WW 928: The Rice is Done - Edge 134's speed, Reboot Chime, Altera

04/16/25 • 139 min

1 Listener

Paul, Leo, and Richard get into new Windows features (thanks to the Feature Tracker), hardware shifts for Microsoft/Intel/Apple, AI moves from OpenAI/Apple/Adobe, Notion Mail, a Hawaiian drink, the National Recording Registry, rice cookers, and electronic timer tunes!

Windows 11

Feature Tracker. Since we last talked, Microsoft has announced the following new features for Windows 11:
Semantic search can now search for Windows settings using natural language - Dev and Beta (24H2) channels, no clear stable date but guessing June
Narrator can more accurately describe images by detailing the people, objects, colours, text, and numbers in them, Snapdragon X only, same builds as above
Snipping Tool with "Text extraction" in the capture bar - This in Canary now, but it was in at least Dev previously, this could ship in stable at any time, it's an app
Recall (preview) and Click to Do (preview) head to the Release Preview channel (24H2) - Expect this in May Patch Tuesday
Narrator speech recap, Phone Link/Start integration, File Explorer Home updates, Windows Share with Edit all head to Release Preview (23H2) - Expect these in May Patch Tuesday - They were added to Beta channel (23H2) a few days earlier
Plus, Microsoft Edge is up to 9 percent faster at web rendering and we're having a fiesta
Also, the Windows 95 startup/logout chime has been inducted into the National Recording Registry

Hardware

Surface Hub OG hits EOL this year just like Windows 10
First major change under new Intel CEO
What's a computer? The iPad, supposedly, but we'll see
Everything's fine, but Google laid off hundreds in Pixel/Android group

Apple is making big changes so that Apple Intelligence will actually be intelligent
Adobe is going agentic too
OpenAI is creating its own social network because the world needs another social network
OpenAI announces three GPT-4.1 models - may retire GPT-4 soon - plus now o3 and o4-mini models
ChapGPT gets an image library and a memory
Claude gets Research and Google Workspace integration
Meta will start training its AI models with EU data, wink wink

Xbox and games

Xbox app on mobile will soon let you buy games (!) and add-on content, join Game Pass, and redeem perks. Did Microsoft get a concession from Apple/Google??
COD: Modern Warfare II (OG) and more are coming to Game Pass in the next few weeks
Xbox announces Doom: The Dark Ages limited edition accessories
Sea of Thieves is coming to Battle.net
Sony forced to raise the price of PS5 in three locales

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: Think like an individual, not an enterprise
App pick of the week: Notion Mail
RunAs Radio this week: How to Not Hate PowerShell with Barbara Forbes
Brown liquor pick of the week: 12th Hawaii Distiller's Reserve

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin.

Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts!
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Windows 11

Feature Tracker. Since we last talked, Microsoft has announced the following new features for Windows 11:
Semantic search can now search for Windows settings using natural language - Dev and Beta (24H2) channels, no clear stable date but guessing June
Narrator can more accurately describe images by detailing the people, objects, colours, text, and numbers in them, Snapdragon X only, same builds as above
Snipping Tool with "Text extraction" in the capture bar - This in Canary now, but it was in at least Dev previously, this could ship in stable at any time, it's an app
Recall (preview) and Click to Do (preview) head to the Release Preview channel (24H2) - Expect this in May Patch Tuesday
Narrator speech recap, Phone Link/Start integration, File Explorer Home updates, Windows Share with Edit all head to Release Preview (23H2) - Expect these in May Patch Tuesday - They were added to Beta channel (23H2) a few days earlier
Plus, Microsoft Edge is up to 9 percent faster at web rendering and we're having a fiesta
Also, the Windows 95 startup/logout chime has been inducted into the National Recording Registry

Hardware

Surface Hub OG hits EOL this year just like Windows 10
First major change under new Intel CEO
What's a computer? The iPad, supposedly, but we'll see
Everything's fine, but Google laid off hundreds in Pixel/Android group

Apple is making big changes so that Apple Intelligence will actually be intelligent
Adobe is going agentic too
OpenAI is creating its own social network because the world needs another social network
OpenAI announces three GPT-4.1 models - may retire GPT-4 soon - plus now o3 and o4-mini models
ChapGPT gets an image library and a memory
Claude gets Research and Google Workspace integration
Meta will start training its AI models with EU data, wink wink

Xbox and games

Xbox app on mobile will soon let you buy games (!) and add-on content, join Game Pass, and redeem perks. Did Microsoft get a concession from Apple/Google??
COD: Modern Warfare II (OG) and more are coming to Game Pass in the next few weeks
Xbox announces Doom: The Dark Ages limited edition accessories
Sea of Thieves is coming to Battle.net
Sony forced to raise the price of PS5 in three locales

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: Think like an individual, not an enterprise
App pick of the week: Notion Mail
RunAs Radio this week: How to Not Hate PowerShell with Barbara Forbes
Brown liquor pick of the week: 12th Hawaii Distiller's Reserve

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin.

Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts!
Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Sponsors:

Previous Episode

WW 927: Up to Stuff - Intel Unison, Quake II WHAMM demo, Minecraft movie

Introducing the Windows 11 Feature Tracker
"From the 'I should have done this two years ago' files, the 'I have wasted my life' files, and the, 'great, I needed more work to do' files ... There is a need for this. So I made one. But it will evolve. Maybe into a web app/wiki/something else... like a Notion website?" - Paul

Patch Tuesday brings a metric ton of new features - And what the tracker showed clearly
Two seconds after posting the tracker, Microsoft changed the Copilot app yet again - proving the need for the tracker - And demonstrating why the Insider Program is so screwed up
A hidden new Start menu in recent builds presents an interesting conundrum: How to handle something Microsoft has not announced?

More Windows 11

Beta build for 23H2: File new tab/new window changes, Explorer context menu regression may be permanent
Dev and Beta (24H2): Taskbar icon scaling is a blast from the past we all need desperately
Intel is killing Unison app and service

Like winter, Build is coming

Build session catalog is live - mostly AI as expected. Paul and Richard are going
Overview of the Windows Copilot Runtime (one year after it was announced), Windows Actions, standard Kayla Cinnamon talk on Windows productivity, using your own model with WCR, native app experiences(!), Arm64 app perf, etc.

Final thoughts on Microsoft's 50th: Biggest accomplishment wasn't any tech, it was changing with the times.
What it's best at: Democratizing tech for the commoners, an expansion on Jack Tramiel/Commodore's "computers for the masses, not the classes" schtick. And that is exactly what it is doing with AI right now
Microsoft hosts a consumer AI event and announces a metric ton of new Copilot features
We need a Copilot feature tracker. Copilot = every single feature other AIs have - Copilot Actions on the web, memory and personalization, Copilot Vision on mobile and Windows, AI-generated podcasts and Microsoft releases Copilot Search in Bing
Is AI turning us all into Charly from Flowers for Algernon?
AI is making us stupider! There are studies!!
This is the argument against every single tech advance from the steam train to the ballpoint pen to this
Microsoft's AI demo of vibe-coded Quake II highlights the problem nicely
Sometimes it's the little things: AI recaps for book series in Kindle
GitHub Copilot updated with Agent Mode, Cursor-style code overviews, more

Xbox & gaming

Microsoft announces new Xbox Games Showcase for June
Edge Game Assist gets new features, support for new games
GTA V and enhanced version for PC coming to Game Pass on April 15 - In addition to the previous Game Pass titles we discussed last week
Good: Nintendo Switch 2 supports ray tracing and DLSS
Bad: Nintendo delays Switch 2 to figure out the tariffs mess

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: Programmers at Work
App pick of the week: Apple Music
RunAs Radio this week: Application Risk in Security Copilot with Ari Schorr
Brown liquor pick of the week: The Heart Cut #02

These show notes have been truncated due to length. For the full show notes, visit https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly/episodes/927

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell

Next Episode

WW 929: The Blue Screen of Soup - Agent Store, Oblivion Remastered, Ubuntu 25.04

It's Week D, do you know where your preview update is? 23H2 is out - 24H2, not so much! No surprises in the new features list, but are more new features on the way?

Windows

New text actions in Click to Do - Practice in Reading Coach and Read with Immersive Reader - in Dev and Beta (24H2)
Find cloud-based (OneDrive-based) photos using Semantic search - Comes to EEA, Snapdragon X only for now, Dev and Beta
Voice access improvements - add words to custom dictionary - Dev and Beta
Updated green screen UI - latest Canary build, from today
Minor update to the Beta/23H2 channel, no new features
Ubuntu 25.04 is out and there's a native Arm64 ISO (!) and BitLocker support
Hands-on with WSL (which is stuck at 24.xx) and in Hyper-V on a Copilot+ PC
Is dual-boot even possible on Arm? (Yet)
Friday night update to identity caused accounts to be marked as leaked for 50,000 partner accounts

We're in a new wave: Microsoft 365 Copilot updated, new Agent Store and more on the way
Copilot Vision is now free for everyone in Microsoft Edge
Google is giving Gemini Advanced/Google One AI Premium away for free to US college students
Google estimates its Gemini AI chatbot had 35M DAUs and 350M MAUs worldwide as of last month while ChatGPT had 160M DAUs and 600M MAUs (Erin Woo/The Information)
Perplexity is coming to Samsung and Motorola phones - and Microsoft is apparently coming to Motorola too

Antitrust

It's getting real - 20 years after US v. Microsoft, Big Tech is finally getting a reckoning
Google has now lost two major US antitrust cases in less than a year
US v. Google (search): DOJ wants Judge to break up Google
US v. Google (ads): Google found to have another illegal monopoly
What's the "right" outcome for Chrome and Google's ad businesses?
OpenAI says it would be happy to buy Chrome from Google- hilarious
Google just killed Privacy Sandbox, cites regulatory climate
Apple, Meta fined by EU for not conforming to the DMA
Apple Intelligence is no longer "available now" (Siri: Is it raining?)

Xbox/gaming

Elder Scrolls IV Remastered lands on Xbox, PC, PS5 and Game Pass
Xbox app arrives on LG smart TVs
It's (back) on: Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders rescheduled to April 24 with no price change
And the demand is higher than expected, Nintendo says

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: It's time to look at Google Fi again
HARDWARE pick of the week: Microsoft keyboards and mice are back, baby
RunAs Radio this week: Agentic AI for IT Pros with Tim Warner
Brown liquor pick of the week: Dark Harmony No. 3 Black IPA Cask

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin.

Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts!
Support what you love and get ad-free shows, a members-only Discord, and behind-the-scenes access. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Sponsor: