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

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