Featured content

The first time you boot the Xbox full‑screen experience on an OG ROG Ally, it feels like someone quietly unhooked Windows from the device and slid a console‑style launcher in its place — but the reality is more pragmatic and far more interesting: Microsoft has layered a controller‑first Xbox shell on top of Windows 11 and used simple, surgical resource trimming to squeeze measurable performance and battery headroom out of handheld hardware. Background: what the Xbox full‑screen experience...

Apple’s long-standing refusal to put touchscreens on MacBooks appears to be changing: multiple supply‑chain reports and a high‑profile analyst now say an OLED MacBook Pro with a built‑in touch panel is moving toward mass production, a shift that would bring Apple’s laptop strategy closer to the Surface‑style touchscreen laptops Microsoft has iterated on for more than a decade. Background: the tug‑of‑war over touch on laptops Apple’s resistance to touchscreen laptops is well documented. In...

The gaming‑PC placebo is real: dozens of forum threads and decades of benching show that social comparison — a buddy’s boast about “10 more FPS” or “100MHz more core clock” — routinely convinces otherwise‑happy players that something is wrong with their system, even when subjective gameplay was fine before the comparison. This dynamic sits at the heart of the Windows 10/11 performance debate: measurable deltas do exist between OS builds and settings, but perception often amplifies tiny...

For privacy-conscious Windows users, encrypting DNS in Windows 11 is one of those rare, high-impact, low-effort settings that delivers real protection with almost no downside — and it’s now easier to enable system‑wide than most people realize. The recent How‑To Geek walkthrough frames the change as an “overlooked” privacy upgrade and gives a practical GUI walkthrough for turning on DNS over HTTPS (DoH) in Settings; the same technique applies whether you choose Cloudflare, Google, or another...

After decades of promises that never quite fixed Windows Search, Microsoft has finally shipped a working semantic search layer to Windows 11 — but it’s arriving in a very specific way: behind the Copilot+ hardware gate, previewed to Insiders, and baked into both the system search surfaces and the Copilot app. The result is meaningful progress: search that understands phrases and context, works locally on-device, and integrates into File Explorer and Settings — yet it’s also a cautious...

Microsoft’s latest Paint update lands as a surprisingly consequential usability upgrade: a native, editable project container (.paint) and a per-tool opacity slider for Pencil and Brush tools, both of which ship to Windows Insiders now and materially change how the app fits into everyday image editing workflows. Background / Overview Paint’s transformation has been incremental but steady. What began as a simple raster doodling utility has been rebuilt over several Insiders releases into a...

Microsoft has quietly begun testing a more integrated, surface-level approach to Account management in Windows 11 through the latest Insider builds (delivered as KB5065786), and the changes deserve attention from everyday users, power users, and IT administrators alike. These updates — visible in both the Dev and Beta channel flights — bring a consolidated Microsoft Account experience into Settings and other system surfaces, while also continuing a broader push toward deeper...

Microsoft has shipped Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27950 to the Canary Channel, a compact but meaningful flight that fixes a string of installer rollbacks, cleans up several UI and resource regressions, and temporarily reverts the new “Advanced” Settings page back to the prior “For Developers” experience while further polishing is completed. Background / Overview Canary-channel releases are the bleeding edge of Windows platform work: they’re used to validate low-level plumbing, early UI...

Medline’s announcement that it will co-develop Mpower—an AI-powered, Microsoft Azure-backed “digital control tower” for healthcare supply chains—and that Northwestern Medicine and Providence will pilot the system represents a deliberate, high-stakes push to move inventory decisioning, clinical substitution workflows, and supplier orchestration into a cloud-first, AI-native stack designed for scale and resilience. Early details from Medline and independent reporting show Mpower is being built...

Microsoft appears to be quietly experimenting with an “AI agent” entry point for the Windows 11 taskbar — a small, persistent companion that could surface context-aware assistance, link into Copilot features, and even perform multi‑step actions on behalf of the user. Traces of a feature labeled Taskbar Companion and references to “agentic companions” and a “Composer on Taskbar” have been discovered in recent Insider and server preview builds, suggesting Microsoft is prototyping a...

