Microsoft's Windows Recall feature is attracting controversy before even venturing out of preview. From a report: The principle is simple. Windows takes a snapshot of a user's active screen every few seconds and dumps it to disk. The user can then scroll through the snapshots and, when something is selected, the user is given options to interact with the content.

Mozilla's Chief Product Officer, Steve Teixeira, told The Register: "Mozilla is concerned about Windows Recall. From a browser perspective, some data should be saved, and some shouldn't. Recall stores not just browser history, but also data that users type into the browser with only very coarse control over what gets stored. While the data is stored in encrypted format, this stored data represents a new vector of attack for cybercriminals and a new privacy worry for shared computers.

"Microsoft is also once again playing gatekeeper and picking which browsers get to win and lose on Windows -- favoring, of course, Microsoft Edge. Microsoft's Edge allows users to block specific websites and private browsing activity from being seen by Recall. Other Chromium-based browsers can filter out private browsing activity but lose the ability to block sensitive websites (such as financial sites) from Recall. "Right now, there's no documentation on how a non-Chromium based, third-party browser, such as Firefox, can protect user privacy from Recall. Microsoft did not engage our cooperation on Recall, but we would have loved for that to be the case, which would have enabled us to partner on giving users true agency over their privacy, regardless of the browser they choose."

A consumer-grade spyware app has been found running on the check-in systems of at least three Wyndham hotels across the United States, TechCrunch reported Wednesday. From the report: The app, called pcTattletale, stealthily and continually captured screenshots of the hotel booking systems, which contained guest details and customer information. Thanks to a security flaw in the spyware, these screenshots are available to anyone on the internet, not just the spyware's intended users.

This is the most recent example of consumer-grade spyware exposing sensitive information because of a security flaw in the spyware itself. It's also the second known time that pcTattletale has exposed screenshots of the devices that the app is installed on. Several other spyware apps in recent years had security bugs or misconfigurations that exposed the private and personal data of unwitting device owners, in some cases prompting action by government regulators. pcTattletale allows whomever controls it to remotely view the target's Android or Windows device and its data, from anywhere in the world. pcTattletale's website says the app "runs invisibly in the background on their workstations and can not be detected."

An anonymous reader shares a report: For those of us who came of age in the early days of personal computing, the names "Intel 486" and "Windows XP" evoke a nostalgic whirlwind of memories. The 486 was the hot new CPU of the early 90s, while Windows XP became a household name and Microsoft's most popular OS over a decade later. But did you ever imagine these two icons of different eras could be merged into an unholy union? Well, start brushing off those vintage 486 rigs, because a modder has actually made it happen. Going by the name Dietmar on the MSFN forums, he has somehow managed to get Microsoft's beloved Windows XP running on the ancient 486 architecture.

It's worth mentioning that these two were never meant to coexist. The first 486 chips hit the market way back in 1989, while Windows XP landed over a decade later in 2001. The 486 represented a major breakthrough when Intel unveiled it in 1989. Packing over a million transistors, it remained Intel's primary x86 chip until the arrival of the Pentium in 1993. Such was the processor's longevity that Intel continued manufacturing it for embedded systems until 2007. Still, 486 systems were simply too underpowered to run XP, which needed at least a Pentium-class processor from the 586 generation - or any compatible chip that ran at 233MHz or higher. Meanwhile, the i486 could only do 133MHz. It also needed at least 64MB of RAM and at least 1.5GB of storage.

Umar Shakir reports via The Verge: Microsoft is adding a new Advanced Paste feature to PowerToys for Windows 11 that can convert your clipboard content on the fly with the power of AI. The new feature can help people speed up their workflows by doing things like copying code in one language and pasting it in another, although its best tricks require OpenAI API credits.

Advanced Paste is included in PowerToys version 0.81 and, once enabled, can be activated with a special key command: Windows Key + Shift + V. That opens an Advanced Paste text window that offers paste conversion options including plaintext, markdown, and JSON. If you enable Paste with AI in the Advanced Paste settings, you'll also see an OpenAI prompt where you can enter the conversion you want -- summarized text, translations, generated code, a rewrite from casual to professional style, Yoda syntax, or whatever you can think to ask for.

