Posey's Tips & Tricks
Microsoft Adds a Copilot Key to the Keyboard
Let's take a look at what this means by peering back at Microsoft's history with the keyboard.
If you needed any more evidence that Microsoft is going all in on its Copilot strategy, then look no further than the recent announcement that the company would be adding a Copilot key to the PC keyboard. Â
On the surface, the idea of adding an extra key to the keyboard probably doesn't seem like a big deal. Believe me when I say that at first, I didn't even give the announcement a second thought. However, I think that this announcement is far more significant than it might initially seem.
To fully appreciate the significance of Microsoft adding a Copilot key to the PC keyboard, you need to have a bit of historical perspective. As far as I can remember, the only other time that Microsoft added a key to the PC keyboard was way back in 1994 when it added the now standard Windows key.
At the time, all PC keyboards were more or less the same. They were flat, boxy, and boring. Microsoft had introduced its Natural keyboard, which to the best of my knowledge, was the first keyboard to feature an ergonomic curve. The Natural Keyboard looked really fancy and futuristic when compared to a normal keyboard of the day. More importantly however, the Natural Keyboard was the very first keyboard to include a Windows key.
The important thing to keep in mind is that Microsoft probably did not create the Windows key just because it wanted to sell keyboards. There was something else going on at the time that was far more significant.
Microsoft rolled out the Natural Keyboard at around the same time as it introduced Windows 95, which was arguably one of the most ground breaking versions of Windows ever released. Windows 95 gave us things that we still use today, such as the Start button, plug and play and effortless multitasking.
Interestingly, the Windows 95 setup process actually showed pictures of the Microsoft Natural Keyboard, hinting at the idea that the keyboard had been created with Windows 95 in mind. Although it might have been tempting to dismiss the Microsoft Natural Keyboard as little more than a marketing gimmick, it was actually an excellent keyboard. I owned several of these keyboards and found them to be extremely comfortable to use.
It would be easy to consider all of this and come to the conclusion that Microsoft created the Windows button as a way of promoting a new feature (the Start button) in a brand new operating system, and the fact that they might also be able to sell a few keyboards in the process was just icing on the cake. While every bit of this is probably true, it misses the larger point.
How many new desktop operating systems has Microsoft created since Windows 95? By my count, there have been 10 that I can think of off the top of my head. Every one of those operating systems introduced a plethora of new features. Even so, Microsoft has never gone through the trouble of adding a new key to the keyboard for any of those features.
So what was it about the Start menu that caused it to be the only Windows feature in the last 30 years (or ever) to receive its own dedicated key? I can only speculate, but my guess is that Microsoft intended the Start menu to be a permanent feature that would not only redefine Windows, but also be a part of all future Windows versions (never mind what happened with Windows 8).
So with all of that in mind, let's fast forward to 2024 and Microsoft's announcement that it is adding a Copilot key to the keyboard. Given Microsoft's past history, I think that Microsoft considers Copilot to be a flagship feature that will be a part of Windows for generations to come.
And even though the Copilot key is supposedly being added to third party keyboards, my guess is that we will see this key receive special emphasis on Microsoft Surface devices. I'm not really sure what this will look like, but consider the fact that some of the Microsoft keyboards that followed the Natural Keyboard actually contained two Windows keys instead of the one Windows key that we have today. As such, I think that the next generation of Surface devices will likely be marketed as having been designed for Copilot.
About the Author
Brien Posey is a 22-time Microsoft MVP with decades of IT experience. As a freelance writer, Posey has written thousands of articles and contributed to several dozen books on a wide variety of IT topics. Prior to going freelance, Posey was a CIO for a national chain of hospitals and health care facilities. He has also served as a network administrator for some of the country's largest insurance companies and for the Department of Defense at Fort Knox. In addition to his continued work in IT, Posey has spent the last several years actively training as a commercial scientist-astronaut candidate in preparation to fly on a mission to study polar mesospheric clouds from space. You can follow his spaceflight training on his Web site.