It might not get the same kind of attention as Google and Apple, but Microsoft is still one of the biggest and most powerful tech companies operating today. It runs Azure, one of the biggest cloud computing services, and maintains Windows 11 and the whole Office suite of software. It also makes plenty of Surface hardware and has a whole slew of gaming products, including the Xbox Series X. But the company is ever expanding — building new hardware, acquiring new game studios, and making sure that even if Microsoft doesn’t run your phone, it can touch plenty of the apps on it.
Microsoft isn’t saying where it will host Build next, after holding it in Seattle since 2017.
You can test this new ‘enhanced search’ feature in beta versions of Edge.
Who did the glass-like design first? Was it Apple with its Aqua transparency effects in 2000, or Microsoft with its Aero Glass theme in Windows Vista in 2007? Either way, Microsoft seems to think Apple’s Liquid Glass design bears some resemblance to its glass look in Windows Media Center, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. Whatever you think, just don’t call it that.
Although the original dual-screen Ayaneo Flip was a flop, the company confirmed it was committed to the line and today announced its new Flip 1S DS. The most obvious upgrade is a 7-inch 1080P OLED main screen with a larger 4.5-inch secondary LCD touchscreen with a 1620×1080 pixel resolution.
It will be powered by an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor, run Windows 11, and feature TMR joysticks, but pricing and availability isn’t known yet.
Xbox chief Phil Spencer just casually revealed Gears of War: E-Day is coming in 2026, 25 years after the launch of the original Xbox. It’s arriving alongside a “the next Forza,” according to Spencer, and “the return of a classic that’s been with us since the beginning.” That classic sure sounds like the Halo CE remaster I wrote about last year.
If you already bought a Windows gaming handheld, you might not need to upgrade your hardware to get the overhauled Xbox app, Game Bar, and Windows OS that Microsoft and Asus just announced.
Xbox exec Roanne Sones:
The Xbox full-screen experience will first come to the ROG Xbox Ally and the ROG Xbox Ally X, and our next focus will be updating the in-market ROG Ally and the ROG Ally X. Similar full-screen Xbox experiences will be rolling out to other Windows handhelds, starting next year.”
“You can now easily pause, play, skip forward or backward, and seek via the progress bar right from the picture-in-picture window,” according to a blog post. I don’t use Edge, but these seem like good upgrades.
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Microsoft’s tablet and laptop hybrid now has the right mix of design, power, and battery life.
A notification on Washington’s statewide Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) layoff and closure database says the exact number is 305. According to a statement from Microsoft to GeekWire, that number is in addition to the 6,000 layoffs it announced last month,
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Microsoft’s slightly cheaper notebook is great, but Windows on Arm can still complicate things for some.
An interview with Microsoft’s new CoreAI chief.
Former Surface chief Panos Panay left Microsoft for Amazon nearly two years ago, and now rumors are emerging that Amazon is in the early stages of creating a “large-sized foldable device” that might compete with Huawei’s folding laptop. That’s the rumor from Apple supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who says the device, if development progresses, is “projected to enter mass production in late 2026 or 2027.” Perhaps the Surface Neo will finally become an Amazon reality.
The big focuses of Microsoft’s Build 2025 keynote were AI agents, the open agentic web, and Copilot upgrades that aim to solve coding bugs in a pinch. Microsoft’s Azure AI Foundry is also expanding its model list to include Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini from Elon Musk’s xAI. Check out our video for more.
