Laptops with Windows Copilot+ will no longer launch with Microsoft’s controversial recall feature. An update on the Microsoft blog https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2024/06/07/update-on-the-recall-preview-feature-for-copilot-pcs/ indicates that the company will offer this feature to Windows Insiders program participants instead. In essence, there’s no indication when Recall will be usable, but the company promises to release more information when it happens.
Recall has (rightly) sparked an outcry online. Elon Musk compared it to an episode of Black Mirror. Microsoft then added a few requirements (Windows Hello, encrypted screenshots) and made it an opt-in feature instead of an opt-out. While this is a step in the right direction, the feature needs a lot more time in the oven, which could be why Microsoft decided to sit on this feature for a while.
Intrepid users who want to try Recall will need Copilot+ certified laptops, which means they’ll need to have a brand new AMD Strix Pointintel Lunar Lake model, but not Snapdragon X-series for one reason or another . This effectively alienates desktop users, as modern CPUs don’t have an NPU at all. Even the Ryzen 9000 processors launched without an NPU and Intel’s upcoming Intel Arrow Lake processor will likely follow the same path.
