Windows Weekly (Audio)

By TWiTNews Technology Tech News

Windows Weekly (Audio) episodes

February 15, 2023WW 816: I Have Been a Good Bing - Skype's annual revenue drop, Github layoffs, Viva Engage
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

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
2 hr 50 min
February 08, 2023WW 815: It's Your Foot! - AI riskiness, Zoom layoffs, HBO's The Last of Us, Skype on Apple Silicon
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:
CDW.com/LenovoClient
Miro.com/podcast
3 hr 2 min
February 01, 2023WW 814: Dump Truck Fade - Halo engine switch, Intel Q4 2022 revenues, Ground News
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.
Sponsors:
Miro.com/podcast
Melissa.com/twit
drata.com/twit
2 hr 27 min
January 25, 2023WW 813: Usage Intensity - F23Q2 analysis, the subscription future, Microsoft 365 Insider program
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:
GO.ACILEARNING.COM/TWIT
2 hr 34 min
January 18, 2023WW 812: Pessimism Pays - AI for the consumer client, HoloLens request rejected, Azure DevOps
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.
Sponsors:
CDW.com/LenovoClient
tanium.com/twit
2 hr 41 min
January 11, 2023WW 811: The Angle of the Dangle - Fungible, rounded corners, Xbox Oreos, the AI wave
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:
cachefly.com
3 hr 2 min
January 04, 2023WW 810: Call of Duty-Free - Notepad tabs, Stack Overflow 2022 developer survey, LastPass alternatives
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:
Melissa.com/twit
2 hr 59 min
December 28, 2022WW 809: A Look Back at the Year - A look back at Windows Weekly's best moments in 2022
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:
UnifyMeeting.com code WW50 for subscription and code WW for displays
drata.com/twit
2 hr 46 min
December 21, 2022WW 808: Nuclear Conservation - Wrapping Up Microsoft's 2022, Carmack quits Meta, Overwhelm Freeze
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
2 hr 56 min
December 14, 2022WW 807: You're a Contronym! - Federal Trade Commission lawsuit, 12th-Gen Intel dock problems, text suggestions
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:
kolide.com/ww
nordlayer.com/twit
Code Comments
2 hr

About Windows Weekly (Audio)

From the publisher's feed

Windows Weekly is about more than Windows. Veteran Microsoft insiders Paul Thurrott and Richard Campbell join Leo for a deep dive into the most valuable company in the world. From consumer to enterprise, AI to Xbox, Windows Weekly is the only Microsoft podcast you'll ever need.

You can join Club TWiT for $10 per month and get ad-free audio and video feeds for all our shows plus everything else the club offers...or get just this podcast ad-free for $5 per month.