Windows Weekly (MP3)

Paul, Leo, and Richard get into new Windows features (thanks to the Feature Tracker), hardware shifts for Microsoft/Intel/Apple, AI moves from OpenAI/Apple/Adobe, Notion Mail, a Hawaiian drink, the National Recording Registry, rice cookers, and electronic timer tunes!

Windows 11

Feature Tracker. Since we last talked, Microsoft has announced the following new features for Windows 11:
Semantic search can now search for Windows settings using natural language - Dev and Beta (24H2) channels, no clear stable date but guessing June
Narrator can more accurately describe images by detailing the people, objects, colours, text, and numbers in them, Snapdragon X only, same builds as above
Snipping Tool with "Text extraction" in the capture bar - This in Canary now, but it was in at least Dev previously, this could ship in stable at any time, it's an app
Recall (preview) and Click to Do (preview) head to the Release Preview channel (24H2) - Expect this in May Patch Tuesday
Narrator speech recap, Phone Link/Start integration, File Explorer Home updates, Windows Share with Edit all head to Release Preview (23H2) - Expect these in May Patch Tuesday - They were added to Beta channel (23H2) a few days earlier
Plus, Microsoft Edge is up to 9 percent faster at web rendering and we're having a fiesta
Also, the Windows 95 startup/logout chime has been inducted into the National Recording Registry

Hardware

Surface Hub OG hits EOL this year just like Windows 10
First major change under new Intel CEO
What's a computer? The iPad, supposedly, but we'll see
Everything's fine, but Google laid off hundreds in Pixel/Android group

AI

Apple is making big changes so that Apple Intelligence will actually be intelligent
Adobe is going agentic too
OpenAI is creating its own social network because the world needs another social network
OpenAI announces three GPT-4.1 models - may retire GPT-4 soon - plus now o3 and o4-mini models
ChapGPT gets an image library and a memory
Claude gets Research and Google Workspace integration
Meta will start training its AI models with EU data, wink wink

Xbox and games

Xbox app on mobile will soon let you buy games (!) and add-on content, join Game Pass, and redeem perks. Did Microsoft get a concession from Apple/Google??
COD: Modern Warfare II (OG) and more are coming to Game Pass in the next few weeks
Xbox announces Doom: The Dark Ages limited edition accessories
Sea of Thieves is coming to Battle.net
Sony forced to raise the price of PS5 in three locales

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: Think like an individual, not an enterprise
App pick of the week: Notion Mail
RunAs Radio this week: How to Not Hate PowerShell with Barbara Forbes
Brown liquor pick of the week: 12th Hawaii Distiller's Reserve

Hosts: Leo Laporte , Paul Thurrott , and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin .

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Introducing the Windows 11 Feature Tracker

"From the 'I should have done this two years ago' files, the 'I have wasted my life' files, and the, 'great, I needed more work to do' files ... There is a need for this. So I made one. But it will evolve. Maybe into a web app/wiki/something else... like a Notion website?" - Paul
Patch Tuesday brings a metric ton of new features - And what the tracker showed clearly
Two seconds after posting the tracker, Microsoft changed the Copilot app yet again - proving the need for the tracker - And demonstrating why the Insider Program is so screwed up
A hidden new Start menu in recent builds presents an interesting conundrum: How to handle something Microsoft has not announced?

More Windows 11

Beta build for 23H2: File new tab/new window changes, Explorer context menu regression may be permanent
Dev and Beta (24H2): Taskbar icon scaling is a blast from the past we all need desperately
Intel is killing Unison app and service

Like winter, Build is coming

Build session catalog is live - mostly AI as expected. Paul and Richard are going
Overview of the Windows Copilot Runtime (one year after it was announced), Windows Actions, standard Kayla Cinnamon talk on Windows productivity, using your own model with WCR, native app experiences(!), Arm64 app perf, etc.

