Microsoft's fiscal year ended on a high note, assuming you didn't just get laid off. WinSAT's formal assessment will give you some interesting PC performance information, similar to the old WEI score from Windows Vista. And Proton finally makes a standalone authenticator app; How to transition from whatever you're currently using and why you'll need to keep using Microsoft Authenticator too.

Microsoft Earning

• Quarterly: net income of $27.2 billion on revenues of $76.4 billion. Those figures represent gains of 24 percent and 18 percent, respectively, year-over-year (YOY)
• Annual: a net income of $101.8 billion (up 16 percent YOY) on revenues of $281.7 billion (up 15 percent)
• Another look at layoffs, which are nothing new under Satya Nadella - Over 17,000 in CY 2025 so far, despite over $100 billion in profits in FY
• Headcount "unchanged" YOY
• Big announcements below were likely made to avoid Qs about layoffs and it almost worked
• AI spending in FY was about $85 billion, higher than promised
• AI spending in this quarter will jump to $30 billion (!!!!)
• Azure earned $75 billion in revenues in FY, its first-ever disclosure of this number - Fun with math, that means $56 billion in revenues in previous FY. How far back can we go?
• Microsoft's market cap exceeded $4 trillion after earnings release
• "Copilot" has over 100 million MAUs, really M365 Copilot, which even Nadella thinks is a new M365 tier
• GitHub Copilot has over 20 million MAUs, probably most are free
• HUGE gains in Microsoft Gaming/Xbox, discussed below

Windows 11

• But first, something completely different: Microsoft's "vision" for Windows in 2030
• David Weston a curious choice for this video, first in a series - he's in security
• Daily work life changes thanks to AI - less toil work, less eyes and more talking, multimodal interactions
• Security - customers want appliance-level security, "it just works" security -
• Degenerates into a general security discussion
• Back to AI, reclaiming our lives
• Windows 11 SE, RIP - We hardly knew you. Literally.
• Insider: Changes to Home view in File Explorer for Work and School sign-ins, Settings app changes in Dev (25H2) and Beta (24H2)

More earnings

• AMD - HUGE gains in its PC businesses!
• Qualcomm up 10%
• Apple up 9.6%
• Amazon up 13%

AI & dev

• OpenAI releases its first open-weight reasoning models and Microsoft gives them away for free
• Apple is trying to Sherlock ChatGPT
• Of course Alexa+ will get ads
• Dev: Microsoft has a native app problem on Windows
• Microsoft says it will fix Windows App SDK
• Paul just switched .NETpad to the Windows App SDK and can confirm it's a nightmare
• WPF is half-assed... and last year, it took Microsoft over 9 months to deliver the first Windows Copilot Runtime capabilities to devs, but you still can't use this in production. Also, it's not called that anymore

Xbox & games

• Microsoft Gaming has over 500 million MAUs - More fun with math
• COD has 50 million MAUs
• Microsoft has nearly 40 games in development
• Xbox Game Pass has $5 billion in revenues in FY, over 500 million hours played in FY
• Gaming Copilot (Beta) is available on Game Bar for Windows PC for Xbox Insiders enrolled in the PC Gaming Preview
• Assassin's Creed Mirage and more coming to Game Pass this month
• OG Switch models now cost more thanks to tariffs

Tips & Picks

• Tip of the week:

These show notes have been truncated due to length. For the full show notes, visit https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly/episodes/944

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell

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Ten years ago yesterday, Microsoft released Windows 10, fixing the issues with Windows 8.x and giving Windows 7 users a solid upgrade. One historical curiosity: It was the first Windows release without a major launch event. In other news, Microsoft publishes a Nadella email to the troops about the layoffs, but he never really addresses the layoffs.

Windows 10 turns 10

• The Bad: Its legacy is mixed, as this is when the enshittification of Windows began, really
• Windows as a Service
• Ads, crapware, and telemetry — plus some made-up privacy issues
• Terry Myerson gaff about one billion users
• Universal apps/One Windows was a bust, with Windows Phone and HoloLens failures
• Windows 10's launch was a missed opportunity to make the Store matter
• The Good: Windows Subsystem for Linux was huge
• WinGet was also huge, but is underappreciated and underutilized to this day
• It did reverse the mistakes of Windows 8, and in time it got more stable as Microsoft figured out WaaS (and then went on to abuse it)
• Oh, and the Windows 10 Field Guide is free to celebrate the anniversary

Windows 11

• Microsoft is using Rust for Surface drivers, and it wants all Windows drivers to switch to Rust too
• The Link to Windows app is getting a nice upgrade on Android
• Dev (25H2) and Beta (24H2): Settings agent for x86, SCOOBE changes, Click to Do improvements, Windows Search improvements
• Canary: Just a couple of bug fixes (Actually, two builds, one today also with no features)
• Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, and Media Encoder are Now Native on Windows 11 on Arm in beta
• Opera files antitrust case against Microsoft in Brazil for Windows 11/Edge behaviors
• Another app blocking Recall in a slow-drop of negative Recall-related AI privacy news for Microsoft.
• Rant: More importantly, Recall is boring and not useful given the hype around it.
• Intel earnings are flat, but more layoffs are on the way
• Lenovo rollable laptop in action! (ThinkBook Plus Gen 6)
• Lenovo makes a lot of weird laptops now (like the dual-screen Yoga Book 9i Paul reviewed last year) — apparently they didn't get the message after Microsoft cancelled the Surface Neo and Windows 10X.
• Does the average modern Windows laptop really need a touchscreen? Is this a relic of the Windows 8 era?

AI & Microsoft 365

• Perplexity Comet is real and it shows the way forward for AI web browsers
• Coincidentally, Microsoft suddenly launches Copilot mode for Microsoft Edge. (But I've played with Copilot Mode, and it's no Comet or Dia.)
• Copilot is getting real-time expressions. It's the return of Clippy!
• Microsoft's long-term Copilot plans are a lot wilder than you might expect
• Google earned $96.4 billion in one quarter. This shows that it has not been impacted by other AIs yet

Xbox & gaming

• Xbox is coming to Gamerscom in Germany in August, and it's bringing the ROG Xbox Ally handhelds
• The July Xbox Update is here and it's all about the PC
• Paul reviewed the Lenovo Legion Go S, and the Windows experience was so bad. Also, PC OEMs are having trouble competing with the Steam Deck's pricing on gaming handhelds.

Tips & picks

• Tips of the week: Chris and Paul are partnering on his new newsletter
• App pick of the week: Perplexity Pro
• Beer pick of the week: Alesong Rhino Suit

These show notes have been truncated due to length. For the full show notes, visit https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly/episodes/943

Hosts: Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott

Guest: Chris Hoffman

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Microsoft finally kills Movies & TV show service in the Microsoft Store. This was the final vestigial minder of Zune that remained. There was Groove Video and Xbox Video, too. Microsoft previously killed eBook (2019) and music (2017) sales. At this point, you would have to be insane to buy content from Microsoft, sorry... but you can get to some of your content on other services via Movies Anywhere - and use the Movies & TV app for now in Windows, which is no longer bundled.

Windows 11

• It's Week D and you can't tell your Copilot+ PC features from your Windows 11 features without a scorecard
• A peek at next month's Patch Tuesday - Also, preview updates for 23H2, Windows 10
• Copilot+ PCs only: Settings agent, Click to Do improvements, Photo relight in Photos app, Sticker generator and Object select in Paint
• Everyone: Copilot Vision (U.S. only) in Copilot, Edge Game Assist, Quick Machine Recovery
• Microsoft explains how PC transfer feature will work in Windows Backup later this year
• Describe image action for Click to Do (for AMD/Intel), image descriptions in Narrator (AMD/Intel), performance log improvements (!), Click to Do search bar test, Lock screen improvements, privacy improvements head to Dev and Beta channels
• Bug fixes in Canary, back to the usual waste of time
• Brave will automatically block Recall
• WhatsApp is going PWA, killing UWP app
• Focusrite finally releases drivers for Windows 11 on Arm/Snapdragon X, removing the final major compatibility issue on that platform
• Linux (sort of) crosses the 5 percent usage milestone

Surface/Copilot+ PC

• Copilot+ PC is a failure as a brand because Microsoft focused on negligible on-device AI features
• It should have pushed reliability, performance, efficiency and battery life
• All Copilot+ PC features should come to at least those with GPUs, but really all customers
• Microsoft failed at AI, and failed with consumers, and so now it's going to tell us what consumers want from AI - a comedy
• Microsoft announces Surface Laptop for Business with 5G but the real "with" is Intel Inside
• Intel layoffs are even worse than expected and more are coming
• Microsoft has a problem and it starts with "C" and ends with "opilot"
• Microsoft SharePoint has a notably bad security flaw
• DuckDuckGo adds some neat customization features to Duck.ai and DuckDuckGo lets you hide all AI from search

Xbox and gaming

• The Xbox platform unification continues: Xbox now testing cross-device play history - Not just console games on console, PC games on PC
• Just kidding! The Outer Worlds will cost $69.99, not $79.99

Tips & Picks

• Tip of the week: You hate Big Tech, but who can you trust?
• App pick of the week: Proton Lumo
• RunAs Radio this week: Copilot Studio with April Dunnam
• Brown liquor pick of the week: Benromach 10

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell

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