Someone said - in Linux, everything is a file. In Microsoft, everything is a copilot. Lol.
layer8 42 minutes ago [-]
We are still missing "Windows Subsystem for Copilot".
xattt 20 minutes ago [-]
Copilot Subsystem for Copilot
jeffhwang 43 minutes ago [-]
Halo Cortana AI: Copilot for Combat 2026
Waterluvian 2 hours ago [-]
Microsoft .NET Copilot
NooneAtAll3 22 seconds ago [-]
Microsoft .Copilot ?
gedy 1 hours ago [-]
Microsoft Azure .NET Copilot 365
VladVladikoff 59 minutes ago [-]
I’ve been wondering lately if the next Xbox will have “copilot” in the name. With an easy to accidentally press dedicated button on the controller that interrupts the game you’re playing to start an AI chat.
iknowstuff 47 minutes ago [-]
They have that on windows game bar. Then you press the xbox button there’s a copilot “for games” there
anal_reactor 52 minutes ago [-]
A valid use case would be AI pretending to be the second player so that you can pretend you're having friends over while actually you're alone. Schizophrenia-as-a-Service.
juliusceasar 33 minutes ago [-]
Haha, actually funny.
jen20 9 minutes ago [-]
Live Ultimate Edition for Developers.
gpi 1 hours ago [-]
Microsoft Azure .NET Core Copilot 355
malfist 15 minutes ago [-]
Microsoft Azure .NET Core Copilot 355 (classic)
anal_reactor 53 minutes ago [-]
Microsoft Azure .NET Copilot 365 Series X
1 hours ago [-]
aleph_minus_one 1 hours ago [-]
> Microsoft .NET Copilot
Not to be confused with "Microsoft Copilot .NET". :-)
pluc 56 minutes ago [-]
or Microsoft Copilot for .NET Core
aleph_minus_one 52 minutes ago [-]
.NET Core does not exist anymore: it was renamed to .NET with .NET 5.0 (skipping version 4.0):
That's because .Net 4 has been the .Net Framework's current version since 2010. It's basically the same reason they never made Windows 9.
They dropped the Core designation because they're still trying to encourage people to migrate so they can take .Net Framework out behind the shed where Silverlight went. v5 was a convenient time to start that whole process of re-integration.
lateforwork 3 hours ago [-]
Copilot is just Microsoft's term for AI. How many products have Copilot? Just about all of them.
ValentineC 2 hours ago [-]
> Copilot is just Microsoft's term for AI.
This comment really helps me put things in perspective.
I'm guess now that it's Microsoft's way of naming their LLM-powered products/features, the same way "Azure" is basically their codename for "cloud".
Pxtl 2 hours ago [-]
Except they named their local hosted version of TFS/VSTS Azure DevOps Server (where the cloud version is Azure DevOps Services).
They just like branding their dev tools for whatever they're pushing at the time. In 2002 they named Visual Studio "Visual Studio .NET".
hamasho 2 hours ago [-]
It makes sense. And Google is its own way to name all AI products “Gemini”.
conductr 12 minutes ago [-]
Probably will use other astrology terms. Like the way android is named for desserts.
yreg 2 hours ago [-]
Which is unusually simple. I would expect Google to use 10 more marketing names simultaneously without any logic to the product lines.
jayknight 1 hours ago [-]
Next year they will introduce "hAIngouts" as an AI chat bot.
layer8 44 minutes ago [-]
Ouch. Maybe "Google wAIve" for collaborative chats.
ayewo 48 minutes ago [-]
> Which is unusually simple. I would expect Google to use 10 more marketing names simultaneously without any logic to the product lines.
I think they were lucky this time that they landed a good name after only a few iterations that has since stuck.
Anyone remember Google Bard or LaMDA?
chatmasta 1 hours ago [-]
They’ve improved it since the initial launch when the service, model names and plan names all sounded similar and contradictory.
Twirrim 1 hours ago [-]
And IBM has "Watson"
tylerchilds 29 minutes ago [-]
And Silly has Silly!
lschueller 1 hours ago [-]
SAP sales reps used HANA for "cloud" in the beginning... Which was bs back then and is today. But while everybody wanted to be in the cloud, SAP sales was scared to not be with the cool kids, when they do not somehow add to the cloud talk
idontwantthis 1 hours ago [-]
But they put Gemini in google docs, they didn’t rename Docs to Gemini like Microsoft did.
gedy 1 hours ago [-]
I think they'll more likely launch competing AI projects like 'Aquarius' and 'Doh' or something
jtokoph 2 hours ago [-]
Great point. We’re about to get a wave of Apple Products with “Apple Intelligence” in a similar way.
vjvjvjvjghv 23 minutes ago [-]
If they ever get Apple Intelligent going.
whynotmaybe 2 hours ago [-]
Is it in solitaire or minesweeper?
shiandow 7 minutes ago [-]
Didn't they kill those?
hebelehubele 2 hours ago [-]
Be careful what you wish for
didgetmaster 34 minutes ago [-]
Just what we need...AI agents that will play our games for us!
aleph_minus_one 55 minutes ago [-]
Microsoft should add a new game to Windows to accustom Windows users to Copilot.
IshKebab 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah imagine if they had unique product names for "AI in OneDrive", "AI in SharePoint", "AI in Outlook"... That would be even more ridiculous.
ddtaylor 1 hours ago [-]
Not if AI is ultimately a commodity, which it likely is. We don't want or need branded terms for other common features, like networking or files. In the early days of networking, before it was standard, there were attempts to brand things like NetBIOS with IPX and such. I don't want to repeat all of that every time some company wants to establish vendor lockin or branding.
quag 3 hours ago [-]
It reminds me of around 2002 when Microsoft named everything ".net".
amanzi 2 hours ago [-]
Yep, I remember downloading a beta version of what would be eventually released as Windows Server 2003. The beta version was called Windows .Net Server 2003.
rdhatt 1 hours ago [-]
I had some books that referred to it as .NET Server printed before the name change. In the long history of terrible Microsoft names, this was a rare case where they were able to right the ship.
Findecanor 1 hours ago [-]
"Microsoft Surface" ...
If had first meant a coffee table form factor PC with touch screen and special software, which was able to sense special objects placed on top of it.
Then that was renamed to "PixelSense" [1] and "Surface" instead got put on a line of touchscreen tablet form factor PCs launched together with Windows 8. OK, reusing a strong name for a product line expected to sell more, and which still fit the theme made sense.
.. but then the brand was also put on laptops, convertibles, desktop PC and an Android phone ... eh, OK, but at least those also had touch screens.
... but then the brand was also put on generic peripherals: keyboard, mouse, headphones, earbuds, etc. which diluted the brand to mean practically nothing.
For example, a search for "surface keyboard", could result in a "type cover" for some kind of tablet PC or a keyboard intended for desktop computers.
Microsoft later did the same with the "Microsoft Sculpt" brand. It was first a compact curved "sculpted" ergonomic keyboard with chiclet keys and an ergonomic mouse that were most often sold as a set. That got quite popular and so the brand achieved recognition.
But later, Microsoft decided to reuse that brand for completely generic peripherals with no special ergonomic designs whatsoever.
BTW. Not long after, Microsoft also released products with the similarly ungoogleable names "Microsoft Bluetooth Keyboard" and "Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard".
Then they did the same thing to a lesser degree with "360", including the Xbox.
debugnik 1 hours ago [-]
Also Live. Windows Live [whatever], Xbox Live [whatever], Games for Windows - Live, Office Live.
karlitooo 1 hours ago [-]
Also 365 -_-
rowls66 2 hours ago [-]
Or when IBM renamed everything Websphere.
aleph_minus_one 46 minutes ago [-]
> Or when IBM renamed everything Websphere.
You mean "Web's fear"? ;-)
vjvjvjvjghv 23 minutes ago [-]
And then Watson
FartyMcFarter 2 hours ago [-]
Soon: Copilot .NET .
Pxtl 2 hours ago [-]
Azure PowerCopilot Live .NET
hsbauauvhabzb 45 minutes ago [-]
Which was arguably more problematic. Are you referring to a web address or a Microsoft product?
layer8 39 minutes ago [-]
More importantly, you couldn't usefully search for it with the search engines of the time.
andrewmcwatters 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
schappim 1 hours ago [-]
Microsoft is not alone in this. Apple does the same thing!
There is Siri on iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod, Apple TV, and CarPlay and are all different different incarnation of Siri (with different capabilities). Then there is everything else like the Siri Remote, Siri Suggestions (and all their types: Siri apps suggestions, Maps, keyboard, Share Sheet, etc), Siri Shortcuts, and Siri Knowledge (WolframAlpha + Wikipedia + other databases?).
I'm sure 75% of these will be rebranded "Apple Intelligence" by the end of the year...
flexagoon 56 minutes ago [-]
Idk, at least in Apple's case it all refers to a voice assistant and some of the features integrated with it.
If they were like MS, they would add Siri into everything and then call it "Siri Cloud", "Siri Messages", etc (if they were even more like MS, iMessage would be "Siri 365 Communication Suite")
ryandrake 4 minutes ago [-]
> (if they were even more like MS, iMessage would be "Siri 365 Communication Suite")
Siri 365 Communication Suite .NET Enterprise Edition With Copilot
Nowadays Apple would brand such features as "Apple Intelligence", but since they already existed long before, they are "Siri".
Though I agree that it's not quite as badly ubiquitous as Copilot.
schappim 51 minutes ago [-]
These are all non talky talky: Siri Suggestions, Siri Knowledge (Safari / Spotlight Intelligence), Siri Shortcuts (Automation, not voice), Siri Intelligence (On-device ML features), Siri Widget/Watch face… you get the idea. There was a time when “Siri” was the catch all for Smart/ML.
goldenarm 3 minutes ago [-]
The best move of Apple this decade was to ignore LLMs and let the others burn cash. Now they can use the mature Gemini for $1B. Brilliant.
dangus 19 minutes ago [-]
Music the app and Music the subscription service are the two worst, tied with TV the app, TV the hardware device, and TV+ the subscription service. At least TV+ is named differently.
Most Apple customers probably don’t even realize you can still do all the original iTunes stuff in Music (local music and syncing, CD burning, etc) purely due to the horrible branding.
chatmasta 3 hours ago [-]
I don’t use windows, so most of this doesn’t affect me, but I do use GitHub and VSCode. Can anyone clarify, once and for all, whether “GitHub Copilot” and “VSCode Copilot” (sic?) are the same product? The documentation isn’t even clear, and it’s important because it affects billing. How do these two products interact and where do they NOT overlap?
This confusion even bleeds into other coding harnesses. I have no idea which GitHub MCP server I setup in Claude Code, but the domain has “githubcopilot” in it. Am I burning copilot tokens (or “requests” or whatever is their billing unit) when I use this from Claude?
shireboy 2 hours ago [-]
Git is a distributed source control system. It's open source and you can use it to version source code on your drive and/or a remote git repository.
Github is one of the most popular git repository hosts. In addition to source repositories, it has other services like issue tracking and wikis.
A while back, Microsoft bought Github.
"Github Copilot" is a service you can buy (with limited free sku) from Github that adds AI capabilities to your Github subscription.
One of the ways you can use Github Copilot is by using the GitHub Copilot extension for VSCode. This extension lets you use chat inside VSCode in such a way that it can read and write code. It lets you pick which LLM model you want to use: Claude Sonnet, Opus, OpenAI GPT, etc., from the ones they support.
Note you don't need another subscription if you only use Github Copilot. They pay Anthropic, you pay Github. You _might_ want another subscription directly with Anthropic if, say, you want to use Claude Code instead.
"VSCode Copilot" isn't a thing. Some people might call Github Copilot extension for VSCode "VSCode Copilot".
Github MCP server lets AI tools like GitHub Copilot extension for VSCode, Claude Code, or any tool that supports MCP use your Github account to do things like pull requests, read issues, etc. Just using it from Claude Code would not use Github Copilot tokens, UNLESS you used it to work against your Github Copilot service. You would not need a Github Copilot subscription to use it for example to create a pull request or read an issue. But it would use your Github Copilot tokens if, say, you used the MCP from Claude Code to assign a task to Github Copilot. It uses githubcopilot domain because they built it mostly for Github Copilot to use, though MCP is an open standard so it can be used from any MCP-supporting AI tool.
aucisson_masque 2 hours ago [-]
Sidenote but I don't get why you would want to pay github to run Claude on your code.
Yeah github pays Claude but what's the point ?
gWPVhyxPHqvk 1 hours ago [-]
It's massively cheaper. Copilot charges per request, which with some clever prompting, can lead to huge amounts of work being done at fractions of the cost of Claude Code. Millions of tokens for mere pennies. MS must be taking a huge hit somewhere, because I'm probably getting 10-20x my value out of GH relative to CC.
I am not locked in to Anthropic, either. I can easily switch between GPT and Gemini models based on how I think each would perform in various scenarios. That's a big win. I use a lot of design with Opus, implement with GPT 5.4.
Also, Github Copilot CLI is pretty much at feature parity (for the stuff that matters) with Claude Code. Using both at work and home, I don't think there's much difference in features between the two. Maybe I'm not a super power user, and just a regular dumb user, but GH doesn't seem buggy and everything I think I'd want to do with CC I can do with GH.
maille 51 minutes ago [-]
How can I learn that clever prompting?
esafak 7 minutes ago [-]
Try to pack as much clear work into your prompt as you can so you don't go back and forth.
mschulkind 1 hours ago [-]
I use it because they offer absurdly cheap prices that they're clearly losing money on. I can get $1000 at API prices of Opus 4.6, for in the range of $2 my cost through copilot.
ponkpanda 2 hours ago [-]
Tighter (read better) integration with VSCode and Github than what you could get running claude code on the side.
Your question does raise a valid point - Github Copilot's value proposition is fairly limited in my opinion. Not to say worthless but limited and clearly varies depending on how Githubbey your dev workflows are.
SturgeonsLaw 2 hours ago [-]
From a user point of view there's no real reason for it, from an admin point of view if your team is already using Github Enterprise then deploying it is basically hitting a toggle switch, and it has some more fine grained controls about what it can or can't do compared to Claude Code.
everfrustrated 2 hours ago [-]
The workflow that GitHub has for prompting agent inside the ide itself is by far and away the nicest and most intuitive I've used.
Claude's integration looked like trash in comparison.
Why would I lock myself into a single vendor when I can have access to all models.
Also the GitHub subscription is a very good price.
chatmasta 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah, the workflow is superb. That’s what I miss most using Claude in a terminal inside VSCode. It doesn’t integrate with VSCode native diff tools like the native VSCode (GitHub Copilot does. The Claude extension in non-terminal mode is crap.
yreg 2 hours ago [-]
Most corporations have Microsoft already greenlisted as a vendor.
Making it possible to buy something from Anthropic might require tedious paperwork for many of them.
duzer65657 47 minutes ago [-]
you can also get a service contract via MS quite easily/cheaply, which mightnot help you with hard problems but does solve the easy ones. example: in earlydays we bought OpenAI API directly and via Azure; when we needed account service we got it immediately from MS instead of waitlists from OpenAI.
chokolad 2 hours ago [-]
> I don’t use windows, so most of this doesn’t affect me, but I do use GitHub and VSCode. Can anyone clarify, once and for all, whether “GitHub Copilot” and “VSCode Copilot” (sic?) are the same product? The documentation isn’t even clear, and it’s important because it affects billing. How do these two products interact and where do they NOT overlap?
There is no VSCode Copilot. There is Github Copilot integration inside VS Code.
Surprisingly, I immediately noticed that “Gaming Copilot” is missing (i.e. The version of Copilot that Microsoft shoehorned into the Xbox mobile app).
mrandish 2 hours ago [-]
> “Gaming Copilot” is missing
It would be ironic if there was nothing called "CoPilot" for Microsoft Flight Simulator.
mcmcmc 2 hours ago [-]
The PM: “People love watching streamers play games, so people who play games must want to watch a game play itself! Introducing Xbox GamePass CoPilot with Microsoft Flight Simulator CoPilot+, all included with your GamePass Ultra subscription for $199.99 a month! Never play your games again!”
chatmasta 2 hours ago [-]
Related: a list of all Microsoft login portals (there are 609 of them).
At least some of those were from acquisitions. All the Copilots are their own fault.
fortran77 53 minutes ago [-]
These drive my password manager nuts, especially when there are actually different logins for them. I just put a note in it saying exactly what service it's for.
firefoxd 23 minutes ago [-]
Just this last week, I wrote about the confusion this creates in the workplace[0]. My coworker said "copilot" literally referring to any code assistant, the same way we say bandaid or kleenex. I thought he was talking about Copilot, the one I see nagging me on Microsoft teams. We had a full discussion about completely different tools without realizing it.
What's fun is getting into the co-pilot comparison conversational because they are not all equal either. Co-pilot 365 is a donkey for one
BirAdam 2 hours ago [-]
The only Microsoft products I’ve actively heard people desire within the last 5 years are VSCode and Excel. Microsoft have so severely damaged their brand that they’ve finally shed the image of oddly gray Dell midtowers running XP on Pentium 4.
rr808 2 hours ago [-]
I work in big financials. Everything used to be built on Excel. A lot still is but Python/Jupyterhub or custom applications has taken over a lot of the complex stuff. Excel isn't really essential any more.
slaymaker1907 1 hours ago [-]
While less necessary with AI, Excel is still the king of data entry and basic data manipulation (sorting, filtering, updating, etc.). I’d say that SQLite with a GUI for visualization is a far stronger competitor than Jupyter at those sorts of things. You can do that stuff in Jupyter, but it’s easier in Excel.