AI

Final thoughts on Microsoft's 50th: Biggest accomplishment wasn't any tech, it was changing with the times.
What it's best at: Democratizing tech for the commoners, an expansion on Jack Tramiel/Commodore's "computers for the masses, not the classes" schtick. And that is exactly what it is doing with AI right now
Microsoft hosts a consumer AI event and announces a metric ton of new Copilot features
We need a Copilot feature tracker. Copilot = every single feature other AIs have - Copilot Actions on the web, memory and personalization, Copilot Vision on mobile and Windows, AI-generated podcasts and Microsoft releases Copilot Search in Bing
Is AI turning us all into Charly from Flowers for Algernon ?
AI is making us stupider! There are studies!!
This is the argument against every single tech advance from the steam train to the ballpoint pen to this
Microsoft's AI demo of vibe-coded Quake II highlights the problem nicely
Sometimes it's the little things: AI recaps for book series in Kindle
GitHub Copilot updated with Agent Mode, Cursor-style code overviews, more

Xbox & gaming

Microsoft announces new Xbox Games Showcase for June
Edge Game Assist gets new features, support for new games
GTA V and enhanced version for PC coming to Game Pass on April 15 - In addition to the previous Game Pass titles we discussed last week
Good: Nintendo Switch 2 supports ray tracing and DLSS
Bad: Nintendo delays Switch 2 to figure out the tariffs mess

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: Programmers at Work
App pick of the week: Apple Music
RunAs Radio this week: Application Risk in Security Copilot with Ari Schorr
Brown liquor pick of the week: The Heart Cut #02

These show notes have been truncated due to length. For the full show notes, visit https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly/episodes/927

Hosts: Leo Laporte , Paul Thurrott , and Richard Campbell

Bill Gates celebrates the 50th anniversary of Microsoft with the release of the source code for Altair BASIC 1.0. Plus, Paul celebrates with 99 cent books: The Windows 10 Field Guide, Windows 11 Field Guide, and Windows Everywhere are all 99 cents for 24 hours! Also available: Eternal Spring: Our Guide to Mexico City in preview!
Windows

The plot thickens. Paul writes epic take on future of Windows 11, describes Dev channel-only features and when/if they were ever released - in other words, an extensive but partial Windows 11 feature roadmap for 2025
Two days later, Microsoft announces a Windows 11 feature road map - one that is woefully incomplete, pathetic, and sad
Microsoft announces when (sort of) new on-device AI features will come to all Copilot+ PCs, meaning Intel and AMD, too - "not a glimpse at the future of the PC, but the future of the PC."
Live captions with live language translations, Cocreator in Paint, Restyle image and Image creator in Photos, plus Voice access with flexible natural language (Snapdragon X only)
But not Recall or Click to Do in preview, go figure
As expected, March 2024 Preview update for 24H2 arrives, a few days late - with AI-powered search experience enabled
Dev and Beta builds - Friday - Quick Machine Recovery (Beta only?), Speech recap in Narrator, Blue screen to get less blue, WinKey + C shortcut for Copilot returns, Spanish and French Text actions in Click to Do, Edit images in Share, AI-powered search (Dev only?)
Then, Microsoft more fully describes Windows Quick Recovery
Beta (23H2) - Monday - A lot of familiar 24H2 features - Narrator improvements, Copilot WinKey + C, Share with Image edit, plus System -- About FAQ for some freaking reason
Proton Drive is now native on Windows 11 on Arm, everyone gets new features
Proton VPN is now built into Vivaldi desktop browser
Intel's new CEO appears in public, vows to spin off non-core businesses. Everything but x86 chip design and Foundry, then

Microsoft 365

Windows 365 Link is now available
The Office apps on Windows already launch instantaneously but apparently that's not invasive enough - we need fewer auto-start items, not more of them
Microsoft Excel to call out rich data cells with value tokens

AI & Dev

NYT copyright infringement lawsuit against Open AI and Microsoft can move forward, judge rules
And now Tim O'Reilly says Open AI stole his company's paywalled book content too. Book piracy is sadly the easiest thing in the world
Open AI raised more money than any private firm in history, now worth $300B
ChatGPT releases awesome new image generation feature for ChatGPT
And now it's available for free to everyone
Google's Gemini Pro 2.5 is now available to everyone too
Amazon launches Alexa+ in early access, US only
Some thoughts about vibe coding, which isn't what you think it is
AMD pays $4.9 billion to take on Nvidia in cloud AI
Apple Intelligence + Apple Health is the future of something something

Xbox & Games

Nintendo announces Switch 2. Looks awesome, coming earlier than expected. But that price! And no Xbox/COD news at the launch??
Luna's not dead! Amazon announces multi-year EA partnership, expands Luna to more EU countries
Microsoft announces a new Xbox Backbone controller for smartphones
New titles for Xbox Game Pass across PC,

