Microsoft is reportedly winding down most internal Claude Code licenses in its Experiences + Devices division by June 30, 2026, and steering many developers toward GitHub Copilot CLI instead. The move is not simply a procurement footnote; it is Microsoft choosing platform discipline over tool pluralism at the exact moment coding agents are becoming part of the software factory. Claude may still live inside Microsoft’s broader AI stack, but Claude Code appears to have become too successful...
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On May 15, 2026, Microsoft said Windows 11 Insiders in the Experimental channel would begin receiving taskbar and Start menu personalization changes, including the ability to place the taskbar on any screen edge and choose smaller taskbar buttons and Start menu layouts. The move is not just a nostalgia play for Windows 10 holdouts. It is Microsoft admitting, without quite saying so, that Windows 11’s original simplicity bargain went too far. Four and a half years after centering the Start...
Microsoft’s May 12, 2026 Windows 11 security update KB5089549 is now under scrutiny after a public proof-of-concept called MiniPlasma claimed to revive CVE-2020-17103, a Windows Cloud Files Mini Filter Driver privilege-escalation flaw first addressed in December 2020. The uncomfortable part is not merely that another local privilege escalation exists; Windows has plenty of those. It is that the alleged bug lives in a component meant to make cloud-backed storage feel invisible, and the public...
Between late 2024 and March 2025, Microsoft reportedly canceled, deferred, or let lapse data center capacity agreements totaling more than 2 gigawatts across the United States and Europe after TD Cowen analysts’ channel checks found a pullback from planned AI infrastructure commitments. The easy reading was that Microsoft had discovered a hole in the AI demand story. The more useful reading is sharper and less comforting: Microsoft had discovered that not all AI capacity is interchangeable...
NTT DATA announced on May 18, 2026, that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire WinWire, a Santa Clara-based Microsoft partner with delivery centers in India, adding more than 1,000 Azure engineers and AI specialists to expand enterprise AI and Microsoft cloud transformation services. The deal is less about another systems integrator bulking up headcount than about the new center of gravity in enterprise AI: Microsoft’s cloud, data, and agent tooling stack. For WindowsForum readers...
Microsoft’s June 2026 Secure Boot certificate deadline affects most Windows devices that still depend on Microsoft’s 2011-era boot trust certificates, and the immediate fix is installing current Windows updates, allowing the machine to restart, and leaving the new Secure Boot remediation files alone. The alarmist version is that Windows PCs may suddenly refuse to boot. The more accurate version is subtler and, for IT departments, more annoying: Microsoft is trying to rotate the cryptographic...
Microsoft is ending support in October 2026 for Windows 11 SE, its locked-down education edition for low-cost school PCs, and Microsoft Publisher, the desktop publishing app that has survived inside Office for more than three decades. The dates are not merely housekeeping entries on a lifecycle calendar. They mark two retreats from markets where Microsoft once believed Windows and Office could win by offering specialized, tightly scoped products. In both cases, the message is the same...
On May 13, 2026, Gallup reported that 71 percent of U.S. adults oppose construction of AI data centers in their local area, a finding that turns the physical infrastructure of artificial intelligence into a national backyard fight. The result is not a small reputational problem for the AI industry; it is a warning that compute has become land use politics. The same public that has rapidly adopted AI tools is increasingly unwilling to host the power-hungry, water-sensitive, noise-producing...
Sparkle 2.19.0 is a new release of the open-source Windows optimization utility for Windows 10 and Windows 11, updating its app installer experience, debloat scripts, settings interface, developer options, and package-manager checks while adding new apps and fixes for performance-related UI issues. The release is not a revolution so much as a revealing maintenance build. It shows where the Windows “debloat” movement has matured: away from one-shot scripts and toward reversible, GUI-driven...
Microsoft is testing Windows 11 changes that would let users place the taskbar differently on each monitor, move it with drag and drop, resize taskbar elements, and gain new Start menu controls, according to Windows Latest reporting published on May 18, 2026. That is not a cosmetic footnote; it is Microsoft revisiting one of Windows 11’s original sins. Five years after Windows 11 traded flexibility for visual discipline, the company is now trying to prove that a modern Windows shell can be...
