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

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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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Patch Tuesday was yesterday, so find out what's new! Plus, two of the best-ever Doom engine games are now available in remastered form (4K/120 FPS, new episodes, cross-play, multiplayer, more) on Game Pass, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox PC (Windows), PS4, PS5, Switch, Steam, GOG, and various cloud streaming services. It's a free update if you already own either game. Also, if you have a local library, you should use it. If only for Libby by Overdrive free audiobooks and free access to periodicals. But then be surprised by all the services they offer!

Windows 11

• Copilot+ PCs: Recall comes to the EU, Recall Reset, Click to Do improvements, AI agent in Settings
• All: Quick Machine Recovery, black screen of death, Snap layouts improvements, Gamepad layout for Windows Touch Keyboard
• Blender is now native on Windows 11 on Arm
• Search settings consolidation in Canary
• Mobile device companion sidebar for Start gets a new layout in Dev
• More Control Panel settings move to Settings app in Dev and Beta

Windows 10

• Consumer ESU licenses will support up to 10 PCs
• Microsoft will support Edge on Windows 10 through October 2028 (as expected)

AI

• OpenAI releases GPT-5 but not everyone loves it
• Quickly brought back GPT-4o
• And now the model picker is back, for now
• Microsoft is adding it everywhere, of course, and Apple says it will add to Apple Intelligence - And Bing just added support for GPT-4o image creation
• Perplexity makes unsolicited $34.5 billion bid for Google Chrome
• Comet - New tab page with Chat, can choose a Google Search as you type, Assistant in a sidebar, Summarize webpage/document, voice dictation, voice mode, big feature is website interactivity
• Microsoft Edge in Copilot Mode - most evolutionary update, new New Tab page, Quick assist with Copilot button location change, Simple task handoff (which needs work), Voice navigation
• But some bigger UI changes are on the way
• Dia (Mac only for now) - Also, there's a Pro subscription - New Tab page with chat and an attempt at orchestration, @mentions for tabs, Skills (built-in, can edit, can make you're own), and personalization
• Next up: Opera Neon - And what is Google doing with Chrome?
• Copilot 3D can turn images into 3D models - It's a "Creators Update"!
• Microsoft is EOLing the Lens app - use Microsoft Copilot 365 app instead

Microsoft/Surface

• GitHub CEO is leaving, Microsoft is rolling GitHub into its Core AI organization
• Surface Laptop 7 and Surface Pro 11 get firmware update to add battery charging modes

Xbox and games

• Sony sold 2.5 million PS5s in quarter, now over 80 million cumulatively
• Microsoft rumored to have sold only 21 to 29 million Xbox Series X|S consoles
• Big Windows 11 on Arm updates!
• Game downloading is coming to Xbox app on Windows 11 on Arm
• Epic Games and Qualcomm bring Easy Anti-Cheat to Windows 11 on Arm/Snapdragon X
• Apple and Google have illegal mobile app store monopolies in Australia, so Fortnite is coming back to the iPhone there via Epic Games Store
• Microsoft is updating Xbox Dashboard and app to show game trials and demos in "Free with Xbox" section
• Microsoft has paused the production of Contraband
• Steam for Chromebooks Beta will never leave beta, discontinuing in January instead

Tips & Picks

• Tip of the week: Go to the library
• App pick of the week: Heretic and Hexen

These show notes have been truncated due to length. For the full show notes, visit https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly/episodes/945

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell

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Microsoft's fiscal year ended on a high note, assuming you didn't just get laid off. WinSAT's formal assessment will give you some interesting PC performance information, similar to the old WEI score from Windows Vista. And Proton finally makes a standalone authenticator app; How to transition from whatever you're currently using and why you'll need to keep using Microsoft Authenticator too.

Microsoft Earning

• Quarterly: net income of $27.2 billion on revenues of $76.4 billion. Those figures represent gains of 24 percent and 18 percent, respectively, year-over-year (YOY)
• Annual: a net income of $101.8 billion (up 16 percent YOY) on revenues of $281.7 billion (up 15 percent)
• Another look at layoffs, which are nothing new under Satya Nadella - Over 17,000 in CY 2025 so far, despite over $100 billion in profits in FY
• Headcount "unchanged" YOY
• Big announcements below were likely made to avoid Qs about layoffs and it almost worked
• AI spending in FY was about $85 billion, higher than promised
• AI spending in this quarter will jump to $30 billion (!!!!)
• Azure earned $75 billion in revenues in FY, its first-ever disclosure of this number - Fun with math, that means $56 billion in revenues in previous FY. How far back can we go?
• Microsoft's market cap exceeded $4 trillion after earnings release
• "Copilot" has over 100 million MAUs, really M365 Copilot, which even Nadella thinks is a new M365 tier
• GitHub Copilot has over 20 million MAUs, probably most are free
• HUGE gains in Microsoft Gaming/Xbox, discussed below