Ti

These show notes have been truncated due to length. For the full show notes, visit https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly/episodes/926

Hosts: Leo Laporte , Paul Thurrott , and Richard Campbell

Sponsor:
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What's next? Windows 12? Windows 11 25H2? You're not going to believe what happens next! A look back at everything Microsoft tested in just the Dev channel and then did or did not release to stable, and when. The list of unreleased features is unexpectedly long - most of this must be the next Windows version. Plus, If you have a PC Game Pass or Game Pass Ultimate subscription, there are more benefits now and they're easier to find.
Windows 11 in 2025

Dev channel moves to a new build sequence
Microsoft issues Patch Tuesday updates for Windows 10 and Windows 11 23H2 (But not 24H2)
Release Preview (24H2) - AI-powered Windows Search experience is barreling towards stable
Beta (23H2) and now Canary - Mostly just fixes
New AI features in Notepad, Paint, and Snipping tool head to all Insiders
Photos app update to all Insiders, adds Copilot integration, more

Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 Copilot gets two reasoning agents, Researcher and Analyst
AI - Agents - Reasoning AI --- Reasoning Agents? You got your reasoning in my agent!
Microsoft to launch Security Copilots in April
Microsoft releases first two Microsoft 365 companion apps for Windows 11, threatens to make more
Here comes Copilot in OneDrive, to consumer Microsoft 365 account holders
Anonymous document sharing for Word, Excel, PowerPoint comes to iPhone/iPad (is on web already)
OneNote for Windows 10 RIP in October after years of malaise

AI

Browsers to change in the agentic AI era - are they still browsers? Will we still browse?
"In Russia, the browser browses for you!"
Sam Altman pulls a Bill Gates in executive shift
ChatGPT gets image generation with GPT-4o
Google brings AI search to Gmail - Hopefully, it's better than AI search in Photos
Google releases first Gemini 2.5 model, all will be reasoning (thinking) models going forward
Amazon is testing AI-powered Interests feature in the U.S.
After it's success with conversational Siri, Apple to bring AI to Apple Watch, AirPods
Speaking of which, Apple sued for advertising Apple Intelligence - maybe it's time for a level set here
Exec reshuffle to fix Siri woes - maybe it's time to Ol' Yeller this
WWDC is on for June 9 - [waves hands] Look, it's iOS 19!
Opera upgrades three of its web browsers (really, four) with new Aria AI features

Xbox

Microsoft wants to make Xbox app in Windows the central hub for all stores
Microsoft testing new Game Hub on Xbox
Microsoft to release Vibrant Visuals upgrade for Minecraft this year
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is coming to PS5 on April 17
New Assassin's Creed game (Shadows ) gets off to a great start, with 2 million players in first 2 days, better than Origins and Odyssey . Most played game on Steam over the weekend, second-highest day-one sales revenue in the franchise's history (behind Valhalla ), best ever day-one launch on the PlayStation Store. 27 percent of players are on PC

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: Take advantages of Game Pass in-game benefits
App pick of the week: Google Drive for Windows
RunAs Radio this week: Writing Better PowerShell with Jeff Hicks
Brown liquor pick of the week: Kempisch Vuur

These show notes have been truncated due to length. For the full show notes, visit https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly/episodes/925

Hosts: Leo Laporte , Paul Thurrott , and Richard Campbell

Sponsors:
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cachefly.com/twit

Did Copilot uninstall from your computer recently? You're not alone. At least Microsoft is working on a fix. Plus, Satya Nadella has created a new Office of Strategy and Transformation to meet the rapidly evolving needs of the AI era. Discord finally has a Social SDK now, Copilot for Gaming is preparing for mobile testing, and a Call of Duty franchise sale that brings savings up to 67 percent off. Lastly, Paul's app pick is a free, open source, third-party File Explorer replacement that is beautiful and highly customizable. And it never badgers you to backup to OneDrive.