Sean Hollister reports via The Verge: At Build, Microsoft now says it's adding native version control to File Explorer by integrating systems like Git, letting you see new changes and comments directly from the app. Here's a cropped and zoomed version of the provided screenshot so you can get a better look. [...] Microsoft says it's also letting File Explorer natively compress files to 7-zip and TAR; currently, the right-click context menu has a "Compress to ZIP file" option, but ZIP is thought to be a bit antiquated in terms of how much compression you get.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Computer pioneer Gordon Bell, who as an early employee of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) played a key role in the development of several influential minicomputer systems and also co-founded the first major computer museum, passed away on Friday, according to Bell Labs veteran John Mashey. Mashey announced Bell's passing in a social media post on Tuesday morning. "I am very sad to report [the] death May 17 at age 89 of Gordon Bell, famous computer pioneer, a founder of Computer Museum in Boston, and a force behind the @ComputerHistory here in Silicon Valley, and good friend since the 1980s," wrote Mashey in his announcement. "He succumbed to aspiration pneumonia in Coronado, CA."

Bell was a pivotal figure in the history of computing and a notable champion of tech history, having founded Boston's Computer Museum in 1979, which later became the heart of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, with his wife Gwen Bell. He was also the namesake of the ACM's prestigious Gordon Bell Prize, created to spur innovations in parallel processing. Bell also mentored at Microsoft in 1995, where he "studied telepresence technologies and served as the subject of the MyLifeBits life-logging project," reports Ars. "The initiative aimed to realize Vannevar Bush's vision of a system that could store all the documents, photos, and audio a person experienced in their lifetime."

Former Windows VP Steven Sinofsky said Bell "was immeasurably helpful at Microsoft where he was a founding advisor and later full time leader in Microsoft Research. He advised and supported countless researchers, projects, and product teams. He was always supportive and insightful beyond words. He never hesitated to provide insights and a few sparks at so many of the offsites that were so important to the evolution of Microsoft."

"His memory is a blessing to so many," added Sinofsky in a post memorializing Bell. "His impact on all of us in technology will be felt for generations. May he rest in peace."

Microsoft Paint is getting a new image generator tool called Cocreator that can generate images based on text prompts and doodles. Engadget reports: During a demo at its Surface event, the company showed off how Cocreator combines your own drawings with text prompts to create an image. There's also a "creativity slider" that allows you to control how much you want AI to take over compared with your original art. As Microsoft pointed out, the combination of text prompts and your own brush strokes enables faster edits. It could also help provide a more precise rendering than what you'd be able to achieve with DALL-E or another text-to-image generator alone.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft is going all-in on Arm-powered Windows PCs today with the introduction of a Snapdragon X Elite-powered Surface Pro convertible and Surface Laptop, and there are inevitable comparisons to draw with another big company that recently shifted from Intel's processors to Arm-based designs: Apple. A huge part of the Apple Silicon transition's success was Rosetta 2, a translation layer that makes it relatively seamless to run most Intel Mac apps on an Apple Silicon Mac with no extra effort required from the user or the app's developer. Windows 11 has similar translation capabilities, and with the Windows 11 24H2 update, that app translation technology is getting a name: Prism.

Microsoft says that Prism isn't just a new name for the same old translation technology. Translated apps should run between 10 and 20 percent faster on the same Arm hardware after installing the Windows 11 24H2 update, offering some trickle-down benefits that users of the handful of Arm-based Windows 11 PCs should notice even if they don't shell out for new hardware. The company says that Prism's performance should be similar to Rosetta's, though obviously this depends on the speed of the hardware you're running it on. Microsoft also claims that Prism will further improve the translation layer's compatibility with x86 apps, though the company didn't get into detail about the exact changes it had made on this front.

Microsoft today unveiled Recall, a new AI-powered feature for Windows 11 PCs, at its Build 2024 conference. Recall aims to improve local searches by making them as efficient as web searches, allowing users to quickly retrieve anything they've seen on their PC. Using voice commands and contextual clues, Recall can find specific emails, documents, chat threads, and even PowerPoint slides.

The feature uses semantic associations to make connections, as demonstrated by Microsoft Product Manager Caroline Hernandez, who searched for a blue dress and refined the query with specific details. Microsoft said that Recall's processing is done locally, ensuring data privacy and security. The feature utilizes over 40 local multi-modal small language models to recognize text, images, and video.

"Blue Origin's tourism rocket has launched passengers to the edge of space for the first time in nearly two years," reports CNN, "ending a hiatus prompted by a failed uncrewed test flight." The New Shepard rocket and capsule lifted off at 9:36 a.m. CT (10:36 a.m. ET) from Blue Origin's facilities on a private ranch in West Texas.

