn key is supermagical bullshit, and according to XWindows, Fn-Left is nothing. Not an undefined keycap or something suprising... it's just plain nothing. I haven't dug any deeper to see if maybe something lower than X is eating it because I don't care enough (I remapped Windows-Left and Window-Right, retrained my fingers, and called it a day), and I judge the probability that the keyboard hardware is literally emitting no key events for this event too high to be worthwhile.

So, they could spec the Copilot key to be a super magical key that doesn't let you play with others and blocks all other keystrokes while it is held down or something. The good news is, I doubt they'd even want to do that; they're going to want to be able to tell people "Use Copilot+X" to do things themselves, even if they don't have anything for that on day one. They could in principle do something like my Fn key, though, and rigidly insist that only certain defined shortcuts could be used and everything else results in no events, and that is at least an outside chance. Hopefully they don't do anything like that, though, it's honestly more work than just letting it be an otherwise normal key.

> The bad news is that people do sometimes do dumb things with keyboards for no reason.

cries in Thinkpad

And if they spec that the key just sends Win+Ctrl+Alt+C then what? I don't care about the new key, I care about the fact that it seems likely it will be implemented in an absurd way.

I guess yeah, you can still bind to that key combo and use the key, but you don't get capacity for a "new" binding.

I kinda feel like I covered that.

Related, from yesterday https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38864958

This impression feels dishonest. They link a video from microsoft[0] which shows a copilot key on the bottom row left of the arrow keys. Here's a diagram

... [space bar] [alt] [copilot] [left arrow] ...

Every keyboard I own already has a key here that I don't use. Right of spacebar: on my logi keyboard I have [cmd/alt] [fn] [opt/ctrl]; on my Code keyboard I have [alt] [blank] [fn] [ctrl]; on my actoo international I have [lang switch] [alt] [fn] [menu] [ctrl]; on my Air I have [cmd] [option]. I can dig out more if this isn't sufficient. Only in rare circumstances have I ever used any of these keys. I rarely ever use the windows key on the left side either (tbf I mostly am mac or linux but even on work computers I don't).

The title, subtitle, and article make it sound like there's going to be a keyboard layout change when really all I'm getting is that they're going to change a keycap. Doesn't seem insane to me, especially considering a lot of the comments around here.

[0] https://youtu.be/S1R08Qx6Fvs?t=5

The game here is to get as many of your users as possible and keep them chatting with the LLM (copilot) to get the human / machine back and forth. When everything has been scraped already then the only advantage you can have is more chat logs. I suspect that we will see every large tech company start to push their own models (or skins) just as hard for that same reason. OpenAI is sitting on some of the most valuable data from their user base, and the long targeted conversations they have.

Decades later, the Win95 keys are still making my life a little bit worse, throughout each day. (Jammed into the laptop keyboards that I use all day, when I only want Ctrl and Alt there.)

Ah good, I'm sure that will age as well as the Cortana button.

And the MSN Messenger button on the headset that I'm wearing :-)

And the Bixby button on my Samsung Galaxy.

Nothing quite like taking your hands off the controller to waive at your kinect in an fps game. MS hardware engineers really are interesting to say the least.

Seems a little premature and locked to a specific use case that isn't yet really established.

I'm sorry to differ with you, sir, but Copilot has always been here. I should know, sir. I've always been here.

This is awesome! I'll be able to map that to window manager functions in Cinnamon, and they won't conflict with any application's keystrokes.

Maybe you wont, it wasn’t possible with the “Office” key, because that just mapped to Shift+Ctrl+Alt+Win (I’m not joking). The Copilot key may just be hardcoded to map to Win+C or similar.

This should already be the case with the Meta key (which some platforms will insist on calling "Win"), shouldn't it?

I think the model of having a key which is only ever used for workspace management, and never by the applications themselves, is so obviously correct that the MacOS Command key actively baffles me.

> Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards

To point out the obvious, no, it won't. Microsoft does not define what a PC is. Sure, they can make up whatever fanciful hardware requirements for their own operating system that they want to, and they can force whatever absurdities they want into contracts with manufacturers. But I guarantee my PC will not have a keyboard with this key.

> But I guarantee my PC will not have a keyboard with this key.

... And 99% of PCs around the world, will, which is indistinguishable from "requiring" it.

They do have enough weight in the PC market to create some kind of “Made for Windows” program which would stand a good chance of swaying the keyboard manufacturers, who would no doubt love an excuse to get everyone to buy a new keyboard.

I wonder if there's some deal attached to the use of the Windows logo on the Super key - to put a Windows logo on one, you have to put the Copilot logo on the other.

I also wonder how wired Windows users are to the Windows logo on the key. Being a Mac guy, I actually don't know the history of the Windows key.

