Paul, Leo, and Richard get into new Windows features (thanks to the Feature Tracker), hardware shifts for Microsoft/Intel/Apple, AI moves from OpenAI/Apple/Adobe, Notion Mail, a Hawaiian drink, the National Recording Registry, rice cookers, and electronic timer tunes!

Windows 11

• Feature Tracker. Since we last talked, Microsoft has announced the following new features for Windows 11:
• Semantic search can now search for Windows settings using natural language - Dev and Beta (24H2) channels, no clear stable date but guessing June
• Narrator can more accurately describe images by detailing the people, objects, colours, text, and numbers in them, Snapdragon X only, same builds as above
• Snipping Tool with "Text extraction" in the capture bar - This in Canary now, but it was in at least Dev previously, this could ship in stable at any time, it's an app
• Recall (preview) and Click to Do (preview) head to the Release Preview channel (24H2) - Expect this in May Patch Tuesday
• Narrator speech recap, Phone Link/Start integration, File Explorer Home updates, Windows Share with Edit all head to Release Preview (23H2) - Expect these in May Patch Tuesday - They were added to Beta channel (23H2) a few days earlier
• Plus, Microsoft Edge is up to 9 percent faster at web rendering and we're having a fiesta
• Also, the Windows 95 startup/logout chime has been inducted into the National Recording Registry

Hardware

• Surface Hub OG hits EOL this year just like Windows 10
• First major change under new Intel CEO
• What's a computer? The iPad, supposedly, but we'll see
• Everything's fine, but Google laid off hundreds in Pixel/Android group

AI

• Apple is making big changes so that Apple Intelligence will actually be intelligent
• Adobe is going agentic too
• OpenAI is creating its own social network because the world needs another social network
• OpenAI announces three GPT-4.1 models - may retire GPT-4 soon - plus now o3 and o4-mini models
• ChapGPT gets an image library and a memory
• Claude gets Research and Google Workspace integration
• Meta will start training its AI models with EU data, wink wink

Xbox and games

• Xbox app on mobile will soon let you buy games (!) and add-on content, join Game Pass, and redeem perks. Did Microsoft get a concession from Apple/Google??
• COD: Modern Warfare II (OG) and more are coming to Game Pass in the next few weeks
• Xbox announces Doom: The Dark Ages limited edition accessories
• Sea of Thieves is coming to Battle.net
• Sony forced to raise the price of PS5 in three locales

Tips and Picks

• Tip of the week: Think like an individual, not an enterprise
• App pick of the week: Notion Mail
• RunAs Radio this week: How to Not Hate PowerShell with Barbara Forbes
• Brown liquor pick of the week: 12th Hawaii Distiller's Reserve

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

Sponsors:

• 1password.com/windowsweekly
• uscloud.com

Introducing the Windows 11 Feature Tracker
"From the 'I should have done this two years ago' files, the 'I have wasted my life' files, and the, 'great, I needed more work to do' files ... There is a need for this. So I made one. But it will evolve. Maybe into a web app/wiki/something else... like a Notion website?" - Paul

• Patch Tuesday brings a metric ton of new features - And what the tracker showed clearly
• Two seconds after posting the tracker, Microsoft changed the Copilot app yet again - proving the need for the tracker - And demonstrating why the Insider Program is so screwed up
• A hidden new Start menu in recent builds presents an interesting conundrum: How to handle something Microsoft has not announced?

More Windows 11

• Beta build for 23H2: File new tab/new window changes, Explorer context menu regression may be permanent
• Dev and Beta (24H2): Taskbar icon scaling is a blast from the past we all need desperately
• Intel is killing Unison app and service

Like winter, Build is coming

• Build session catalog is live - mostly AI as expected. Paul and Richard are going
• Overview of the Windows Copilot Runtime (one year after it was announced), Windows Actions, standard Kayla Cinnamon talk on Windows productivity, using your own model with WCR, native app experiences(!), Arm64 app perf, etc.

AI

• Final thoughts on Microsoft's 50th: Biggest accomplishment wasn't any tech, it was changing with the times.
• What it's best at: Democratizing tech for the commoners, an expansion on Jack Tramiel/Commodore's "computers for the masses, not the classes" schtick. And that is exactly what it is doing with AI right now
• Microsoft hosts a consumer AI event and announces a metric ton of new Copilot features
• We need a Copilot feature tracker. Copilot = every single feature other AIs have - Copilot Actions on the web, memory and personalization, Copilot Vision on mobile and Windows, AI-generated podcasts and Microsoft releases Copilot Search in Bing
• Is AI turning us all into Charly from Flowers for Algernon?
• AI is making us stupider! There are studies!!
• This is the argument against every single tech advance from the steam train to the ballpoint pen to this
• Microsoft's AI demo of vibe-coded Quake II highlights the problem nicely
• Sometimes it's the little things: AI recaps for book series in Kindle
• GitHub Copilot updated with Agent Mode, Cursor-style code overviews, more

Xbox & gaming

• Microsoft announces new Xbox Games Showcase for June
• Edge Game Assist gets new features, support for new games
• GTA V and enhanced version for PC coming to Game Pass on April 15 - In addition to the previous Game Pass titles we discussed last week
• Good: Nintendo Switch 2 supports ray tracing and DLSS
• Bad: Nintendo delays Switch 2 to figure out the tariffs mess

Tips and Picks

• Tip of the week: Programmers at Work
• App pick of the week: Apple Music
• RunAs Radio this week: Application Risk in Security Copilot with Ari Schorr
• Brown liquor pick of the week: The Heart Cut #02

These show notes have been truncated due to length. For the full show notes, visit https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly/episodes/927

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell

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