The Hot Take: Software development world is condensing fast with Ai....
Microsoft is expected to announce another round of layoffs soon. Less than 2.5% of the company's workforce will be affected, according to sources that spoke with Business Insider. Due Microsoft's size, even that small percentage means thousands of people will be affected.An SEC filing from June 30, 2025 showed Microsoft had about 228,000 employees. That figure has fluctuated since then, but it gives a gauge of the size of Microsoft's full-time workforce.Division cuts & AI infrastructureThis round of layoffs will affect thousands of rolesâŚ
The Hot Take: Slowly Windows becoming more and more Linux.
Microsoft has shot down the idea that WSL 3 is on the way. The articles that have been calling it WSL 3 mixed up a different feature, WSL Containers, which the company showed at Build 2026 and is now days away from shipping. The correction came straight from the team that builds Windows Subsystem for Linux.
TL; DR: WSL 3 does not exist. WSL Containers does, and it shows up in less than a week.
Microsoft has officially denied that WSL 3 exists.
Craig Loewen, the Product Manager at Microsoft responsible for the Windows Subsystem forâŚ
The âbigâ Windows 11 update for the year 2026, aka Windows 11 26H2, is arriving this fall as a mere 174KB enablement package for anyone already running Windows 11 24H2 or 25H2. For context, upgrading from 23H2 to 26H2 requires close to 6.5GB (not a typo).
Windows 11 update, depending on which version you are on, can weigh either 174 kilobytes or roughly 6.5 gigabytes. The reason is the shared servicing branch model. With Microsoft now force-installing Windows 11 25H2 on all eligible Home and Pro PCs ahead of the 26H2 launch, weâll tell youâŚ
The Hot Take: I guess OK? Is it going to be a google authenticated Microsoft account though?
Microsoft is quietly loosening its grip on the Microsoft account (MSA) requirement. Edge is getting a new option to sign in with a Google account, and we already know that internal teams in the company are working to bring back local account in Windows 11. This may be the first time in 10 years that Microsoft is getting a change of heart when it comes to forcing us to sign in with MSA.
For years, Microsoft pushed MSA hard. You needed one to set up Windows 11, to get the most out of Bing, to claim Rewards points, and to sync anything in Edge.âŚ
The Hot Take: Snapdragon gets it's own windows. Makes me think they haven't converged code like Apple has with iOS/iPadOS/Mac OS.
Microsoft has finally confirmed what we reported in February 2026: Windows 11 26H2 is shipping this year, and itâs not a major release, as the company is trying to make Windows updates more predictable. It means this yearâs feature update will be similar to Windows 11 25H2 and install via an enablement package (eKB).
Windows 11 hasnât received a major feature update since 2024. Windows 11 24H2 was the last major update, and it was released on October 1, 2024. In 2025, Microsoft rolled out Windows 11 25H2, but it was based on the sameâŚ
The Hot Take: Interesting features, we'll see if they pull me from eM Client which has all these now. Minus .pst files.
Outlook âNew,â which is based on Outlook.com, is far from a decent email client. While it has come a long way, the new Outlook doesnât feel as good as the Classic version, and it still lacks many features most users want. Microsoft now says itâs adding advanced support for Mail Merge, .PST, and a new single view for all accounts to the new Outlook app.
Outlook for Windows and web is getting the All accounts view in August 2026
I asked Microsoft for more details, and it told me that Outlook on Windows 11 (and 10) will get support for aâŚ
The Hot Take: Now we know why M$ is trying to squeeze out every ounce of performance in Windows 11.....
Microsoft says youâll be able to run Windows 11âs local Language Model APIs on non-Copilot+ PCs as long as you meet the new hardware requirement: an RTX 30+ GPU with 6GB of VRAM. Itâs a major change, as it means Copilot+ PCsâ advantages are getting âthin,â and I wouldnât be surprised if Microsoft drops the NPU requirement entirely in the future.
Copilot+ PCs officially debuted on June 18, 2024, and theyâve been driving sales for PC makers. However, itâs not because of the âCopilotâ or âNPUâ factor. Itâs largely because newer PCs are now soldâŚ
The Hot Take: Well look at that, it's very interesting that Microsoft is suddenly knocking out all these windows 11 issues. Kinda like they're afraid Linux will take their user base.
The Windows 11 June 2026 Patch Tuesday update, KB5094126 brings Low Latency Profile, Shared Audio, Multi-App Camera, and a handful of other noteworthy changes. Buried deeper in the changelog, without much fanfare, are two improvements to the Microsoft Store, one addressing a long-standing download speed problem and another fixing a frustrating gap in error reporting for managed devices.
Neither of these fixes will generate hype the way the CPU boost feature does. But for anyone who has watched a 500MB app update crawl through the Store forâŚ
The Hot Take: What about that small file handling, any better on that yet?
Microsoft admitted that File Explorer on Windows 11 is slower than the previous version and is taking steps to make it faster, but the performance improvements extend beyond just UI surfaces. Iâm told that Microsoft is internally testing a major performance boost for file operations, starting with batch deleting files.
When you select dozens or hundreds of smaller files, or a few large files, and delete them all in one go, the speed depends on both the SSD/HDD and Windows.
Windows file system overhead matters as well because the OS hasâŚ