microsoft

office-2024-will-be-the-next-standalone-release,-as-the-office-brand-lives-on

Office 2024 will be the next standalone release, as the Office brand lives on

Excel, microsoft, Microsoft office, office, Powerpoint, Tech, Word / /

return to office —

Consumer prices stay the same; MS promises at least one more standalone release.

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Office 2024 will be the next standalone release, as the Office brand lives on

Microsoft

Last week, Microsoft announced that it would soon begin offering previews of Microsoft Office 2024, the next standalone perpetually licensed version of the Office suite. Like Office 2021 before it, Office 2024 will be part of Microsoft’s Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC), which is intended for IT administrators and users who value stability and predictability over constant iteration.

But Microsoft is being clearer than ever that it would really like people to move to using Microsoft 365 subscriptions, referring to Office 2024 as “a specialty product that Microsoft has committed to maintaining for use in exceptional circumstances.” The company will be increasing prices for businesses by “up to 10 percent” compared to Office 2021, a price hike that Microsoft says will “support continued innovation in this niche space.” Pricing for the consumer version of Office 2024 should stay the same as it is for Office 2021.

Office 2024 will receive support and security updates for five years from its release date, which will be “later this year,” along with a new LTSC release of Windows 11. The company has also committed to releasing at least one more standalone version of Office in the future. If you bought Office 2021 and you’re still happy with it, you’ll still get support (including security updates) until October of 2026. Support for Office 2019 ended in October 2023.

Highlights of the Office 2024 release include “new meeting creation options and search enhancements in Outlook, dozens of new Excel features and functions including Dynamic Charts and Arrays; and improved performance, security, and accessibility,” according to Microsoft. One missing feature of note will be Microsoft Publisher, which will be discontinued in October 2026.

Like other standalone Office releases, Office 2024’s feature set will be frozen in time without the continuous changes present in the Microsoft 365 versions of the same apps. And while the perpetually licensed versions of Office can interact with Microsoft services like OneDrive, the company says that other features like the Copilot AI assistant won’t be available in Office 2024 because it is a “disconnected product.” It’s also missing real-time collaboration features available in Microsoft 365.

Is it a rebrand if you keep using the old brand name in parentheses?

Enlarge / Is it a rebrand if you keep using the old brand name in parentheses?

Microsoft

Among other things, the continued existence of the standalone Office product shows that the “Office” brand name will still be with us for a while, despite Microsoft’s formal decision to retire it back in late 2022. “Office” remains useful as a noun that refers to all of these apps collectively—and separately from the Microsoft 365 subscription product. Even in places where the Office name has been removed, Microsoft seems reticent to do away with it entirely; the Microsoft 365 app that comes built into Windows has the new name and the new logo but also includes “Office” in parentheses as if to say “yes, we know what name most people use to talk about this software.”

Office 2024 will be the next standalone release, as the Office brand lives on Read More »

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Unreleased preview of Microsoft’s OS/2 2.0 is a glimpse down a road not taken

ibm, microsoft, MS-DOS, OS/2, Tech / /

OS/2 the future —

Microsoft’s involvement in IBM’s OS/2 project ended before v2.0 was released.

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This big, weathered box contains an oddball piece of PC history: one of the last builds of IBM's OS/2 that Microsoft worked on before pivoting all of its attention to Windows.

Enlarge / This big, weathered box contains an oddball piece of PC history: one of the last builds of IBM’s OS/2 that Microsoft worked on before pivoting all of its attention to Windows.

In the annals of PC history, IBM’s OS/2 represents a road not taken. Developed in the waning days of IBM’s partnership with Microsoft—the same partnership that had given us a decade or so of MS-DOS and PC-DOS—OS/2 was meant to improve on areas where DOS was falling short on modern systems. Better memory management, multitasking capabilities, and a usable GUI were all among the features introduced in version 1.x.

But Microsoft was frustrated with some of IBM’s goals and demands, and the company continued to develop an operating system called Windows on its own. Where IBM wanted OS/2 to be used mainly to boost IBM-made PCs and designed it around the limitations of Intel’s 80286 CPU, Windows was being created with the booming market for PC-compatible clones in mind. Windows 1.x and 2.x failed to make much of a dent, but 1990’s Windows 3.0 was a hit, and it came preinstalled on many consumer PCs; Microsoft and IBM broke off their partnership shortly afterward, making OS/2 version 1.2 the last one publicly released and sold with Microsoft’s involvement.

But Microsoft had done a lot of work on version 2.0 of OS/2 at the same time as it was developing Windows. It was far enough along that preview screenshots appeared in PC Magazine, and early builds were shipped to developers who could pay for them, but it was never formally released to the public.

But software archaeologist Neozeed recently published a stable internal preview of Microsoft’s OS/2 2.0 to the Internet Archive, along with working virtual machine disk images for VMware and 86Box. The preview, bought by Brian Ledbetter on eBay for $650 plus $15.26 in shipping, dates to July 1990 and would have cost developers who wanted it a whopping $2,600. A lot to pay for a version of an operating system that would never see the light of day!

The Microsoft-developed build of OS/2 2.0 bears only a passing resemblance to the 32-bit version of OS/2 2.0 that IBM finally shipped on its own in April 1992. Neozeed has published a more thorough exploration of Microsoft’s version, digging around in its guts and getting some early Windows software running (the ability to run DOS and Windows apps was simultaneously a selling point of OS/2 and a reason for developers not to create OS/2-specific apps, one of the things that helped to doom OS/2 in the end). It’s a fascinating detail from a turning point in the history of the PC as we know it today, but as a usable desktop operating system, it leaves something to be desired.

