It might not get the same kind of attention as Google and Apple, but Microsoft is still one of the biggest and most powerful tech companies operating today. It runs Azure, one of the biggest cloud computing services, and maintains Windows 11 and the whole Office suite of software. It also makes plenty of Surface hardware and has a whole slew of gaming products, including the Xbox Series X. But the company is ever expanding — building new hardware, acquiring new game studios, and making sure that even if Microsoft doesn't run your phone, it can touch plenty of the apps on it.
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Microsoft says its Recall uninstall option in Windows 11 is just a bug
Microsoft is working to fix Recall showing up as an optional Windows 11 feature.
Welcome to Notepad, a newsletter on Microsoft’s era-defining bets
Notepad will include analyses and scoops from a veteran Microsoft reporter.
Reliable leaker Evan Blass says Qualcomm is getting ready to launch cheaper Windows laptops at the IFA tradeshow next month. Blass says a new Snapdragon X Plus variant with eight cores will push Copilot Plus PCs down to just $800. Currently, the cheapest Copilot Plus PC is Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 7 at $999.
CrowdStrike and Microsoft: all the latest news on the global IT outage
A global IT outage grounded flights and resulted in outages at the London Stock Exchange and other systems early Friday morning.
Starting today, you can stream your Discord friend’s gameplay from your Xbox and even call them directly from the console.
The Windows and Surface team split last year when Panos Panay left, with Parakhin’s team building AI-powered web services like Bing Chat / Copilot. Then, this spring, in a shake up as Mustafa Suleyman became CEO of Microsoft AI, Parakhin was out.
He’s since joined the board of an AI startup and with Shopify:
Mikhail will oversee our engineering and data organizations and push Shopify to the cutting edge, not just in ML and AI, but in everything we’re building to make commerce better for everyone.
Following a test in June, Microsoft will now let you send files to your linked Android phone from the Share menu in Windows 11. The update will roll out gradually to users starting today.
Today I learned there’s a really neat Windows app called Twinkle Tray that lets you easily manage the brightness levels of multiple monitors. Useful for the winter nights when you want to adjust brightness levels easily, and the app even integrates neatly into the Windows 11 system tray.
Microsoft has admitted that its August security update has ruined some dual-boot Linux devices. The security patch wasn’t supposed to hit dual-boot Linux / Windows machines, but Microsoft admits “on some devices, the dual-boot detection did not detect some customized methods of dual-booting.” Workarounds include disabling Secure Boot and deleting Microsoft’s update while the company investigates the issue.
[MicrosoftLearn]
Microsoft has been working on moving Control Panel features to its Settings UI in Windows for more than 10 years, but a new support note has got some speculating the Control Panel might finally be removed soon. “The Control Panel is in the process of being deprecated in favor of the Settings app,” says Microsoft. It’s not news that Control Panel is being replaced, but Microsoft still hasn’t answered when that will actually happen.
A day after announcing that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is coming to the PS5 next year, Xbox boss Phil Spencer spoke a bit more during a Gamescom livestream about the company’s ongoing multiplatform experiment.
Stardock’s excellent Start11 app is making its way to Windows on Arm PCs this week. Version 2.1 brings native ARM64 support for customizing the Windows 11 Start menu to exactly how you want it to look and feel. Start11’s update comes just weeks after Microsoft launched its Qualcomm-powered Copilot PCs, and ahead of the busy back to school season for laptops.
I reported earlier this year that Microsoft was considering launching Towerborne into early access. After a promise of a “special surprise” during gamescom opening night live, Microsoft has just confirmed that Towerborne will be available in early access on Steam on September 10th, and on Xbox in early 2025. A full free-to-play launch is planned for 2025.
Xbox fans will soon finally be able to join in the anime-style open-world environment of Genshin Impact. The game is arriving on Xbox Series X / S on November 20th, and preorder bonuses are available right now.
GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke says the AI industry needs competition to thrive
Dohmke says navigating Microsoft-OpenAI isn’t as complicated as it seems, and open source is still king.
Originally announced in October of 2022 when the PC version was celebrating its 25th anniversary, Age of Empires Mobile, developed by TiMi Studio Group and World’s Edge, will finally be released on October 17th.
Ahead of the launch, the game is now available for preorder on both the App Store and Google Play.
