Edge's data trick, Outlook's AI Themes, .NET 9, and more!

Windows 11

• The 24H2 quality issues continue, like a parade with no end.
• Patch Tuesday arrives
• Windows team says no Preview update in December... but what about November?
• Reminder of the Canary build last week with Prism emulator improvements. WHERE ARE THE ARM ISOs???
• Most recent episode of Run as Radio is worth discussing again here
• Dev and Beta: Nice new "run as admin" shortcut in Dev, minor changes in Beta
• Canary: Mostly bug fixes
• Microsoft Edge is using a new trick to steal Chrome data
• It's dead, Jim: Microsoft reminds world that Outlook will replace Mail, Calendar, People
• If you pay for Copilot (dummy) you can make custom Outlook themes now for some reason
• Quick laptop update: AMD Zen 5 vs. Intel Lunar Lake vs. Snapdragon X

Still more earnings

• Arm: $844 million, but disappointing. Also, Qualcomm legal battle looms
• Qualcomm: $10.24 billion in revenues, up 19 percent
• AMD to lay off 4 percent of (26,000 employee) workforce globally, focus on AI

Dev

• Microsoft releases .NET 9
• That means WPF support for Windows 11 theming is live
• But there's a surprise: Microsoft added one of the features we need
• .NET Conf is happening as we speak - Thursday is third-party day, and I am curious about Avalon and Uno announcements
• Qualcomm has a webinar tomorrow for AI developers and Snapdragon X

Xbox

• Surprise! Death Stranding comes to Xbox three years later to the day
• Phil Spencer talks PS5, mobile devices, more in a new interview
• MAJOR NEW ACTIVISION RELEASE ON GAME PASS
• Just kidding, it's some stupid purple dragon
• Friend requests now available (again) to all Xbox users
• Paying GeForce Now customers get monthly usage caps
• NVIDIA app replaces GeForce Experience, no need to sign in anymore
• Sony has sold 65 million PS5 consoles ... it needs 20+ million more to surpass PS3

Tips and Picks

• Tip of the week: Quick Windows 11 Field Guide update
• App pick of the week: Stardock DesktopGPT
• App pick of the week #2: Quick Share
• Cocktail of the week: Salmoncito

Ingredients

• 1 oz. tonic water, plus more for topping
• 1½ oz. London dry gin
• ¼ oz. Campari
• ¼ oz. fresh grapefruit juice
• Grapefruit twist and grapefruit supreme (for serving)

Preparation

• Fill a highball glass with ice. Add 1 oz. tonic water, then pour in 1½ oz. London dry gin, ¼ oz. Campari, and ¼ oz. fresh grapefruit juice. Top off with more tonic water and stir gently with a bar spoon. Express oil of a grapefruit twist over cocktail and discard. Garnish with a grapefruit supreme.

Hosts: Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

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The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin.

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On Halloween, the last day of October, Microsoft delayed Recall again. It was supposed to preview in October, this is the third delay. No clear reason why. December now, supposedly. Plus, Paul gives an earnings recap that he didn't get to dive into much last week.

Windows

• New 24H2 bug
• More features coming to Prism emulator in Windows 11 on Arm (!)
• New generative AI features are coming to Paint, Photos, and Notepad
• Beta channel: Here's the new Windows Hello experience, with explicit references to passkeys
• Proton VPN is native on Windows 11 on Arm
• Windows Server 2025 is GA (and some are being mistakenly force-upgraded. This is what you get when you share a codebase with Windows 11, apparently)
• Google shifts Android development cycle - Major update each Q2, minor update each Q4, monthly feature/quality updates

A Tale of 2 Chips

• Paul reviewed the AMD Zen 5-based HP OmniBook Ultra, it's awesome. Paul is also reviewing an Intel Lunar Lake laptop, and it is not awesome
• Early glee around Lunar Lake was misplaced
• Laptop reviewers all report what Paul is seeing (for once), that the performance is horrific. You need to switch to "Best performance" power management mode for reasonable performance, but this hasn't solved all the issues
• COD: Black Ops 6. Average FPS under Zen 5 is 90 to 120 at native resolution/medium graphics, single and multi-player. Lunar Lake? 40 FPS with all graphics settings on low/very low
• Intel now says Lunar Lake is a one-off too (Meteor Lake was likewise a one-off, architecturally). It will no longer package RAM with processors because of margins. Lunar Lake rushed to market and was key contributor to recent financial issues

More Earnings Learnings

• Amazon: $159 billion in revenues, $27.5 billion for AW
• Apple: $95 billion in revenues, a small uptick in iPhone revenues

Microsoft 365/AI

• Some curious/confusing moves with Microsoft 365 for consumers: subscribers in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand are getting Copilot Pro credits with base subscription (Word, Excel, etc.), Designer, ... and the long-overdue and dreaded price increase
• This must be a test for the U.S. and western Europe. Feels inevitable
• OpenAI launches ChatGPT Search. This is not the Google Search replacement you're looking for

Xbox

• It's November, so here's the incredible list of Activision Blizzard games now coming to Game Pass! Just kidding, but we are getting Flight Sim 2024
• Microsoft introduced an AI-powered support virtual agent to Xbox because something something AI
• Switch sales drop off a cliff, Nintendo will announce backward-compatible successor before the end of March
• Sony launches the PS5 Pro to meh

Tips and Picks

• Tip of the week: Windows 11 minus the MSA
• App pick of the week: Docs in Proton Drive
• RunAs Radio this week: Software-Defined Networking using Azure Firewall with Aidan Finn
• Brown liquor MOVIE pick of the week: Whisky Galore

Hosts: Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin.

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Enjoy Leo's many hats in this fun and silly edition of Windows Weekly. Happy Halloween!

Windows 11

• Yes, Windows 11 version 24H2 got its preview update for October too, a few days late as expected
• 24H2 was a surprisingly big platform shift - no enablement updates - faster updates going forward
• Dev and Beta get new builds, minor changes in each

Microsoft 365/AI/dev

• Teams is... getting weird
• Microsoft 365 apps get Handoff support on Apple devices
• Notion Mail - a light alternatives to Google Workspace and M365?
• GitHub Copilot goes multi-LLM
• Apple Intelligence wave one arrives, mostly to indifference. Wave two in December. EU is getting it in the Spring
• New Macs this week with M4. But the big news? 16 GB of RAM, minimum. Finally.
• The Browser Company can't realize its vision for the future with Arc

Earnings/Corporate

• Microsoft and Google duke it out over Cloud licensing - This one is getting ugly
• Google - $88.3 billion in revenues
• AMD - OK, but dominated by Intel on PCs and NVIDIA in AI/datacenter

Xbox

• More games, more people, more devices, Microsoft says
• Less emphasis on console but what might a next-gen console look like? Arm? Mobile? Third-party hardware makers?
• Cloud Gaming is limited to the most expensive Game Pass tier - that has to change, and what about a standalone tier?
• Mobile app stores are coming - but what about native mobile games?
• Call of Duty Black Ops 6 lands on PC Game Pass, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and Cloud Gaming - Paul puts aside his grudge and gives it a shot
• Microsoft previews new Home experience for Xbox app on Windows

Tips and Picks

• Tip of the week: It might be time to look at the Raspberry Pi again
• App pick of the week: My God, it's full of web browsers
• RunAs Radio this week: Updating Windows on ARM with Aria Hanson
• Brown liquor pick of the week: Laird of the Fintry Black Label Cask Strength Single Malt Whisky

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin.

Sponsors:

• 1password.com/windowsweekly
• uscloud.com
• threatlocker.com
• Melissa.com/twit