Windows Weekly (Audio)

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WW 922: There's Never a 'Not OK' Button - End of Skype, MWC25, Rust-inovich Mar 05, 2025

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

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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WW 921: Regret as a Service - Drag tray, 3 new Framework PCs, Free Office test? Feb 26, 2025

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.

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WW 920: Celebrity Condiments - Quantum Processing Unit, Edge 132, Rust Feb 19, 2025

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

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!
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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WW 919: The Supermodel of Apps - Windows MIDI Services, OCR, IVAS program Feb 12, 2025

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

WW 918: Casa Chaos - FY25 Q2 earnings, reasoning models, deprecation Feb 05, 2025

Microsoft reported that it earned a net income of $24.1 billion on revenues of $69.6 billion in the quarter ending December 31, the second quarter of its fiscal 2025. Those figures represent gains of 10 percent and 12 percent year-over-year (YOY), respectively.

Microsoft Earnings Overview

Not much going on with client-side products and services, so a focus on AI
Productivity and Business Processes: $29.4 billion in revenues, up 14 percent YOY. This was 42.2 percent of Microsoft's earnings
Intelligent Cloud: $25.5 billion in revenues, up 19 percent YOY. This was 36.6 percent of Microsoft's earnings
More Personal Computing: $14.7 billion, unchanged from the year-ago quarter. (Literally flat YOY.) This was 21.1 percent of Microsoft's earnings

Windows

Microsoft testing AI-powered search in Windows 11 Dev
New Canary build- Windows Midi Services preview, OneDrive resume, File Explorer folder resume
Microsoft is experimenting with new Windows 11 UIs
Microsoft Edge text rendering comes to all Chromium web browsers on Windows - That only took a few years
Microsoft explains deprecation after using the term for decades

Week 2 of submitting to our new Chinese overlords
Gemini catapults into the lead for a few days as Gemini 2.0 becomes broadly available
Inspired by DeepSeek, OpenAI releases reasoning model to free ChatGPT
This comes after Microsoft added it to Copilot
Reasoning vs. traditional models
Also, DeepSeek R1 is on Azure AI Foundry and GitHub
Sam Altman discusses DeepSeek, more
OpenAI offers up an AI research assistant

More Earnings (Lightning Round)

Intel - $14.3 billion in revenues, down 7 percent
AMD: Revenues up 24 percent, market share gains on Intel
Apple - Record $124.2 billion in revenues, up 4 percent
Alphabet/Google: Revenues at $96.47 billion, up 12 percent - CapEx expenditures closing in on MSFT
Samsung - Revenues up 12 percent to $52.2 billion
Spotify is profitable for full year for the first time

Microsoft 365

Designer makes its way to Photos (Windows) and Microsoft 365 Copilot app (mobile)
Microsoft is removing the VPN from Microsoft 365 Family and Personal
Outlook for Mac to get email recall feature

Xbox

Starfield is coming to Game Pass Standard this month, more Game Pass titles
Forza Horizon 5 is coming to PS5
Two Age of Empires titles are coming to PS5
Remember that Microsoft partnership with Start.gg? Me neither
Nintendo revenues, Switch sales fall more than expected, will no longer beat DS this fiscal year

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: It's time for an online account audit
App pick of the week: Another week of big browser update
RunAs Radio this week: Entra ID Protection with Corissa Koopmans
Margarita of the week: 2 oz white tequila, 1.5 oz Triple Sec, 1 oz fresh lime juice.

Hosts: Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott

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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WW 917: There Is No 10 - DeepSeek AI, scareware blocker, Dev Home removal Jan 29, 2025

Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell go over the latest batch of preview updates for January 2025, including KB5050094! The big story of the week revolves around DeepSeek and its noticeable effects on the modern AI world. Sinofsky even wrote a big piece on the latest AI assistant!

Windows 11

Preview updates for Windows 11, 10 arrive ahead of February Patch Tuesday
Windows 11 - Taskbar preview improvements, Windows Studio Effects in the system tray, many File Explorer fixes, more
Windows 10 - New Outlook replaces Mail, Calendar, People
New Dev and Beta channel builds - Overdue battery icon updates in Dev, Snap Layout experiments in Beta
New Canary build today with new File Explorer home view tab
Microsoft to remove Dev Home from Windows - This never made sense, so that's fine, but its most important features will live on
Microsoft Edge for Windows now has a Scareware blocker in preview

DeepSeek explodes out of the gate, sends Big Tech/AI stock reeling and opening up questions about how much money these companies are spending on AI
Nadella, Altman, Nvidia all react to this change in interesting ways
Steve Sinofsky - This was inevitable, disruption always comes from outside
Ahead of this blockbuster development, a look at how the Microsoft/OpenAI relationship is changing - and now we need another look
OpenAI announces Operator agent for ChatGPT in preview
Google is bringing new Gemini features to Android and Pixel
Google is also bringing NotebookLM to almost every Workspace tier, including the cheap one I (Paul) use, NotebookLM Plus to WS Standard and better

Microsoft

Microsoft preps smaller Surface Pro and Laptop models with Snapdragon chips for some reason
Microsoft is closing its UK-based "experience center"

Xbox

Thanks to Activision Blizzard, Microsoft is the biggest game publisher in the world
Phil Spencer: Xbox Series S a "real advantage" for coming portable gaming product
Phil Spencer says hardware still "critical" to Xbox. More like "critical condition," am I right?
No surprises at Xbox Developer_Direct, but a solid collection of games, including the new DOOM