Incognito mode is better for hiding browser traces from other people using the same computer, while a VPN is better for hiding your network location and traffic path from local networks and internet providers. Neither tool makes you anonymous, and treating either one as a magic privacy switch is how users get burned. The real answer is not “Incognito versus VPN,” but which layer of exposure you are trying to reduce.
That distinction matters because browser vendors, VPN companies...
Technology Management Concepts announced in May 2026 that it has acquired PowerApps911, folding a specialist Microsoft Power Platform consulting and training firm into TMC’s broader Microsoft business applications practice. The deal is not just another channel roll-up. It is a bet that the next phase of Microsoft services will be won less by firms that merely deploy software and more by firms that can teach customers how to build, govern, and automate with it. For WindowsForum readers, the...
Apple is reportedly preparing a rebuilt Siri for iOS 27 with chat-style conversations and retention controls that let users auto-delete histories after 30 days, after one year, or never. The feature, reported by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and echoed by follow-on coverage, is small enough to fit inside a Settings pane but large enough to define Apple’s next AI argument. After losing the first round of the generative AI race on speed and spectacle, Apple appears ready to fight the second round on...
On May 7, 2026, a federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia convicted Sohaib Akhter, a former federal contractor, after prosecutors said he and his twin brother Muneeb Akhter deleted roughly 96 U.S. government databases hosted by their employer shortly after being fired on February 18, 2025. The case is not just a lurid revenge-hacking story with an unusually cinematic cast. It is a clean-room example of what happens when privileged access, weak offboarding, contractor sprawl, and poor hiring...
Microsoft began testing a movable and smaller Windows 11 taskbar on May 15, 2026, in Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8493 for the Experimental channel, restoring customization options that Windows users lost when Windows 11 replaced the old taskbar in 2021. The change is not merely cosmetic. It is Microsoft conceding, five years late, that the Windows desktop is still a workplace as much as it is a showroom. And in Windows, the difference between polish and paternalism often comes...
Former Microsoft executive Mat Velloso reportedly said on May 17, 2026, that Microsoft has “missed the AI wave,” arguing that Copilot adoption, Windows 11 integration, and enterprise AI execution have not matched the company’s spending or rhetoric. The charge lands because it does not come from an outside skeptic cheering for Redmond’s decline, but from someone who spent years inside Microsoft and later worked near the center of Google and Meta’s AI machinery. His argument is not that...
Windows 11 Home and Pro are not the whole Windows 11 product family in May 2026; Microsoft also ships Education, Enterprise, Enterprise LTSC, IoT Enterprise, and IoT Enterprise LTSC editions, with different servicing models, policy controls, setup behavior, licensing channels, and support timelines. That matters because the Windows edition is no longer a cosmetic SKU choice. It increasingly decides how much control the owner has over updates, consumer features, cloud sign-in pressure, and...
Microsoft’s Windows 11 Snipping Tool has evolved from a basic screenshot utility into a multi-purpose capture app with color picking, screen recording, OCR, and redaction features now built into the operating system. That shift matters because it changes the default software stack on ordinary Windows PCs. For many users, the old reflex—install ShareX, Greenshot, PowerToys, OBS, or Snagit before doing real work—is no longer automatic. Microsoft has quietly turned one of Windows’ most...
Microsoft has confirmed that the new C:\Windows\SecureBoot folder appearing after Windows 11’s May 2026 cumulative update, KB5089549, is expected behavior, not a bug, and exists to support the ongoing rollout of replacement Secure Boot certificates before older 2011-era certificates expire this year. The folder is not malware, not update debris, and not something ordinary users need to clean up. But its sudden arrival is a revealing example of how Microsoft’s most sensitive Windows plumbing...
Microsoft’s Windows 11 “Doppelmode” campaign, launched in May 2026 with Droga5, is a student-focused ad built around 25 sets of identical twins in a college library to promote Windows 11 PCs and Microsoft’s U.S. College Offer. That sounds like a neat advertising gimmick until you look at what Microsoft is really trying to do. The company is not just selling laptops to students; it is trying to make Windows feel like the natural home for a life that no longer divides cleanly between work and...