Windows

March security update hilariously removes Copilot app from Windows 11
New Canary build today
Release Preview (today): 24H2 ahead of Week D
Release Preview: 23H2 and Windows 10 ahead of Week D
Dev, Beta, Beta (23H3) - Voice access suggestions, File Explorer fix
Paint is getting new Cocreator features
New Notepad and Snipping Tool features for all

Microsoft

Microsoft announces vague transformation that could be important
FTC to move forward with Microsoft antitrust probe
Microsoft no longer includes power supply with Surface PCs sold in Europe

AI/Dev

Gemini adds Canvas and Audio Overview features
Plus, Gemini is replacing Assistant in Android (and Chromebook)
Zoom AI Companion is going agentic
Meta claims one billion downloads of Llama AI models
Microsoft ships .NET 10 Preview 2

Xbox

Microsoft is bringing Copilot to Xbox
Xbox Adaptive Joystick is now available for $29.99
Here are the new games heading to Game Pass in second half of March
Epic Games and Qualcomm partner on bringing games to WOA
Discord has an SDK now
Google Play Games for PC is adding native games

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: Call of Duty titles are on sale in the Microsoft Store
App pick of the week: Files
RunAs Radio this week: Managing AI Costs with Sonia Cuff
Brown liquor pick of the week: Toki Suntory Whisky

Hosts: Leo Laporte , Paul Thurrott , and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin .

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Your Patch Tuesday is showing. Paul Thurrott, Richard Campbell, and Leo Laporte go over the latest features for Windows 11 with the KB5053598 update. Also, the hosts discuss Press to Talk for Insiders, the Windows app replacing Remote Desktop, the agentic future of browsers, Copilot integration in GroupMe, Gemma 3, issues with Xbox Wireless Controller 5.23.5.0 firmware, Pocket Casts Web Player, and the "vibe coding" era. Plus, Fences 6 is now in Beta, on sale!

Woody Leonhard, RIP

Like Jerry Pournelle, a major influence on Paul's career and writing style
He had a mysterious life in latter years, not clear what happened

Windows 11

Windows 11 gets all the features we've discussed recently
Are we heading towards something bigger this year? Or just more of the same?
New Canary and Beta (23H2) builds
New Dev and Beta (24H2) builds
Copilot in Windows 11 is getting Press to Talk
Microsoft follows through on threat, kills Remote Desktop App - our latest outrage
Arc crashed and burned but we can still evolve web browsers
What about sidebar apps as a UX baby step forward?
Does Edge need to restart every three days now to install updates?

Microsoft 365

Google promotes ChromeOS/Chromebooks as the right client ... for Microsoft 365

Dev

Build 2025 registration is now open

AI

It's Microsoft's 50th anniversary, so it's going to announce AI something something
Paul has agreed to attend this, from Mexico
Also, report that Microsoft's in-house models now rival OpenAI is a hint
Microsoft improves Think Deeper in Copilot using OpenAI o3-mini
Google secretly owns 14-15 percent of Anthropic
WTF is going on with Big Tech and regulatory evasion?
On that note, CMA clears Microsoft + OpenAI specifically because of change to partnership
Also, Google launches Gemma 3
The Siripocalypse - AI is a hard computer science problem and Siri is the dumb blond in this space
Amazon will use AI to dub movies and TV series because obviously

Xbox

Rumor: Third-party portable Xbox gaming handheld this year, console resets in two years
You could have cobbled this together solely based on what Microsoft has said publicly
Xbox controller firmware, we have a problem

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: Code with AI
App pick of the week: Fences
RunAs Radio this week: Strong Certificate Mapping in Active Directory with Richard Hicks
Brown liquor pick of the week: Ardbeg 10

Hosts: Leo Laporte , Paul Thurrott , and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin .

Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts!

Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit

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Skype to EOL in May, replaced by the consumer Teams client, which is surprisingly good now. There are three possible responses to this:

"They still make Skype?"
The 13 people who rely on Skype for calling landlines come out of the woodwork.
"Come on, Microsoft telegraphed this two years ago"

Plus, Opera previews what an AI agent in a browser can be used for. Firefox 136 now comes with vertical tabs (again), updated sidebar, AI chatbots, and more. And a Google-related tip that lets one see what it's like to live in the EU, minus the universal health care and other social safety nets.

