It’s only been one week, but it’s really been 14 years, and Paul is calling: Microsoft and Qualcomm have finally made Windows 11 on Arm both viable and desirable. Nothing is perfect, but this platform is pretty incredible. Some notes from the past week:
Mission Accomplished
• As a reminder, Paul finally got the Yoga Slim 7x last week and updated on app compatibility, hardware compatibility, gaming, and in-box AI experiences in time for WW - only found one non-working app, Google Drive. Then...
• More app and game compatibility testing. Since then, played a lot more DOOM (2016), ran into one issue that’s surely WOA-related (note beta graphics driver, though)
• Video encoding performance: Snapdragon X vs Snapdragon X vs Core Ultra 9 H-series vs MacBook Air M3
• Initial thoughts on battery life and then More thoughts on battery life. The Yoga Slim 9x and Surface Laptop both get about 10 hours of real-world battery life (so far), compared to 15 hours for the MacBook Air 15-inch M3.
• Hardware compatibility update: Only one of my devices doesn’t work, the Focusrite.
• Surface Laptop 7 first impressions and second impressions
• HP Elitebook Ultra first impressions
Windows 11
• After skipping Week D last Tuesday, Microsoft belatedly delivers a Week D preview update for Windows 11 version 24H2
• No new features, so next Patch Tuesday will be light for 24H2
• 22H2 and 23H2 got a big Week D update last Tuesday, so Patch Tuesday will be meaningful
• As of July’s Patch Tuesday, 22H2, 23H2, and 24H2 will all provide the same basic feature set
• Canary, Dev, Beta (last Friday): nothing exciting, a few small features or changes
AI & Microsoft 365
• European Commission “shifts” investigation of Microsoft/OpenAI partnership. Is Ken Starr in charge of this thing?
• Microsoft highlights new Copilot features coming to Microsoft 365 in July
• Copilot in OneNote can now recognize handwritten text. It’s 2002 all over again!
• Pixel 9 family will promote unique “Google AI” features
• Brave introduces a BYOM plan for its web browser
• Thanks to AI, Google Translate now supports 110 new languages
Xbox
• Xbox Cloud Gaming Fire Sticks it to Amazon
• Another two weeks of Xbox Game Pass
• Forza Horizon 4 (from 2018) to be delisted December 15. Why?
Tips and Picks
• Tip of the week: Get $10 off Tony Redmond’s Office 365 for IT Pros 11th Edition
• App pick of the week: Docs in Proton Drive
• RunAs Radio this week: NGINX as a Service with Buu Lam
• Brown liquor pick of the week: Jack Daniels Old No. 7
Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell
Windows Weekly episode 888
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