NS-25, Blue Origin's seventh crewed flight to date, carried six customers aboard the capsule: venture capitalist Mason Angel; Sylvain Chiron, founder of the French craft brewery Brasserie Mont-Blanc; software engineer and entrepreneur Kenneth L. Hess; retired accountant Carol Schaller; aviator Gopi Thotakura; and Ed Dwight, a retired US Air Force captain selected by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to be the nation's first Black astronaut candidate... Dwight completed that challenge and reached the edge of space at the age of 90, making him the oldest person to venture to such heights, according to a spokesperson from Blue Origin...

"It's a life-changing experience," he said. "Everybody needs to do this."

The rocket booster landed safely a couple minutes prior to the capsule. During the mission, the crew soared to more than three times the speed of sound, or more than 2,000 miles per hour. The rocket vaulted the capsule past the Kármán line, an area 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth's surface that is widely recognized as the altitude at which outer space begins...
"And at the peak of the flight, passengers experienced a few minutes of weightlessness and striking views of Earth through the cabin windows."

In a press release today, the best music player of the 1990s announced that it'll open up its source code to developers worldwide. "Winamp will open up its code for the player used on Windows, enabling the entire community to participate in its development," said the company. "This is an invitation to global collaboration, where developers worldwide can contribute their expertise, ideas, and passion to help this iconic software evolve."

Alexandre Saboundjian, CEO of Winamp, explains: "This is a decision that will delight millions of users around the world. Our focus will be on new mobile players and other platforms. We will be releasing a new mobile player at the beginning of July. Still, we don't want to forget the tens of millions of users who use the software on Windows and will benefit from thousands of developers' experience and creativity. Winamp will remain the owner of the software and will decide on the innovations made in the official version."

In an op-ed on Windows Central, the site's co-managing editor Jez Corden laments Microsoft's "short-sighted" decision-making and "inconsistent" investment in its products and services, which he argues has led to a loss of trust among customers and missed opportunities in the tech industry. Despite Microsoft's advancements in AI and cloud computing, the company has made "baffling" decisions such as shutting down Windows Phone, under-investing in Xbox, and canceling promising Surface products.

The author argues that Microsoft's lack of commitment to security, customer support, and long-term quality has "damaged" its reputation and hindered its potential for growth. Examples include recent hacking scandals, poor customer service experiences, and the aggressive promotion of Microsoft Edge at the expense of user choice. The author also expresses concern over Microsoft's handling of the Xbox brand, particularly the decision to release exclusive games on PlayStation, which could undermine the reasons for customers to choose Xbox. The op-ed concludes that while Microsoft has the potential to be a leader in the tech industry, its pattern of short-sighted decisions and failure to learn from past mistakes has led to a growing sense of doubt among its customers and observers.

Tech columnist and venture investor MG Siegler, commenting on the new iPad Pro: I love the iPad for the things it's good at. And I love the MacBook for the things it's good at. What I want is less a completely combined device and more a single device that can run both macOS and iPadOS. And this new iPad Pro, again equipped with a chip faster than any MacBook, can do that if Apple allowed it to.

At first, maybe it's dual boot. That is, just let the iPad Pro load up macOS if it's attached to the Magic Keyboard and use the screen as a regular (but beautiful) monitor -- no touch. Over time, maybe macOS is just a "mode" inside of iPadOS -- complete with some elements updated to be touch-friendly, but not touch-first. Steven Sinofsky, the former head of Microsoft's Windows division, chiming in: It is not unusual for customers to want the best of all worlds. It is why Detroit invented convertibles and el caminos.

But the idea of a "dual boot" device is just nuts. It is guaranteed the only reality is it is running the wrong OS all the time for whatever you want to do. It is a toaster-refrigerator. Only techies like devices that "presto-change" into something else. Regular humans never flocked to El Caminos, and even today SUVs just became station wagons and almost none actually go off road :-)

Two things that keep going unanswered if you really want macOS on an iPad device:

