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Microsoft’s reported offer to cut or eliminate Windows Phone licensing fees for HTC represented one of the most candid – and revealing – attempts by Redmond to bend the rules of mobile platform economics in order to expand Windows Phone’s footprint. Background In the early 2010s Microsoft was fighting two linked problems: a tiny mobile market share and a limited roster of committed hardware partners. Windows Phone had traction in pockets, but the platform depended heavily on one large...

Windows Terminal is no longer a niche power‑user toy — it’s a modern, extensible command‑line host that bundles multiple shells (PowerShell, Command Prompt, WSL distributions and cloud shells) into a single, high‑performance workspace while exposing deep customization and experimental AI features that change how many Windows developers and sysadmins work. The practical highlights — tabs and split panes, per‑profile themes, a JSON settings model, GPU‑accelerated rendering, and a new Terminal...

Microsoft’s Gaming Copilot for Windows 11 has been thrust into the privacy spotlight after community testers discovered that the assistant can take screenshots during gameplay and — in some preview configurations — a “Model training on text” toggle that relates to on‑screen text appeared enabled by default, creating fears that gameplay frames or OCR’d text could be transmitted to Microsoft unless users manually changed settings. The company responded by saying screenshots are only captured...

Microsoft’s holiday pitch is deceptively simple: there’s a Surface for every person on your list — from the student who needs a featherlight study buddy to the creator who wants a pen‑first tablet that doubles as a studio‑grade slate — and this year the message leans heavily on on‑device AI, long battery life and a new generation of Qualcomm Snapdragon‑powered Copilot+ PCs. The messaging is more than marketing copy; Microsoft is packaging hardware, Windows 11 AI features, and dedicated...

Durapid Technologies’ announcement that it has been named a Microsoft Solutions Partner for Data & AI marks a clear step in the company’s positioning as an Azure-aligned provider of data-driven and AI-enabled business solutions, with a live presence on Microsoft AppSource via its GenAI Interview Evaluator offering. Background / Overview Durapid Technologies, an IT services firm headquartered in Jaipur, India, issued a press release reporting that it has achieved the Microsoft Solutions...

Digital identity has quietly moved from an abstract security concept to the plumbing of everyday life — and with that elevation has come a stark trade‑off: convenience versus control. The technology that lets services remember us, let agents act for us, and let machines prove a human exists is now being stitched into browsers, clouds, national ID programmes and even autonomous AI commerce. The result is an identity landscape that is simultaneously empowering and perilous — one that demands...

Windows 10’s rapid adoption did not translate into an immediate rebound in hardware demand: industry trackers reported continued year‑over‑year declines in third‑quarter PC shipments even as Microsoft’s new OS crossed the 100‑million‑device mark, illustrating a more complex, inventory‑and‑timing–driven market than headlines suggesting a simple “Windows 10 fixes PC sales” narrative. Background The third quarter brought a paradox for the PC industry. On one hand, Microsoft’s Windows 10 showed...

Embee Software’s announcement that it has secured the Microsoft Copilot Advanced Specialization signals a major step in the company’s push to be a front-line integrator for enterprise generative AI and Copilot-driven workflows, complementing its recent recognition in Microsoft’s AI First Movers Program, its Microsoft Fabric Featured Partner status, and a portfolio of Microsoft Advanced Specializations. Background Embee Software, a long-established IT services firm, has been publicizing a...

Microsoft's entry of Copilot into consumer Microsoft 365 subscriptions and the way that rollout was communicated to customers has escalated into a major legal showdown: the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has commenced Federal Court proceedings alleging Microsoft misled roughly 2.7 million Australians about subscription options and a linked price rise, and is seeking significant penalties, consumer redress and injunctions. Background Microsoft announced the broad...

In late summer 2015 Microsoft quietly acknowledged that Windows RT devices would not be upgraded to the full Windows 10 experience, but promised a small, targeted refresh — a September update that would bring an improved Start menu and a refreshed lock screen to Surface RT and Surface 2 owners. That announcement briefly reopened a conversation about what vendors owe buyers of moribund platforms, why ARM-based Windows diverged from mainstream Windows, and whether a cosmetic Start-menu...