Workday and Microsoft have announced a practical, identity-first integration that lets organizations register, verify, and govern AI agents alongside human employees by linking Microsoft’s agent runtime and identity tooling with Workday’s new Agent System of Record (ASOR), enabling agents built in Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio to receive Microsoft Entra Agent IDs and be managed within Workday’s governance, finance, and HR controls. Background Enterprises are moving quickly from pilots...

Microsoft has given Windows 10 users one clear, short-lived option to avoid an immediate upgrade: a consumer Extended Security Updates (ESU) program that can keep eligible PCs receiving critical security patches for a single extra year — but only if you meet the prerequisites and enroll before the cutoffs Microsoft has set. Background Microsoft set a firm end-of-support date for consumer editions of Windows 10: October 14, 2025. After that date, routine feature updates, most quality fixes...

Microsoft’s new handheld-focused “Xbox mode” for Windows 11 is already being run on existing Windows handhelds — in some cases by users who have forced the mode early via Insider/Release Preview builds and system tweaks — giving owners of devices like the original ASUS ROG Ally and other Windows gaming handhelds the chance to try a console-style launcher and reclaim system resources months before OEM‑shipped Ally devices arrive on store shelves. Background Microsoft and ASUS unveiled a...

Millions of PC gamers are racing to replace whole systems — not just install a new OS — as the clock ticks down toward Windows 10’s official end of support on October 14, 2025, a change that industry researchers say is already reshaping the PC gaming hardware market and buying behavior. Background / Overview Microsoft has set a firm end-of-support date for Windows 10: after October 14, 2025, the company will stop issuing free security updates, feature updates, and technical support for that...

Mozilla has quietly shipped Firefox 143.0.1 — a focused, emergency patch whose sole purpose is to stop a class of tab crashes caused by third-party DLL injection on Windows systems, with multiple reports pointing to Trend Micro's tmmon64.dll as a common trigger. Background Firefox 143 arrived as a major feature release with new UI conveniences and platform improvements, but like any large browser update it also exposed edge cases where third‑party Windows code interferes with Firefox...

The debate about whether Windows 10 or Windows 11 delivers the better gaming experience is no longer a purely technical argument — it has become a cultural one, tied up with benchmarking obsession, perceived differences versus measurable gains, and a growing tension between security features that protect systems and performance features that keep games smooth; a recent TechPowerUp forum thread captures this tension neatly, arguing that many gamers fall prey to the placebo effect and that...

Microsoft has quietly given many Windows 10 users a narrow, conditional lifeline: enroll your PC in the consumer Extended Security Updates (ESU) program before October 14, 2025 and you can receive security-only updates for one more year — through October 13, 2026 — but the window is tight and the trade-offs are real. Background / Overview Microsoft set a firm end-of-support (EOL) date for Windows 10: October 14, 2025. After that day, consumer editions of Windows 10 will no longer receive...

Microsoft today pushed another Dev Channel flight: Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.6690 (KB5065786), a focused cumulative update for Insiders running Windows 11, version 25H2, that continues the program’s push to fold Copilot-driven experiences deeper into the shell while addressing a set of reliability and device-specific regressions. The flight, published on September 19, 2025, expands Click to Do capabilities (including Copilot-powered translation on Copilot+ PCs), experiments with...

Valve is ending support for 32‑bit Windows on the Steam desktop client, setting a firm cutoff that marks the final mainstream exit of 32‑bit Windows from one of the largest PC gaming platforms and giving the small remaining cohort of users a clear migration deadline. Background Modern PC software and drivers have migrated to a 64‑bit baseline over the last decade. Microsoft shipped Windows 11 as a 64‑bit‑only operating system, and Windows 10 has been the last broadly available edition that...

Microsoft has released Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 27950 to the Canary Channel, a compact flight focused on stability fixes, a temporary UI rollback for Advanced Settings, and several targeted reliability improvements for taskbar previews, Dynamic Lighting, and gaming overlays. Background / Overview Windows Insider Canary builds are the earliest public preview tier for platform-level changes. They are intended as an experimental playground for long-lead platform work, kernel-level...