Jupyter also has a janky execution model. It doesn’t track dependencies so you have to be very careful in how you separate cells from one another and just running the whole notebook every time seems kind of pointless vs just writing a pure Python script.
tonypapousek 48 minutes ago [-]
Not sure they count as “products” in this context, but TypeScript and Playwright are still nice.
bdangubic 2 hours ago [-]
this is true only on HN. in reality, if you wanted a job where you did not use microsoft products you’d probably have to get a wrench and start doing plumbing work :)
lpcvoid 2 hours ago [-]
Nah, especially in technology it's very easy to avoid Microslop. I've done it successfully for many, many years.
bdangubic 31 minutes ago [-]
possible, sure. easy, I would disagree. starting with government and any government contracting through most enterprises. startups etc perhaps but avoiding msft severely limits your options
Zambyte 23 minutes ago [-]
Using Microsoft products and desiring Microsoft products are not the same thing.
tedk-42 11 minutes ago [-]
Microsoft slowly becoming the IBM of the 21st century.
TradingPlaces 3 hours ago [-]
For a moment it was called Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365. Naming things is hard.
harvey9 3 hours ago [-]
Reminds me of Microsoft OneCare which sounds like saying 'wanker' with a slight French accent
lucb1e 2 hours ago [-]
Claude sounds like bollocks in Dutch ('kloot')
Pretty sure bollocks was the literal example I read on HN like 10 years ago of what your cool-sounding product name will turn out to mean in Spanish, but I can't remember if the moral of the story was to check every language or to just accept it because it'll happen anyway
Anyway, the various tech podcasts caught on after a few episodes and seem to now pronounce it more foreignly, so it's now more like clod
Joeri 56 minutes ago [-]
The name that still takes the cake is Github Advanced Security for Azure DevOps.
chrisjj 3 hours ago [-]
> Naming things is hard
... for people really bad at it.
tanseydavid 26 minutes ago [-]
"I'm Daryl. These are my 608 other brothers named Daryl"
ieie3366 3 hours ago [-]
Crazy how copilot was a great brand, and might even have been the first mass market LLM product (2022-2023 code autocomplete) but they completely ensloppified it
JumpCrisscross 3 hours ago [-]
> Crazy how copilot was a great brand, and might even have been the first mass market LLM product
Cortana was a great brand. Clippy is still on the shelf. Copilot could have been a deep brand if they pulled it from their flight simulators. Instead it rings hollow of any meaning.
twobitshifter 1 hours ago [-]
Right, they had Cortana right there for the built in windows function!
ValentineC 2 hours ago [-]
We definitely could have stuck with Cortana for a consumer-facing personal assistant. The first few Halo games were great.
yunnpp 3 hours ago [-]
Slopya Nutella leaves no stone unslopped.
hocuspocus 1 hours ago [-]
I think it's fine. GitHub Copilot is popular as ever, especially in companies that have enterprise tier subscriptions. Plans for personal use pretty good too, pricing is competitive. The VS Code integration and agentic features aren't bad either.
Developer tools live in their own space. And I assume most devs don't really care that "Copilot" started to show up everywhere, especially in MS365 products. At least I don't. Conversely, do non-technical people care where the term comes from, and now means "LLM integration" in a bunch of MS products?
I think it's better that Google going through Bard, Gemini, IDX, Firebase Studio, Antigravity, ...
georgeburdell 3 hours ago [-]
Reminds me of the 2010s when IBM called everything Watson
r0m4n0 2 hours ago [-]
To be fair, Google does it too. I just had the product I work on renamed to Gemini Enterprise. Sure we use Gemini but it’s confusing because it’s not really an “enterprise” version of Gemini. It’s just a way to name drop what it uses under the hood. This was our third rename in 4 years so probably will change again soon
Dwedit 50 minutes ago [-]
I have personally nullified one of those, namely the Copilot Key. It took a low level keyboard hook, and blocking a specific sequence of keys, then injecting the right ctrl key back.
gwf 3 hours ago [-]
It's the new .NET in that it been so overused as to become almost meaningless.
layer8 2 hours ago [-]
It means “the AI thing we bolted on here”.
nlawalker 3 hours ago [-]
I actually was just thinking about doing something very similar for this but for "agent," specifically in the Microsoft ecosystem. There are a zillion different proper nouns (products, services, frameworks, toolkits and tools, SDKs etc.) containing "agent" now, plus a bunch of other things that are now "agentic".
smelendez 2 hours ago [-]
A ton of companies use agent/agentic to mean AI that does something with external effects, as opposed to a chatbot. I’m not sure if it’s overused per se or companies are just really pushing their AI features in general.
claaams 3 hours ago [-]
No one can ruin microslops branding better than microslop.
shireboy 2 hours ago [-]
I get that it's annoying, but also don't know what else one would do? "FooPilot is our Office AI toolset, BarWonk is our code assist tool"? There are also a lot of Claudes and GPTs. Naming things is hard.
Gigachad 2 hours ago [-]
They could start by not renaming Microsoft Office and laptops as copilot.
BenFranklin100 2 hours ago [-]
The problem is not annoyance. The problem is confusion.
One should aim for clarity.
FooPilot, Barwonk, etc.. would actually be a vast improvement.
1a527dd5 2 hours ago [-]
Ignoring the disaster that is their branding/naming.
Copilot is _amazing_. Everyone is hyping about Claude, but I'm way more productive with the copilot cli. The copilot cloud agent is great, and copilot code review is great (we also tried the new very expensive claude code review - it was slow and expensive).
Forget that it's Microsoft, forget that everything is Copilot and go and give it a shot.
quantummagic 1 hours ago [-]
> Copilot is _amazing_.
