I picked Task Manager 'to see how ready AI is for primetime… or if it would just degrade to slop' – OG dev talks to The Reg

The author of the original legendary 1996 Windows Task Manager has released new versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux, telling The Reg the project started life as a way to see if vibe coding could produce something useful.

"I picked Task Manager as a simpler target to see how ready AI is for primetime… or if it would just degrade to slop," former Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer told us.

"And it turns out it depends on what you ask for, largely! And what you test and instrument.

It's like having a very ambitious and precocious intern, but like the classic genie in the bottle, be careful what you wish for." The update is a much fuller-featured affair, designed to offer insight into the inner workings of a user's system rather than behaving like a bare-bones process-killer as it once did.

As such, it bears a passing resemblance to the current Windows Task Manager.

However, it can drill into more detail and expose more metrics.

Aesthetically, as well as the similarities to the Task Manager found in Windows 11, the interface gives off similar vibes to media player skins of the 1990s and 2000s.

"I wanted it to look and feel like my Pioneer RT-909 reel to reel," said Plummer.

The user can set the font and theme to something more suited to the their task.

However, if you fancy that Amber or Green screen look, that's possible.

So is full color.

Users can also set the bloom and saturation via a slider that goes up to 11.

The application started as a 107-page specification that Plummer passed to Fable.

After a three-and-a-half-hour first pass, the first iteration of the application was produced.