Windows Weekly

The AI morning after

A week after the irrational exuberance, reality sets in. It's still Bing. And it's still competing against Google
Microsoft shares an update on Bing AI rollout
Google employees were not amused at botched Bard announcement
Microsoft to add AI to Office in March
Everyone is doing AI now. Including Opera and Notion

Windows 11

New Windows 11 Dev build adds more live captions
IE was disabled in Windows 11 on Patch Tuesday. It's dead, Jim
2FA is coming to Windows 11. It's all in the toast

Microsoft 365

Looks like Skype revenue has plummeted over the past decade
And full of "meet your new girlfriend" messages if you don't lock down from defaults
Microsoft finally retired the Yammer brand. And you're never going to believe what happened next

Corporate

GitHub lays off 10 percent of staff, going fully remote
More jobs cuts announced in Surface, HoloLens, Xbox

Xbox

Just kidding: Activision to release a major Call of Duty title this year
Xbox February update is now available with Google Home app integration

Tips & Picks

Tip of the week: Get started with the new Bing AI. Bing AI apparently has some "creator prompts" that will jumpstart certain types of tasks:

-Letter (Write a letter)

-Code (Write code)

-Movie (Write a script)

-Story (Write a story)

-Poem (Write a poem)

-Summary (Write a summary)

-Tweet (Write a tweet)

-Blog post (Write a blog post)

-Quiz (Write a quiz)

-Joke (Write a joke)

App pick of the week: DALL-E
This Week on RunAs: Strengthening Security with Jess Dodson
Brown liquor pick of the week: Kvint Divin

Hosts: Leo Laporte , Paul Thurrott , and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

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Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin .

Sponsor:
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WORLD WAR AI

OpenAI announces ChatGPT Plus
Google responds to ChatGPT with Bard
Microsoft announces AI-powered Bing and Edge.
Google hosted its own AI event and it announced multi-search, Maps improvements, and Translate improvements, and discussed how AI can make life better
Semi-related: Paul was let into the Notion AI beta

Windows

Paul has some thoughts about Windows 12 and what an AI-based Windows could look like
Ads are coming to the Microsoft Store. FINALLY
New Insider build for the Beta channel. No new features, but a new policy that lets IT admins customize how Search looks on the Windows 11 Taskbar
Microsoft is integrating Adobe Acrobat PDF with Microsoft Edge, but only on Windows 10 and 11 for now

Microsoft 365

Native Apple Silicon version of Skype is 3X faster. What took so long?

Hardware

Microsoft says it's still committed to HoloLens 2 and MR, tries not to laugh
Samsung is working on XR hardware with Qualcomm and Google.

Dev

Microsoft updates its .NET language strategy. Nothing has changed, other than they way they document their .NET language strategy

More Big Tech Earnings

Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Meta earnings
Zoom just showed us the way to handle layoffs

Xbox

Sony is fighting Microsoft subpoena in AB case. It's fighting the FTC subpoena, too
UK CMA says AB deal is "anti-competitive" but would accept some concessions
New Game Pass titles announced for the middle of February
Sony says the PS5 is immune to the downturn
Nintendo says Switch is not immune to the downturn, but it's still dominating

Tips & Picks

Tip of the week: Protect your privacy in Windows 11
App pick of the week: Microsoft Edge Dev
Brown Liquor of the week: Mackmyra

Hosts: Leo Laporte , Paul Thurrott , and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin .

Sponsors:
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Halo engine switch, Intel Q4 2022 revenues, Ground News

Windows 11

Skipping the Windows 11 upgrade? Microsoft will force-feed it to you soon
Related: Microsoft is using dark patterns to get people to upgrade to 11
Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 25290 heads to Dev channel with new Spotify and Phone Link widgets, new Start menu "exploration"
Screen recording in Snipping Tool rolls out to users in Windows Insider Beta channel

More earnings

Since Microsoft's mixed earnings last week, a few more relevant firms have checked in on Q4 2022
Intel earnings fall off a cliff: Cutting pay 5% rather than layoffs, VPs 10%, leadership 15%, CEO 25%
AMD - not bad thanks to datacenter, but this quarter will be down 10 percent
And it's not just the PC: IDC says smartphone sales declined 18.3 percent in Q4

Dev

A quick look at .NET MAUI desktop app capabilities
.NET MAUI gets a cross-platform media player control
GitHub says it has over 100 million developers on the service. From what Google indicates, there are only ~27 million developers in the world

Xbox

After layoffs at 343, a smaller team will start over with Unreal Engine
Why not just disband the whole disaster and let Halo fly free?
Microsoft announces Xbox Games with Gold for February... and new Game Pass titles for first half of February
Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition comes to Xbox consoles
Xbox Series X|S get a price hike in Japan
Did Sony really halve PS VR2 production?
VR is not having a good time right now... probably this whole year.
Rumor: Microsoft will skip E3 along with Nintendo and Sony

Tips & Picks

Tip of the week: Complete your password manager switch
Plus: Quick update on the new book
App pick of the week: https://ground.news/
Brown alcohol pick of the week: Crown Royal

Hosts: Leo Laporte , Paul Thurrott , and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin .

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F23Q2 analysis, the subscription future, Microsoft 365 Insider program

Microsoft announced a net income of $16.4 billion on revenues of $52.7 billion for the quarter ending December 31. Net income decreased by 12 percent year-over-year (YOY) in the time period while revenue was up just 2 percent. It was a mixed quarter, at best, and below expectations.
Intelligent Cloud delivered $21.5 billion in revenues in the quarter, up 18 percent YOY.
Productivity and Business Processes was Microsoft's second-biggest business in the quarter, with $17 billion in revenues, up 7 percent.
More Personal Computing was again the laggard with $14.2 billion in revenues, down an astonishing 19 percent YOY.
The cloud saved the quarter
Windows tanked
Windows won't get better any time soon
Surface tanked even worse than Windows
Surface also won't get better any time soon thanks to "execution challenges"
Xbox tanked, but was at least inline with expectations
Teams has over 280 million users
Microsoft 365 to evolve into an AI-first platform
Office did OK overall, big shift away from one-off product sales to subscriptions

Windows

It's time to suck it up: the future of Windows is all advertising and subscriptions
Microsoft is working on yet another File Explorer redesign
Microsoft also starts testing tabs in Notepad
Microsoft is also testing a side-by-side view for web pages in Edge
And now a new Insider build for the Dev channel with a new (Facebook) Messenger widget
Microsoft kills Altspace VR as part of an AR/MR house-cleaning move
Microsoft may be walking away from AR/MR, but Apple's coming headset will allegedly switch between the two modes

Microsoft 365

Office Insider Program renamed to Microsoft 365 Insider Program
This rebranding crusade is a mistake and is reminiscent of the .NET branding mistake

Antitrust

EU to announce antitrust case against Microsoft Teams
DOJ announces antitrust case against Google for advertising and Google responds
Google lays off 12,000. Nothing from Apple?

Dev

Github now has over 100 million developers
Google announces what's next for Flutter
An examination of .NET MAUI reveals what it's good for on the Windows desktop

Xbox

N64 classic GoldenEye is coming to Xbox, Game Pass January 27
Sony pushes forward with VR2 plans

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: Paul is working on a new book and needs your help
Tip of the week #2: Microsoft will stop selling Windows 10 downloads
Brown alcohol pick of the week: Nomad Outland Whisky

Hosts: Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin .

Sponsor:
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AI for the consumer client side, HoloLens request rejected, Azure DevOps

Layoffs

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella informs employees of 10,000 layoffs
Is Surface on the cutting block?
Amazon to layoff 18,000

Welcome to the AI era

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella confirms Microsoft's AI moves: Azure Open AI service, ChatGPT APIs, and infusing AI across the entire Microsoft stack
This is a much bigger deal than Microsoft's pivot to the cloud 20 years ago because it infuses everything that it does. When Wall Street latched onto Azure and cloud computing and made Microsoft the second biggest company in the world, the software giant effectively ignored personal computing because no one wanted to hear about legacy. That era is over.

Windows 11

New Insider Preview build for the Dev channel adds a developer feature, OneDrive storage quote display
New Insider Preview build comes to the ... Release Preview channel? This one is interesting.
Now we know the full story of the bloodbath that was PC sales in Q4 2022: a 28.3 percent drop in unit sales YOY. Yikes
Intel ships its first 6 GHz CPU, reminding us again that this—and not efficiency—is what Intel is good at
12 years after Windows 8 and Surface, Apple is adding touchscreens to the Mac.

Devices

US Congress nixes Army purchase of more HoloLens units

Xbox

Google and NVIDIA voice concerns about Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard
EU likely to issue warning on Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard
Public support for the acquisition is strong. Even about PlayStation users!
Google turns the Stadia controller into a normal Bluetooth controller

Tips & Picks

Tip of the week: The OneDrive storage upgrades you didn't know about
App pick of the week: MSEdgeRedirect
Enterprise pick of the week: Azure DevOps
Whisky pick of the week: Glenlivet Nadurra

Hosts: Leo Laporte , Paul Thurrott , and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin .

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Fungible, rounded corners, Xbox Oreos, the AI wave

Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019
Surface Pro X, also from 2019, featured the first-ever NPU in a Surface product
Eye contact announced in 2020 - requires NPU
Windows Studio Effects announced at hybrid work event in April 2021 - adds Voice clarity, Voice focus, Automatic framing, Portrait blur, and Background blur to Eye contact
Windows Dev Kit 2023 (Volterra) arrives in late 2022 with NPU
Did Microsoft just soft announce Windows 12? Panos Panay awkwardly joins Lisa Su at AMD announcement at CES. Still, this is potentially huge
Let's not forget VALL-E
Now, Microsoft is reportedly seeking to expand its OpenAI partnership with $10 billion investment, could lead to 49 percent ownership stake

Windows 7 + Windows 8.1 are on a farm chasing rabbits

Microsoft issues the final Patch Tuesday updates for Windows 7 and 8.1. They're dead, Jim. And ... oddly, Microsoft added Secure Boot to Windows 7 at the last second
Windows 7 was beloved, Windows 8 was reviled, both were horribly misunderstood

More Windows

First Windows Insider builds of 2023 reveal more UI tinkering
Android 13 comes to WSA in the Insider Program
Preliminary results (from IDC) confirm what we knew about the PC industry in 2022

Surface + devices

After claiming that Surface Duo remained important, rumors of major Surface Duo developments, um, surface - Microsoft to move to folding display design, could add standalone phone
And let's not forget this little patent from 2017!
Microsoft launches shared device mode for frontline workers

Microsoft

Microsoft announces Microsoft 365 Basic - what used to be called OneDrive 100 GB Standalone plan
Microsoft acquires Fungible for $190 million (estimated)
There's a Microsoft education event coming in February

Tips and picks

Tip of the week: Install Windows Subsystem for Android correctly
App pick of the week: BitWarden
Enterprise pick of the week: Local Administrator Password Solution V2
Bourbon pick of the week: Angel's Envy

Hosts: Leo Laporte , Paul Thurrott , and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin .

Sponsor:
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Notepad tabs, Stack Overflow 2022 developer survey, LastPass alternatives

Windows

Microsoft's next Moment for Windows 11 is on the way
Microsoft is testing tabs in Notepad internally
This is what we're reduced to with the Windows 11 team, a 25-year old debate about MDI and SDI
Google is changing the Chrome release schedule again... no word from the Edge team

Services

Bing is reportedly going to get a ChatGPT upgrade to take on Google Search

CES

Intel announces 13th Gen Core chipsets for mobile
New PCs from Acer, HP, etc.
Matter Devices
Masonite Smart Door
Shiftall Mutalk
Surface Laptop 2 is no longer supported. It's four years old

Dev

Stack Overflow releases its 2022 survey. Lots of interesting data in there

Xbox

Ahead of Tuesday's pre-trial hearing, Microsoft responds to FTC complaint... and everyone focuses on the exact wrong thing, again
Microsoft's strategy for the FTC: Be the nice guy
Alone in Big Tech, Microsoft embraces unions
Here are the Games with Gold for January
Epic Games settles with FTC, will pay $520 million fine

Tips & Picks

Tip of the week: Dump LastPass?
App pick of the week: Xbox Live Gold
Bourbon pick of the week: Fable & Folly by Orphan Barrel

Hosts: Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott

Guest: Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin .

Sponsor:
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Looking back on the year in Microsoft, from Paul's rants to Mary Jo's beer! The world of Windows has had one wild 2022!

Activision Blizzard acquisition begins
Autocorrect/autocomplete baffles Mary Jo!
Experimenting with Ads in File Explorer!? Uh oh!
Farewell to Clippy/Gottfried
DuckDuckGo's controversial Microsoft problem
Interrupted by a crisis in Leo's office!
Zac Bowden & Rich Woods discuss the new Windows update schedule
Live widget notifications are annoying!
Outlook? More like Look-Out... for advertisements
Multiple Apple integrations announced
Mary Jo Foley's final beer pick of the week: Sororicide
Revolver's 2022 mix is an incredible musical achievement

Host: Leo Laporte

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin .

Sponsors:
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Microsoft in 2022: the good, the bad, the meh

Activision Blizzard. It's the gift that keeps on giving. I mean, Brazil OKed the deal. COME ON
Microsoft Teams turned 5. Is it unstoppable? (Stack is asking for a friend)
Games in Teams?
Just one feature update per year? Just kidding! Microsoft released Windows 10 version 22H2 in October. Since then, we've seen the unexpected, largely (or completely) untested rollout of three new features: Search "pill," Task Manager access from the Taskbar, and now a new OneDrive. Each has inconsistently rolled out to different PCs. One has a regression. One was actually tested with the Insider Program. And one wasn't tested at all.
Don't like Windows 11? Please, let the designers explain it
One Outlook (Project Monarch) arrives, sort of, changes nothing
Loop doesn't arrive, changes nothing
.NET MAUI lands. Is it the future? Or just "a" future?
Project Voltera looks cool, but Arm is still down the road
DuckDuckGo colluded with Microsoft, then didn't
Alex Kipman was just trying to be like Bill Gates!
GitHub CoPilot: friend or foe?
PC sales fell off a cliff. That cliff is about to get higher. Deeper. Whatever
Joe B leaves. Like Mad Men, he might have stuck around too long
The year the Insider Program broke - there is no way out of Dev, Beta, or WOA builds

Windows 11

Microsoft brings Android 13 to WSA in preview

Hardware

Microsoft touts HoloLens 2 "momentum," says that an HL3 will need to be "meaningful"
Lenovo is pre-gaming CES with major PC announcements. Isn't this how E3 started to fall apart?
Google Android/Nest and Amazon both go live with early Matter implementations.

Microsoft 365

Microsoft will let all EU cloud customers store their data locally.
Microsoft teams with AWS, Meta, and TomTom to take on Google Maps
Microsoft, Teams has failed with consumers. Just bring back Skype already
In its second announcement all year, Skype adds real-time translation that imitates your voice
Amazon settles EU antitrust case. Did it learn anything from Microsoft?

Xbox

Microsoft launches a massive sale on Xbox games
Amazon expands in gaming, will publish next Tomb Raider title
John Carmack leaves Meta, has a lot to say. Little of it good
Ubisoft is giving Stadia customers the PC versions of the games they bought

Tips & Picks

Tip of the week: Make Mastodon less sleepy
Apps of the year: Brave, Notion, ImageGlass, Modern Warfare II
Term of the Week: Overwhelm Freeze

Holiday cocktail pick of the season: Winter Warmer

Mix equal parts apple whiskey and cranberry juice with a few good shakes of ginger bitters.
Warm gently on the stovetop or in the microwave--to a little above room temperature, not hot like tea or coffee.
Serve with a cinnamon stick or dried apple slice.
You can make a batch for a party and keep it warm on the stove or in a crock-pot, just keep in on low or the alcohol will evaporate.

Hosts: Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott

Guest: Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin .

Sponsor:
UnifyMeeting.com code WW50 for subscription and code WW for displays

FTC sues to block Activision Blizzard acquisition

FTC goes after Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard
The FTC's action against Microsoft is ridiculous given the real-world abuses by Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta
Did the FTC lie about Microsoft? And what does this say about its case?
Spencer: Sony wants to make PlayStation bigger by making Xbox smaller
Microsoft offered to bring Call of Duty to PlayStation Plus
Microsoft offered the FTC a legally-binding consent decree to address their needs.

12th-Gen Intel update

There are problems with 12th-Gen Intel Core-based PCs from all major PC makers using USB-C, Thunderbolt 3, and Thunderbolt 4 docks.
It appears that Dell has released a flurry of firmware updates that may have fixed the issue. This hints at how the issue will be fixed: by PC makers.

Windows 11

Dev channel: latest build has more Search experiment, final Dev channel build of 2022
Dev channel: New build last week removed sign-in requirement for Widgets
Dev channel: everyone is getting an update Snipping Tool with screen recording and an updated Media Player with who cares
Stable: Microsoft quietly updated OneDrive, never tested it with the public first
Microsoft Edge 110 will drop support for Windows 7/8.1 in January 2023

Microsoft 365

OneNote for Windows is getting vertical tabs because that's what's wrong with OneNote
Microsoft Authenticator drops support for Apple Watch. The reason is... curious

Microsoft

Microsoft buys 4 percent of the London Stock Market

Surface

Surface Duo 2 December Update addresses calling issues. Remember, it's not a phone

Xbox

Riot games come to Xbox Game Pass
Microsoft gives Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers 3 months of Calm
It's been a good year for the Xbox app on Windows. Sure, but what about accessing your console screenshots and recorded clips?

Tips & Picks

Tip of the week: Enable text suggestions in Windows 11
App pick of the week: Typora
Apple pick of the week #2: Firefox
Word of the week: Contronym

Hosts: Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin .

Sponsors:
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