Do you mean Github Copilot? If not, which Copilot are you recommending? Can you give a link to where it can be purchased or trialed?
I'm genuinely interested in trying out whatever you're recommending; but it highlights the problem, that I literally don't know what you're actually referencing.
karlitooo 1 hours ago [-]
maybe a different thing but trying to work with copilot as part of the microsoft apps (e.g. automation flows) feels like it has zero reasoning ability, just says the same thing over and over like a chatbot rather than LLM.
altern8 1 hours ago [-]
Nice try, Nadella!
fortran77 52 minutes ago [-]
I don't know if you're kidding, but I agree with you. I use the Copilot CLI in VS Code and Visual Studio and it works better than anything else. I do use Claude models with it....
brcmthrowaway 1 hours ago [-]
How much is it?
Razengan 3 hours ago [-]
It's MSN, Plus, Live, Surface, 365 all over again
darkwater 2 hours ago [-]
I wonder if they have more or less the same marketing team over all these years or now it's just part of the mindset.
function_seven 3 hours ago [-]
I’m waiting for .Net Copilot with integration to Passport.
xfactorial 2 hours ago [-]
Kid: you are playing with forces of nature you cannot comprehend :-)
That being said: I would love someone from Marketing and Branding to explain me this “Copilot everywhere” because it is unintelligible (unless they want to dilute it through over exposure).
frankzander 3 hours ago [-]
But beware if someone say to them Microslop ... they don't like it if someone other make up new names :-)
zdragnar 2 hours ago [-]
Is it unreasonable to not appreciate an insult?
RGamma 3 hours ago [-]
Fabric is the one place for all your data!
yunnpp 3 hours ago [-]
Plot twist: he used Copilot to generate the figure.
giancarlostoro 3 hours ago [-]
Its annoying especially since Copilot exists in Visual Studio (Code too I believe) and its not exactly "the same" thing as far as I can tell. I really hate Microsoft's naming conventions. At least call that one Copilot for Devs or something more meaningful.
ethmarks 3 hours ago [-]
The Copilot in Visual Studio (Code) is not the same as Microsoft's Copilot. The former is GitHub's AI product and the latter is Microsoft's AI product. You can tell them apart because GitHub Copilot's icon is a helmet with goggles and Microsoft Copilot's icon is a colourful swirl thing.
It's wildly confusing branding not only because they're identically-named things that both repackage OpenAI's LLMs, but also because they're both ultimately owned by the same company.
I can only assume that the conflicting naming convention was either due to sheer incompetence or because they decided that confusing users was advantageous to them.
chatmasta 2 hours ago [-]
And let’s not forget that Visual Studio Code (the IDE) is not Visual Studio (the IDE).
giancarlostoro 1 hours ago [-]
This is my biggest frustration as a full time .NET developer. Its especially worse when you're searching for Visual Studio (IDE) specifics, and get results for VS Code. It bewilders me why a company that owns a search engine names their products so poorly.
giancarlostoro 1 hours ago [-]
Copilot for Visual Studio (IDE) has multiple models, not just OpenAI models, it also includes Claude. It is basically a competitor to JetBrains AI.
The only good "AI" editor that supports Claude Code natively has so far been Zed. It's not PERFECT, but it has been the best experience short of just running Claude Code directly in the CLI.
lou1306 2 hours ago [-]
> they're identically-named things that both repackage OpenAI's LLMs
Haven't tried it yet but the GitHub Copilot extension for VSCode also seems to integrate Claude, Gemini and other non-OAI stuff
chatmasta 2 hours ago [-]
They do, and those models are served by Microsoft. You pay a premium per “request” (what that means is not fully clear to me) for certain models. If you use the native chat extension in VSCode for GitHub CoPilot, with Opus model selected, you are not paying Anthropic. This counts against your GitHub Copilot subscription.
The Claude Code extension for VSCode from Anthropic will use your Claude subscription. But honestly it’s not very good - I use it but only to “open in terminal” (this adds some small quality of life features like awareness it’s in VSC so it opens files in the editor pane next to it).
giancarlostoro 1 hours ago [-]
The best non-Clude Code CLI integration by far has been Zed's and I prefer Zed over what VS Code has become.
mirekrusin 3 hours ago [-]
They should have called it Micro.
Traubenfuchs 43 minutes ago [-]
How many of those are used regularly by more than 0.1% users?
yieldcrv 2 hours ago [-]
The real question is how many products could AWS call the same thing
two extremes at play here. A single brand name masquarading as the same product, versus a hundred brand names that don’t tell you a thing about what the product is
Kind of why I’m fond of GCP now. Just name it what it is
EvanAnderson 2 hours ago [-]
Microsoft is uniquely unable to name / brand anything sensibly:
"Outlook" / "Outlook Web Access" / "Outlook Web App" / "Outlook.com" / "new Outlook for Windows" / "Outlook (classic)"
.NET: .NET Framework. ASP.NET. .NET Core. Windows .NET Server. Ugh...)
The love of the term "Explorer": "Internet Explorer" / "Windows Explorer" / "File Explorer" / "MSN Explorer"
Similarly is the love of "Defender": "Windows Defender" / "Microsoft Defender" / "Windows Defender Antivirus" / "Windows Firewall" / "Windows Defender Firewall" / "Microsoft AntiSpyware" / "Microsoft Security Essentials" / "System Center Endpoint Protection"
"Messenger" was a term they loved: "MSN Messenger" / "Windows Messenger" / "Windows Live Messenger" (which also evokes the whole "Windows Live" series of products)
Windows 95 shipped with an email client called "Exchange" that could be used peer-to-peer (using a filesystem-based "Microsoft Mail Postoffice"), but there was also the email server platform "Exchange"
"Microsoft Teams" / "New Microsoft Teams" / "Microsoft Teams for Business"
Their Xbox consoles have also uniquely terrible naming:
“Xbox” / “Xbox 360” / “Xbox One” / “Xbox One X” / “Xbox Series S” / “Xbox Series X”
reincarnate0x14 2 hours ago [-]
My "callsign" at work for many, many years was a result of the entire C-suite hearing me laughing about Microsoft Critical Update Notification Tool and sending a manager down to figure what the hell was going on in the test lab.
