Your Patch Tuesday is showing. Paul Thurrott, Richard Campbell, and Leo Laporte go over the latest features for Windows 11 with the KB5053598 update. Also, the hosts discuss Press to Talk for Insiders, the Windows app replacing Remote Desktop, the agentic future of browsers, Copilot integration in GroupMe, Gemma 3, issues with Xbox Wireless Controller 5.23.5.0 firmware, Pocket Casts Web Player, and the "vibe coding" era. Plus, Fences 6 is now in Beta, on sale!

Woody Leonhard, RIP

• Like Jerry Pournelle, a major influence on Paul's career and writing style
• He had a mysterious life in latter years, not clear what happened

Windows 11

• Windows 11 gets all the features we've discussed recently
• Are we heading towards something bigger this year? Or just more of the same?
• New Canary and Beta (23H2) builds
• New Dev and Beta (24H2) builds
• Copilot in Windows 11 is getting Press to Talk
• Microsoft follows through on threat, kills Remote Desktop App - our latest outrage
• Arc crashed and burned but we can still evolve web browsers
• What about sidebar apps as a UX baby step forward?
• Does Edge need to restart every three days now to install updates?

Microsoft 365

• Google promotes ChromeOS/Chromebooks as the right client ... for Microsoft 365

Dev

• Build 2025 registration is now open

AI

• It's Microsoft's 50th anniversary, so it's going to announce AI something something
• Paul has agreed to attend this, from Mexico
• Also, report that Microsoft's in-house models now rival OpenAI is a hint
• Microsoft improves Think Deeper in Copilot using OpenAI o3-mini
• Google secretly owns 14-15 percent of Anthropic
• WTF is going on with Big Tech and regulatory evasion?
• On that note, CMA clears Microsoft + OpenAI specifically because of change to partnership
• Also, Google launches Gemma 3
• The Siripocalypse - AI is a hard computer science problem and Siri is the dumb blond in this space
• Amazon will use AI to dub movies and TV series because obviously

Xbox

• Rumor: Third-party portable Xbox gaming handheld this year, console resets in two years
• You could have cobbled this together solely based on what Microsoft has said publicly
• Xbox controller firmware, we have a problem

Tips and Picks

• Tip of the week: Code with AI
• App pick of the week: Fences
• RunAs Radio this week: Strong Certificate Mapping in Active Directory with Richard Hicks
• Brown liquor pick of the week: Ardbeg 10

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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Skype to EOL in May, replaced by the consumer Teams client, which is surprisingly good now. There are three possible responses to this:
- "They still make Skype?"
- The 13 people who rely on Skype for calling landlines come out of the woodwork.
- "Come on, Microsoft telegraphed this two years ago"

Plus, Opera previews what an AI agent in a browser can be used for. Firefox 136 now comes with vertical tabs (again), updated sidebar, AI chatbots, and more. And a Google-related tip that lets one see what it's like to live in the EU, minus the universal health care and other social safety nets.

Windows

• Microsoft FINALLY updates the Copilot app in Windows 11 for the 127th time - What Microsoft didn't tell anyone. Arrives just after the release of a native Mac client
• Three months of Recall, and it IS controversial, just not for the reasons you think
• Dev and Beta (last week): lock screen widget customizing (finally), Windows Share updates (again), Task Manager CPU usage calculation change (seriously), more
• It may be controversial at Linux, but not at Microsoft, which is all-in on Rust
• Intel delays Ohio fabs until after the earth careens into the sun
• Dell up 7 percent to $23.9 billion ($11.9 billion from PCs)
• HP up 2.4 percent to $13.5 billion ($9.2 billion from PCs)
• Intel brings Core Ultra Series 2 "Arrow Lake" chips to commercial market

Microsoft 365

• Microsoft finally puts Skype out of its misery
• A look back at 22 years of Skype
• Outlook Mobile gets delivery and read receipts

AI

• USA! USA! USA! Microsoft makes AI export changes easy to understand for our stupid government
• OpenAI announces GPT-4.5, its final non-reasoning model
• Microsoft brings new local distilled DeepSeek models to Copilot+ PCs, starting with Snapdragon X - a little hands-on
• Microsoft announces Dragon Copilot for clinical workflow
• Stability AI + Arm Holdings = generative AI audio, more to come
• Scam Detection in Messages for Pixel and Android
• Gemini improvements including upcoming features
• Apple's struggles with AI are real. Just ask Siri. Kidding, no one asks Siri anything

Xbox

• New Game Pass titles for first half of March
• Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3+4 coming to all platforms including Game Pass on July 11
• Sony slashes prices on VR2 months after it stopped building it

Tips & Picks

• Tip of the week: Remove yourself from Google Search results
• App pick of the week: Mo' browsers!
• RunAs Radio this week: Secure by Design with Karinne Bessette
• Brown liquor pick of the week: Knappogue Castle 16

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:

• uscloud.com
• zscaler.com/security

Week D - If a preview update falls in the woods and no one downloads it, did it really happen? Plus, what is going on with AI for free? Isn't this stuff expensive?

Windows

• 23H2/24H2: Taskbar share, Spotlight updates, Windows Backup snooze in File Explorer, etc.
• Dev and Beta - Semantic search adds OneDrive photo search to Search (was in File Explorer previously), plus the Recall reboot no one is explaining. And Trim comes to Snipping Tool (Canary and Dev)
• Beta (23H2) - Share gets a drag tray and Start All apps gets new Grid and Category views
• Lenovo revenues surge 20 percent
• Framework announces Ryzen AI-based Laptop 13, plus Laptop 12 and Desktop
• Opera adds Bluesky, Discord, and Slack to the sidebar

Microsoft 365

• Microsoft confuses us with a test of a free, ad-supported core Office suite for Windows
• Amazon kills Chime, will use Zoom, Teams, and more
• Amazon kills Appstore for Android
• Google to drop SMS-based 2FA, move to QR codes
• Paul continues with his SSO removals, an update on whether this impacts account availability

AI/Dev

• Following up the previous discussion with an interesting way to use an AI chatbot
• Alexa enters the AI era
• OpenAI now has 400 million weekly active users
• Microsoft cancels some AI datacenter leases, but it's not done spending billions on AI
• Anthropic releases first reasoning model, with a twist
• Gemini Code Assist is now free for individuals!
• ThinkDeeper and Voice in Copilot no longer have usage restrictions
• OpenAI makes Deep Research available to all paid customers
• Apple delays biggest Siri advances past iOS 18.4 - Math is hard, but AI is even harder
• Spotify expands into AI-narrated audiobooks
• NVIDIA partners to bring free ASL training to everyone
• .NET 10 Preview 1 arrives with the promise of LTS and not much else

Xbox

• Xbox Cloud Gaming gets its first update in a while, and it's a big one
• Microsoft delays Fable reboot to 2026

Tips and Picks

• Tip of the week: You can view the source code for the oldest machine-readable version of Unix
• App pick of the week: Adobe Photoshop for iPhone
• RunAs Radio this week: Exchange Server in 2025 with Michel de Rooij
• Brown liquor pick of the week: Glenrothes 15

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:

• 1password.com/windowsweekly
• cachefly.com/twit