Windows Weekly 553

Let's talk about Microsoft as an AI company. MS is going to look for the AI angle for every announcement this year, and many customers are right there with them. Cortana becomes less of a search front end and more of a conversational chatbot. Will MS go so far as to call Windows 10 an " AI OS" at some point? Microsoft continues to add AI smarts to its apps and services – Outlook, Office, Skype. Azure supports several AI services now – machine learning, bot service, cognitive services, predictive analytics.

Win 10 1709 is now 'fully deployed' and ready for business: what does this actually mean? Related: MS says 1709 (Redstone 3) was "fastest to reach 100 million devices"… The evil plan is working! The march to 1803 continues — Redstone 4 17074 available for PCs.

The industry marks 6 straight years of PC sales decline.

Hold onto your IMs: Skype is finally getting end-to-end encryption (in a preview for Skype Insiders now). What took so long? The OneDrive for business rollout of Files Restore is about to begin. No one seems to understand this is business only, and cloud-only.

Xbox: yes, Microsoft is FINALLY working on a gen-2 Xbox Elite Controller. The WOW starts NOW! Over 3 million people on PUBG. But it's still pretty terrible on Xbox.

• Tip of the week: Get free IT training ... From Google!?
• App picks of the week: PowerShell Core, Object Desktop 2018
• Enterprise pick of the week: A great chart for comparing Skype for Business and Teams
• Codename pick of the week: Panther
• Beer pick of the week: Cloudwater NE DIPA Citra Mosaic

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