ValentineC 2 hours ago [-]
> "Messenger" was a term they loved: "MSN Messenger" / "Windows Messenger" / "Windows Live Messenger" (which also evokes the whole "Windows Live" series of products)
I thought this was the same app/protocol, only more enshittified as time went by.
walrus01 2 hours ago [-]
May I propose the following for the AI/LLM in everything era?
Microsoft is uniquely unable to name / brand anything sensibly:
"outlook slop" / "outlook slop Web Access" / "outlook slop Web App" / "outlook slop.com" / "new outlook slop for Windows" / "outlook slop (classic)"
slop: slop Framework. ASPslop. slop Core. Windows slop server slop. Ugh...)
The love of the term "slop": "Internet slop" / "Windows slop" / "File slop" / "MSN slop"
Similarly is the love of "slop": "Windows slop" / "Microsoft slop" / "Windows slop Antivirus" / "Windows Firewall" / "Windows slop Firewall" / "Microsoft AntiSpyware" / "Microsoft Security Essentials" / "System Center Endpoint Protection"
"slop" was a term they loved: "MSN slop" / "Windows slop" / "Windows Live slop" (which also evokes the whole "Windows Live" series of products)
Windows 95 shipped with an email client called "Exchange" that could be used peer-to-peer (using a filesystem-based "Microsoft Mail Postoffice"), but there was also the email server slop platform "Exchange"
"Microsoft teams slop" / "New Microsoft teams slop" / "Microsoft teams slop for Business"
"Microsoft FrontPage" / "Site server slop" / "Site server slop Commerce Edition" / "Office server slop" / "SharePoint Portal server slop" / "Windows SharePoint Services" / "Microsoft Office SharePoint server slop" / "SharePoint Foundation" / "SharePoint server slop" / "SharePoint Standard" / "SharePoint Enterprise" / "SharePoint Online" / "SharePoint Designer"
"Office Communicator" / "Microsoft Lync" / "slop for Business" / "slop" / "slop for Business Online" / "slop for Business for Microsoft 365"
Fairly guffaw-inducing branding, to me, was removing the Remote Desktop Client app and introducing something called "Windows App".
The old "System Management server slop" became "System Center" and its family of products.
There's the whole accounting software / ERP world, too:
(For most guffaws induced, though, there's the Windows 98-era "Critical Update Notification Tool"[0])
stephenlf 3 hours ago [-]
Microsoft yearns for the flight simulator.
rdsubhas 2 hours ago [-]
Blame brain dead product managers who merely want to hoist their poor quality yearly performance review slop on something existing that carries SEO/SEM value.
Most of the time, these piggy backers only pull down the value of what they're riding on.
2OEH8eoCRo0 2 hours ago [-]
It sucks they got rid of Cortana. The thought of being Master Chief with a Cortana of your own sounds badass.
jaffa2 3 hours ago [-]
Isn’t it just their AI llm thing?
saint_yossarian 8 minutes ago [-]
Yes but which one?
Rebelgecko 3 hours ago [-]
I thought that was Cortana? Copilot is the new keyboard button, kinda like the Windows key
ezfe 3 hours ago [-]
Copilot is a brand that refers to a variety of products
This is what happens when you have some sort of top-down directive from the C-level people to put "AI" in everything, and dozens of department/project managers who all have their own fiefdoms
Handy-Man 3 hours ago [-]
It's just one brand: Copilot
3 hours ago [-]
sublinear 3 hours ago [-]
> .. the name ‘Copilot’ now refers to at least 75 different things. Apps, features, platforms, a keyboard key, an entire category of laptops - and a tool for building more Copilots. All named ‘Copilot’.
Right, so then it's not a "product", or even a range of "products".
It's a brand name and inherently pointless to map out. It doesn't even have to involve any "AI" to be given the branding. All that matters is it's a thing they have, new or old, that they'd like to push people towards.
throwaway87543 3 hours ago [-]
Okay. But how many products have Gemini or Claude in the name?
snowchaser 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 23:22:26 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Not to be confused with "Microsoft Copilot .NET". :-)
> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=.NET&oldid=134276...
They dropped the Core designation because they're still trying to encourage people to migrate so they can take .Net Framework out behind the shed where Silverlight went. v5 was a convenient time to start that whole process of re-integration.
This comment really helps me put things in perspective.
I'm guess now that it's Microsoft's way of naming their LLM-powered products/features, the same way "Azure" is basically their codename for "cloud".
They just like branding their dev tools for whatever they're pushing at the time. In 2002 they named Visual Studio "Visual Studio .NET".
I think they were lucky this time that they landed a good name after only a few iterations that has since stuck.
Anyone remember Google Bard or LaMDA?
If had first meant a coffee table form factor PC with touch screen and special software, which was able to sense special objects placed on top of it. Then that was renamed to "PixelSense" [1] and "Surface" instead got put on a line of touchscreen tablet form factor PCs launched together with Windows 8. OK, reusing a strong name for a product line expected to sell more, and which still fit the theme made sense.
.. but then the brand was also put on laptops, convertibles, desktop PC and an Android phone ... eh, OK, but at least those also had touch screens.
... but then the brand was also put on generic peripherals: keyboard, mouse, headphones, earbuds, etc. which diluted the brand to mean practically nothing. For example, a search for "surface keyboard", could result in a "type cover" for some kind of tablet PC or a keyboard intended for desktop computers.
Microsoft later did the same with the "Microsoft Sculpt" brand. It was first a compact curved "sculpted" ergonomic keyboard with chiclet keys and an ergonomic mouse that were most often sold as a set. That got quite popular and so the brand achieved recognition. But later, Microsoft decided to reuse that brand for completely generic peripherals with no special ergonomic designs whatsoever.
