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,
Tip
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