1. What software on Mac do you want for an iPad device experience? What software will get rewritten for touch? If you want "touch-enabled" check out what happened on the Windows desktop. Nearly everything people say they want isn't features as much as the mouse interaction model. People want overlapping windows, a desktop of folders, infinitely resizable windows, and so on. These don't work on touch very well and certainly not for people who don't want to futz.
2. Will you be happy with battery life? The physics of an iPad mean the battery is 2/3rds the size of a Mac battery. Do you really want that? I don't. The reason the iPad is the 5.x mm device is because the default doesn't have a keyboard holding the battery. This is about the realities. The metaphors that people like on a desktop, heck that they love, just don't work with the blunt instrument of touch. It might be possible to build all new metaphors that use only tough and thus would be great on an iPad but that isn't what they tried. The device grew out of a phone. It's only their incredible work on iPhone that led to Mx silicon and their tireless work on the Mac-centric frameworks that delivered a big chunk (but not all) the privacy, reliability, battery life, security, etc. of the phone on Mac. [...]

Dan Robinson reports via The Register: VMware has made another small but notable post-merger concession to users: the Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro desktop hypervisor products will now be free for personal use. The cloud and virtualization biz, now a Broadcom subsidiary, has announced that its Pro apps will be available under two license models: a "Free Personal Use" or a "Paid Commercial Use" subscription for organizations. Workstation Pro is available for PC users running Windows or Linux, while Fusion Pro is available for Mac systems with either Intel CPUs or Apple's own processors. The two products allow users to create a virtual machine on their local computer for the purpose of running a different operating system or creating a sandbox in which to run certain software. [...]

According to VMware, users will get to decide for themselves if their use case calls for a commercial subscription. There are no functional differences between the two versions, the company states, and the only visual difference is that the free version displays the text: "This product is licensed for personal use only." "This means that everyday users who want a virtual lab on their Mac, Windows, or Linux computer can do so for free simply by registering and downloading the bits from the new download portal located at support.broadcom.com," VMware says. Customers that require a paid commercial subscription must purchase through an authorized Broadcom Advantage partner.

The move also means that VMware's Workstation Player and Fusion Player products are effectively redundant as the Pro products now serve the same role, and so those will no longer be offered for purchase. Organizations with commercial licenses for Fusion Player 13 or Workstation Player 17 can continue to use these, however, and they will continue to be supported for existing end of life (EOL) and end of general support (EoGS) dates.

OpenAI has launched an official macOS app for ChatGPT, with a Windows version coming "later this year." "Both free and paid users will be able to access the new app, but it will only be available to ChatGPT Plus users starting today before a broader rollout in 'the coming weeks,'" reports The Verge. From the report: In the demo shown by OpenAI, users could open the ChatGPT desktop app in a small window, alongside another program. They asked ChatGPT questions about what's on their screen -- whether by typing or saying it. ChatGPT could then respond based on what it "sees." OpenAI says users can ask ChatGPT a question by using the Option + Space keyboard shortcut, as well as take and discuss screenshots within the app. Further reading: OpenAI Launches New Free Model GPT-4o

The Register provides a retrospective look at how Microsoft "absorbed the handset division of Nokia" ten years ago, only to kill the unit two years later and write it off as a tax loss. What went wrong? "It was a fatal combination of bad management, a market evolving in ways hidebound people didn't predict, and some really (with a few superb exceptions) terrible products," reports The Register. From the report: Like Nokia, Windows Mobile's popularity peaked in 2007, then started to drop away. The iPhone was the tech item of choice for fashionistas, Blackberry was seen as essential for serious business, and Android -- with Google as its new owner -- was gaining traction. Microsoft by that time had a new CEO in Steve Ballmer, who completely and famously failed to see the shifting sands in the mobile market. He dismissed the iPhone as a threat to what he thought was Windows Mobile's unassailable market position, and was roundly mocked for it. So the scene was set for a mobile standards war, and Steve Ballmer staked his professional pride on winning it. Microsoft recruited Nokia to help out. [...]

Under [Executive VP of Microsoft Stephen Elop's] leadership, a closer working relationship with Microsoft was a given -- but in 2013 Redmond announced it was going the whole hog and buying Nokia's handset business outright for $7.2 billion. The deal was done in April 2014, a decade ago from today. Microsoft also got a ten-year license on Nokia's patents and the option to renew in perpetuity. It also got Elop back, as executive vice president of the Microsoft Devices Group. That meant stepping down as CEO of Nokia, for which he trousered an 18.8 million bonus package -- a payoff the Finnish prime minister at the time called "outrageous." Nokia retained its networking business in Finland. It purchased Siemens' half of the Nokia Siemens Networks joint venture and renamed in Nokia Networks. The Nokia board rolled the dice again on hiring another non-Suomi manager, Rajeev Suri, and this time hit a double D20 in D&D terms.

