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.
It’s a terrible time to buy a laptop (sorry), but if you gotta do it, here are some to consider.
Mico launched in Copilot’s voice mode less than a year ago.
Windows Central shared photos showing what appears to be a prototype of a rumored, unreleased Windows phone “that was expected to ship in 2014 under the Surface moniker.” It even has a design similar to a Surface laptop and reportedly included a Qualcomm chip and a 720p display.
Xbox and PC gamers in Australia are reportedly being notified that they’ll soon need to verify their age before purchasing 18+ rated apps and games on both the Xbox Store and Microsoft Store. Existing purchases and downloads won’t be affected. Microsoft has a September 9th deadline to comply with Australian online safety rules, or risk facing an almost AUS$50 million fine (about $34.9 million in US monies).
3
Verge Score
Short answer: Yes. Longer answer: Yeeeeeeeeeessssssss.
And that’s a good thing, because its own 8GB Surface Laptop 13 struggles so much that it’s a tough buy. Microsoft’s other new areas of “focus” include making Windows onboarding and family controls easier to set up and making “voice [control] more natural and fluid” across apps.
[Windows Insider Blog]
Project Perception uses a series of AI agents to reason across a company’s data, tools, and workflows to detect potential security holes and patch them before they’re exploited.
Microsoft is powering the tool with its new MAI-Cyber-1-Flash model, which it says “delivers world-class performance at 50% of the cost of leading models.”
[The Official Microsoft Blog]
8
Verge Score
The Framework Laptop 13 Pro has it all. But RAMageddon spiked its price.
6
Verge Score
The new entry-level Surface Laptop 13-inch is last year’s same great hardware with less memory and a higher price.
The source code for Microsoft Comic Chat is now available, opening up the workings of a project released in 1996 that turned the walls of text from chats into comic strips, generating panels and illustrations that represent the chat and are still backward-compatible with text-only clients.
I wasn’t familiar with the app until now, although it apparently shipped as part of Internet Explorer 3.0, and used Microsoft typographer Vincent Connare’s then-new font for its speech bubbles.
This Windows Central rumor says Windows 11 could add a dedicated flyout menu for the phone companion to show your phone’s status and things like DND status or “find my phone.” Other possible updates could bring a standalone SMS syncing app and sync your clipboard history beyond just the last entry.
Game Developer reports the OneBGS union is holding the rally in support of laid off developers on July 15th at ZeniMax offices in Rockville, Austin, Dallas, and Montreal, as the union announced in an email to members:
“Microsoft and ZeniMax leadership have made the devastating decision to slash over 440 positions across BGS, ZOS, id, ZWU(QA) and ZeniMax corporate (including CTO and CSUR). Because we organized and certified our unions, we have hard-won legal rights and protections that non-unionized studios simply do not have. The company wants us to accept this as a done deal and quietly disappear. We won’t let that happen. Our next steps are to mobilize. We need every single member visible and unified.”
The Doom developer is reportedly the latest Xbox studio to be hit by Microsoft’s ongoing layoffs, prompting a new variant on an age-old question.
Tal Rico:
Can Microsoft run (the studio that makes) Doom? Apparently not very well.
Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.
Major changes are looming for Microsoft’s gaming division after years of bad decisions.
Zac Bowden at Windows Central posted this video of Aion, a stripped-down Windows concept made for agentic AI that popped up on the BetaWiki Discord, and says sources have confirmed to him that it is a real video made in 2024.
There’s no indication whether an OS like this would actually ship or if it’s part of something like Project Solara, but it’s very Chrome OS-like, built around the Edge browser and web apps.
You know what weeping gamers really want? A burned CD with their GitHub repo on it. Fun novelty if you can get it, though. “This is a limited run, so signing up doesn’t guarantee one,” writes Microsoft-owned GitHub.
