Paul Thurrott is in Berlin this week for IFA 2025! With AI models multiplying across devices and Microsoft plotting a post-OpenAI future, Paul and Richard debate whether Copilot and local AI finally hint at what's next for your PC. Paul also reacts to the surprising Google antitrust ruling, questioning whether judges are truly willing to rein in Big Tech or just maintain the status quo. Has the battle for online competition already been lost?

Windows 11

• Four new builds issued in the Insider Program at the same time (rare)
• Dev and Beta: New Microsoft 365 text actions in Click to Do, Braille Viewer, more Share changes
• Canary: Nothing to see here, move along
• The Mobile Plans app you never used in Windows 11 is going away
• Windows Backup for Organizations is here
• Dolby Vision 2 is on the way
• Dell hits record revenues, but not because of PCs - PC revenues $12.5 billion, up 1 percent
• HP revenues up 3.1 percent and it is because of PCs - PC revenues $9.9 billion, up 6 percent
• Reminder that Lenovo is curiously dominant in this market - PC revenues $13.5 billion, up 18 percent

Antitrust

• Google unexpectedly given a pass on egregious antitrust violations
• "We don't do these things because they are hard"

Ensh*ttification

• Amazon begins restricting the ability to share Prime free shipping within a household
• This, from the company that makes you pay to remove ads from a video service you're already paying for
• YouTube is changing what it means to be in household

This week from the misinformation files

• Microsoft denied that it had anything to do with SSD fails
• Google denies that it warned 2.8 billion Gmail users about anything
• If it happened online, it must be real

AI

• Microsoft AI releases its first-ever in-house models and one is quite mysterious
• Copilot is coming to make your smart TVs dumber
• Anthropic will now train Claude on user data unless you opt out
• NVIDIA is still doing pretty well financially
• The Pixel 10 series phones are all about AI
• Camera Coach
• It's fascinating to reexamine the initial Pixel launch for its forward-leaning looks at AI, computational photography, and more

Xbox and games

• Xbox August Update brings a few interesting new features
• Activision inks deal to make a Call of Duty movie
• Hollow Knight: Silksong and more are coming to Game Pass in first half of September

Tips & picks

• Tip of the week
• App pick of the week: Vivaldi
• RunAs Radio this week: Episode 1000!
• Brown liquor pick of the week: Canadian Club 1858 Original

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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Protesters take over Microsoft's Building 34, objecting to the company's technology being allegedly used by Israel. Is it more than simply cybersecurity usage, and how is Microsoft handling employee activism? In other news, Gemini suddenly vaults to the front of AI image editing capability, and the OG Gears of War has been remastered at least twice (but now it's cross-platform).

Windows 11

• Resume from your (Android) phone in testing in Dev and Beta channels
• Copilot app gets semantic search and new home page across all Insider channels
• 25H2 feature focus: Administrator Protection probably works but it's more disruptive than even UAC was
• Windows 11 gets a nice Bluetooth quality update
• Parallels Desktop 26 for Mac is out, but it's a minor update for individuals

Microsoft 365

• Microsoft to fix one of the biggest issues with Word
• Reminder: OneNote for Windows 10 hits EOL in October

AI

• Apple's AI floundering continues as it considers a Perplexity or Mistral acquisition
• And tests a Gemini AI model for Siri in-house
• Perplexity offers a $5 per month Comet Plus subscription that pays content makers
• Anthropic sort of brings Claude extension to Chrome
• NotebookLM audio and video overviews are now available in over 80 languages
• And AI Mode is now available in Search in over 180 countries
• Norton's AI web browser gets off to a rough start
• Proton Lumo gets a big update
• Rant: The real problem with the Windows 2030 talk, and why everyone (on both sides) is wrong about AI

Dev

• Microsoft lets Visual Studio devs tune-down GitHub Copilot, finally
• Microsoft makes some progress with improving Windows App SDK, supposedly

Xbox and gaming

• Xbox Cloud Gaming expands to Xbox Game Pass Core Standard, adds PC games for the first time
• Steam and other stores come to Xbox app on PC
• Activision says it will reverse some of the stupidity it introduced in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
• Nintendo invented the 30 percent fee that's still common today in digital app/game stores, but when it did so, the fee actually made sense... and it still does today, but only for the videogame industry

Tips & Picks

• Tip of the week: Edit images with Gemini
• Tip of the week: Subscribe to Chris's new newsletter, The Windows ReadMe
• App pick of the week: Gears of War
• App pick of the week: NVIDIA Broadcast app

Hosts: Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott

Guest: Chris Hoffman

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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Leo, Paul, and Richard break down Google's Pixel 10 launch spectacle, poking fun at celebrity overkill and asking whether anyone actually cares about new phones anymore. Plus, they dig into Lenovo's record-breaking quarter, surprising shifts in the PC market, and the ongoing struggle between innovation and copycatting in the AI arms race. Also, Notion has finally added basic offline support, which should make it stickier than ever.

You got your AI in my Windows

• Pavan Davuluri discusses how AI will impact the Windows user experience
• Not the same video series as the previous "vision" video
• Davuluri leads Windows and Surface, so his words matter
• Changing: Interactions, business models, experiences
• Multimodal - in this case, meaning adding natural language interactions and vision to keyboard, mouse, touch, pen, etc. - "experience diversity"
• Powerful AI models running on-device are "transformational"
• Predictably, the Chicken Littles are losing their s#%t yet again. Guys. Come on.

Windows 11

• Semantic search and new Copilot home page for all Insiders
• Click to Do selection modes, minor improvements in Beta and Dev
• Recall and other Copilot+ PC features FINALLY come to Canary
• A few minor additions to Canary, nothing new to everyone else
• Notepad is getting an updated context menu and the Chicken Littles are losing their s#%t yet again. Guys. Come on!
• Lenovo earnings up 22 percent, best PC market share ever, number one in AI PCs too

AI

• Google Chrome takes the subtle approach
• Brave found a major security vulnerability in Comet
• Like my wife, Gemini remembers everything I ever said now
• Duck.ai gets GPT-5 Mini access, web search results
• Grammarly announces CODA-based editor, several AI agents

Xbox and games

• Another stunning Windows on Arm development
• The Xbox app actually works now on Windows 11 on Arm, meaning not just game streaming but also downloads. Except, of course, that it mostly doesn't work
• Heretic/Hexen installs and runs great
• Asus ROG Xbox Ally handhelds to launch on October 16
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 with four-player co-op campaign
• Indiana Jones coming to the Switch 2
• Gears of War: Reloaded, more coming to Game Pass in late August
• To help Xbox, Sony raises prices on the PS5
• GeForce Now gets more powerful cloud GPUs

Tips & picks

• Tip of the week: Windows 11 Field Guide, 25H2 Edition is on the way
• App pick of the week: Notion
• RunAs Radio this week: Data Governance for AI with Martina Grom
• Brown liquor pick of the week: Chichibu Ichiro's Malt & Grain 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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