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Apple and Microsoft have pushed the desktop into sharply different directions this year: macOS Tahoe bets on a curated, privacy‑first, design‑led desktop infused with on‑device AI, while Windows 11 continues to trade on hardware variety, backward compatibility, and a rapidly expanding set of cloud‑enabled AI services. The PCMag Australia comparison lays out this split cleanly across hardware, multitasking, input methods, AI assistants, and gaming — and the practical takeaway is the same one...

Microsoft is rolling out a dedicated Channel Agent inside Microsoft Teams — an always-on, channel-scoped Copilot that ingests chat history, meeting recaps, files, and Planner boards to summarize conversations, draft status reports, create tasks, and act as a contextual subject-matter assistant for teams. Background / Overview Microsoft’s recent expansion of Microsoft 365 Copilot moves the AI experience from a solo productivity assistant to a set of collaboration-first agents that live where...

Microsoft’s Gaming Copilot has arrived on Windows in beta, and for PC players it promises something both simple and seductive: an AI in your Game Bar that can whisper strategies, spot on-screen problems, and even coach you through a brutal boss fight without forcing you to tab out of the game. Background Microsoft has been folding AI into everything from search to productivity for several years, and Gaming Copilot is the latest attempt to bring conversational AI into the play loop. The...

Microsoft has set a firm end-of-support date for Windows 10: after October 14, 2025 the operating system will no longer receive routine security updates, quality fixes, or standard technical support — and while your PC will still boot and run, staying on Windows 10 after that deadline materially increases risk and reduces operational resilience for everyday users. Background — why this matters now Windows 10 launched in 2015 and has been the default desktop OS for hundreds of millions of PCs...

Acer’s new Swift Edge 14 AI lands in the UK as an ultralight “Copilot+” notebook that pairs Intel’s Lunar Lake Core Ultra silicon with what Acer bills as the first laptop use of Corning’s matte‑glass OLED treatment, promising sharper outdoor legibility, local AI acceleration and a sub‑1 kg chassis built for Windows 11’s AI era. Background / Overview The Swift Edge 14 AI arrives at a moment when PC vendors are repositioning premium thin‑and‑light laptops around two ideas: on‑device AI and...

Microsoft’s recent performance is a study in steady, methodical expansion: the company reported a powerful quarter driven by cloud and AI adoption, yet public commentary — including the Seeking Alpha piece provided for review — frames Microsoft as “boring but steadily growing,” a mature franchise executing an expensive, high-stakes transition into AI infrastructure and productization. The public facts are clear: revenue of roughly $69.6 billion in the quarter ended December 31, 2024; net...

Microsoft is quietly testing native video wallpapers in Windows 11 Insider preview builds — a DreamScene‑style feature that lets ordinary video files (MP4, MKV, MOV and others) act as looping desktop backgrounds directly from Settings or a File Explorer context menu — but it remains experimental, gated behind an Insider flag and several important implementation questions still need answers. Background Windows has shipped animated desktop backgrounds before. In 2007 Microsoft released Windows...

Borderlands 4 players on NVIDIA’s RTX 50-series cards have been facing persistent crash-to-desktop and instability problems since launch, and the most reliable — and immediate — fix for many affected users is a driver rollback to an earlier GeForce driver; the pattern points to a regression introduced in recent 581.xx Game Ready drivers that destabilizes some Unreal Engine 5 titles on RTX 50 hardware. Background Borderlands 4 launched as a technically ambitious Unreal Engine 5 title that...

If you landed on the XboxAchievements page for Endless Legend 2 and were greeted with the message “The owner of this website has banned your IP address (104.196.9.116),” you are seeing a deliberate server-side block rather than a transient site outage—and there are concrete steps, implications, and alternatives to understand before attempting any workaround. Background / Overview Cloudflare and other web security/CDN services sit between millions of websites and their visitors. When a site...

Microsoft is quietly testing built‑in video wallpapers for Windows 11, a modern revival of Vista’s DreamScene that lets ordinary video files act as looping desktop backgrounds directly from Settings — and the change could alter how millions of users personalize their PCs. Background The idea of using motion as desktop wallpaper is not new: Microsoft experimented with it in 2007 as Windows DreamScene for Windows Vista Ultimate, a GPU‑accelerated feature that displayed WMV/MPG clips behind...