Windows

Microsoft FINALLY updates the Copilot app in Windows 11 for the 127th time - What Microsoft didn't tell anyone. Arrives just after the release of a native Mac client
Three months of Recall, and it IS controversial, just not for the reasons you think
Dev and Beta (last week): lock screen widget customizing (finally), Windows Share updates (again), Task Manager CPU usage calculation change (seriously), more
It may be controversial at Linux, but not at Microsoft, which is all-in on Rust
Intel delays Ohio fabs until after the earth careens into the sun
Dell up 7 percent to $23.9 billion ($11.9 billion from PCs)
HP up 2.4 percent to $13.5 billion ($9.2 billion from PCs)
Intel brings Core Ultra Series 2 "Arrow Lake" chips to commercial market

Microsoft 365

Microsoft finally puts Skype out of its misery
A look back at 22 years of Skype
Outlook Mobile gets delivery and read receipts

AI

USA! USA! USA! Microsoft makes AI export changes easy to understand for our stupid government
OpenAI announces GPT-4.5, its final non-reasoning model
Microsoft brings new local distilled DeepSeek models to Copilot+ PCs, starting with Snapdragon X - a little hands-on
Microsoft announces Dragon Copilot for clinical workflow
Stability AI + Arm Holdings = generative AI audio, more to come
Scam Detection in Messages for Pixel and Android
Gemini improvements including upcoming features
Apple's struggles with AI are real. Just ask Siri. Kidding, no one asks Siri anything

Xbox

New Game Pass titles for first half of March
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3+4 coming to all platforms including Game Pass on July 11
Sony slashes prices on VR2 months after it stopped building it

Tips & Picks

Tip of the week: Remove yourself from Google Search results
App pick of the week: Mo' browsers!
RunAs Radio this week: Secure by Design with Karinne Bessette
Brown liquor pick of the week: Knappogue Castle 16

Hosts: Leo Laporte , Paul Thurrott , and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin .

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Week D - If a preview update falls in the woods and no one downloads it, did it really happen? Plus, what is going on with AI for free? Isn't this stuff expensive?

Windows

23H2/24H2: Taskbar share, Spotlight updates, Windows Backup snooze in File Explorer, etc.
Dev and Beta - Semantic search adds OneDrive photo search to Search (was in File Explorer previously), plus the Recall reboot no one is explaining. And Trim comes to Snipping Tool (Canary and Dev)
Beta (23H2) - Share gets a drag tray and Start All apps gets new Grid and Category views
Lenovo revenues surge 20 percent
Framework announces Ryzen AI-based Laptop 13, plus Laptop 12 and Desktop
Opera adds Bluesky, Discord, and Slack to the sidebar

Microsoft 365

Microsoft confuses us with a test of a free, ad-supported core Office suite for Windows
Amazon kills Chime, will use Zoom, Teams, and more
Amazon kills Appstore for Android
Google to drop SMS-based 2FA, move to QR codes
Paul continues with his SSO removals, an update on whether this impacts account availability

AI/Dev

Following up the previous discussion with an interesting way to use an AI chatbot
Alexa enters the AI era
OpenAI now has 400 million weekly active users
Microsoft cancels some AI datacenter leases, but it's not done spending billions on AI
Anthropic releases first reasoning model, with a twist
Gemini Code Assist is now free for individuals!
ThinkDeeper and Voice in Copilot no longer have usage restrictions
OpenAI makes Deep Research available to all paid customers
Apple delays biggest Siri advances past iOS 18.4 - Math is hard, but AI is even harder
Spotify expands into AI-narrated audiobooks
NVIDIA partners to bring free ASL training to everyone
.NET 10 Preview 1 arrives with the promise of LTS and not much else

Xbox

Xbox Cloud Gaming gets its first update in a while, and it's a big one
Microsoft delays Fable reboot to 2026

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: You can view the source code for the oldest machine-readable version of Unix
App pick of the week: Adobe Photoshop for iPhone
RunAs Radio this week: Exchange Server in 2025 with Michel de Rooij
Brown liquor pick of the week: Glenrothes 15

Hosts: Leo Laporte , Paul Thurrott , and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin .

Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts!

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On this episode, Paul Thurrott, Leo Laporte, and Richard Campbell explore the Windows KB5052086 update, the new Linux kernel drama, quantum computing, and more. Microsoft has announced the very first QPU, powered by topological qubits! Can the hosts possibly comprehend how this works? Later, Paul strongly emphasizes how AI can save users lots of time. Finally, Richard features a whisky that was recently brought to his 30th wedding anniversary!

