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Microsoft’s latest earnings sprint left headlines and investor decks buzzing, but the more important story is the market’s tempering of enthusiasm: despite a blowout quarter and visible AI monetization, the company lacks an obvious new catalyst to justify an even loftier premium, and investors are increasingly parsing whether the “AI bubble” is inflating expectations faster than revenue can catch up. Background Microsoft reported a strong fiscal fourth quarter for FY25: revenue of $76.4...

Microsoft’s near-final Windows 11 25H2 build has quietly begun to appear as official ISO media on Microsoft’s delivery infrastructure, with Release Preview ISOs now discoverable by enthusiasts and the enablement-package (eKB) path — KB5054156 — confirmed as the primary in-place upgrade for patched 24H2 devices. Background / Overview Windows 11 version 25H2 is not being shipped as a traditional, full rebase feature update. Instead, Microsoft has used the same shared-servicing and...

Google’s Gemini is positioning itself as more than a chatbot — it’s being packaged, integrated, and promoted as a daily workhorse that can replace single-purpose assistants and win user loyalty through consistent utility rather than flash. Recent coverage and first‑hand user testimonials point to three converging dynamics: Gemini’s multimodal capabilities and agentic features, Google’s tight product integrations (notably across Chrome, Workspace and Google One), and a growing trend of users...

Principled Technologies’ new hands‑on evaluation argues that running a complete retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) stack entirely on Microsoft Azure — instead of splitting model hosting, search and compute across multiple clouds — can produce measurable gains in latency, simplify governance, and yield more predictable multi‑year costs for many common enterprise AI workloads. Background / Overview Principled Technologies (PT) built a canonical RAG application twice: once in a mixed...

Valve has put a firm date on the end of an era for legacy Windows builds: beginning January 1, 2026, the Steam desktop client will stop receiving updates and official support on 32‑bit versions of Windows — practically, that means Windows 10 (32‑bit) — a decision built on telemetry, upstream dependency shifts, and the economics of supporting a vanishingly small user base. Background / Overview Steam’s desktop client has been trimming old operating system targets for years; the 32‑bit x86...

Xbox’s new cross-device play history made one anecdotal fact impossible to ignore: in 2025, independent studios are not just competing with AAA publishers — for many players they’re eclipsing them in creativity, polish, and sheer hours played. Background What changed: Xbox’s cross-device play history Microsoft rolled out a play history feature that syncs recently launched games across console, PC, and handhelds, plus integrates cloud-playable titles into the Xbox PC app and console library...

Cluster Reply and Riverty have rolled out a Microsoft‑centric, AI‑enhanced omnichannel customer service platform — delivered in an accelerated production timeline — that consolidates voice, chat and e‑mail into a single Microsoft Dynamics 365 agent workspace and stages Microsoft Copilot Studio as the configurable AI behavior layer. Background Riverty, the fintech arm of Bertelsmann, handles a high‑volume payments and receivables business that the company describes as serving millions of...

Windows Vista did more than just introduce a flashy glass theme and a LOT of user complaints — it quietly shipped a raft of technologies that became the scaffolding for modern Windows, from GPU-first graphics and a new audio stack to system‑level security mitigations and background search. Many of the conveniences and protections people credit to Windows 7, 8, 10, or 11 were actually first delivered with Vista; this piece walks through ten of the most consequential of those introductions...

Linux quietly offers a set of desktop comforts that many longtime Windows users have never experienced — from lightweight, kernel-integrated drivers to live-boot trial sessions and near-instant, space-efficient system snapshots — and once you see them in action, it’s easy to understand why they frustrate Windows devotees who value control, customization, and minimal bloat. Background Linux has never been about market-share dominance; it’s always been about choice, transparency, and...

Microsoft has confirmed that its devices chief, Panos Panay, will take the stage at the end of October — and that confirmation has reignited expectations that Microsoft will use the autumn “Future Decoded” window to refresh multiple Surface-family products and surface new form factors, from LTE-equipped Surface Pros to high-performance Surface Book updates and the industry’s first serious push into always‑connected Windows PCs powered by smartphone-class silicon. Background Microsoft has...

