But maybe this time user discontent will finally spawn the year of the Linux desktop.

They hate poorly planned or executed changes or changes that degrade their user experience.

Users just don’t want usability and productivity impacted, and they want to understand how to accomplish their tasks under the new system. If you prepare them adequately so they aren’t surprised, they don’t hate it. On the other hand, if vendors impose changes without truly understanding the user experience first, you’re gonna generate lots of user negativity.

For example, iOS 26 is SO HYPED, and it is all shiny and stuff. But they sacrificed readability and accessibility for this shiny new interface, and Apple is getting taken to the woodshed over it. Are these complaints illegitimate? Do we just say oh well complaining users?

and to say it's not ready for prime time is the understatement of the year.

I have been kicking the tires on it more than most others in my role (because I don't think AI will replace paralegals entirely, at least not before I retire within the next 10-15 years, but paralegals WILL be replaced by the ones who best know how to leverage AI).

Not only does it not help, it just wastes time I could have spent just doing the tasks the old-fashioned way (like taking the time to manually cross-check information from two different data sources). Instead, I find myself arguing with it for two hours, pointing out what it got wrong (or made up out of whole cloth - not kidding, it COMPLETELY hallucinates things that aren't even there). And, every time I point out its mistakes, it essentially just goes "My bad, thanks for catching that!" Regurgitates data again and, even though it may have fixed the most recent issue, it continually re-introduces errors I'd already corrected in previous iterations of the prompts. Wash, lather, rinse, repeat. It's like playing whack-a-mole.

Just one example: you have a list of the elected/appointed officers and directors of a company and its several subsidiaries who are authorized to sign documents, organized neatly in a table. You ask it to double-check said list against a set of signature blocks to documents those companies need to sign and verify the proper names and titles of the individuals signing on behalf of each company. It fails in EPIC fashion. If I relied on its results, we would have scores of documents signed by the wrong people, which could mean they aren't legally binding or that my firm could get sued for issuing an opinion letter that the agreements have been duly executed.

In this case, all that's at risk is other people's money, but what about applications where AI is being stuffed into programs used for healthcare, airplane safety, self-driving vehicles, firefighting????

areas they're trying to force it into. But AI companies keep hyping it, and too many companies hope it will let them replace employees.

... if I have to spend hours removing or disabling "features" that annoy me?

The last version of Microsoft Windows that I used on my personal machines was 98SE, specifically the stripped down "Lite" version.

Then I switched to Linux and never looked back.

I used to tell people I wouldn't work with Apple or Microsoft products unless they were paying me, and I kept a Windows laptop around for that purpose, but now that's a Linux machine too and I simply refuse to work with modern Microsoft or Apple products.

I know when it's time when a shortcut I use regularly starts asking with "What would you like to open that with"

I know some people actually like that browser, but I never asked for it to be installed on my laptop. where 1.5GB of something I never asked for and won't use makes a difference.

And isn't a program that you never asked for, that tries to take over your computer, the definition of a virus?

The only positive comment I have to make about Microsoft Copilot is that it was easy to uninstall.

of decorative items and antiques that I research before possibly bidding in online auctions clearly show that the AI is full of sh*t. Many if not most AI results have mis-identifications, mistakes as to the nature of the object (i.e. gets the fundamental ID wrong) and other bad search results. I just scroll past the AI-generated text to look at the images returned (also often laughably bad matches).

Bunch of garbage.