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

04/23/25 • 137 min

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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.

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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:

spaceship.com/twit

Previous Episode

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

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!
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:

Next Episode

WW 930: Flocculation & Saponification - Profanity filter, EU digital commitments, FY25 Q3

YOU ARE THE PRODUCT! But... are you? In Russia, Windows 11 uses you! Plus, something happened to Paul on the way to dual-booting Ubuntu 25.04 on Surface Laptop 7, but all is well! Also, you should be using Brave. But if you don't like/trust Chromium, Firefox 138 finally added profile management support.

Windows

Windows 11 24H2 preview update for April finally arrives
Now we know why Microsoft waited: It wanted to announce the "general availability" of Recall, Click to Do, and "improved Windows Search" (we're still struggling with a name for that one)
Dev and Beta (24H2) builds add a profanity filter, a Pen shortcut for Click to Do, improved Windows Search for work and school accounts, Accessibility flyout in Quick settings
Microsoft (sort of) explains why Windows Insider Preview channels don't follow a logical order anymore
Microsoft deprecates Map app in Windows 11
That makes sense. But also VBS Enclaves in pre-24H2 versions, which is interesting

Corporate

Microsoft says it will defend EU companies against US government
Alphabet/Google is doing just great, thanks
Intel earnings are flat, and that's as good as that news gets
Samsung posts record revenues on strong S25 series sales

Dev

Build and Google I/O are coming in hot
Google is holding a separate Android event for the first time, ahead of I/O
What about Surface? At Build last year, the company announced Copilot+ PC

Microsoft has an OpenAI problem - duh and/or hello
Microsoft is part of an AI unholy quaternity on new Moto phones
Duolingo announces controversial "AI first" strategy - And then announces 148 new AI-based courses
Apple on Apple Intelligence: Just kidding!
OpenAI on GPT-4o: Just kidding!
ChatGPT goes shopping and OpenAI improves Deep Research
Google updates NotebookLM audio overviews with support for over 50 languages
YouTube starts testing AI overviews for videos - and Spotify is using AI for playlists
Adobe updates Firefly models, adds third party support
DuckDuckGo's Duck.ai now supports real-time model switching
Meta launches a standalone AI app that no one should want

Xbox

Xbox-exclusive game Towerborne is here in preview on Xbox, PC, and Game Pass

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: Be prepared
App pick of the week: Firefox 138
RunAs Radio this week: Modern Work in 2025 with Karoliina Kettukari
Brown liquor pick of the week: Highwayman Whisky Abbey 2024

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: