Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott, Richard Campbell, and Leo Laporte

Aug 20th 2025

Windows Weekly 946

Backing up the Intel Truck

Hosted by Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, Richard Campbell

Microsoft’s gamescom 2025 reveals

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Category: News

Leo, Paul, and Richard break down Google’s Pixel 10 launch spectacle, poking fun at celebrity overkill and asking whether anyone actually cares about new phones anymore. Plus, they dig into Lenovo’s record-breaking quarter, surprising shifts in the PC market, and the ongoing struggle between innovation and copycatting in the AI arms race. Also, Notion has finally added basic offline support, which should make it stickier than ever.

You got your AI in my Windows

  • Pavan Davuluri discusses how AI will impact the Windows user experience
  • Not the same video series as the previous “vision” video
  • Davuluri leads Windows and Surface, so his words matter
  • Changing: Interactions, business models, experiences
  • Multimodal - in this case, meaning adding natural language interactions and vision to keyboard, mouse, touch, pen, etc. - “experience diversity”
  • Powerful AI models running on-device are “transformational”
  • Predictably, the Chicken Littles are losing their s#%t yet again. Guys. Come on.

Windows 11

  • Semantic search and new Copilot home page for all Insiders
  • Click to Do selection modes, minor improvements in Beta and Dev
  • Recall and other Copilot+ PC features FINALLY come to Canary
  • A few minor additions to Canary, nothing new to everyone else
  • Notepad is getting an updated context menu and the Chicken Littles are losing their s#%t yet again. Guys. Come on!
  • Lenovo earnings up 22 percent, best PC market share ever, number one in AI PCs too

AI

  • Google Chrome takes the subtle approach
  • Brave found a major security vulnerability in Comet
  • Like my wife, Gemini remembers everything I ever said now
  • Duck.ai gets GPT-5 Mini access, web search results
  • Grammarly announces CODA-based editor, several AI agents

Xbox and games

  • Another stunning Windows on Arm development
  • The Xbox app actually works now on Windows 11 on Arm, meaning not just game streaming but also downloads. Except, of course, that it mostly doesn’t work
  • Heretic/Hexen installs and runs great
  • Asus ROG Xbox Ally handhelds to launch on October 16
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 with four-player co-op campaign
  • Indiana Jones coming to the Switch 2
  • Gears of War: Reloaded, more coming to Game Pass in late August
  • To help Xbox, Sony raises prices on the PS5
  • GeForce Now gets more powerful cloud GPUs

Tips & picks

  • Tip of the week: Windows 11 Field Guide, 25H2 Edition is on the way
  • App pick of the week: Notion
  • RunAs Radio this week: Data Governance for AI with Martina Grom
  • Brown liquor pick of the week: Chichibu Ichiro’s Malt & Grain Whisky

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Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

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