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Microsoft’s Copilot rollout has reached a point where the brand is both omnipresent and opaque — a marketing strategy that is generating internal alarm, user friction, and regulatory scrutiny all at once. Overview Microsoft has deliberately stamped the Copilot name across many parts of its ecosystem: the standalone consumer Copilot app, the rebranded Microsoft 365 Copilot productivity hub, GitHub Copilot for developers, in‑app Copilot features in Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Teams, and device‑level...

Xbox’s Game Pass shake-up is dramatic by design: the company has restructured tiers, rolled cloud access into lower plans, bundled partner services, promised a surge of day‑one releases — and bumped Xbox Game Pass Ultimate from $19.99 to $29.99 a month, a 50% increase that landed with immediate backlash across the community. Background / Overview Microsoft built Xbox Game Pass as a loss‑leader platform play: day‑one access to first‑party titles, a rotating catalog, and aggressive bundling to...

OpenAI’s long-promised parental controls for ChatGPT have finally arrived — and they come bundled with granular settings, safety alerts, and a direct link into OpenAI’s newly launched short‑video app, Sora. The move is a clear response to growing scrutiny over how conversational AI interacts with teenagers, including a high‑profile wrongful‑death lawsuit that alleged ChatGPT contributed to a teen’s suicide, and it represents a significant — if imperfect — step toward giving parents tools to...

Windows on Steam just hit a new milestone: Windows 11 now accounts for 63.04% of Windows installations reported in Valve’s September 2025 Hardware & Software Survey, a sharp monthly gain as users accelerate moves away from Windows 10 ahead of its support sunset and Valve prepares to end support for 32‑bit Windows next year. Background Valve’s monthly Steam Hardware & Software Survey is a unique window into the PC gaming population — not the broader installed base of Windows worldwide, but...

Microsoft’s plan to push new Microsoft 365 Companion apps onto Windows 11 machines without an explicit opt‑in has ignited fresh criticism from users and IT pros, rekindling debates over bloatware, device control, and Microsoft’s widening AI-first strategy. Starting in late October 2025, Microsoft will automatically install three lightweight taskbar apps — People, Files (File Search), and Calendar — on Windows 11 PCs that already have Microsoft 365 desktop apps. The company says the rollout...

Signing out of a school or work account on Windows 11 is deceptively simple, but the choice between “signing out,” “removing,” or “switching to a local account” has real consequences for synced settings, OneDrive files, BitLocker recovery, and corporate device management — this guide explains the safe, step‑by‑step methods to sign out of a school account on Windows 11, what each action actually does, and the precautions every user should take before they disconnect an organizational...

Microsoft’s leadership ranks have seen a steady stream of exits through 2025, and the departures are not just shuffle‑board moves — they map directly to the fierce talent war sweeping through cloud and AI. CRN’s roundup of “25 Big Microsoft Executive Departures So Far in 2025” catalogued a wide mix of retirements, lateral moves to rivals and fast‑track hires into startups — a list that underscores how the Copilot/Azure era is reshaping careers and incentives across the industry. Background...

Microsoft’s Copilot AI kept its hot streak rolling into Week 5 of the 2025 NFL season, delivering another winning slate of straight-up picks as USA TODAY Sports continued its experiment of asking the chatbot to pick winners and scores for every game on the schedule. Background For the third consecutive week, Microsoft Copilot AI posted a winning record in USA TODAY Sports’ ongoing experiment to see how a modern conversational AI performs at full‑slate NFL predictions. The process was...

LinkedIn’s CEO has quietly lifted the curtain on a practice many executives already suspected: he leans on artificial intelligence to write the majority of his emails — even the ones sent to his own boss, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Ryan Roslansky disclosed during a fireside chat at LinkedIn’s San Francisco office that Microsoft’s Copilot is part drafting tool, part iterative collaborator — a “second brain” he uses to shape almost every important message he sends. Background LinkedIn sits...

Microsoft’s executive reshuffle this week — elevating Judson Althoff to lead the company’s commercial business while Satya Nadella steps back into what he called “founder‑mode” to focus on datacenter build‑out, systems architecture and AI science — is more than a personnel move; it’s a strategic refocus that realigns incentives, reorganises customer touchpoints, and places Microsoft’s capital‑intensive AI build at the center of its corporate priorities. Background / Overview Microsoft...

