"The new Copilot app for Windows 11 is really just Microsoft Edge" | Hacker News Reader

"The new Copilot app for Windows 11 is really just Microsoft Edge"

twitter.com

117 pointsbundie72 comments

It's worse than that. On my corporate mac when I try to login with Entra, the only option I get is a hyperlink to 'experience Copilot on the web'.

Also, it seems like all the Copilot 'connected experiences' are really just a chat window without any real integration with the applications they are embedded in. Claude is more useful in Excel than Copilot.. how? Microsoft's consistently incoherent and hobbled rollout of Copilot is why I find Anthropic's offerings so much better. It just allow me to get stuff done.

My one hope was that Copilot would solve the Microsoft documentation tarpit by leveraging enormous context to root out the answers to my questions. When chatGPT can finally one-shot Microsoft product queries with the correct platform, release, license, and 'gotchas'.. I'll know we've hit AGI.

> When chatGPT can finally one-shot Microsoft product queries with the correct platform, release, license, and 'gotchas'.. I'll know we've hit AGI.

In that case a simple few lines of whatever language you prefer would class as "AGI". Here's a sample session using the non-existing oracle.sh tool;

   oracle.sh 'tell me how to do ${thing} in Microsoft ${product} and which licence requirements that brings'
 
   (computer noises)

   oracle: Avoid using Microsoft ${product}, use one of the alternatives listed in this web search: 

      https://search.engine.org/search?q=alternatives%20to%20Microsoft%20${product}

"Also, it seems like all the Copilot 'connected experiences' are really just a chat window without any real integration with the applications they are embedded in."

I was triple-booked today. Two of the meetings in question should have had significant overlap between attendees. I figured, hey, there's this Copilot thing here, I'll ask it what the overlap is, that's the sort of thing an AI should be able to do. It comes back and reports that there is one person in both meetings, and that "one person" isn't even me. That doesn't seem right. One of the autocompleted suggestions for the next thing to ask is "show me the entire list of attendees" so I'm like, sure, do that.

It turns out that the API Copilot has access to can only access the first ten attendees of the meetings. Both meetings were much larger than that.

Insert rant here about hobbling 2026 servers with random "plucked out of my bum" limits on processing based on the capabilities of roughly 2000-era servers for the sheer silliness of a default 10-attendee limit being imposed on any API into Outlook.

But also in general what a complete waste of hooking up an amazingly sophisticated AI model to such an impoverished view of the world.

There are innumerable companies built around the Outlook calendar; you’d think Microsoft could get something right here with AI; but they seem unable.

"plucked out of my bum" sounds so much more sophisticated than “pulled out of my ass”

Plucked betwixt mine cheeks

Ha ha, only serious: I’ll know we’ve hit AGI when the systems start convincing execs and sales types to solve whatever ‘it’ is in emacs.

“A couple shared lisp files, and org-mode, we can have that ready before lunch…” detonating contracts and SaaS vendors like it was the end of Fight Club.

You’re using the wrong app. You need the M365 Copilot app which supports Entra IDs.

Thanks for the tip, I'll search it out.

It just reinforces the problem -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47615490

Is that like MS’s version of an Electron app? Aren’t most Electron apps just Chrom{e,ium} plus some JS to run inside it?

Asking seriously, not snarkily. That’s my understanding but maybe I’m wrong about it.

Electron is NodeJS + Chromium + Some native control APIs (trays/menus/shortcuts/window management) + update & packaging.

So a lot more can be done with an electron app, while still staying mostly in the web based comfort zone.

Microsoft switched from Electron to their own WebView2 a while ago.

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview...

Main difference, electron bundles all of chrome with every app. WebView2 can do that, but the recommended route is one that shares the runtime across multiple apps (what ms does). So you end up with just 1 webview2 on the system + your app specific code ultimately significantly shrinking the distribution size.

MSHTML.dll reborn

Mostly, yes. But since they upstream Chromium, it is more likely to remain evergreen than MSHTML ever was.

I think you meant Chrom(e|ium). Chrom{e,ium} expands out to Chrome Chromium. Which isn't what you meant, I think.

More informative article: https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/04/05/new-copilot-for-win...

It seems to actually use a modified copy of Edge in a subfolder.

What is the reason they don't use the WebView2? Microsoft Teams uses WebView2, surely it should be enough for Copilot. This defeats the whole point of having WebView builtin and shipped with the Windows 11.

If I was to speculate, this is the result of "rank n' yank" where the performative productivity is more important than actual productivity. If true it says something about why AI is pushed hard by Microsoft, it make performative productivity much more easier.

You cannot really use most Copilot products for actual productivity, even if you wanted to.

Last time I checked, Copilot in Outlook did not have access to my calendar data.

Yeah, I gave up trying to find productivity uses for the copilot in office because of limitations like that.

I have plenty of users using it for real productivity purposes. Yes, it has access to Exchange Online calendars.

Could these be different products, like Home edition vs Pro edition?

I only have experience with the M365 enterprise services. I don’t use M365 for personal stuff, I’m too cheap for that.

True, but it's so incredibly fragile. 90% of the time copilot returns sensible things, eg when prompted to list all the f2f meetingsI had last month. 10% of the time it fails to find things, makes things up, etc.

Problem: if I cant rely on it for administrative tasks like this, I end up having to do more work to verify what it says. which makes the tool pretty useless.

One of the comments led to an article which really goes into the details of what exactly is packaged here https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/04/05/new-copilot-for-win...

So, like edit.com and QBasic. What is old is new again.

Wait. What? Was that the case? Young me never realised that! =)

It was. And you could do things with moving it to previous releases of DOS too if I remember. QB.EXE the actual compiler was compatible, too.