Windows Weekly 974: DIY Crocs

Leo, Richard, and Paul discuss Patch Tuesday, Intel gaming processors, Microsoft 365 Cowork, Mozilla and Anthropic, Xbox and games, and more.

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Windows 11

Patch Tuesday arrives

• Familiar list of updates: Network speed test, Camera tilt and pan controls, sysmon, RSAT improvements, Quick Machine Recovery improvements, WEBP support for desktop wallpaper, Emoji 16.0, etc.
• It’s been a light year so far for Patch Tuesday features – that’s a good thing

Windows Insider Program

• New builds for Canary, Dev, and Beta late last week – Canary is nothing, Dev/Beta get Administrator Protection, Drag Tray refinements, File Explorer improvements and fixes.

Related: Android 16 QPR3 brings Desktop Mode to Android devices – and a hands-on with Pixel phones and tablets shows the way forward for Android-based laptops later this year

Semi-related: Intel has new gaming processors for creators and gamers and they look excellent and are inexpensive

AI and dev

Microsoft 365 Cowork is literally Claude Cowork in Microsoft 365 – “Wave 3” for Microsoft 365 Copilot begins with a lot of agentic features, in private preview at first

Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive get big Gemini updates for consumers and Workspace customers

Mozilla partners with Anthropic to use AI to find bugs and it’s paying off nicely

Visual Studio Code moves to a weekly update schedule – Not sure about this given the reliability issues I’m starting to see in “big” Visual Studio

.NET 11 Preview 2 is here

Xbox and gaming

Microsoft starts talking up next Xbox console! It’s called Project Helix and, yes, it will run Windows games

Big day for Xbox with GDC updates on next-gen console

• New Xbox Mode is on the way
• Project Helix dev kits to game makers in 2027

Satya Nadella explains why he/Microsoft are “long” on gaming

• Gaming is a core identity for Microsoft alongside platforms, developers, and knowledge workers

Tips and picks

Tip of the week: Nostalgia with a purpose

I’ve resisted nostalgia everywhere in my life where possible and I’m not a fan of hipster affectations for things like vinyl, iPods, and board games. But there is a big difference between actually remembering the good and bad of the past and a faux nostalgia for a past that wasn’t that great to begin with or wasn’t what you think it was. And we are missing a key aspect of personal computing that was present in the early days. How do we get it back?

• This isn’t about age, but it is about wanting to love this industry again, which is nearly impossible thanks to Big Tech enshittification
• Technology evolves, gets more complicated, gets less personal
• Example: Focus of Microsoft Office transitioned over time from enthusiasts to individuals to small organizations to enterprises and now to cloud-powered subscriptions
• Home computers in the 1970s and 80s always came with BASIC and a DIY need that no longer exists – Visual Basic was the last vestige of this, and Microsoft killed it when it created .NET and C#. There is nothing like this today.
• The closest we get, maybe, is the Raspberry Pi, but these PCs are just cheap, not better than mainstream PCs.

App pick of the week: Stardock Clairvoyance

I’m using Stardock Clairvoyance paired with Anthropic Claude to get my multi-document/tab version of WinUIpad completed

• Code review, fixing major and minor bugs
• Adding new features (or re-adding features that were in the previous app version)
• Clairvoyance built a version of my app with multiple tabs and it used the architecture I had created for this to make it work – What I had gotten right, what I had missed was an interesting set of lessons
• The rebuild begins

Stardock’s Clairvoyance is currently in preview with a waitlist

RunAs Radio this week: SQL Server in 2026 with Bob Ward

https://runasradio.com/Shows/Show/1027

Brown liquor pick of the week: Canadian Centennial Rye Whisky

https://highwood-distillers.com/centennial-10-year-old-canadian-rye-whisky/