In 3.5 years, Notepad.exe has gone from “barely maintained” to “it writes for you”
In 3.5 years, Notepad.exe has gone from “barely maintained” to “it writes for you”
AI features in Windows are gradually becoming more widespread and inescapable.
I first ran into the Copilot integration in Notepad a couple of days ago and immediately turned it right the fuck off.
In November, Microsoft began testing an update that allowed users to rewrite or summarize text in Notepad using generative AI. Another preview update today takes it one step further, allowing you to write AI-generated text from scratch with basic instructions (the feature is called Write, to differentiate it from the earlier Rewrite).
Like Rewrite and Summarize, Write requires users to be signed into a Microsoft Account, because using it requires you to use your monthly allotment of Microsoft's AI credits. Per this support page, users without a paid Microsoft 365 subscription get 15 credits per month. Subscribers with Personal and Family subscriptions get 60 credits per month instead.
Microsoft notes that all AI features in Notepad can be disabled in the app's settings, and obviously, they won't be available if you use a local account instead of a Microsoft Account.
"Barely maintained"
Notepad was a very simple application. Did it even need more effoet put into it? Looks more like they fixed what was not broken.
I like dark mode and tabs. Now I actually use it a lot more. I don't like adding a gibberish generator...
They should've stopped at support for utf-8 encoding and unix line endings.
This. It needed absolutely nothing added to it. You could write text files, what more did anyone ever need from it? The app was done. It was ready.
This is a concept that is not even in the vocabulary of IT companies these days and I can understand it for complex systems that have dependencies up the wazoo but notepad was just a notepad and that was good enough.
There were a few things that it eventually got but lacked for way too long like support for UNIX line endings.
It was definitely lacking in core areas. Large files, better search, possibly spell check (and why isn't spell check core Windows functionality?). It also could have used better handling for non-Windows text files. But overall, yes, this wasn't a program that needed a dedicated team to manage or improve.
Counterpoint:
In 3.5 years, Notepad.exe has gone from “perfect text-only editor” to “ai-laden spyware/malware”
And they killed Wordpad for that.
Now I didnt use wordpad at all and was content with txt and md files.
But that is vile.I actually did use WordPad occasionally, but it wasn't a huge loss for me, since LibreOffice does this. LO is just too overpowered for a quick RTF edit, so I used WordPad. Besides work, I only windows for a specific usecase, not as a daily, but it was still annoying.
Problem: Not enough AI training data. Solution: Start scraping everything people type in Notepad, errors and all.
They don't need notepad for that. They control your entire OS, and all inputs. All they need to do, is capture all inputs (which they already do and package it all nicely as Recall). They're using notepad as just a user-facing justification for the spying they do throughout the rest of the OS.
And how much slower is it to launch and use?
Notepad went from barely maintained and barely useable (it couldn't even handle undo/redo in a reasonable way) to surprisingly decent at basic text editing to now bloated with useless shit. They were so close.
As always, when notepad.exe is suddenly connecting to the internet, you can be sure something's wrong.
I don't use it, but I assume the writes for you was to imitate VS Codes GitHub copilot. While it will suggest code in stuff like scripts, you can absolutely ignore it
"bearly maintained with AI" now g
I prefer mousepad
For those who don’t know: Mousepad (at least, I think this was the reference)
xfce <3
I got the most badass mousepad I've ever seen in Germany. It was a cartoon of someone trying to sell an abacus to the king with a mouse (an actual one) with its tail nailed to it, and his advisor suggesting he wait, as in (some number of months -- I got it in 1995, so details are a bit hazy) it will cost half the price.
I only remember some of this verbatim, but it was absolute gold because of double meanings.
Ihr solltet noch warten ... inclusive Maus ... auf Festplatte
The mouse is easy enough to jump language comprehension (though "inclusive" is pronounced differently), but Festplatte means both a wooden board, as the base of the abacus was, and hard drive.