Steam’s monthly snapshot makes it official: a noticeable chunk of Steam players have finally jumped to Windows 11, and they did it with the clock ticking toward Windows 10’s end-of-support deadline. Valve’s September survey shows Windows 11 reaching 63.04% of surveyed Steam users—up 2.65 percentage points month-over-month—while Windows 10 slipped to 32.18%, a drop of 2.90 points. This short, sharp movement comes as Microsoft’s free-support window for Windows 10 closes on October 14, 2025...

Microsoft has begun rolling out the Windows 11 25H2 update to consumers and businesses — a lean, enablement-package release that mostly formalizes the platform work Microsoft shipped during 2024–2025 while sharpening internal security controls, removing legacy tooling, and resetting support timelines for devices that adopt it. The update arrives as a small activation package for systems already on Windows 11 version 24H2 and is being distributed gradually via Windows Update, with full media...

Windows File Explorer still does the basics, but for anyone who spends a lot of time organizing, searching, or moving files, the third‑party Files app replaces friction with speed, polish, and productivity features that Microsoft’s default tool simply hasn’t prioritized — from dual‑pane and column view navigation to tag support, an integrated Omnibar, and options to view folder sizes at a glance. Background For decades Windows File Explorer has been the default file manager for millions of...

When an app crashes, refuses to launch, or your system behaves oddly, being able to check application logs in Windows 11 or Windows 10 short‑circuits guesswork and gets you to a fix faster; this feature guide walks through the three practical methods — Event Viewer, command‑line (PowerShell/wevtutil), and trusted third‑party utilities — with step‑by‑step commands, troubleshooting workflows, and enterprise‑grade cautions. Background / Overview Windows records a vast array of runtime activity...

The long, slow sunset for Windows 10 has become a hard deadline: Microsoft will stop routine security and feature updates for mainstream Windows 10 editions on October 14, 2025, leaving millions of PCs to choose between upgrading to Windows 11, enrolling in a time‑boxed Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, or running an increasingly risky unsupported system. Background / Overview Windows 10 arrived in 2015 and dominated the PC landscape for a decade. Microsoft’s lifecycle policy has now...

Signing out of a Microsoft account is a simple click for many users, but the consequences for privacy, cloud sync, device recovery, and enterprise access can be significant — this guide unpacks the quick steps, the technical differences between signing out and removing an account, and the best practices every Windows user should follow to avoid lost files or security gaps. Background / Overview Microsoft accounts (MSA) are the identity backbone for consumer Microsoft services: they connect...

Microsoft’s Copilot has been given a face: a new experimental feature called Copilot Portraits places animated, human‑like avatars into live voice conversations, aiming to make spoken interactions feel more natural and socially grounded. Background / Overview Microsoft introduced Copilot Portraits inside Copilot Labs, the company’s public sandbox for higher‑risk, high‑compute experiments that expand Copilot beyond typed chat into voice, vision, and expressive presentation layers. The...

Talkdesk’s roadmap with Microsoft took a tangible step forward on September 30, 2025, when the vendor announced that Talkdesk Workspace can be embedded directly inside Microsoft Teams and that Talkdesk Customer Experience Automation (CXA) is now available through the Microsoft Azure Marketplace—moves that aim to collapse app switching for agents, speed escalation to subject‑matter experts, and make multi‑agent AI automation easier to procure for enterprise contact centers. Background...

Azure’s Data API Builder (DAB) is the kind of developer tool that quietly changes the rules of engagement: it turns an existing database into a production-ready HTTP API — both REST and GraphQL — with no custom backend code required, letting you “bring your data to your code” without building or maintaining a service layer. Background Over the past decade Microsoft has shifted much of its internal operational tooling outward, converting infrastructure patterns used to run Microsoft services...

Signing out of a Microsoft account on a Windows PC is a small action with outsized consequences for privacy, access to cloud services, and device management — this guide explains every practical way to sign out or remove an account, what each option actually does, and the security and recovery trade‑offs you must consider before you click. Background / Overview Microsoft accounts (often shortened to MSA) are the identity pivot for consumer Microsoft services: they connect Windows, OneDrive...