Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott, Richard Campbell, and Leo Laporte

Apr 16th 2025

Windows Weekly 928

The Rice is Done

Hosted by Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, Richard Campbell

Edge 134's speed, Reboot Chime, Altera

Records live every Wednesday at 2:00pm Eastern / 11:00am Pacific / 18:00 UTC.
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Category: News

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

AI

  • 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

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Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin.

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