I grew up using Windows and switched to Linux in my late teens. I've hopped back and forth for personal desktop while servers have always been Linux too.

I honestly use the windows key 1000 times a day and I don't understand comments in here saying they don't.

So many keyboard shortcuts. Plus it opens the task and search to launch programs.

I'm pretty keyboard heavy, I can go hours sometimes without touching the mouse.

> But I guarantee my PC will not have a keyboard with this key.

The article is misleading and if you click on the actual video (I linked in my main comment) they're just replacing a keycap and doing a remap. Layout is the same. So... technically your PC will probably have this key, just not the printed icon on it.

I suspect that whatever PC I have in 20 years will still have an IBM Model M keyboard attached via whatever weird combination of dongles it requires to make this true.

I’m one of the apparently few people who use the Menu key [0] at that location all the time. I find it frustrating that this key location is constantly being repurposed for other functions, if the key isn’t omitted altogether. It wouldn’t be so bad if the key could be remapped back to Menu, but it often either has a keyboard-local function like Fn, or is hardcoded to a key combination, or uses some out-of-band USB protocol instead of sending a normal scancode.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menu_key

I hate how Microsoft thinks they have the authority to dictate keyboard layouts. They're a software company and should keep out of hardware.

Bad enough that it's hard to find a keyboard without a windows key.

Why not just rebrand the 'Windows' key with 'Copilot', and make either the start menu or copilot launch based on one key press or a key hold?

Honestly, my initial reaction to this was my typical jaded, cynical, anti-MS self, but after consideration - and the key fact that they're replacing a key, not adding one necessitating a new layout - I'm honestly okay with this. does anyone use the menu key (the key that allegedly this will replace)? It's certainly one of the first to go in enthusiast keyboards using non standard 100% layouts, As long as it's not some stupid propreitary implementation and can be remapped to something useful for those of us not interested in a copilot hotkey, I'm fine with this.

Sidenote, what do people do for push to talk, because if I can disable the copilot trigger and just make this a PTT key then that's great, but I suspect a proper PTT button is one those things everyone else has solved and I've just been under a rock.

EDITED for clarity

My initial reaction was similar. I use the menu key, but rarely. I will certainly never use a copilot key.

Mouse side button. Caps lock if I'm using a mouse that doesn't have one - but like, it depends on the context you're using PTT in. I only use it while gaming, really.

Soon we'll be living in the future Scotty envisioned. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hShY6xZWVGE

> but does anyone use the menu key?

I've never used the menu key. I don't really know what it does (what menu it's supposed to pull up).

I object to software vendors dictating unnecessary features in peripherals their software isn't even going to run on.

It's mouse-right click but on the keyboard (context menu). I believe it's an accessibility thing now that I think about it, which might be why MS is saying "maybe" and considering other keys to replace instead - though that's speculation on my part.

Also, unless I misunderstood this, this is only being mandated for hardware that ships with Windows on it (Eg, surface or desktops that come with windows installed), so this is only being mandated for peripherals that their software is going to run on (or on devices those peripherals come with and connect to).

Will Dell be lazy and ship the copilot key on their ubuntu laptops? I'd be damned shocked if they didn't, but that's just them cutting corners/oversight if I understand this correctly? For example, System76 can completely disregard this if they so choose. I'm sure Apple will.

But, but...

Nearly all retail PCs are sold with Windows, even if Windows is blown away immediately and replaced with Linux or something. And while it may not be mandated for 3rd-party keyboards (e.g. logitech), it'll turn up on all of those too.

Yes, and?

Mandate != Trend.

There's a very important difference, and logitech et al following suite is a choice, just like there will plenty of enthusiast/premium/higher end offerings that will let you customize it in all number of ways - like they already do.

And just because those keyboards have the windows logo on the super key doesn't mean Linux is going to kernel panic when you press. I mean, there's always a chance I suppose, but then something far more interesting is going on.

If they're giving some sort of kickback or financial incentive to embrace, extend, extinguish something with this initiative, I wouldn't be surprised, but I see no indication of that yet.

It opens the context menu of the currently focused item. It's very useful for keyboard-centric Windows users (and probably works in KDE etc, though I haven't verified that).

I use the menu key where it's available, and ctrl-shift-F10 where it isn't. (Most new laptops seem to omit it.)

When I'm in Windows, that is, which is an ever-dwindling share of my time.

Interesting, may I ask why/how/in what scenarios? Is it a trackpad thing? I was assuming it was an accessibility thing. That key's always been strange to me, never could figure out who used it and for what.

It’s very handy for me when say I only have one finger available to operate the laptop (eg holding something/having dinner).

It’s quite useful to correct highlighted spelling errors.

Sometimes when I want to "right click" something, it's more comfortable to use the Menu key than to reach for the mouse. For example, when going through a list of items with the arrow keys.

