Recall is finally here in preview, at least for those silly enough to put a Snapdragon X-based Copilot+ PC in the Dev channel of the Windows Insider Program. I am that silly, of course, but I at least followed my own advice and created USB-based recovery media so I can get it back when needed. As for Recall itself, now that I can finally access this useful feature, I'm even less clear what all the fuss was about.

Not that there aren't improvements: Thanks to all the unnecessary drama about the non-existent security problems, Microsoft did make a few changes to Recall, the most important, arguably, being that it's now testing it in preview in the Insider Program. It originally intended to ship this feature to the public, in preview, with no formal testing at all.

Microsoft also changed Recall to be opt-in for consumers--it was originally going to be opt-out--and uninstallable to silence the Luddites. And it's not installed by default on PCs managed by businesses and other organizations. These changes are all important, positive differences from what Microsoft originally intended.

It feels like this was all so long ago.

But thinking back to the original Copilot+ PC announcement in May, I um, recall Microsoft telling attendees of the event that Recall would be optional. I and many others took it to mean opt-in, something one agreed to enable and use. But Recall was going to be enabled by default. Windows 11 Setup would alert the user to this fact, but then they would have to figure out how to disable it after the fact. In other words, it was opt-out. This is a form of dark pattern, where Microsoft wanted to lead users down a specific path using confusing language, and so I viewed its initial round of concessions as a victory for common sense and the rare example of Microsoft reversing what can only be described as yet another example of enshittification in Windows 11.

The original situation was even worse for businesses. At the time of the announcement, not only did Microsoft plan to enable Recall for people using PCs managed by businesses--in other words, those controlled by corporate policy--but it wasn't going to let those businesses disable Recall. That is, Recall would exist outside of policy and was aimed at the people using those PCs, not at the companies managing them. Policy and control might come later, I was told. But in its initial form, Recall, for lack of a better term, was for the people.

This was a huge mistake. That this flies in the face of reality goes without saying. Commercial entities--companies, especially, but also governments, educational institutions, and other organizations--aren't just the biggest customer base for Windows, they're also the most important and financially lucrative. This is not an audience Microsoft can afford to anger, though consumers very clearly are. And so in the months since the Recall reveal and during the subsequent delays, Microsoft made an even bigger change: Now, Recall ...