Microsoft has quietly turned the Xbox PC app on Windows into a genuine, controller‑friendly game hub that now discovers and launches installed titles from third‑party launchers — Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG, Battle.net and more — while adding a new My apps shelf for quick access to storefronts and utilities. Background For years PC gamers have lived with an ecosystem of competing storefronts and launcher clients: Steam for discovery and community, Epic for exclusives, GOG for DRM‑free...

Principled Technologies’ new hands‑on benchmark argues that running an end‑to‑end Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG) application entirely on Microsoft Azure — rather than splitting model hosting, retrieval, and compute across providers — can deliver measurable gains in latency, simplify governance, and produce more predictable multi‑year costs for many enterprise AI workloads. Background / Overview Principled Technologies (PT), a commercial third‑party testing lab, built a canonical RAG...

Thirty-one years ago today Microsoft shipped Windows NT 3.5 — a quietly transformational release that turned the “New Technology” experiment into a credible platform for servers and workstations and set technical foundations still visible in Windows 11 and Windows Server today. Overview Windows NT 3.5 (codename Daytona) arrived as a pragmatic, performance-first update to Microsoft’s fledgling NT family. It did not radically change the user-facing shell — the classic Program Manager and File...

Apple’s latest wearable cycle leans into health, battery life and incremental hardware polish — and the new Apple Watch Series 11, Apple Watch SE 3 and Apple Watch Ultra 3 are already available for preorder with delivery slated to begin on September 19. Background: what just happened and why it matters Apple’s September hardware event again paired a new iPhone family with an updated Apple Watch lineup, positioning the watch as both a health device and a more independent, always‑connected...

Microsoft Taiwan will formally introduce the Surface Laptop to the local market in early August, bringing Microsoft’s first “true” clamshell Surface notebook to Taiwan with Windows 10 S preinstalled, a tiered SKU lineup starting in the low-to-mid NT$30,000 range, an introductory free upgrade path to Windows 10 Pro through the end of the year, and an Office 365 Personal subscription bundled on qualifying purchases. Background The Surface Laptop is Microsoft’s move to recast the Surface brand...

Valve’s latest decision to end support for 32‑bit Windows in Steam marks the final stage of a long, industry‑wide migration to 64‑bit computing—and while the change will touch only a vanishingly small slice of users, it has meaningful technical and security consequences that every Windows PC gamer should understand. Background Over the past decade the PC ecosystem steadily moved from 32‑bit (x86) to 64‑bit (x86‑64 / AMD64) as default. Microsoft’s own push—Windows 11 is 64‑bit only, and...

Cloud computing — and particularly sovereign cloud — has quietly become the fulcrum of the UAE’s digital transformation push, shaping how governments, banks, healthcare providers and logistics firms choose where and how to run their most sensitive workloads. Recent market studies and government-led programmes paint a clear picture: the UAE’s digital transformation market is expanding rapidly, cloud remains the dominant deployment model, and sovereign cloud offerings that combine hyperscale...

Microsoft appears to be quietly testing a native video‑wallpaper feature in Windows 11 Insider builds — a modern, DreamScene‑style capability that would let users set ordinary video files (MP4, MOV, MKV and others) as their desktop background directly from the OS — but the functionality is still hidden in preview code and its final behavior, rollout timing, and power/security policies remain provisional. Background Windows has flirted with animated desktop backdrops before. In 2007 Microsoft...

Cloud-first strategies are no longer a future aspiration in the UAE — they are the operational backbone of a national digital agenda that ties sovereign cloud, hyperscaler partnerships, and large-scale AI ambitions into a single, fast-moving transformation story. Background / Overview The UAE’s digital transformation market is entering a rapid scale-up phase: market research estimates put the UAE digital transformation market at USD 1.57 billion in 2025, with projections to reach USD 3.29...

I used a simple change—turning off nonessential startup apps—and cut my PC's boot wait by measurable seconds; the tweak is low-risk, reversible, and one of the fastest wins for real‑world responsiveness. In controlled tests on two machines (one HDD-based, one SSD-based) the boot time dropped consistently when startup programs were disabled, and a selective approach—keeping only essential apps enabled—delivered most of the benefit without sacrificing convenience. This feature explains exactly...