I use the menu key. And all this new key provides is to open copilot sidebar. That’s all. I expected something like a push to talk conversation agent using the key. It’s not the case. Very underwhelming, IMHO.

EDIT: I actually assumed it would open the sidebar because that’s what I saw on Scott Hanselman’s alternate shortcut trick video. Maybe Microsoft is planning for a push to talk agent. In that case, a dedicated key might be okay.

I don't use the menu key for daily-driver uses, but I have definitely used it in situations where the mouse was inoperable. It can occasionally be useful if a window gets stuck off-screen and you can't right click it. All rare scenarios, though.

I use a USB foot-pedal mapped to `.

Should last as long as Mac's Touchbar

If we are adding a copilot key the keyboards also need additional hallucination warning LEDs.

Wired/wireless keyboard manufacturers are going to go nuts with a whole new product line :-)

Previously: A new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38864958 (85 comments)

Wonder if the Co-pilot feature will map to a "normal" keystroke; similar to how you can pull up the Start Menu on a keyboard without the Start button with a Ctrl-Escape.

Bing AI says it's not yet settled if that will be an option.

My 2020 Macbook Pro has a function row - touchbar with a "button" for siri.

Here I am, still buying old Microsoft Natural ergonomic keyboards from the 90s off eBay and using them with Linux. To date, I haven’t found a better keyboard. And I don’t expect I’ll miss the Copilot key anytime soon.

Hmm hope this isn’t the version that mixes in web results and web advertisements into its AI response. Hope it’s not limited to certain number of back and forth responses and essentially sanitized and neutered.

I somehow misread the title and thought Microsoft was going to require an AI keylogger be built into every keyboard. Then I realized that it is a key to turn on the keylogger!

The key-logger is already in.

All AI arguments aside, this is just another run at the "internet" buttons on late 90s keyboards. I'm sure it will go over just as well as the last time

South Park needs a “Put AI in it and make it lame” episode.

I'm ok with this if I can remap to the right click key that has disappeared over the years. I use that one a lot on laptops.

> Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards, though not yet.

Is there an antitrust angle on this?

No thanks, I'll just buy a Chromebook. Which all have the same keyboard layout.

What's really refreshing for me about the Chromebook is a clean keyboard layout that's not encumbered by legacy placements or requirements.

They were able to sweep away the Windows modifiers, the Fn key, F1-F12, and even Caps Lock! In their place, they've established a nice selection of quick-action keys, and the replacement of "Win" with "Search" is intuitive and efficient.

Using a Chromebook for Google properties at work has really accelerated my productivity. Knowing lots of keyboard shortcuts, and being able to efficiently use chords in place of dedicated keys (such as PgUp, PgDn, Home, End) is a joy. The biggest reward is an uncrowded keymap which affords generous surface area for each keycap. In contrast, my Lenovo's keyboard has many keys I simply don't use, and all of them are small and cramped, I am continually looking down to see where my fingers should go.

Audibly speaking: "Cortana, bring back Mr. Clippy."

Keyboard layouts should be legally required to be standard.

They are, but nobody cares about that standard, not even government agencies.

guess I miss a lot of news of Copilot...when is it becoming a personal assistant?

what happens when I click Copilot button but I don't have money in Microsoft account?

It falls back to launching Windows Search: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2024/01/04/intro...

Another copy of Candy Crush gets automatically installed.

And they said the antichrist isn't real.

1 social demerit.

Why stop there? Lets add a quibi key next.

That's cool and all, but when are we getting a dedicated LinkedIn key? I'm getting tired of hitting the shortcut everytime...

OK MS. The first thing I'll do is rebind it to run llamafile.exe

I honestly thought this was a joke since the key icon seemed like a female menstruation pad to me. Oh, how times have changed.

At least it will have a new purpose once the AI bubble bursts...

Yeah, we can map it to "order a 500-pack of tampons on Amazon Prime."

Looks more like a band-aid to me. Either way, now that you've said that i'll never un-see it.

Really? Terrible marketing design from Microsoft has always been something you can set your watch too.

Most people would just put a picture of an airplane on there and call it a day but that would be missing an opportunity for pointless over-branding that people have come to expect when trying to use their Windows PC.

I remember when I was working on Facebook games, every product manager wanted their new feature to have one-click access from the main game screen. So each new feature created a new wart on the UI.

This is that, but for hardware.

Let's call it a Thirsty Feature

I love the term "Thirsty Feature". I've seen this happen many a-time and it's always a sign of poor product management :/

Metrics looking dire? Did you ship the wrong product? Do users express little interest in what you have made?

No worries - juice your metrics and secure that promo by forcibly throwing your feature at users' faces in an existentially inescapable way, like an out of control t-shirt cannon!

This is the entire Amazon store page for me.

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