Has Microsoft Lost Its Mojo (Again)?

You went down the coding agent rabbit hole last November along with everyone else?

It was an intense time for the nerds. I spent a lot of time talking to coding agents during that holiday. And it’s been an absolute rocket ship of a ride since then.

Claude Code seems to have gotten the thunder there, beating Codex, and frankly, Copilot. A few years ago Microsoft’s Copilot coding tool seemed to stand at the head of the pack. Now it’s Claude Code.

I would respectfully disagree. Coding models are part of it, but Microsoft is a great place for developers. Windows is an open platform on open hardware where people can build anything.

Microsoft wants Scout to be adopted by productivity workers and even consumers. AI agents make mistakes and have hallucinations. How many errors will people tolerate?

That’s a good question. I don’t know. Trust but verify. Give it a small task, and then try it out, and see if it works. And then, “Oh it hasn’t done anything wrong. I’ll give it read-only access to something.” For example, when I tell somebody I gave OpenClaw access to my blood sugar, because I’m a type 1 diabetic, there’s the knee-jerk reaction, “How dare you give an agent access to your health data?” It is super useful for me to get proactive notifications about my blood sugar. I don’t think that’s a controversial thing.

I get that, but right now there are many people who are skeptical or hostile to AI.

When a new tool is introduced, whether it be a chainsaw, a power tool, or the internal combustion engine, there’s a chaotic time as people figure out how to make this thing good for humans. I am not personally all in on AI, because I vote with my feet. I don’t use AI image generation, and I don’t use AI video generation, because I don’t believe in those things. I use AI for coding, and I find it to be a joy.

Yes, coders absolutely love agents, but outside of that community, there’s resistance. Microsoft has seen this in the underperformance of its AI productivity tools. Are you anticipating similar headwinds with agentic AI?

They’ll either like it or they won’t. I remember when the Walkman came out and people said, “No one’s going to wear those things on their heads. Those headphones look ridiculous.” Now we all walk around with these white Q-tips hanging out of our ears.

You don’t feel that Microsoft is in catch-up mode?

I would respectfully push back and point out that everybody’s in catch-up mode, because you pull ahead and then you go back and forth. It’s a thumb war. I would remind folks that the term “Copilot” was something that Microsoft did first, and that term has become like Kleenex.

Do you feel that this year’s developer conference has put Microsoft back in the race?

A couple of Mac users were hanging out with me backstage, and they watched the Surface Laptop Ultra announced. They saw all the new developer tools, and they begrudgingly looked at us and said, “Dang it, you’re going to make me get a Surface, aren’t you?”

The trash cans at Fort Mason are full of MacBook Airs now?

That would be an amazing result, although I would hate to make more eco waste.

This is an edition of Steven Levy’s Backchannel newsletter. Read previous newsletters here.