Windows Weekly 1005: Nicely Frosted

Leo, Richard, and Paul discuss the 10.7 Windows event, Patch Tuesday, the ArtCraft AI explosion, Microsoft 365, XBOX and gaming, and a lot more.

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Windows

We need to talk about last week’s Windows event … what the heck was this?

• Lots of Windows, lots of Surface, a little bit of ecosystem, confusing local AI story, no major new end user features that are unique to RTX Spark, a weird Osborne Effect for RTX Spark, and a stunning lack of self-awareness combine for one of the weirder Microsoft events in memory
• The RTX Spark era begins this week. How is this different from Copilot+ PC?

Patch Tuesday is here and it’s a big milestone

• Minor changes for 24H2, 25H2, 26H2
• Big changes for 26H1
• This is the first Patch Tuesday for 26H2, the last one for 24H2 (Home, Pro)
• 1400+ security fixes, a new record(!!) – This is almost 15x the normal number of patches

Hardware

• ASUS allows reviewers to show unboxing, so here’s the RTX Spark-based ASUS ProArt P16
• PC market fell over 20 percent in Q3 as component crisis takes its toll
• Googlebooks suck and everyone is finally noticing what I reported last week. But there is another, and it’s an unexpected option

Software

• Tiny11 Builder gets a major update with a WinUI makeover

AI/dev

This has been the most exciting week in AI advances since this era kicked off in February 2023

• ArtCraft releases impressive clones of top 7 Adobe Creative Cloud apps
• ArtCraft is also working at replacing Microsoft Office, with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint clones so far – Also clones of AutoCAD and Audacity(?)/audio editor
• Google Playground lets anyone create a game that you can share with anyone
• Google AI Studio now lets anyone vibe-code Android and web apps, and you will soon be able to put them in the Google Play Store
• XBOX news below

Big changes to Microsoft 365 for consumers – Family/Premium loses 1 TB per user, goes to a single pool of 2 TB, but all users now share the same Copilot rights

Apple makes a long-overdue smart home push thanks to Siri AI finally making sense – New HomeView smart display is the star

.NET 11 heads to the finish line

XBOX and gaming

XBOX creates an XP division for non-game entertainment. They should have called it XBOX One, cough

Asha Sharma creates XBOX LABS team to explore how vibe coding changes gaming

Microsoft announces an XBOX Nano Controller

Forza Horizon 6 is coming to PS5 in January

GTA VI coming to the PC in early 2027

Epic Games vibe-coded its new launcher and it’s available in preview for Windows, Mac, and Linux

Tips and picks

Tip of the week: Just make it

I wrote about this back in April, but things have escalated since then. There are SO many ways to make things with AI now and it’s only gotten easier.

App pick of the week: ArtCraft for the win

The ArtCraft apps are free, open source, and made with Rust. They may not meet all needs yet, but they will, and it’s going to happen fast. Adobe and Microsoft Office

RunAs Radio this week: Choosing Tools in M365 with Joy Apple

https://runasradio.com/Shows/Show/1058

Brown liquor pick of the week: Bunnahabhain 12

https://bunnahabhain.com/products/12-year-old