My Top Stories of 2025 ⭐

2025 was another monster year for personal technology, with AI, antitrust, and layoffs dominating the headlines.

2025 was also a big year for Thurrott.com. We published 1979 articles and posts overall (including this one). Laurent wrote 880 news stories and an excellent iPhone 16E review, and I feel obligated to point out that his work behind the scenes is invaluable and as appreciated as his writing. I was busy, too, of course. My 2025 contributions included:

1098 articles written overall (including this one)
261 Premium posts (including this one)
13 installments of the new Thurrott Premium newsletter since August and a partnership with Chris Hoffman on his excellent Windows ReadMe newsletter
33 From the Editor’s Desk editorials
48 Ask Paul columns
21 articles in the Online Accounts (2025) series, which was triggered by YouTube removing our access to our channel without warning
34 articles in the WinUIpad (5) and Modernizing .NETpad (2025) (29) programming series
50 episodes of Windows Weekly with Leo Laporte and Richard Campbell (2 with Chris)
50 episodes of Hands-On Windows
173 episodes of First Ring Daily with Brad Sams
11 episodes of Desk to Destination with Stephen Rose since August
2 episodes of RunAsRadio with Richard and 1 episode of iTechGear Weekly with Chris Spera, Larry McJunkin, and Joel McLaughlin

There’s no rest for the wicked. So let’s dive into the biggest stories and trends of 2025. Note that this is a human curated list, not a rote “x number of reads/comments” thing. I went through the entire year’s worth of stories twice to come up with this. And yet I feel it still only scratches the surface. It was just that kind of year.
? Some good news for a change
Despite all the negativity around AI, tech industry enshittification, tariffs and rising prices, uncertainty about Xbox, layoffs, and whatever else, 2025 is perhaps best remembered for all the good news, too. And there was no better news than antitrust regulation finally going after Big Tech and netting some major wins, so that gets its own category below. Here, I celebrate the smaller wins that helped get me—and, I suspect, many of you—through this objectively terrible year.

Commodore is back, baby! And in semi-related news, Amiga Forever and C64 Forever got nice updates in 2025 too
Affinity 3 arrived and the new owners at Canva surprised everyone by making it 100 percent free to use
Microsoft open sourced its 6502 BASIC source code and the first three ZORK games, and Bill Gates open sourced Altair BASIC
Microsoft made major advances in security in Windows 11 thanks to the Windows Resiliency Initiative (and so I wrote up how Windows 11 users should secure their PCs)
Adobe Premiere shipped on iPad and iPhone for free
Some positive news for Xbox and gamers amidst all the terribleness, including Fallout 4 adding Xbox Play Anywhere and Creations support, Red Dead Redemption coming to Android, iPhone, and iPad...