Microsoft has quietly started testing native video wallpapers in Windows 11 Insider Preview builds — a DreamScene‑style capability that lets users set ordinary video files (MP4, MKV and others) as looping desktop backgrounds from the standard Settings UI. Background / Overview For nearly two decades Windows lacked a built‑in way to make a video play behind desktop icons and windows. In 2007 Microsoft shipped Windows DreamScene for Windows Vista Ultimate, an experimental feature that let...

Windows 11 is quietly testing native video wallpapers — a modern, DreamScene‑style capability that lets ordinary video files behave as looping desktop backgrounds — and the change has started showing up in Insider preview builds, sparking a mix of nostalgia and practical questions about battery, security, and enterprise control. Background Windows has flirted with animated desktop backgrounds before. In 2007 Microsoft shipped Windows DreamScene for Windows Vista Ultimate, an experimental...

Perplexity’s new Email Assistant promises to turn an overflowing inbox into a working assistant that schedules meetings, drafts replies in your voice, and auto-prioritizes messages — but it arrives as an exclusive, high-cost feature with real privacy and reliability trade‑offs that every Windows power user and IT admin should weigh carefully. Background Perplexity has been pushing quickly from an “answer engine” into a full agent platform: over 2025 the company launched on-device and web...

Acer’s new Swift Edge 14 AI lands as an ultralight Copilot+ laptop that pairs Intel’s Lunar Lake “Core Ultra” silicon with what Acer bills as the first-ever Corning Gorilla Glass Matte Pro treatment on a laptop, promising bright OLED visuals without the usual glare — a combination aimed squarely at creators, mobile professionals, and anyone chasing the first genuinely usable matte OLED on a thin‑and‑light machine. Overview Acer’s Swift Edge 14 AI compresses modern PC trends into one chassis...

Windows Terminal has quietly become the practical way most Windows users — from hobbyists to full-time devs and sysadmins — now manage command‑line work, and its profile system is the single feature that makes traditional shortcuts look increasingly quaint. Background Windows Terminal began as Microsoft’s attempt to modernize the Windows command‑line experience: a host that runs the shells you already use (Command Prompt, PowerShell, PowerShell Core, WSL distributions, Git Bash, cloud...

The physical Xbox game is slipping into the margins of the hobby — not overnight, but decisively — as publishers, platform holders, and retailers reshape how games are sold, preserved, and experienced. Recent industry statements and observable retail behavior make one thing clear: fewer Xbox titles are shipping as boxed discs, and that trend is driven by economics, technology, and shifting consumer habits as much as by corporate strategy. Background / Overview Physical media has been the...

Microsoft has set a firm deadline: Windows 10 will stop receiving built‑in security updates on October 14, 2025, and that decision has pushed a growing number of users toward two very different survival strategies — Microsoft’s own Extended Security Updates (ESU) program and third‑party “micropatch” vendors such as 0patch. The result is a real-world experiment in what modern OS end‑of‑life looks like: one option from the vendor that buys time under strict rules, and one from an independent...

Windows 11’s next annual refresh is officially on the doorstep: Microsoft’s 25H2 update has reached final pre-release builds and is being distributed to partners and insiders, but the real headline for many users may be the overhauled Start menu — a change already living, dormant, in Windows 11 24H2 and rolling out separately via phased updates. Background / Overview Microsoft has shifted Windows 11’s annual cadence into a model that often stages features inside an existing servicing branch...

Microsoft is quietly testing a native “video wallpaper” capability in Windows 11 Insider builds that brings back a DreamScene‑style feature — letting ordinary video files (MP4, MKV, MOV and others) be set as looping desktop backgrounds directly from Settings or File Explorer — but the experience is still experimental, gated behind flags, and important details about power, accessibility, and enterprise controls remain unresolved. Background / Overview Windows has flirted with animated desktop...

The Cleveland Browns snapped an eight-game skid with a dramatic, last-second 55-yard walk-off field goal by rookie kicker Andre Szmyt, rallying from a 10–0 fourth-quarter deficit to beat the Green Bay Packers 13–10 in Week 3 — a finish defined by a game-turning interception, a crucial blocked Packers field goal, and special teams delivering the final punch. Overview The Week 3 showdown at Huntington Bank Field will be remembered more for its final 30 seconds than for the first 59 minutes...