BTW. Not long after, Microsoft also released products with the similarly ungoogleable names "Microsoft Bluetooth Keyboard" and "Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PixelSense
You mean "Web's fear"? ;-)
There is Siri on iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod, Apple TV, and CarPlay and are all different different incarnation of Siri (with different capabilities). Then there is everything else like the Siri Remote, Siri Suggestions (and all their types: Siri apps suggestions, Maps, keyboard, Share Sheet, etc), Siri Shortcuts, and Siri Knowledge (WolframAlpha + Wikipedia + other databases?).
I'm sure 75% of these will be rebranded "Apple Intelligence" by the end of the year...
If they were like MS, they would add Siri into everything and then call it "Siri Cloud", "Siri Messages", etc (if they were even more like MS, iMessage would be "Siri 365 Communication Suite")
Siri 365 Communication Suite .NET Enterprise Edition With Copilot
Nowadays Apple would brand such features as "Apple Intelligence", but since they already existed long before, they are "Siri".
Though I agree that it's not quite as badly ubiquitous as Copilot.
Most Apple customers probably don’t even realize you can still do all the original iTunes stuff in Music (local music and syncing, CD burning, etc) purely due to the horrible branding.
This confusion even bleeds into other coding harnesses. I have no idea which GitHub MCP server I setup in Claude Code, but the domain has “githubcopilot” in it. Am I burning copilot tokens (or “requests” or whatever is their billing unit) when I use this from Claude?
Github is one of the most popular git repository hosts. In addition to source repositories, it has other services like issue tracking and wikis.
A while back, Microsoft bought Github.
"Github Copilot" is a service you can buy (with limited free sku) from Github that adds AI capabilities to your Github subscription.
One of the ways you can use Github Copilot is by using the GitHub Copilot extension for VSCode. This extension lets you use chat inside VSCode in such a way that it can read and write code. It lets you pick which LLM model you want to use: Claude Sonnet, Opus, OpenAI GPT, etc., from the ones they support.
Note you don't need another subscription if you only use Github Copilot. They pay Anthropic, you pay Github. You _might_ want another subscription directly with Anthropic if, say, you want to use Claude Code instead.
"VSCode Copilot" isn't a thing. Some people might call Github Copilot extension for VSCode "VSCode Copilot".
Github MCP server lets AI tools like GitHub Copilot extension for VSCode, Claude Code, or any tool that supports MCP use your Github account to do things like pull requests, read issues, etc. Just using it from Claude Code would not use Github Copilot tokens, UNLESS you used it to work against your Github Copilot service. You would not need a Github Copilot subscription to use it for example to create a pull request or read an issue. But it would use your Github Copilot tokens if, say, you used the MCP from Claude Code to assign a task to Github Copilot. It uses githubcopilot domain because they built it mostly for Github Copilot to use, though MCP is an open standard so it can be used from any MCP-supporting AI tool.
Yeah github pays Claude but what's the point ?
I am not locked in to Anthropic, either. I can easily switch between GPT and Gemini models based on how I think each would perform in various scenarios. That's a big win. I use a lot of design with Opus, implement with GPT 5.4.
Also, Github Copilot CLI is pretty much at feature parity (for the stuff that matters) with Claude Code. Using both at work and home, I don't think there's much difference in features between the two. Maybe I'm not a super power user, and just a regular dumb user, but GH doesn't seem buggy and everything I think I'd want to do with CC I can do with GH.
Your question does raise a valid point - Github Copilot's value proposition is fairly limited in my opinion. Not to say worthless but limited and clearly varies depending on how Githubbey your dev workflows are.
Claude's integration looked like trash in comparison.
Why would I lock myself into a single vendor when I can have access to all models.
Also the GitHub subscription is a very good price.
Making it possible to buy something from Anthropic might require tedious paperwork for many of them.
There is no VSCode Copilot. There is Github Copilot integration inside VS Code.
It would be ironic if there was nothing called "CoPilot" for Microsoft Flight Simulator.
https://msportals.io/
[0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/what-is-copilot-exactly
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47603231
Jupyter also has a janky execution model. It doesn’t track dependencies so you have to be very careful in how you separate cells from one another and just running the whole notebook every time seems kind of pointless vs just writing a pure Python script.
Pretty sure bollocks was the literal example I read on HN like 10 years ago of what your cool-sounding product name will turn out to mean in Spanish, but I can't remember if the moral of the story was to check every language or to just accept it because it'll happen anyway
Anyway, the various tech podcasts caught on after a few episodes and seem to now pronounce it more foreignly, so it's now more like clod
... for people really bad at it.
Cortana was a great brand. Clippy is still on the shelf. Copilot could have been a deep brand if they pulled it from their flight simulators. Instead it rings hollow of any meaning.
Developer tools live in their own space. And I assume most devs don't really care that "Copilot" started to show up everywhere, especially in MS365 products. At least I don't. Conversely, do non-technical people care where the term comes from, and now means "LLM integration" in a bunch of MS products?
I think it's better that Google going through Bard, Gemini, IDX, Firebase Studio, Antigravity, ...
One should aim for clarity.
FooPilot, Barwonk, etc.. would actually be a vast improvement.
Copilot is _amazing_. Everyone is hyping about Claude, but I'm way more productive with the copilot cli. The copilot cloud agent is great, and copilot code review is great (we also tried the new very expensive claude code review - it was slow and expensive).
Forget that it's Microsoft, forget that everything is Copilot and go and give it a shot.
Do you mean Github Copilot? If not, which Copilot are you recommending? Can you give a link to where it can be purchased or trialed?
I'm genuinely interested in trying out whatever you're recommending; but it highlights the problem, that I literally don't know what you're actually referencing.
That being said: I would love someone from Marketing and Branding to explain me this “Copilot everywhere” because it is unintelligible (unless they want to dilute it through over exposure).