All 26 disks of the OS/2 2.0 preview, plus hefty documentation manuals. There are some things about the '90s I don't miss.

Enlarge / All 26 disks of the OS/2 2.0 preview, plus hefty documentation manuals. There are some things about the ’90s I don’t miss.

This unreleased Microsoft-developed OS/2 build isn’t the first piece of Microsoft-related software history that has been excavated in the last few months. In January, an Internet Archive user discovered and uploaded an early build of 86-DOS, the software that Microsoft bought and turned into MS-DOS/PC-DOS for the original IBM PC 5150. Funnily enough, these unreleased previews serve as bookends for IBM and Microsoft’s often-contentious partnership.

As part of the “divorce settlement” between Microsoft and IBM, IBM would take over the development and maintenance of OS/2 1.x and 2.x while Microsoft continued to work on a more advanced far-future version 3.0 of OS/2. This operating system was never released as OS/2, but it would eventually become Windows NT, Microsoft’s more stable business-centric version of Windows. Windows NT merged with the consumer versions of Windows in the early 2000s with Windows 2000 and Windows XP, and those versions gradually evolved into Windows as we know it today.

It has been 18 years since IBM formally discontinued its last release of OS/2, but as so often happens in computing, the software has found a way to live on. ArcaOS is a semi-modernized, intermittently updated branch of OS/2 updated to run on modern hardware while still supporting the ability to run MS-DOS and 16-bit Windows apps.

Unreleased preview of Microsoft’s OS/2 2.0 is a glimpse down a road not taken Read More »

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Microsoft says Kremlin-backed hackers accessed its source and internal systems

apts, Biz & IT, microsoft, midnight blizzard, Security, source code / /

THE PLOT THICKENS —

Midnight Blizzard is now using stolen secrets in follow-on attacks against customers.

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Microsoft says Kremlin-backed hackers accessed its source and internal systems

Microsoft said that Kremlin-backed hackers who breached its corporate network in January have expanded their access since then in follow-on attacks that are targeting customers and have compromised the company’s source code and internal systems.

The intrusion, which the software company disclosed in January, was carried out by Midnight Blizzard, the name used to track a hacking group widely attributed to the Federal Security Service, a Russian intelligence agency. Microsoft said at the time that Midnight Blizzard gained access to senior executives’ email accounts for months after first exploiting a weak password in a test device connected to the company’s network. Microsoft went on to say it had no indication any of its source code or production systems had been compromised.

Secrets sent in email

In an update published Friday, Microsoft said it uncovered evidence that Midnight Blizzard had used the information it gained initially to further push into its network and compromise both source code and internal systems. The hacking group—which is tracked under multiple other names, including APT29, Cozy Bear, CozyDuke, The Dukes, Dark Halo, and Nobelium—has been using the proprietary information in follow-on attacks, not only against Microsoft but also its customers.

“In recent weeks, we have seen evidence that Midnight Blizzard is using information initially exfiltrated from our corporate email systems to gain, or attempt to gain, unauthorized access,” Friday’s update said. “This has included access to some of the company’s source code repositories and internal systems. To date we have found no evidence that Microsoft-hosted customer-facing systems have been compromised.

In January’s disclosure, Microsoft said Midnight Blizzard used a password-spraying attack to compromise a “legacy non-production test tenant account” on the company’s network. Those details meant that the account hadn’t been removed once it was decommissioned, a practice that’s considered essential for securing networks. The details also meant that the password used to log in to the account was weak enough to be guessed by sending a steady stream of credentials harvested from previous breaches—a technique known as password spraying.

In the months since, Microsoft said Friday, Midnight Blizzard has been exploiting the information it obtained earlier in follow-on attacks that have stepped up an already high rate of password spraying.

Unprecedented global threat

Microsoft officials wrote:

It is apparent that Midnight Blizzard is attempting to use secrets of different types it has found. Some of these secrets were shared between customers and Microsoft in email, and as we discover them in our exfiltrated email, we have been and are reaching out to these customers to assist them in taking mitigating measures. Midnight Blizzard has increased the volume of some aspects of the attack, such as password sprays, by as much as 10-fold in February, compared to the already large volume we saw in January 2024.

Midnight Blizzard’s ongoing attack is characterized by a sustained, significant commitment of the threat actor’s resources, coordination, and focus. It may be using the information it has obtained to accumulate a picture of areas to attack and enhance its ability to do so. This reflects what has become more broadly an unprecedented global threat landscape, especially in terms of sophisticated nation-state attacks.

The attack began in November and wasn’t detected until January. Microsoft said then that the breach allowed Midnight Blizzard to monitor the email accounts of senior executives and security personnel, raising the possibility that the group was able to read sensitive communications for as long as three months. Microsoft said one motivation for the attack was for Midnight Blizzard to learn what the company knew about the threat group. Microsoft said at the time and reiterated again Friday that it had no evidence the hackers gained access to customer-facing systems.

Midnight Blizzard is among the most prolific APTs, short for advanced persistent threats, the term used for skilled, well-funded hacking groups that are mostly backed by nation-states. The group was behind the SolarWinds supply-chain attack that led to the hacking of the US Departments of Energy, Commerce, Treasury, and Homeland Security and about 100 private-sector companies.

Last week, the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and international partners warned that in recent months, the threat group has expanded its activity to target aviation, education, law enforcement, local and state councils, government financial departments, and military organizations.

Microsoft says Kremlin-backed hackers accessed its source and internal systems Read More »

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What a potential post-Xbox future could mean for Sony and Nintendo

consoles, gaming, microsoft, Nintendo, PlayStation 5, Sony, Switch, syndication, xbox, xbox one s / /

shifting landscape —

“All signs point to the hardware becoming less and less important to Microsoft.”

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What a potential post-Xbox future could mean for Sony and Nintendo

Aurich Lawson

Microsoft’s decision to ease off its 23-year competition with Sony and Nintendo over supremacy in games hardware has opened a path for Japan’s return as the world’s undisputed home of the console.

The prospect of a new, less internationalized era of console wars has raised hopes of happier times for the Japanese survivors but has also caused analysts and investors to revisit the question of how much longer the whole genre of dedicated games machines will continue to exist.

Microsoft head of gaming Phil Spencer last month revealed plans to release what would previously have been exclusively Xbox games for use on rival platforms, as part of a new focus on cloud-based gaming.

While the US technology giant has said it is still working on a new generation of more powerful consoles, analysts think its long-term direction is clear.

“All signs point to the hardware becoming less and less important to Microsoft, so there is that possibility that we could go back to a point like we were in the 1990s where the viable choices of console were all Japanese,” said Serkan Toto, head of the games consultancy Kantan Games.

Giving up the console fight to concentrate on software could be taken as a huge victory for Japan. To many, the birthplace of Super Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, Final Fantasy, and Pokémon is the spiritual home of the console and has featured the industry’s fiercest “golden age” 1980s and 1990s clashes of Nintendo vs Sega, and later, Nintendo vs Sony.

“It may not happen immediately because the technology of cloud gaming is clearly not ready yet, but from what Microsoft is indicating, there is a possibility that we go back to an all-Japan console industry with Sony and Nintendo each dominating their part of that market in their different, unique ways,” said David Gibson, an analyst at MST Financial.

But the return to a Japan-only industry for dedicated games hardware could more clearly define the console as a commercial cul-de-sac.

That issue, said independent games analyst Pelham Smithers, could be particularly acute for Sony, which last week announced plans to cut 900 staff from its games unit.

“It was tough enough for Sony arguing the need to investors for a PS5—and a lot of people at the time were saying that the PS5 could be the end of the line—but Microsoft’s commitment to console gaming helped,” said Smithers.

Nintendo, meanwhile, faces an issue of timing. Its Switch machine, released in 2017 and now significantly underpowered even when compared with some mobile phones, is to be replaced with a next-generation successor. But the Kyoto-based company has yet to say precisely when and what it will look like.

Analysts said Nintendo is still traumatized by the experience in 2012 when it launched a poorly conceived successor to the global blockbuster Wii console.

Sales of the existing Switch are respectable, said Toto, but more or less everyone who wanted the console has bought one by now. The market, he said, will be waiting for Nintendo’s successor and may hold back on buying games for the Switch ahead of a new machine being released.

Gibson said Sony’s problems are very different: its PS5 machine, now four years old, is popular, but its games business is now guided by “accountants,” rather than people primed to manage a creative business.

Previous generations of the PlayStation had been launched with an expectation that the machine would initially be sold at a loss, before the price of components quickly fell, allowing the company to break even and, in time, allow price cuts for customers.

By its fifth year of release the PS4 had two price cuts totaling $100. The PS5 has had none. “With the accountants in charge, Sony is not prepared to cut prices by $100 to stimulate demand because that would cost $2 billion in profits,” Gibson said.

Microsoft, which has spent huge sums on acquisitions of game studios such as the $75 billion purchase of Activision, is facing similar issues with its hardware economics. Analysts said the US company may have greater motivation than Sony to become an all-platform king.

“The state of the console market right now may not be an advertisement per se for Japan getting its mojo back. It feels more like these three very idiosyncratic businesses are doing well or not for idiosyncratic reasons,” said Robin Zhu, games analyst at Bernstein.

There is a chance that Microsoft’s new direction is a “win, win, win situation,” according to Atul Goyal at Jefferies, because of the different situation each company finds itself in.

Microsoft, he said, could pump up returns by offering its games across different platforms, while Nintendo and Sony would face “less intense competition” and benefit from having a wider choice of titles for customers.

But, as Zhu said, one factor that might keep Microsoft from killing off the Xbox entirely is the same thing that will keep Sony and Nintendo in the market—the fierce loyalty of gamers.

“The concern [Microsoft] will have is that you’ve already convinced your customers to buy the hardware; by telling them that Xbox games will be on every other platform, you risk upsetting your highest engagement and most dogmatic customers,” he said.

© 2024 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

What a potential post-Xbox future could mean for Sony and Nintendo Read More »

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Hackers exploited Windows 0-day for 6 months after Microsoft knew of it

Biz & IT, lazarus group, microsoft, Security / /
The word ZERO-DAY is hidden amidst a screen filled with ones and zeroes.

Hackers backed by the North Korean government gained a major win when Microsoft left a Windows zero-day unpatched for six months after learning it was under active exploitation.

Even after Microsoft patched the vulnerability last month, the company made no mention that the North Korean threat group Lazarus had been using the vulnerability since at least August to install a stealthy rootkit on vulnerable computers. The vulnerability provided an easy and stealthy means for malware that had already gained administrative system rights to interact with the Windows kernel. Lazarus used the vulnerability for just that. Even so, Microsoft has long said that such admin-to-kernel elevations don’t represent the crossing of a security boundary, a possible explanation for the time Microsoft took to fix the vulnerability.

A rootkit “holy grail”

“When it comes to Windows security, there is a thin line between admin and kernel,” Jan Vojtěšek, a researcher with security firm Avast, explained last week. “Microsoft’s security servicing criteria have long asserted that ‘[a]dministrator-to-kernel is not a security boundary,’ meaning that Microsoft reserves the right to patch admin-to-kernel vulnerabilities at its own discretion. As a result, the Windows security model does not guarantee that it will prevent an admin-level attacker from directly accessing the kernel.”

The Microsoft policy proved to be a boon to Lazarus in installing “FudModule,” a custom rootkit that Avast said was exceptionally stealthy and advanced. Rootkits are pieces of malware that have the ability to hide their files, processes, and other inner workings from the operating system itself and at the same time control the deepest levels of the operating system. To work, they must first gain administrative privileges—a major accomplishment for any malware infecting a modern OS. Then, they must clear yet another hurdle: directly interacting with the kernel, the innermost recess of an OS reserved for the most sensitive functions.

In years past, Lazarus and other threat groups have reached this last threshold mainly by exploiting third-party system drivers, which by definition already have kernel access. To work with supported versions of Windows, third-party drivers must first be digitally signed by Microsoft to certify that they are trustworthy and meet security requirements. In the event Lazarus or another threat actor has already cleared the admin hurdle and has identified a vulnerability in an approved driver, they can install it and exploit the vulnerability to gain access to the Windows kernel. This technique—known as BYOVD (bring your own vulnerable driver)—comes at a cost, however, because it provides ample opportunity for defenders to detect an attack in progress.

The vulnerability Lazarus exploited, tracked as CVE-2024-21338, offered considerably more stealth than BYOVD because it exploited appid.sys, a driver enabling the Windows AppLocker service, which comes preinstalled in the Microsoft OS. Avast said such vulnerabilities represent the “holy grail,” as compared to BYOVD.

In August, Avast researchers sent Microsoft a description of the zero-day, along with proof-of-concept code that demonstrated what it did when exploited. Microsoft didn’t patch the vulnerability until last month. Even then, the disclosure of the active exploitation of CVE-2024-21338 and details of the Lazarus rootkit came not from Microsoft in February but from Avast 15 days later. A day later, Microsoft updated its patch bulletin to note the exploitation.

Hackers exploited Windows 0-day for 6 months after Microsoft knew of it Read More »

age-of-empires-2-gets-another-expansion-25-years-later,-and-deservedly-so

Age of Empires 2 gets another expansion 25 years later, and deservedly so

age of empires, age of empires 2, gaming, microsoft, real time strategy, real time strategy game, rts / /

Expansing empire of Age of Empires —

The rest of 2024 promises a whole lot for Age of Empires fans across all titles.

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Cover artwork for Victors and Vanquished expansion to Age of Empires II

Enlarge / A battle between Ragnar Lothbrok and Oda Nobunaga was unlikely to occur, given the roughly 700 years between their existences. But Age of Empires is a limitless canvas.

World’s Edge

Real-time strategy (RTS) games aren’t getting many new titles or mainstream attention these days, but that need not be a problem. Age of Empires 2, one of the best games in the genre—and some would say of all time, period—continues to be playable on modern systems and is even getting new expansions.

Victors and Vanquished gameplay trailer.

Victors and Vanquished, an expansion for Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition, arrives March 14. It adds 19 scenarios to the base game, allowing you to play as, among others, Oda Nobunaga, Charlemagne, and Ragnar Lothbrok. The campaigns are inspired by the deep community around Age of Empires but spiffed up with voice acting, music, bug fixes, and “quality of life improvements.” Some new mechanics show up in the scenarios, including population migration, political decisions, assassinations, and more. It’s $13 on launch day, works with Xbox Game Pass on PC (where AoE2: DE is included), and it’s on sale for preorder at about $11 until launch.

  • Oda Nobunaga’s realm in Victors and Vanquished.

    World’s Edge

  • Otto the Great, beset on all sides, with competing vassals to consider, in Victors and Vanquished.

    World’s Edge

  • Setting for Ragnar Lothbrok’s campaign in Victors and Vanquished.

    World’s Edge

  • Gameplay from Victors and Vanquished.

    World’s Edge

Developer World’s Edge Studios has offered up five expansions for AoE2:DE since its 2019 release, including the Return of Rome DLC in 2023 that shuttled in the civilizations from the original Age of Empires. A big chunk of their inspiration comes from the community. And a huge chunk of that big chunk is Filthydelphia, who had been turning out campaigns like “Kings of West Africa” and “Francis Drake on the Spanish Main” for years. Beyond the maps and army configurations, many of the campaigns contain narrative pieces. “City of Peace” involves a young woman murdered in Madinat al-Salaam, and you, the vizier, must find her murderer. Community scenarios like these make up 14 of the expansion’s 19 scenarios.

The Age of Empires series, started by a group that included a co-creator of Civilization, sought to give players a kind of “Hollywood History,” as detailed in our definitive oral history of the series. It was brightly colored, it was accurate only to the point that it made battles fun to play, and it had Microsoft to help distribute it. It sold faster than even Microsoft expected, and the sequel brought the game forward in time into knights, castles, and the like. Age of Empires 2 arrived just as real-time strategy games were at their peak, but also starting their decline. A decade later, they were merging into their scaled-back, fighting-forward cousins, MOBAs (multiplayer online battle arena), in games like Dota 2 and League of Legends.

If you’ve got a broad love of the Age of Empires franchise, but this particular expansion doesn’t compel you, don’t worry: all of 2024 is shaping up to be a big year for Xbox Studios developer World’s Edge to tempt you with one new thing or another. Age of Mythology: Retold looks to go beyond just being a “Definitive Edition” and to majorly remake the fantasy spinoff. Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition is now free to play and getting its own DLC this year. And Age of Empires IV is in its seventh season this spring.

Age of Empires 2 gets another expansion 25 years later, and deservedly so Read More »

microsoft-confirms-which-xbox-games-are-going-to-switch,-playstation

Microsoft confirms which Xbox games are going to Switch, PlayStation

exclusives, gaming, microsoft, xbox / /

four fewer reasons to buy an Xbox? —

Hi-Fi Rush, Grounded, Pentiment, and Sea of Thieves are going multiplatform.

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Four Xbox console exclusives will soon be exclusive no more.

Enlarge / Four Xbox console exclusives will soon be exclusive no more.

Microsoft

During a “business update” video podcast last week, Microsoft addressed widespread rumors of Xbox software going multiplatform by saying that four of its legacy titles would be going “to the other consoles” in the future. But the company waited until today to confirm the names of the four soon-to-be-multiplatform titles.

The Xbox games coming to other consoles in the coming months are (multiplatform launch date in parentheses):

  • Pentiment (February 22, Switch, PS4/5): Obsidian’s historical murder mystery has a sprawling narrative that reacts strongly to player choices.
  • Hi-Fi Rush (March 9, PS5): A rhythm-action game from Bethesda Softworks where you have to match your attacks and movements to the beat to maximize your impact.
  • Grounded (April 16, Switch, PS4/5): Obsidian’s co-op survival adventure will be fully cross-play compatible across all platforms.
  • Sea of Thieves (April 30, PS5): Despite what we considered a poor first impression, Rare’s pirate-themed multiplayer simulation has attracted 35 million players, according to Microsoft. This title will also be cross-play compatible across platforms.

Microsoft’s announcement comes just after Grounded and Pentiment were announced for Switch as part of the morning’s Nintendo Direct: Partner Showcase video stream, the timing of which likely prevented Microsoft from announcing its plans for those titles last week. There wasn’t a lot of drama to today’s announcement, though; The Verge and independent journalist Stephen Totilo cited anonymous sources in accurately naming all four games just after Microsoft’s presentation last week.

Before that presentation, rumors flying around the Xbox community suggested that major Xbox exclusives like Starfield or Bethesda’s upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle would be coming to other consoles or that Microsoft had plans to leave the console space entirely. And while Microsoft has effectively shot down those rumors, the company has suggested that exclusive games will be a less important part of its console strategy going into the future.

“[I have] a fundamental belief that over the next five or ten years… games that are exclusive to one piece of hardware are going to be a smaller and smaller part of the game industry,” Xbox CEO Phil Spencer said.

Microsoft confirms which Xbox games are going to Switch, PlayStation Read More »

microsoft-fixes-problem-that-let-edge-replicate-chrome-tabs-without-permission

Microsoft fixes problem that let Edge replicate Chrome tabs without permission

Browsers, google chrome, microsoft, Microsoft Edge, Tech, web browsers / /

Tab thieving thwarted —

Edge update is first proof that this was definitely a glitch.

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Microsoft fixes problem that let Edge replicate Chrome tabs without permission

Microsoft

Microsoft has fixed a problem that resulted in tabs from Google Chrome being imported to Microsoft Edge without user consent, as spotted by The Verge. Microsoft has kept mum on the situation, making the issued update the first time Microsoft has identified this as a problem, rather than typical behavior for the world’s third-most-popular browser.

In late January, The Verge Senior Editor Tom Warren reported experiencing the puzzling Edge issue. After updating his computer, Edge launched with the tabs that Warren most recently used in Chrome. He eventually realized that Edge has a feature you can toggle, reading: “Always have access to your recent browsing data each time you browse on Microsoft Edge.” The setting is reachable in Edge by typing “edge://settings/profiles/importBrowsingData.” Interestingly, it allows Edge to import browsing data from Chrome every time you open Edge, but data from Firefox can only be imported manually. However, Edge was seizing Chrome tabs without this setting enabled. Others reported having this problem via Microsoft’s support forum and social media, as well.

The Edge setting as seen on a Windows 11 23H2 system running Edge 122. You can have data continuously imported from Chrome or on demand from Firefox, but other browsers don't appear.

Enlarge / The Edge setting as seen on a Windows 11 23H2 system running Edge 122. You can have data continuously imported from Chrome or on demand from Firefox, but other browsers don’t appear.

Andrew Cunningham

Microsoft didn’t respond to The Verge’s initial request for comment, but this week it released an Edge update that seems to address matters. Microsoft’s release notes from February 15 say:

Edge has a feature that provides an option to import browser data on each launch from other browsers with user consent. This feature’s state might not have been syncing and displaying correctly across multiple devices. This is fixed.

Microsoft seems to be saying that the status (enabled or disabled) of Edge’s importing data ability wasn’t syncing correctly across people’s Microsoft devices. However, this doesn’t explain the number of users who claimed they saw the problem without having the feature enabled. Microsoft declined Ars Technica’s request for comment.

With this fix, Microsoft is claiming that the behavior was, indeed, unintentional. But that wasn’t a given. Besides the fact that Microsoft hasn’t provided more details about the problem, the company also has a history of both sneakily and overtly trying to coerce people into using Edge. You’ll see Microsoft pester you with pop-up messages if you try to download Chrome or change your default browser, for example.

Edge and Chrome are both based on the Chromium browsing engine, but Chrome has long maintained a massive lead over Edge in terms of market share. Global Statcounter data points to Chrome having 64.41 percent market share last month, followed by Safari (18.82 percent), and then Edge (5.36 percent). The numbers inch slightly more in Microsoft’s favor when looking at the US market specifically (9.31 percent share in January), although Chrome still dominated (49.06 percent).

  • Browser market share for the past year globally.

  • Browser market share for the past year in the US.

Like many web browsers, Edge has a hard time competing with Chrome, which ties in with other popular Google services, like Gmail. Similarly, Edge promotes Microsoft offerings, including coupons, Microsoft accounts, and, as of recently, Copilot.

Edge pulling Chrome tabs seemed to fit in with pushy strategies Microsoft has employed to get people on its browser and other products, like Microsoft 365. Without more information, we don’t know when Microsoft first knew about Edge’s unwanted tab replication or how long it took to make it stop. Regardless, Microsoft doesn’t intend for tab swiping to be part of the Edge experience currently, so at least this particular nuisance should be over.

Microsoft fixes problem that let Edge replicate Chrome tabs without permission Read More »

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Microsoft sure seems to be thinking about some sort of portable Xbox

gaming, microsoft, Phil Spencer, portable, xbox / /

Grist for the rumor mill —

Spencer talks up “different form factors that allow people to play in different places.”

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A demo of

Enlarge / A demo of “Project Xcloud” streaming running on a mobile device, circa 2019.

Yesterday’s news that four unnamed Microsoft games are coming to “the other consoles” was a bit anticlimactic after weeks of now-refuted rumors about games like Starfield and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle going to the PlayStation 5. Yet even as those rumors die, Microsoft seems to be actively feeding new rumors regarding plans for some sort of portable gaming device.

In an interview with the Verge accompanying yesterday’s “multi-platform” business announcement, Microsoft Xbox CEO Phil Spencer was asked directly about any handheld hardware plans, including his recent penchant for liking some social media posts discussing handheld game consoles. While Spencer said he had “nothing to announce,” he talked up a lot of other handheld gaming hardware when talking about how Xbox could capture more “player hours.”

So, okay, what keeps people from playing certain hours? Well there’s some sleep, school, and kind of normal life, but some of it is just access. Do I have access to the games that I want to play right now? Obviously we’re kind of learning from what Nintendo has done over the years with Switch, they’ve been fantastic with that. So when I look at Steam Deck and the ROG and my Legion Go, I’m a big fan of that space.

Spencer went on to say that “real work” still needs to be done to get Windows to work better with controller input and on smaller 7- to 8-inch screens. That’s the kind of OS work we’d note would be very useful if Microsoft is planning to release a Windows-based gaming portable of its own (we’re assuming Microsoft would not want to ditch Windows in favor of SteamOS). “That’s a real design point that our platform team is working with Windows to make sure that the experience is even better,” he said.

Spencer gave even more direct hints along the same lines in an interview with Bloomberg, where he mentioned “early plans” for new consoles and promised, “We’re going to be able to do more innovative things in hardware, the more the game side of the business is having success.” He added that he “get[s] excited about different form factors that allow people to play in different places,” which sure sounds like the kind of thing a portable game console allows for.

Remember the “Xboy”?

Rumors of a Microsoft gaming portable are far from new, dating back to at least the Xbox 360 era and popping up periodically ever since. As recently as last year, insider reports suggested Microsoft had prototyped a “cloud-focused Xbox handheld” in the past, including work on a “lightweight” Xbox interface designed for handhelds.

At the moment, it’s hard to know whether a theoretical Xbox portable would be limited to streaming (either from an in-home Xbox console or the cloud), as those reports suggested. While a streaming-focused handheld could definitely be cheaper to produce, it would be necessarily limited by a smaller selection of games, the need for a reliable Internet connection, and the ever-present latency issues that streaming games have yet to shake (and/or the need to be on the same network as a local Xbox).

Could Sony's PlayStation Portal provide a roadmap for a similar

Enlarge / Could Sony’s PlayStation Portal provide a roadmap for a similar “portable Xbox” design?

Sony

Regardless, some industry pundits have also recently taken to arguing for Microsoft to make a portable gaming move as well. Earlier this week, The Verge proclaimed that “it’s time for Microsoft to build an Xbox Steam Deck” (in a piece timed almost suspiciously closely to the site’s hint-filled Spencer interview). And Jez Corden at Windows Central argued earlier this month that an Xbox handheld “isn’t just likely… it’s absolutely necessary,” (in a piece that also received a like from Spencer on social media).

Then again, a Microsoft “Roadmap to 2030” document from May 2022 (revealed through leaked court documents during the Activision Blizzard merger case last year) listed a portable console as “not in scope for 1st party” as part of Microsoft’s plans at the time. And in 2020, Microsoft’s former head of Xbox, Robbie Bach, discussed three previous times in Xbox history where proposals for an “Xboy” portable were shot down because “we just didn’t have the bandwidth to do that.”

But Bach’s tenure at Xbox (which ended in 2010) was a very different era in the portable gaming market. Today, Valve’s Steam Deck and its imitators have proven there’s a space for more PC-like gaming handhelds that go beyond Nintendo’s longstanding iron grip on handheld gaming. Even Sony recently re-entered the portable gaming market with the PlayStation Portal, though that device being restricted to in-home streaming from a local PS5 puts it in a different class than many other gaming handhelds.

The new rumors also come at a very different time in Microsoft’s own hardware-making story. In 2010, the ill-fated Microsoft Zune was on the verge of ending its short market tenure. Today, Microsoft’s line of Surface laptop-tablets has spent over a decade successfully establishing its place in a competitive market. Maybe Microsoft will take some of those Surface lessons forward if it decides to enter the handheld gaming market for the first time.

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After weeks of rumors, Microsoft says four games are going to “other consoles”

gaming, microsoft, xbox / /

Breaking out of the box —

But Starfield and Indiana Jones are staying exclusive to Xbox and PC.

– Updated

After weeks of rumors around its strategy regarding Xbox console exclusives, Microsoft announced today that it is “going to take four games to the other consoles.” The company stopped short of announcing what those now non-exclusive games would be, but it did point out that neither Starfield nor Bethesda’s upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle would be appearing on other consoles.

All four of the soon-to-be multi-platform titles are “over a year old,” Xbox chief Phil Spencer said in an “Updates on the Xbox Business” podcast video. The list includes a couple of “community-driven” games that are “first iterations of a franchise” that could show growth on non-Xbox consoles, as well as two others that Spencer said were “smaller games that were never really meant to be built as kind of platform exclusives… I think there is an interesting story for us of introducing Xbox franchises to players on other platforms to get them more interested in Xbox.”

The Verge cites “sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans” in reporting that Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, Sea of Thieves, and Grounded are the four multi-platform titles Microsoft is referencing today.

“The teams that are building those [multi-platform] games have announced plans that are not too far away,” Spencer said, “but I think when they come out, it’ll make sense.”

This is not completely new territory for Microsoft; Spencer noted in the podcast that the acquisitions of Activision Blizzard and Bethesda parent Zenimax mean that Microsoft is already “one of the largest game publishers on PlayStation.” Microsoft has also spent years pushing the ability to play Xbox games on other screens via Game Pass streaming.

Spencer stressed during the podcast that this limited multi-platform move does not represent “a change to our fundamental exclusive strategy.” He added that “we’re making these decisions for some specific reasons,” citing “the long-term health of Xbox and a desire to “use what some of the other platforms have right now to help grow our franchises.”

And Xbox hardware will continue to be the “developer target” for Microsoft’s multi-platform games, according to Microsoft President of Xbox Sarah Bond. “Our developers can build the specs of our hardware, and we invest to make sure when they do that the games are going to run great on our hardware, but they’re also going to be able to be accessed across any screen because of all the other investments we make,” Bond said.

Wave of the future

Spencer cited the recent expansion of multi-platform releases in stating “a fundamental belief that over the next five or ten years… games that are exclusive to one piece of hardware are going to be a smaller and smaller part of the game industry.”

“We’ve seen this inversion over the last five years where it used to be that the platform was the biggest thing, and the games would tuck in within the platform,” Head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty added. “Today, big games like a Roblox or a Fortnite could actually be bigger than any one platform, so that has really changed the way we think about those things” (oddly enough, Booty did not mention Microsoft’s own bigger-than-one-platform mega-hit, Minecraft, though Spencer mentioned it later in the presentation).

Bond added that “when you just step back and you look at the history of the industry, we’ve moved from a place where it used to be that someone built and launched a game to accelerate hardware, to actually the things we do with our hardware and with our platform are all in service of making those games bigger.”

Despite the opening up of select franchises, Booty clarified that “Game Pass will only be available on Xbox” and will continue to include all first-party Microsoft games “day one.” That will soon include games Microsoft acquired through the recently completed Activision Blizzard merger, starting with Diablo IV on March 28.

Microsoft’s limited multi-platform announcement comes as information from a Take-Two financial report suggests the PlayStation 5 has outsold the Xbox Series X/S by a roughly 2:1 margin. That’s similar to the sales lead the PS4 maintained over the Xbox One in the last console generation.

Elsewhere in the podcast, Spencer stressed that he wanted the Xbox ecosystem to continue to focus on backward compatibility, comparing it to PC gamers’ ability to still play Windows games released decades ago on modern hardware. “When we look at future hardware generations and what we’re going to support, making sure that we respect… the investments that people have made in Xbox going forward is fundamental.”

This story has been updated with more detailed information from and analysis of Microsoft’s announcement video.

Listing image by Barone Firenze | Shutterstock.com

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Microsoft starts testing Windows 11 24H2 as this year’s big update takes shape

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24h1 isn’t even over yet —

Windows 11 23H2 didn’t make its first appearance until much later in the year.

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Windows 11 24H2 has made its first appearance.

Enlarge / Windows 11 24H2 has made its first appearance.

Andrew Cunningham

The next major release of Windows isn’t due until the end of the year, but it looks like Microsoft is getting an early start. New Windows Insider builds released to the Canary and Dev channels both roll their version numbers to “24H2,” indicating that they’re the earliest builds of what Microsoft will eventually release to all Windows users sometime this fall.

New features in 24H2 include a smattering of things Microsoft has already been testing in public since the big batch of new features that dropped last September, plus a handful of new things. The biggest new one is the addition of Sudo for Windows, a version of a Linux/Unix terminal command that first broke cover in a preview build earlier this month. The new build also includes better support for hearing aids, support for creating 7-zip and TAR archives in File Explorer, an energy-saving mode, and new changes to the SMB protocol. This build also removes both the WordPad and the Tips apps.

Some of these features may be released to all Windows 11 users before the end of the year. During the Windows 11 era, it’s been Microsoft’s practice to drop new features in several small batches throughout the year.

The early change to the 24H2 numbering is a departure from last year, where Windows 11 23H2 didn’t appear publicly until the end of October. And even then, it was mostly just an update that rolled over the version number and Microsoft’s support clock for software updates—most of its “new” features had actually rolled out to PCs running Windows 11 22H2 the month before.

There are some signs that this update will be fairly significant in scope. In addition to all the features Microsoft listed, there are signs that the company is revising things like the Windows setup process that you go through when installing the OS from scratch. The current setup screens have remained essentially unchanged since Windows Vista in 2006, with only light and mostly cosmetic tweaks since then (and even in the redesigned version, window borders are still done in the Vista/7 style).

Logistically, this initial build of Windows 11 24H2 allows Windows Insider testers in the most unstable Canary channel to switch to the less unstable Dev channel without completely reinstalling Windows. Eventually, this… window will close, and the Canary channel will jump into a new series of build numbers.

Whither Windows 12?

Some news outlets and users have taken this update’s announcement as proof that the rumored “Windows 12” won’t happen this year. The existence of Windows 12, largely inferred based on rumors and stray statements from PC makers and analysts, has never been officially confirmed or denied by Microsoft.

A 24H2 update does suggest that Windows 11 will continue on for at least another year, but it doesn’t necessarily preclude a Windows 12 launch this year. Windows 10 received a 21H2 update the year Windows 11 came out and a 22H2 update the year after that (not that either came with significant new features). Microsoft could decide to rename the upcoming feature update on relatively short notice—like it originally did with Windows 11, which began as a design overhaul for Windows 10. Windows 12 might happen, or it might not, but I wouldn’t take this Windows 11 24H2 update as decisive evidence one way or the other.

AI was said to be a major focus for the hypothetical Windows 12, as it has been for the last few major Windows 11 updates. Trendforce went as far as to say that “AI PCs” running “the next generation of Windows” would need a “baseline” of 16GB of RAM, though when asked about this, a Microsoft representative told us that the company “doesn’t comment on rumors and speculation.” Trendforce also said that these AI PCs would need neural processing units (NPUs) that met certain performance standards.

To date, Microsoft hasn’t imposed any specific system requirements for Copilot or Windows’ other generative AI features, aside from 4GB RAM and 720p screen requirements for the Windows 10 version of Copilot, but this could change if more of Windows’ AI features begin relying on local processing rather than cloud processing.

Listing image by Microsoft

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The Super Bowl’s best and wackiest AI commercials

AI, american football, Anthropic, Biz & IT, Commercial, commercials, Football, Google, large language models, machine learning, microsoft, Super Bowl / /

Superb Owl News —

It’s nothing like “crypto bowl” in 2022, but AI made a notable splash during the big game.

–

A still image from BodyArmor's 2024

Enlarge / A still image from BodyArmor’s 2024 “Field of Fake” Super Bowl commercial.

BodyArmor

Heavily hyped tech products have a history of appearing in Super Bowl commercials during football’s biggest game—including the Apple Macintosh in 1984, dot-com companies in 2000, and cryptocurrency firms in 2022. In 2024, the hot tech in town is artificial intelligence, and several companies showed AI-related ads at Super Bowl LVIII. Here’s a rundown of notable appearances that range from serious to wacky.

Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft Game Day Commercial | Copilot: Your everyday AI companion.

It’s been a year since Microsoft launched the AI assistant Microsoft Copilot (as “Bing Chat“), and Microsoft is leaning heavily into its AI-assistant technology, which is powered by large language models from OpenAI. In Copilot’s first-ever Super Bowl commercial, we see scenes of various people with defiant text overlaid on the screen: “They say I will never open my own business or get my degree. They say I will never make my movie or build something. They say I’m too old to learn something new. Too young to change the world. But I say watch me.”

Then the commercial shows Copilot creating solutions to some of these problems, with prompts like, “Generate storyboard images for the dragon scene in my script,” “Write code for my 3d open world game,” “Quiz me in organic chemistry,” and “Design a sign for my classic truck repair garage Mike’s.”

Of course, since generative AI is an unfinished technology, many of these solutions are more aspirational than practical at the moment. On Bluesky, writer Ed Zitron put Microsoft’s truck repair logo to the test and saw results that weren’t nearly as polished as those seen in the commercial. On X, others have criticized and poked fun at the “3d open world game” generation prompt, which is a complex task that would take far more than a single, simple prompt to produce useful code.

Google Pixel 8 “Guided Frame” feature

Javier in Frame | Google Pixel SB Commercial 2024.

Instead of focusing on generative aspects of AI, Google’s commercial showed off a feature called “Guided Frame” on the Pixel 8 phone that uses machine vision technology and a computer voice to help people with blindness or low vision to take photos by centering the frame on a face or multiple faces. Guided Frame debuted in 2022 in conjunction with the Google Pixel 7.

The commercial tells the story of a person named Javier, who says, “For many people with blindness or low vision, there hasn’t always been an easy way to capture daily life.” We see a simulated blurry first-person view of Javier holding a smartphone and hear a computer-synthesized voice describing what the AI model sees, directing the person to center on a face to snap various photos and selfies.

Considering the controversies that generative AI currently generates (pun intended), it’s refreshing to see a positive application of AI technology used as an accessibility feature. Relatedly, an app called Be My Eyes (powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4V) also aims to help low-vision people interact with the world.

Despicable Me 4

Despicable Me 4 – Minion Intelligence (Big Game Spot).

So far, we’ve covered a couple attempts to show AI-powered products as positive features. Elsewhere in Super Bowl ads, companies weren’t as generous about the technology. In an ad for the film Despicable Me 4, we see two Minions creating a series of terribly disfigured AI-generated still images reminiscent of Stable Diffusion 1.4 from 2022. There’s three-legged people doing yoga, a painting of Steve Carell and Will Ferrell as Elizabethan gentlemen, a handshake with too many fingers, people eating spaghetti in a weird way, and a pair of people riding dachshunds in a race.

The images are paired with an earnest voiceover that says, “Artificial intelligence is changing the way we see the world, showing us what we never thought possible, transforming the way we do business, and bringing family and friends closer together. With artificial intelligence, the future is in good hands.” When the voiceover ends, the camera pans out to show hundreds of Minions generating similarly twisted images on computers.

Speaking of image synthesis at the Super Bowl, people mistook a Christian commercial created by He Gets Us, LLC as having been AI-generated, likely due to its gaudy technicolor visuals. With the benefit of a YouTube replay and the ability to look at details, the “He washed feet” commercial doesn’t appear AI-generated to us, but it goes to show how the concept of image synthesis has begun to cast doubt on human-made creations.

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