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: It's time to start watching Dave's Garage
App pick of the week: PowerToys, now with Zoomit
RunAs Radio this week: Querying for Breaches with Mark Morowcyznski
Brown liquor pick of the week: Blair Athol 12 Floral & Fauna

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

Sponsor:

Melissa.com/twit

WW 916: ¡Agua Gigante! - OpenAI, Stargate Project, 24H2 Preview Jan 22, 2025

OpenAI, Stargate Project, 24H2 Preview

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell

For full show notes, visit https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly/episodes/916

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WW 915: Magic Tricks for Cats - GitHub Copilot's magic, KB5050009, 16GB Pi 5 Jan 15, 2025

The first Patch Tuesday of 2025 brings temporary but sweet relief. There were no preview updates last month, so this month is just security/bug fixes. Plus, will Microsoft back down from its Windows 10 EOL line in the sand? It appears not. Finally, got New Year's resolutions? Paul's got a better idea. Maybe...

Windows

New Canary build with nothing in it
Microsoft will not support Office on Windows 10 after October EOL date
Microsoft is auto-installing the new Outlook in Windows 10 too - Don't let the door hit you on the way out
Parallels Desktop for Mac now supports running x86 Windows VMs. Very slowly

AI, Microsoft 365

New business models for AI emerge in 2025. Pay as you go vs. pay or no pay
Microsoft has shifted its business model strategy over two years
15 months of Copilot in Windows: Madness
Microsoft announces pay-as-you-go AI agents
Google has a different (better) take with "the best of Google AI" in Workspace
What to expect: Price hikes on subscription services to pay for this AI
Massive reorg of Microsoft's engineering groups is all about AI - There are PM-level layoffs happening now all over Microsoft
OpenAI adds tasks in beta to ChatGPT
Microsoft Excel in Windows will soon support dark mode. Wait, what?

Hardware

Surface teases a big announcement on January 30
AMD surges on incredible new x86 chips and Intel's epic fail
Former Surface design lead Ralf Groene joins Panos at Amazon. Why?
Arm Holdings plans massive licensing price hikes. Everyone needs to settle the F down
There's a 16 GB Raspberry Pi 5 now. But at this price, a low-end NUC is the better choice for most

Dev

.NET 9.0.1 arrives - and with it, the fix for the app-crashing WPF/Windows 11 theming bug
Paul tried GitHub Copilot in Visual Studio. It is MAGIC

Xbox

Microsoft is clearly planning something big for gaming handhelds. Windows or Xbox? Or both?
Happy New Year, Xbox fans! Microsoft to bring more Xbox exclusives to PS, Switch
Xbox to host a Developer Direct event next week
Microsoft introduces new Xbox repair options
The Nintendo Switch 2 is leaking all over the place, and there were prototypes at CES

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: Think about making micro changes each month or quarter instead of huge, sweeping changes once a year
App pick of the week: Start11 v2.5
RunAs Radio this week: DevOpsDocs with Mattias Karlsson
Brown liquor pick of the week: Buchanan's Deluxe 12

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.

Sponsor:

cachefly.com/twit

WW 914: Something Weird From the Closet - Snapdragon X, Dell kills XPS, Qualcomm beats Arm Jan 08, 2025

We heard you missed us. We're back.

Windows

Microsoft declares 2025 the "year of the Windows 11 PC refresh."
As likely as "year of the Linux desktop"
The theory: Windows 10 EOL, AI PCs, lingering security fears from CrowdStrike
The issue: Windows 10 has 63 usage share right now. At this point in time, Windows 7 had only 25 percent usage share (and was in second place, not first)
Intel joins in on this fever dream but we've stopped listening
More interesting: AMD is kicking ass and taking names. And we thought the existing chips were good (they are). Related to this, PC makers are embracing AMD like never before. Check out HP's workstations (including laptops)
Microsoft is blocking the 24H2 update on PCs with Auto HDR enabled
New Canary and Beta builds ring in the New Year
Not that it matters, but Windows 11 almost had Vista Ultimate Extras-like dynamic wallpapers
Dell kills XPS and all its other PC brands because Dell is stupid and doesn't know what it had

Arm & PCs

Qualcomm defeated Arm Holdings in licensing dispute court case. And, yes, it won big time, contrary to Arm's nonsense
Qualcomm announces an even lower-end Snapdragon X chip for $600 PCs, so ASUS announces an $1100 laptop that uses it
Snapdragon Dev Kit update
Part 2 of Paul's history of Windows on Arm is up
New Arm PCs announced, including desktops. Ahead of CES, Geekom jumped the gun and said it was coming out with a Snapdragon X-based NUC. Lenovo has a NUC/SFF
NVIDIA and MediaTek confirm partnership on Arm chips for PCs

Microsoft 365

First, GitHub Copilot, but now Microsoft 365 Copilot will allegedly stop using OpenAI exclusively
Microsoft reveals (confirms) it will spend $80 billion on AI infrastructure in FY 2025 as it suckles up to Trump like the rest of the tech industry
Microsoft and OpenAI allegedly tied AGI milestone to profits, not intelligence

Xbox & Gaming

Microsoft discusses a console-like experience for Windows handheld gaming. Tied to that, a new generation of handheld gaming PCs is on the way
Xbox Game Pass says Happy New Year with a full slate of Activision Blizzard titles. Just kidding
NVIDIA announces new graphics cards for PCs
No one wants this, but Xbox is coming to LG smart TVs
Xbox Rewards shuffles the deck chairs, hopes no one notices it's worse now

Tips & Picks