Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell go over the latest batch of preview updates for January 2025, including KB5050094! The big story of the week revolves around DeepSeek and its noticeable effects on the modern AI world. Sinofsky even wrote a big piece on the latest AI assistant!

Windows 11

Preview updates for Windows 11, 10 arrive ahead of February Patch Tuesday
Windows 11 - Taskbar preview improvements, Windows Studio Effects in the system tray, many File Explorer fixes, more
Windows 10 - New Outlook replaces Mail, Calendar, People
New Dev and Beta channel builds - Overdue battery icon updates in Dev, Snap Layout experiments in Beta
New Canary build today with new File Explorer home view tab
Microsoft to remove Dev Home from Windows - This never made sense, so that's fine, but its most important features will live on
Microsoft Edge for Windows now has a Scareware blocker in preview

AI

DeepSeek explodes out of the gate, sends Big Tech/AI stock reeling and opening up questions about how much money these companies are spending on AI
Nadella, Altman, Nvidia all react to this change in interesting ways
Steve Sinofsky - This was inevitable, disruption always comes from outside
Ahead of this blockbuster development, a look at how the Microsoft/OpenAI relationship is changing - and now we need another look
OpenAI announces Operator agent for ChatGPT in preview
Google is bringing new Gemini features to Android and Pixel
Google is also bringing NotebookLM to almost every Workspace tier, including the cheap one I (Paul) use, NotebookLM Plus to WS Standard and better

Microsoft

Microsoft preps smaller Surface Pro and Laptop models with Snapdragon chips for some reason
Microsoft is closing its UK-based "experience center"

Xbox

Thanks to Activision Blizzard, Microsoft is the biggest game publisher in the world
Phil Spencer: Xbox Series S a "real advantage" for coming portable gaming product
Phil Spencer says hardware still "critical" to Xbox. More like "critical condition," am I right?
No surprises at Xbox Developer_Direct, but a solid collection of games, including the new DOOM

Tips and Picks

Tip of the week: It's time to start watching Dave's Garage
App pick of the week: PowerToys, now with Zoomit
RunAs Radio this week: Querying for Breaches with Mark Morowcyznski
Brown liquor pick of the week: Blair Athol 12 Floral & Fauna

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell

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WW 917: There Is No 10 - DeepSeek AI, scareware blocker, Dev Home removal

Windows Weekly (Audio)