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

Jan 22nd 2020

Windows Weekly 656

The Wide World of Nose Scrolling

Microsoft 2020 Predictions

Records live every Wednesday at 2:00pm Eastern / 11:00am Pacific / 19:00 UTC.
Category: News

Microsoft's 2020: What's on the docket (our predictions)

  • - January isn't over yet. So that means it's still fair game for predictions about what we're expecting this year
  • - Windows: 2 feature updates – April (Win 10 2004) and October (20H2). What about 10X (which is being worked on now as part of Manganese)? What do we think of Nadella jokingly saying that Windows should be renamed to "Azure Edge"?
  • - Microsoft (Chr)Edge: 6-week schedule, hopefully, gets favorite/history syncing soon. Linux version could materialize this year, and ARM64 one should be finalized
  • - iOS, Android (mostly Android): More Your Phone features coming (like clipboard copy/paste); new Android launcher; more Teams and O365 enhancements.
  • - Surface: Will we see Surface Hub 2X this spring? (Rumors it's running late). Neo running 10X and Duo phone running Android this holiday. What about a Surface Go 2 running ARM? And the long-rumored Surface Pro makeover codenamed Carmel?
  • - Office: O365 Life for consumers (including Teams for Life); more first-line worker features; Project Cortex knowledge management 'premium' service coming this spring. Does Microsoft 365 just take over as the brand?
  • - Azure: More regions, more AI, security, IoT and bot services. More $10-million-plus deals. But also more multicloud acknowledgment with products like Azure Arc
  • - Xbox. Xbox Series X to debut in 2020. What about xCloud?
  • - Developer. Duo SDK for Android, Windows 10 X SDK, Web standards for dual displays, and a Microsoft 365 Developer Day are all on the way. New adjustments to Edge across duel screen devices.

Outlandish (or not) mega predictions?

  • - HUGE NEWS! Graphing mode is coming to Calculator
  • - Windows 10 version 1909 is now broadly available to seekers
  • - German government reveals how much it's paying for Windows 7 extended service

Related: it's one week later, Windows 7 fans. How are we doing?

Semi-related: Gartner shares a PC market prediction for 2020 through 2023

Some Windows 10 on ARM milestones Native ARM64 version of Edge is available in Beta now

Microsoft Mouse and Keyboard Center comes to W10onA

Mark your Microsoft calendars

  • - Spring hardware event (April/early May in NYC?)
  • - Build 2020: May 19 –21 Seattle
  • - Inspire 2020: July 19-23 in Las Vegas (partners and guests only. No press)
  • - Ignite 2020: September 21-25 in New Orleans
  • - Launch of Neo, Duo (Sept/Oct.?)

C'mon, Microsoft. You're better than this

  • - Microsoft to be Carbon Negative by 2030. Nice! But… What about this terribleness?
  • - Ads in WordPad
  • - Auto-installation of Chrome extension switching the search engine to Bing for O365 ProPlus users Xbox
  • - No HDMI port in the coming console. Users revolt (or don't)
  • - New Xbox Game Pass titles for both console and PC
  • - Many new games head to xCloud
  • - Xbox Console Streaming Preview is broadly available

Tips and picks

  • - Tip of the week: Get Xbox Game Pass for PC for 3 months for just $1
  • - App pick of the week: Half-Life, HL-2, and the HL-2 Episodes are all free on PC through March. And also "free to play" not free forever. But still.
  • - Enterprise pick of the week: BizTalk 2020: It's alive! The latest iteration of Microsoft's enterprise app integration server is available: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/biztalk/install-and-config-guides/whats-new-in-biztalk-server-2020
  • - Enterprise pick 2: Microsoft will be adding an Azure region in Isreal in 2021.
  • - Beer pick of the week: Cutting Tiles - Mosiac Double Dry-Hopped by Trillium Brewing Company. 8.4 percent

Download or subscribe to this show at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

Check out Mary Jo's blog at AllAboutMicrosoft.com

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