Windows Weekly 926: You’re Ugly When You Cry

Leo, Richard, and Paul discuss the Altair BASIC 1.0 source code release, Windows 11 vNext, Microsoft 365, AI and dev, Xbox, and more.

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Microsoft turns 50 this week

Bill Gates celebrates the 50th anniversary of Microsoft with the release of the source code for Altair BASIC 1.0.

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

Windows Insider

• 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

• Semi-related: Proton VPN is now built into Vivaldi desktop browser

Related: 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

Some thoughts about vibe coding, which isn’t what you think it is

Xbox and 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, console, and cloud for first half of April

Tips and picks

Tip of the week: Paul celebrates the 50th anniversary of Microsoft

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!

App pick of the week: Wintoys

This utility is so good I’ll be doing a full episode of Hands-On Windows about it

Prompts this – If I could turn back time – How would I (Paul) configure and use Windows if I could do what I wanted –

• Classic Explorer
• Turn off all the nonsense

RunAs Radio this week: GitHub Copilot for SysAdmins with Jessica Deen

https://runasradio.com/Shows/Show/978

Brown liquor pick of the week: Highland Park 12

https://www.highlandparkwhisky.com/en-us/products/12-year-old-single-malt-whisky