Windows 11

• But first, something completely different: Microsoft's "vision" for Windows in 2030
• David Weston a curious choice for this video, first in a series - he's in security
• Daily work life changes thanks to AI - less toil work, less eyes and more talking, multimodal interactions
• Security - customers want appliance-level security, "it just works" security -
• Degenerates into a general security discussion
• Back to AI, reclaiming our lives
• Windows 11 SE, RIP - We hardly knew you. Literally.
• Insider: Changes to Home view in File Explorer for Work and School sign-ins, Settings app changes in Dev (25H2) and Beta (24H2)

More earnings

• AMD - HUGE gains in its PC businesses!
• Qualcomm up 10%
• Apple up 9.6%
• Amazon up 13%

AI & dev

• OpenAI releases its first open-weight reasoning models and Microsoft gives them away for free
• Apple is trying to Sherlock ChatGPT
• Of course Alexa+ will get ads
• Dev: Microsoft has a native app problem on Windows
• Microsoft says it will fix Windows App SDK
• Paul just switched .NETpad to the Windows App SDK and can confirm it's a nightmare
• WPF is half-assed... and last year, it took Microsoft over 9 months to deliver the first Windows Copilot Runtime capabilities to devs, but you still can't use this in production. Also, it's not called that anymore

Xbox & games

• Microsoft Gaming has over 500 million MAUs - More fun with math
• COD has 50 million MAUs
• Microsoft has nearly 40 games in development
• Xbox Game Pass has $5 billion in revenues in FY, over 500 million hours played in FY
• Gaming Copilot (Beta) is available on Game Bar for Windows PC for Xbox Insiders enrolled in the PC Gaming Preview
• Assassin's Creed Mirage and more coming to Game Pass this month
• OG Switch models now cost more thanks to tariffs

Tips & Picks

• Tip of the week:

These show notes have been truncated due to length. For the full show notes, visit https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly/episodes/944

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell

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Ten years ago yesterday, Microsoft released Windows 10, fixing the issues with Windows 8.x and giving Windows 7 users a solid upgrade. One historical curiosity: It was the first Windows release without a major launch event. In other news, Microsoft publishes a Nadella email to the troops about the layoffs, but he never really addresses the layoffs.

Windows 10 turns 10

• The Bad: Its legacy is mixed, as this is when the enshittification of Windows began, really
• Windows as a Service
• Ads, crapware, and telemetry — plus some made-up privacy issues
• Terry Myerson gaff about one billion users
• Universal apps/One Windows was a bust, with Windows Phone and HoloLens failures
• Windows 10's launch was a missed opportunity to make the Store matter
• The Good: Windows Subsystem for Linux was huge
• WinGet was also huge, but is underappreciated and underutilized to this day
• It did reverse the mistakes of Windows 8, and in time it got more stable as Microsoft figured out WaaS (and then went on to abuse it)
• Oh, and the Windows 10 Field Guide is free to celebrate the anniversary

Windows 11

• Microsoft is using Rust for Surface drivers, and it wants all Windows drivers to switch to Rust too
• The Link to Windows app is getting a nice upgrade on Android
• Dev (25H2) and Beta (24H2): Settings agent for x86, SCOOBE changes, Click to Do improvements, Windows Search improvements
• Canary: Just a couple of bug fixes (Actually, two builds, one today also with no features)
• Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, and Media Encoder are Now Native on Windows 11 on Arm in beta
• Opera files antitrust case against Microsoft in Brazil for Windows 11/Edge behaviors
• Another app blocking Recall in a slow-drop of negative Recall-related AI privacy news for Microsoft.
• Rant: More importantly, Recall is boring and not useful given the hype around it.
• Intel earnings are flat, but more layoffs are on the way
• Lenovo rollable laptop in action! (ThinkBook Plus Gen 6)
• Lenovo makes a lot of weird laptops now (like the dual-screen Yoga Book 9i Paul reviewed last year) — apparently they didn't get the message after Microsoft cancelled the Surface Neo and Windows 10X.
• Does the average modern Windows laptop really need a touchscreen? Is this a relic of the Windows 8 era?

AI & Microsoft 365

• Perplexity Comet is real and it shows the way forward for AI web browsers
• Coincidentally, Microsoft suddenly launches Copilot mode for Microsoft Edge. (But I've played with Copilot Mode, and it's no Comet or Dia.)
• Copilot is getting real-time expressions. It's the return of Clippy!
• Microsoft's long-term Copilot plans are a lot wilder than you might expect
• Google earned $96.4 billion in one quarter. This shows that it has not been impacted by other AIs yet

Xbox & gaming

• Xbox is coming to Gamerscom in Germany in August, and it's bringing the ROG Xbox Ally handhelds
• The July Xbox Update is here and it's all about the PC
• Paul reviewed the Lenovo Legion Go S, and the Windows experience was so bad. Also, PC OEMs are having trouble competing with the Steam Deck's pricing on gaming handhelds.

