Windows Weekly (MP3)

Windows Weekly wishes all viewers and listeners a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Here's a look back at Microsoft's 2024!

NYT sues OpenAI and Microsoft
Copilot Pro announced
Copilot GPT Builder Impressions
XZ Utils Backdoor Found by Microsoft Hero
Copilot+ PC & Recall Announced
Recall Drama Prompts Opt-in Changes
Thurrant: WSJ Hit Piece on Qualcomm?
Lenovo's nutty ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 Hybrid
3 Mile Island Revival
Halo Studios & Unreal Engine 5
Snapdragon Dev Kit Unboxed
Coffee and Nespresso tangent!
Steve Gibson's Worry About "Connected Experiences"
Intel's CEO "retires"
Clonakilty Whiskey in studio!

Host: Leo Laporte

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The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin .

BLOCKBUSTER NEWS FROM INTEL

Intel announces Arc B-series GPUs!!!
CEO Pat Gelsinger "retires," but was really forced out by the board of directors
Why? Theories include too-slow progress, major partner bailing on foundry, disagreements over keeping x86 design and foundry, etc.

Windows

All Quiet on the Windows Front
No Insider builds last week. Thanks Thanksgiving! Today, a new Canary build with Win32 app updating in the Store
Patch Tuesday is next week - this will be a big one
The rest of December will be quiet too
Microsoft: TPM 2.0 is "non-negotiable" in Windows
And now, a long-threatened change: Watermark on the desktop of unsupported PCs
PC sales slid 1.5 percent in Q3 after two quarters of "growth"/flat sales
Samsung is killing DeX
Phone Link is the new Dex. Interesting, given the partnership with Microsoft
Plus, Google is FINALLY adding desktop capabilities to Android. This should have always come from the platform maker

AI, Cloud

FTC is investigating Microsoft for cloud licensing too - And about 16 other things apparently
Microsoft: SHE HIT ME FIRST!
Spotify Wrapped 2024 uses Notebook LM to create a personalized podcast for each customer
OpenAI is solving the biggest problem with AI... its lack of advertising!
The Browser Company's next browser is called Dia and it's all about AI. Does it have a chance?

Xbox

Xbox Year in Review is live
Indiana Jones and more is coming to Game Pass in the first half of December
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is getting big reliability updates. Hopefully, Boeing is helping out here
For some reason, Sony announces that it sold 160 million PlayStation 2 consoles

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: Get out of the basement
App pick of the week: Google Drive
RunAs Radio this week: A SysAdmin Christmas with Rick Claus and Joey Snow
Brown liquor pick of the week: Dewar's 8 Year Old Caribbean Smooth Rum Cask Finish

Hosts: Leo Laporte , Paul Thurrott , and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly 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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Spreading light, MSFS 2024 issues, Recall (Preview)

Windows

Recall and Click to Do arrive in Preview and the world doesn't implode. Sorry, haters
Snapdragon X Copilot+ PCs only - and dear God, please follow Paul's advice
Look at how facile the complaints are now
This week in 24H2, unreliability problems. Certain Ubisoft games are causing issues
Beta: New taskbar-based continuity features
Microsoft is getting rid of ONE OneDrive folder backup nag. The beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning?
HP and Dell earnings
The PC refresh cycle keeps getting delayed, now to second half of 2025
Google will reportedly merge Chrome OS into Android. Complexity won. Is this a good idea?

Microsoft 365

Big outage kept customers off Microsoft 365 for better part of a day this week

AI, antitrust, corporate

Microsoft debunks reports that it is using customer data in Microsoft 365 to train AI
This kind of thing keeps happening. There were reports a month ago about Microsoft secretly enabling Recall on PCs that was complete BS
Amazon expands Anthropic investment to $8 billion, or 73 percent of MSFT/OpenAI
Brave Search adds a chat mode to ask follow-ups to AI results
DOJ, Google make final arguments in Google ad monopoly case in US
Google testing changes to search to meet DMA needs
Intel secures $7.6 billion in CHIPS funding. Qualcomm is apparently no longer interested

Xbox

Flight Simulator 2024 is a cluster$%^@ so Xbox is issuing fixes
Microsoft is adding a mini Edge browser to Game Bar
Xbox gamers can make private Discord calls now
Microsoft is shutting down Xbox Avatar Editor because no one uses it
Like Microsoft, PlayStation is looking at mobile gaming hardware again, still years away

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: We live in a new era of misinformation
App pick of the week: Opera GX is almost all-new, Firefox goes to 133
RunAs Radio this week: Incident Response with Mandi Walls
Brown liquor pick of the week: Kavalan Solist Vinho Barrique

Hosts: Leo Laporte , Paul Thurrott , and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly 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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It's Microsoft Ignite and we are totally not there

One word summary: Agentic
A wave two for Copilot, essentially
Agents that work on your behalf autonomously
The Snapdragon Dev Box was such a success that Microsoft is offering more hardware
Copilot+ PCs are getting new AI capabilities. Eventually
Copilot Actions brings, um, actions to Microsoft 365

Windows 11

Microsoft FINALLY releases Windows 11 on Arm ISO - Here's some advice
When you think about Windows, we're guessing security and resiliency aren't what comes to mind. So why is Microsoft pushing this so hard at Ignite??
Google Drive is now available in Beta for Windows 11 on Arm. Paul's national nightmare is over!
Here's what's coming to Windows 11 SOON - a new Release Preview channel build shows that 24H2 was just the start of this coming year's updates
Canary: Mostly bug fixes, no clear vision for this channel we can see - new Canary build today with the new Hello experience, new Taskbar thumbnail previews
Beta: Jump list sharing and other features no one has ever, ever, ever asked for
Microsoft is shutting down Beta channel for Windows 10, just months after it revived it
Lenovo revenues surge, PC sales only up slightly but it sees big growth in the coming quarters

AI, antitrust, more

DOJ reportedly wants Google to sell off Chrome - How does this compare to the previous Microsoft breakup attempt?
Some thoughts about Uno Platform Studio and a re-do of last week's .NET news now that Richard is back
A WPF on .NET 9 update

Xbox

Phil Spencer speaks: Portable Xbox hardware, mobile store, more
Microsoft's new Xbox ad triggers PTSD or celebration, depending on your views
You can now play (50) games you own on Xbox Cloud Gaming!
It's been a while, but this is a killer month for Game Pass
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is now available
Avowed is an Xbox console exclusive and it's coming in February
Warcraft 1 and 2 Remasters arrive alongside Warcraft 3: Reforged 2.0 - celebrating the 20th anniversary
Valve celebrates the 20th anniversary of Half-Life 2!
The OG Unreal and Unreal Tournament are now free, and they run on modern PCs too
Sony PlayStation Portal can now stream some PS Plus games

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: Get 1 TB of additional Xbox storage for just $99
App pick of the week: ChatGPT for Windows and Mac
RunAs Radio this week: Testing Databases with Dan Mallott
Brown liquor pick of the week: Haavaldsen Sledgehammer 2024

Hosts: Leo Laporte , Paul Thurrott , and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly 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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Edge's data trick, Outlook's AI Themes, .NET 9, and more!

Windows 11

The 24H2 quality issues continue, like a parade with no end.
Patch Tuesday arrives
Windows team says no Preview update in December... but what about November?
Reminder of the Canary build last week with Prism emulator improvements. WHERE ARE THE ARM ISOs???
Most recent episode of Run as Radio is worth discussing again here
Dev and Beta: Nice new "run as admin" shortcut in Dev, minor changes in Beta
Canary: Mostly bug fixes
Microsoft Edge is using a new trick to steal Chrome data
It's dead, Jim: Microsoft reminds world that Outlook will replace Mail, Calendar, People
If you pay for Copilot (dummy) you can make custom Outlook themes now for some reason
Quick laptop update: AMD Zen 5 vs. Intel Lunar Lake vs. Snapdragon X

Still more earnings

Arm: $844 million, but disappointing. Also, Qualcomm legal battle looms
Qualcomm: $10.24 billion in revenues, up 19 percent
AMD to lay off 4 percent of (26,000 employee) workforce globally, focus on AI

Dev

Microsoft releases .NET 9
That means WPF support for Windows 11 theming is live
But there's a surprise: Microsoft added one of the features we need
.NET Conf is happening as we speak - Thursday is third-party day, and I am curious about Avalon and Uno announcements
Qualcomm has a webinar tomorrow for AI developers and Snapdragon X

Xbox

Surprise! Death Stranding comes to Xbox three years later to the day
Phil Spencer talks PS5, mobile devices, more in a new interview
MAJOR NEW ACTIVISION RELEASE ON GAME PASS
Just kidding, it's some stupid purple dragon
Friend requests now available (again) to all Xbox users
Paying GeForce Now customers get monthly usage caps
NVIDIA app replaces GeForce Experience, no need to sign in anymore
Sony has sold 65 million PS5 consoles ... it needs 20+ million more to surpass PS3

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: Quick Windows 11 Field Guide update
App pick of the week: Stardock DesktopGPT
App pick of the week #2: Quick Share
Cocktail of the week: Salmoncito

Ingredients

1 oz. tonic water, plus more for topping
1½ oz. London dry gin
¼ oz. Campari
¼ oz. fresh grapefruit juice
Grapefruit twist and grapefruit supreme (for serving)

Preparation

Fill a highball glass with ice. Add 1 oz. tonic water , then pour in 1½ oz. London dry gin , ¼ oz. Campari , and ¼ oz. fresh grapefruit juice . Top off with more tonic water and stir gently with a bar spoon. Express oil of a grapefruit twist over cocktail and discard. Garnish with a grapefruit supreme .

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 .

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veeam.com

On Halloween, the last day of October, Microsoft delayed Recall again. It was supposed to preview in October, this is the third delay. No clear reason why. December now, supposedly. Plus, Paul gives an earnings recap that he didn't get to dive into much last week.

Windows

New 24H2 bug
More features coming to Prism emulator in Windows 11 on Arm (!)
New generative AI features are coming to Paint, Photos, and Notepad
Beta channel: Here's the new Windows Hello experience, with explicit references to passkeys
Proton VPN is native on Windows 11 on Arm
Windows Server 2025 is GA (and some are being mistakenly force-upgraded. This is what you get when you share a codebase with Windows 11, apparently)
Google shifts Android development cycle - Major update each Q2, minor update each Q4, monthly feature/quality updates

A Tale of 2 Chips

Paul reviewed the AMD Zen 5-based HP OmniBook Ultra, it's awesome. Paul is also reviewing an Intel Lunar Lake laptop, and it is not awesome
Early glee around Lunar Lake was misplaced
Laptop reviewers all report what Paul is seeing (for once), that the performance is horrific. You need to switch to "Best performance" power management mode for reasonable performance, but this hasn't solved all the issues
COD: Black Ops 6 . Average FPS under Zen 5 is 90 to 120 at native resolution/medium graphics, single and multi-player. Lunar Lake? 40 FPS with all graphics settings on low/very low
Intel now says Lunar Lake is a one-off too (Meteor Lake was likewise a one-off, architecturally). It will no longer package RAM with processors because of margins. Lunar Lake rushed to market and was key contributor to recent financial issues

More Earnings Learnings

Amazon: $159 billion in revenues, $27.5 billion for AW
Apple: $95 billion in revenues, a small uptick in iPhone revenues

Microsoft 365/AI

Some curious/confusing moves with Microsoft 365 for consumers: subscribers in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand are getting Copilot Pro credits with base subscription (Word, Excel, etc.), Designer, ... and the long-overdue and dreaded price increase
This must be a test for the U.S. and western Europe. Feels inevitable
OpenAI launches ChatGPT Search. This is not the Google Search replacement you're looking for

Xbox

It's November, so here's the incredible list of Activision Blizzard games now coming to Game Pass! Just kidding, but we are getting Flight Sim 2024
Microsoft introduced an AI-powered support virtual agent to Xbox because something something AI
Switch sales drop off a cliff, Nintendo will announce backward-compatible successor before the end of March
Sony launches the PS5 Pro to meh

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: Windows 11 minus the MSA
App pick of the week: Docs in Proton Drive
RunAs Radio this week: Software-Defined Networking using Azure Firewall with Aidan Finn
Brown liquor MOVIE pick of the week: Whisky Galore

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 .

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Enjoy Leo's many hats in this fun and silly edition of Windows Weekly. Happy Halloween!

Windows 11

Yes, Windows 11 version 24H2 got its preview update for October too, a few days late as expected
24H2 was a surprisingly big platform shift - no enablement updates - faster updates going forward
Dev and Beta get new builds, minor changes in each

Microsoft 365/AI/dev

Teams is... getting weird
Microsoft 365 apps get Handoff support on Apple devices
Notion Mail - a light alternatives to Google Workspace and M365?
GitHub Copilot goes multi-LLM
Apple Intelligence wave one arrives, mostly to indifference. Wave two in December. EU is getting it in the Spring
New Macs this week with M4. But the big news? 16 GB of RAM, minimum. Finally.
The Browser Company can't realize its vision for the future with Arc

Earnings/Corporate

Microsoft and Google duke it out over Cloud licensing - This one is getting ugly
Google - $88.3 billion in revenues
AMD - OK, but dominated by Intel on PCs and NVIDIA in AI/datacenter

Xbox

More games, more people, more devices, Microsoft says
Less emphasis on console but what might a next-gen console look like? Arm? Mobile? Third-party hardware makers?
Cloud Gaming is limited to the most expensive Game Pass tier - that has to change, and what about a standalone tier?
Mobile app stores are coming - but what about native mobile games?
Call of Duty Black Ops 6 lands on PC Game Pass, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and Cloud Gaming - Paul puts aside his grudge and gives it a shot
Microsoft previews new Home experience for Xbox app on Windows

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: It might be time to look at the Raspberry Pi again
App pick of the week: My God, it's full of web browsers
RunAs Radio this week: Updating Windows on ARM with Aria Hanson
Brown liquor pick of the week: Laird of the Fintry Black Label Cask Strength Single Malt Whisky

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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uscloud.com
threatlocker.com
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In case you missed it

You didn't. But Qualcomm canceled that Snapdragon Dev Box, will refund customers
Qualcomm picked the wrong company for this
Also, there are plenty of Copilot+ PCs and does it make more sense to develop against the type of PC your customers will use?

Windows 11

23H2 gets a preview update, as expected
Copilot key customization, Gamepad for virtual keyboard, notification suggestions, etc.
Qualcomm and Microsoft solve Paul's only hardware issue with Arm, more
Qualcomm brings Oryon cores to the phone, comes out firing against Intel, and is sued by Arm
Dev channel: That Gamepad virtual kb thing
Canary: That Copilot key customization thing
Photos app gets Super Resolution feature - Microsoft says in preview, but Paul sees it in stable
Microsoft Store is getting "immersive trailers" because ADHD

Microsoft 365, AI, more

Report details mounting tensions between Microsoft and OpenAI. Worst partnership ever?
Several months after releasing Mac and iPhone ChatGPT apps, OpenAI delivers a comicly-named "early version" of it for Windows. Thanks guys, don't hurt yourselves.
Microsoft announces first AI agents for commercial space, DIY in AI Studio
AI in phases? Copilot is phase one, this thing that works beside you (app, essentially)
Agents is phase two, this thing that works on your behalf away from you (service, essentially)
Copilot comes to OneNote for Mac, iPad in beta
Two years behind in AI, Apple has figured out the right quips and marketing messages
As expected, Google gets a stay of execution (pardon the pun) in Epic case (also, pardon the pun)
WTF is happening with smartphones? Did Apple and Google look at the 2024 Windows 11 Mess and say, we want us some of that?
Apple Intelligence to roll out over at least four major iOS 18 updates and then forever
Google rushes Android 15 dev to meet new August deadline for Pixel 9 series, whiffs it, and then delivers it 2 months late ... But at least it's jam-packed with AI

Xbox

Age of Empires goes mobile
In the wake of Xbox/Halo adopting Unreal Engine, Unity ships Unity 6 Engine
Netflix shuts down AAA game studio - I could've saved you guys a lot of money
New Xbox Wireless Headset more battery, better Bluetooth, new voice isolation

Tips & Picks

Tip of the week: Scott and Mark, sitting in a tree...
App pick of the week: Affinity Photos 2.6 Beta
RunAs Radio this week: Securing Data using Azure Virtual Desktop with Jim Duffy
Brown liquor pick of the week: Glenmorangie Nectar D'Or

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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flashpoint.io
veeam.com
e-e.com/twit