Windows Weekly 917: There is No 10

Leo, Richard, and Paul discuss new preview updates, Dev Home RIP, Edge, DeepSeek and AI, Microsoft news and rumors, Xbox, and much more.

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Windows 11

Preview updates for Windows 11, 10 arrive ahead of February Patch Tuesday

• Windows 11 – Taskbar preview improvements, Windows Studio Effects in the system tray, many File Explorer fixes, more
• Windows 10 – New Outlook replaces Mail, Calendar, People

Insider Program

• New Dev and Beta channel builds – Overdue battery icon updates in Dev, Snap Layout experiments in Beta
• New Canary build today with new File Explorer home view tab

Microsoft to remove Dev Home from Windows – This never made sense, so that’s fine, but its most important features will live on

Microsoft Edge for Windows now has a Scareware blocker in preview

• Not at all related: Vivaldi 7.1 delivers even more personalization
• Not at all related: Brave Search adds customized search rankings

AI

DeepSeek explodes out of the gate, sends Big Tech/AI stock reeling and opening up questions about how much money these companies are spending on AI

• Nadella, Altman, Nvidia all react to this change in interesting ways
• Steve Sinofsky – This was inevitable, disruption always comes from outside
• Ahead of this blockbuster development, a look at how the Microsoft/OpenAI relationship is changing – and now we need another look

OpenAI announces Operator agent for ChatGPT in preview

Google is bringing new Gemini features to Android and Pixel

And Google is also bringing NotebookLM to almost every Workspace tier, including the cheap one I (Paul) use, NotebookLM Plus to WS Standard and better

Microsoft

Microsoft earnings to be announced today at 4:00 ET

Rumor: Microsoft preps smaller Surface Pro and Laptop models with Snapdragon chips for some reason

Microsoft is closing its UK-based “experience center” (read: store)

Xbox

Thanks to Activision Blizzard, Microsoft is the biggest game publisher in the world

Phil Spencer: Xbox Series S a “real advantage” for coming portable gaming product

Phil Spencer says hardware still “critical” to Xbox. More like “critical condition,” am I right?

No surprises at Xbox Developer_Direct, but a solid collection of games, including the new DOOM

Tips and picks

Tip of the week: It’s time to start watching Dave’s Garage

Aside from the recent show about DeepSeek, I find myself watching almost every video he makes.

https://www.youtube.com/@DavesGarage

App pick of the week: PowerToys, now with Zoomit

Mark Russinovitch first released this app in 1996!

RunAs Radio this week: Querying for Breaches with Mark Morowcyznski

https://runasradio.com/Shows/Show/969

Brown liquor pick of the week: Blair Athol 12 Floral & Fauna

http://malts.com/en/blair-athol