Windows’ persistent “It’s almost time to restart” prompt is a symptom, not a bug: it means a critical update has finished installing and Windows is waiting to reboot to complete the job — and the system will remind or force you to restart until that reboot happens. This guide explains why that message appears, lays out every practical way to suppress or control it (from the safe, built-in options to advanced registry and Task Scheduler edits), and evaluates the risks so you can choose the...

Microsoft’s formal end of mainstream support for Windows 10 and a concentrated Q3 refresh cycle have done more than move numbers on a ledger — they have reshaped buyer behavior across the PC market, producing a measurable uplift in shipments and a clear short‑term win for Apple’s Mac lineup as a significant number of Windows 10 holdouts elected to buy MacBooks rather than pursue on‑device upgrades to Windows 11. Background / Overview Microsoft’s lifecycle milestone is concrete: Windows 10...

Windows 11’s latest Copilot upgrades turn a once-nice-to-have sidebar chatbot into a practical productivity tool — and a handful of smart prompts make the difference between a novelty and a daily habit. Background Microsoft has been steadily folding Copilot into Windows and Microsoft 365 for more than a year, but a recent wave of Windows 11 updates broadened what the assistant can actually do on your desktop. The evolution centers on three practical pillars: voice (wake-word “Hey, Copilot”...

Australia’s competition regulator has launched Federal Court proceedings accusing Microsoft of misleading roughly 2.7 million Australian Microsoft 365 customers after the company folded its Copilot generative‑AI assistant into consumer Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans and raised renewal prices — a dispute that now tests how subscription UX, price communication and consumer law collide in an age of paid AI features. Background Microsoft introduced Copilot as a consumer-facing...

Microsoft’s hardware roadmap is quietly morphing into something that looks a lot more like a Windows PC than a purpose‑built console: insiders and recent product moves point to an Xbox future built on Windows 11 shells, co‑engineered AMD silicon, and a portfolio approach that treats consoles, handhelds and PCs as variations on the same platform. What started as speculation after Phil Spencer and Xbox executives pointed to the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally as a signpost has hardened into a plausible...

Microsoft is piloting a new post‑crash diagnostic in Windows 11 that prompts users to run a quick memory scan after a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), scheduling the built‑in Windows Memory Diagnostic to run on the next reboot and report results back to the desktop. Background Microsoft has begun flighting a feature internally called Proactive Memory Diagnostics as part of recent Windows Insider Preview builds. The experience surfaces a sign‑in notification after the system detects a bugcheck...

Microsoft’s October cumulative update for Windows 11 — identified as KB5066835 — was intended to harden the platform with security fixes, but it instead introduced cascading regressions that left developers, IT admins, and new Windows users scrambling. The update disabled USB input inside the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) for some systems and broke loopback HTTP/2 connections handled by HTTP.sys, causing IIS and many developer tooling scenarios to fail with “connection reset” and...

Microsoft’s Gaming Copilot has become the center of a heated privacy debate after forum posts and network traces suggested the new Windows 11 Game Bar assistant may be capturing gameplay screenshots and sending extracted text back to Microsoft — a claim the company says is based on a misunderstanding of how the feature operates. Background Gaming Copilot launched in phases throughout 2025 as an AI assistant integrated into the Windows 11 Game Bar and later extended to the Xbox mobile app...

Embee Software’s confirmation as a Microsoft Copilot Advanced Specialization partner is a clear signal that the company has moved from early experimentation to operational delivery of agentic and generative AI solutions—an important milestone for both Embee and the enterprises that rely on Microsoft’s Copilot ecosystem for productivity, automation, and analytics. Background / Overview Embee Software, an established Microsoft partner with a broad portfolio across Azure, Modern Work, Data &...

Amazon is set to eliminate roughly 30,000 corporate positions in a sweeping downsizing that would amount to nearly one in every ten office roles at the company, a move driven by aggressive cost cutting as Amazon accelerates investment in artificial intelligence and automation. Background Amazon’s reported plan — first made public by multiple U.S. outlets citing anonymous sources and subsequently carried around the world — would reduce the company’s corporate headcount by roughly 9–10% of its...