When Ballmer stepped down from the helm at Microsoft in 2014 -- shortly before the Nokia deal completion -- he left a hot mess to deal with. His plan had been to develop the mobile operating system in conjunction with Windows 10, and Windows Mobile 10 was supposed to be a part of a unified code environment. While Windows 10 on the desktop wasn't a bad operating system, Windows Mobile 10 really was. The promised synergy just didn't happen -- it was power-hungry, clunky, and about as popular as a rattlesnake in a pinata. It was this mess that Satya Nadella faced when he took over the reins. Nadella was never very keen on the phone platform and spent more time in press conferences talking about cricket or the cloud than Microsoft's mobile ambitions. It was clear to all that this really wasn't working. Elop was laid off by Redmond a year later.

It was clear that Windows Mobile wasn't going to work. Android and iOS were drinking Microsoft's milkshake, and Redmond realized the game was up. Microsoft started shedding mobile jobs -- both in Finland and Redmond. While mobile was still publicly touted as the way forward for Microsoft with Ballmer gone, the impetus wasn't there and support for the mobile OS shriveled. In 2015 Microsoft declared it was writing off $7.6 billion on the Phone Hardware division as "goodwill and asset impairment charges" -- $400 million more than it had originally paid for the Finnish firm. Nokia bought European networking giant Alcatel-Lucent in a $16.7 billion deal in 2015. Around the same time, Suri announced a move into tablets, since it had a non-compete agreement with Microsoft on mobiles. Meanwhile a bunch of former Nokia execs who'd fled Elop and Microsoft had started a mobile biz of their own: HMD. It was Finnish, but outsourced production to Foxconn in China, and was planning to make cheapish Android devices. In 2016 Microsoft sold its mobile hardware arm to HMD for an undisclosed -- but probably not large -- sum. Nadella clearly wanted out of the whole business and the Finnish startup concentrated on selling good-enough Android smartphones to Nokia's traditional cheap markets.

Microsoft is fully rolling out passkey support for all consumer accounts today. From a report: After enabling them in Windows 11 last year, Microsoft account owners can also now generate passkeys across Windows, Android, and iOS. This makes it effortless to sign in to a Microsoft account without having to type a password in every time.

Microsoft has confirmed that the April 2024 Windows security updates break VPN connections across client and server platforms. From a report: The company explains on the Windows health dashboard that "Windows devices might face VPN connection failures after installing the April 2024 security update or the April 2024 non-security preview update."

"We are investigating user reports, and we will provide more information in the coming days," Redmond added. The list of affected Windows versions includes Windows 11, Windows 10, and Windows Server 2008 and later.

Windows 11's market share dropped in April 2024, falling below 26% after reaching an all-time high of 28.16% in February. According to Statcounter, Windows 11 lost 0.97 points, while Windows 10 gained 0.96 points, crossing the 70% mark for the first time since September 2023. Neowin adds: Some argue that Windows 11 still offers little to no benefits for upgrading, especially in light of Microsoft killing some of the system's unique features, such as Windows Subsystem for Android. Add to that the ever-increasing number of ads, some of which are quite shameless, and you get an operating system that has a hard time winning hearts and minds, and retaining its customers.

Microsoft's motivation for investing heavily and partnering with OpenAI came from a sense of falling badly behind Google, according to an internal email released Tuesday as part of the Justice Department's antitrust case against the search giant. Bloomberg: The Windows software maker's chief technology officer, Kevin Scott, was "very, very worried" when he looked at the AI model-training capability gap between Alphabet's efforts and Microsoft's, he wrote in a 2019 message to Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella and co-founder Bill Gates. The exchange shows how the company's top executives privately acknowledged they lacked the infrastructure and development speed to catch up to the likes of OpenAI and Google's DeepMind.

[...] Scott, who also serves as executive vice president of artificial intelligence at Microsoft, observed that Google's search product had improved on competitive metrics because of the Alphabet company's advancements in AI. The Microsoft executive wrote that he made a mistake by dismissing some of the earlier AI efforts of its competitors. "We are multiple years behind the competition in terms of machine learning scale," Scott said in the email. Significant portions of the message, titled 'Thoughts on OpenAI,' remain redacted. Nadella endorsed Scott's email, forwarding it to Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood and saying it explains "why I want us to do this."