It's wildly confusing branding not only because they're identically-named things that both repackage OpenAI's LLMs, but also because they're both ultimately owned by the same company.
I can only assume that the conflicting naming convention was either due to sheer incompetence or because they decided that confusing users was advantageous to them.
The only good "AI" editor that supports Claude Code natively has so far been Zed. It's not PERFECT, but it has been the best experience short of just running Claude Code directly in the CLI.
Haven't tried it yet but the GitHub Copilot extension for VSCode also seems to integrate Claude, Gemini and other non-OAI stuff
The Claude Code extension for VSCode from Anthropic will use your Claude subscription. But honestly it’s not very good - I use it but only to “open in terminal” (this adds some small quality of life features like awareness it’s in VSC so it opens files in the editor pane next to it).
two extremes at play here. A single brand name masquarading as the same product, versus a hundred brand names that don’t tell you a thing about what the product is
Kind of why I’m fond of GCP now. Just name it what it is
"Outlook" / "Outlook Web Access" / "Outlook Web App" / "Outlook.com" / "new Outlook for Windows" / "Outlook (classic)"
.NET: .NET Framework. ASP.NET. .NET Core. Windows .NET Server. Ugh...)
The love of the term "Explorer": "Internet Explorer" / "Windows Explorer" / "File Explorer" / "MSN Explorer"
Similarly is the love of "Defender": "Windows Defender" / "Microsoft Defender" / "Windows Defender Antivirus" / "Windows Firewall" / "Windows Defender Firewall" / "Microsoft AntiSpyware" / "Microsoft Security Essentials" / "System Center Endpoint Protection"
"Messenger" was a term they loved: "MSN Messenger" / "Windows Messenger" / "Windows Live Messenger" (which also evokes the whole "Windows Live" series of products)
Windows 95 shipped with an email client called "Exchange" that could be used peer-to-peer (using a filesystem-based "Microsoft Mail Postoffice"), but there was also the email server platform "Exchange"
"Microsoft Teams" / "New Microsoft Teams" / "Microsoft Teams for Business"
"Microsoft FrontPage" / "Site Server" / "Site Server Commerce Edition" / "Office Server" / "SharePoint Portal Server" / "Windows SharePoint Services" / "Microsoft Office SharePoint Server" / "SharePoint Foundation" / "SharePoint Server" / "SharePoint Standard" / "SharePoint Enterprise" / "SharePoint Online" / "SharePoint Designer"
"Office Communicator" / "Microsoft Lync" / "Skype for Business" / "Skype" / "Skype for Business Online" / "Skype for Business for Microsoft 365"
Fairly guffaw-inducing branding, to me, was removing the Remote Desktop Client app and introducing something called "Windows App".
The old "System Management Server" became "System Center" and its family of products.
There's the whole accounting software / ERP world, too:
"Great Plains" / "Dynamics GP" / "Navision" / "Dynamics NAV" / "Solomon" / "Dynamics SL" / "Axapta" / "Dynamics AX" / "Dynamics 365" / "Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations" / "Dynamics 365 Business Central"
(For most guffaws induced, though, there's the Windows 98-era "Critical Update Notification Tool"[0])
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Update#Critical_Update...
“Xbox” / “Xbox 360” / “Xbox One” / “Xbox One X” / “Xbox Series S” / “Xbox Series X”
I thought this was the same app/protocol, only more enshittified as time went by.
Microsoft is uniquely unable to name / brand anything sensibly:
"outlook slop" / "outlook slop Web Access" / "outlook slop Web App" / "outlook slop.com" / "new outlook slop for Windows" / "outlook slop (classic)"
slop: slop Framework. ASPslop. slop Core. Windows slop server slop. Ugh...)
The love of the term "slop": "Internet slop" / "Windows slop" / "File slop" / "MSN slop"
Similarly is the love of "slop": "Windows slop" / "Microsoft slop" / "Windows slop Antivirus" / "Windows Firewall" / "Windows slop Firewall" / "Microsoft AntiSpyware" / "Microsoft Security Essentials" / "System Center Endpoint Protection"
"slop" was a term they loved: "MSN slop" / "Windows slop" / "Windows Live slop" (which also evokes the whole "Windows Live" series of products)
Windows 95 shipped with an email client called "Exchange" that could be used peer-to-peer (using a filesystem-based "Microsoft Mail Postoffice"), but there was also the email server slop platform "Exchange"
"Microsoft teams slop" / "New Microsoft teams slop" / "Microsoft teams slop for Business"
"Microsoft FrontPage" / "Site server slop" / "Site server slop Commerce Edition" / "Office server slop" / "SharePoint Portal server slop" / "Windows SharePoint Services" / "Microsoft Office SharePoint server slop" / "SharePoint Foundation" / "SharePoint server slop" / "SharePoint Standard" / "SharePoint Enterprise" / "SharePoint Online" / "SharePoint Designer"
"Office Communicator" / "Microsoft Lync" / "slop for Business" / "slop" / "slop for Business Online" / "slop for Business for Microsoft 365"
Fairly guffaw-inducing branding, to me, was removing the Remote Desktop Client app and introducing something called "Windows App".
The old "System Management server slop" became "System Center" and its family of products.
There's the whole accounting software / ERP world, too:
"Great Plains" / "Dynamics GP" / "Navision" / "Dynamics NAV" / "Solomon" / "Dynamics SL" / "Axapta" / "Dynamics AX" / "Dynamics 365" / "Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations" / "Dynamics 365 Business Central"
(For most guffaws induced, though, there's the Windows 98-era "Critical Update Notification Tool"[0])
Most of the time, these piggy backers only pull down the value of what they're riding on.
What Is Copilot Exactly?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47603231
Right, so then it's not a "product", or even a range of "products".
It's a brand name and inherently pointless to map out. It doesn't even have to involve any "AI" to be given the branding. All that matters is it's a thing they have, new or old, that they'd like to push people towards.