Tips & picks

• Tips of the week: Chris and Paul are partnering on his new newsletter
• App pick of the week: Perplexity Pro
• Beer pick of the week: Alesong Rhino Suit

These show notes have been truncated due to length. For the full show notes, visit https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly/episodes/943

Hosts: Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott

Guest: Chris Hoffman

Sponsor:

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Microsoft finally kills Movies & TV show service in the Microsoft Store. This was the final vestigial minder of Zune that remained. There was Groove Video and Xbox Video, too. Microsoft previously killed eBook (2019) and music (2017) sales. At this point, you would have to be insane to buy content from Microsoft, sorry... but you can get to some of your content on other services via Movies Anywhere - and use the Movies & TV app for now in Windows, which is no longer bundled.

Windows 11

• It's Week D and you can't tell your Copilot+ PC features from your Windows 11 features without a scorecard
• A peek at next month's Patch Tuesday - Also, preview updates for 23H2, Windows 10
• Copilot+ PCs only: Settings agent, Click to Do improvements, Photo relight in Photos app, Sticker generator and Object select in Paint
• Everyone: Copilot Vision (U.S. only) in Copilot, Edge Game Assist, Quick Machine Recovery
• Microsoft explains how PC transfer feature will work in Windows Backup later this year
• Describe image action for Click to Do (for AMD/Intel), image descriptions in Narrator (AMD/Intel), performance log improvements (!), Click to Do search bar test, Lock screen improvements, privacy improvements head to Dev and Beta channels
• Bug fixes in Canary, back to the usual waste of time
• Brave will automatically block Recall
• WhatsApp is going PWA, killing UWP app
• Focusrite finally releases drivers for Windows 11 on Arm/Snapdragon X, removing the final major compatibility issue on that platform
• Linux (sort of) crosses the 5 percent usage milestone

Surface/Copilot+ PC

• Copilot+ PC is a failure as a brand because Microsoft focused on negligible on-device AI features
• It should have pushed reliability, performance, efficiency and battery life
• All Copilot+ PC features should come to at least those with GPUs, but really all customers
• Microsoft failed at AI, and failed with consumers, and so now it's going to tell us what consumers want from AI - a comedy
• Microsoft announces Surface Laptop for Business with 5G but the real "with" is Intel Inside
• Intel layoffs are even worse than expected and more are coming
• Microsoft has a problem and it starts with "C" and ends with "opilot"
• Microsoft SharePoint has a notably bad security flaw
• DuckDuckGo adds some neat customization features to Duck.ai and DuckDuckGo lets you hide all AI from search

Xbox and gaming

• The Xbox platform unification continues: Xbox now testing cross-device play history - Not just console games on console, PC games on PC
• Just kidding! The Outer Worlds will cost $69.99, not $79.99

Tips & Picks

• Tip of the week: You hate Big Tech, but who can you trust?
• App pick of the week: Proton Lumo
• RunAs Radio this week: Copilot Studio with April Dunnam
• Brown liquor pick of the week: Benromach 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.

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Microsoft just made a major change to the Windows 11 install media, and you're not going to believe what happens next! Plus, the AI spelling and grammar checking app/service that Paul relies on. And yes, he does pay for it.

Windows 11

• Copilot Vision gets full Desktop support, Voice integration across all Insider channels
• Click to Do gets a "Describe image" action, Administrator protection, App permission dialog changes in Dev (25H2) and Beta (24H2)
• Canary finally gets the features everyone else has had for a while now
• Also, Microsoft quietly killed the simplified date/time in the Windows 11 Taskbar because no one liked it
• PC sales grew 5 percent in Q2 but there is a BIG caveat
• Semi-related: Google is "combining" ChromeOS and Android
• ChromeOS will build on Android going forward, smart
• Even less related: HMD quietly pulls Nokia out of the U.S. market, the dream is over

Microsoft 365, AI

• Microsoft layoffs directly attributed to AI
• Microsoft scuttled OpenAI's acquisition of Windsurf and all hell broke loose
• Google snapped up key execs and engineers and licensed Windsurf for $2.4 billion
• All's well that ends well: Cognition acquires Windsurf
• Microsoft keeps changing the terms of the deal: Microsoft 365 apps will be updated on Windows 10 only through August 2026
• Microsoft 365 Copilot is finally getting a Memory
• OpenAI is going to war with Microsoft and the world
• It's working on a web browser
• It's also working on an office productivity suite of sorts
• Google NotebookLM gets curated featured notebooks. This is emerging as one of the more useful AI tools

Xbox and Gaming

• Xbox app for Windows 11 gets "Stream your own game" functionality
• Grounded 2, more coming to Game Pass in second half of July
• Cyberpunk 2077 is coming to the Mac for some reason

Tips & Picks

• Tip of the week: Save big on PCs, go refurbished
• App pick of the week: LanguageTool for Desktop
• RunAs Radio this week: Fabric in 2025 with Arun Ulag
• Brown liquor pick of the week: Slane Triple Casked Blend

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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