Windows

Dev channel: "Important" update because of the coming change to Recall soon, so here's an update that will wipe out all your data. One guess about what that means. Plus, a nice change to the Recall pop-up
Release Preview (24H2): A preview of the preview that we'll preview next time
Release Preview (23H2): Basically the same features as above, keeping the two aligned
Microsoft deprecates location history in Windows 11 - depreciation junction, what's your function?
Microsoft Edge gets more WebUI 2-based performance improvements
Clipchamp just keeps getting better

Microsoft 365

Microsoft: Just kidding about that MSA and Entra ID sign-in experience change
Outlook mobile is getting a new font picker, a recall email feature (finally), and a minimize email message feature.
ExpressVPN (TWiT sponsor) rewrote its VPN protocol in Rust

AI

Microsoft announces a Quantum computing breakthrough, first quantum processor
Flareup in Linux kernel management maps directly to what we see with AI - Two extremes but a clear middle ground
Long story short, AI is all about saving you time - this is the "many small things, not one big thing" argument
Copilot gets new voice capabilities
In case you were worried, OpenAI formally rejects buyout offer
OpenAI will also simplify its model offerings
Google Gemini now remembers what you said, unlike your husband
xAI launches Grok3 model but only for X Premium subscribers

Xbox

Avowed launches, with many other Game Pass titles coming through the end of February
Microsoft announced a generative AI model for video games
Sony just had its best-ever PS5 sales quarter

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: Find your AI "ah-ha" moment
App pick of the week: Notion. And iA Writer 2 for Windows is here
RunAs Radio this week: Managed DevOps Pools with Eliza Tarasila
Brown liquor pick of the week: Signal Hill

Hosts: Leo Laporte , Paul Thurrott , and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin .

Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts!

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Patch Tuesday has arrived and Windows 11 23H2/24H2 gets those preview updates we talked about two weeks ago: Taskbar preview improvements, Windows Studio Effects on taskbar, File Explorer improvements, Mouse improvements, Time Zone changes without admin privileges, OneDrive continuity (23H2 only), Windows Share improvements (23H2 only), new keyboard shortcut for Magnifier. While Windows 10 gets the new Outlook, you lucky dogs!

Windows

Beta (yesterday) - Beta/Dev window is open, Beta will move to 24H2 soon, this new build was for 23H2, new Paint app
MIDI IS BACK BABY! MIDI Services 2.0 now in public preview
Photos app OCR capabilities are back - feature was in testing but disabled in November, supports 160 languages
HoloLens is finally dead: Microsoft partners with tech bro to offload US Army contract

AI/Dev

Microsoft schedules Build 2025 for May 19-22. And then Google schedules I/O 2025 for May 20-21
Elon Musk and investors supposedly make bid for OpenAI - hilarity ensues
OpenAI is working on its own AI chip because everyone else is
OpenAI is working on its own AI chip because everyone else is
You don't have to sign in to OpenAI to use ChatGPT Search now
Google Gemini 2.0 family is now (mostly) generally available
GitHub Copilot is getting agentic features this year
Remember the so-called Windows Copilot Runtime? It's finally happening. Paul noticed that the Windows App SDK 1.7 Experimental 3 release finally had WCR bits, was quietly released last week
Coding hands-on: Building text rewrite and summarize requires just a few lines of code

More Earnings/Corporate

Qualcomm - $11.7 billion in revenues, up 17 percent
It's over! Arm Holdings drops Qualcomm complaint, will not terminate license
Amazon: $188 billion in revenues, up 9.5 percent - AWS was $29 billion in revenues, up 16 percent. Amazon to spend $75 billion this fiscal year on AI infrastructure build-out, similar to MSFT, that figure was $28 billion in the previous quarter
Here comes Conversational Alexa - Amazon devices and services event February 26
Sonos continues its downward spiral - Before earnings, restructuring and layoffs

Xbox

Good news/bad news on Xbox console sales - Better than expected, honestly
Candy Crush Solitaire is first new King game under Xbox - Perfect King/Microsoft mashup

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: A few steps forward (and back) for the 2025 online accounts push
Tip of the week #2: Get the Bill Gates book Source Code
App pick of the week: Notion is nearly perfect
RunAs Radio this week: Upgrading to Windows Server 2025 with Robert Smit
Brown liquor pick of the week: Mackmyra Brukswhisky

Hosts: Paul Thurrott , Richard Campbell , and Mikah Sargent

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin .

Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts!

Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit