Happy Friday, and Happy New Year! We head into 2026 full of uncertainty but also full of hope. So let’s kick of this holiday weekend, and the New Year, on a good note. 🤯 Bad memory, bad MartinusV2 asks: While there are high memory prices right now, will that impact the next release of Qualcomm's next Snapdragon x2 success? I’m not sure that it will impact Snapdragon X2 more or less than it will whatever Intel and AMD are releasing, but I suppose that depends on a variety of factors. Snapdragon X was widely adopted by PC makers in the sense that all the major players had at least a few models, with more arriving over time. But availability is also a fairly limited because it’s essentially a new and unproven platform and Snapdragon X probably accounted for less than 10 percent of PCs that shipped last year. So that might factor in for the new generation, and we’re just days away from CES 2026 and what rumors tell us will be the first Snapdragon X2-based laptops. If these appear in market sooner rather than later, I have to assume that the orders were made long ago, so RAM pricing might not factor in all that much. But longer out, that could be an issue for sure. But also an issue for all chips and PCs. Forced to bet, I don’t see the RAM pricing problems impacting Snapdragon X2 disproportionately. These will mostly be premium PCs with better margins, and it feels more likely that the biggest issues will be with more affordable PCs. I could be completely wrong on that. Tied to this, I am curious whether we’ll see upgradeable RAM on more laptops, especially. Despite all the right to repair gains, RAM remains the one basic component that’s typically non-upgradeable on modern laptops. And this would be a good place to save some money. A customer who wanted, say, 32 GB of RAM could order a laptop with 16 GB and then upgrade later when the prices are better or enough time has gone by. Regardless of the current crisis, I was curious we haven’t already seen more of this. With the memory problem, will we see a new revolution in optimization in software that will be more efficient memory or better code optimization? If it continues for years and/or is permanent, yes. This is one of those “life will find a way” things, similar to what DeepSeek is doing with cloud AI. If you have infinite resources, you’ll use them, but people get inventive when there are restrictions or limitations. Oddly, this is perhaps one area where AI could help: We could use GitHub Copilot and other AI pair programming tools to refactor code specifically to be more efficient. We should be doing this anyway, of course. ✔️ Mi amiga wright_is asks: Thinking of what-ifs... Just reading your year in review and saw the Amiga Forever article ... I always wonder, if Commodore could have sorted itself out and actually marketed the Amiga properly, could it have succeeded, been the 3rd operating system, or even have supplanted th... The post Ask Paul: January 2 ⭐ appeared first on Thurrott.com.

In Smart Home-ish in 2026 ⭐, I wrote about the first steps I took to upgrade our condo in Pennsylvania with some basic smart home capabilities. This involved taking stock of what we had, basically several Sonos speakers and some Hue smart lights, and updating and organizing everything in Apple Home and Google Home, and then getting a few new smart home gadgets like two more Hue lights for the porch and garage and four smart plugs for the indoors. It’s been a while, and though the basics are the same, Apple Home and Google Home have both benefitted from some long-needed smart home standardization, most obviously via the Matter protocol. (With the caveat that the owners of each smart home ecosystem still keep key products sealed off from rivals. For example, our Apple HomePod speakers are unreachable outside of Apple Home. And our Blink cameras only work with Amazon.) But smart home tech is still complicated and unreliable, especially when you move beyond the basics. I’ve experienced this problem repeatedly in the past month, and pretty much across the board with the products mentioned above and, most recently, with a few new products and other changes. This reminded me of why I scaled back my smart home ambitions when we had the big house. And that more sophisticated smart home setups may never be simple enough for mainstream users. I will elaborate. 💡 First tests automating the lights In late November and early December, I bought a set of four Matter-compatible smart plugs and two Philips Hue Essential smart LED A19 smart light bulbs so that I could automate the outside and interior lighting, respectively, when we’re away. This is useful because we’re often gone for months at a time and the lighting will help give the appearance of someone being home. I don’t really need all four lights to come on inside the place, but it was a set, and so I plugged each into a receptacle and configured each plug in the Apple Home and Google Home apps. Three are in the living room and attached to (dumb) lamps. And the fourth is in the kitchen, though I had it attached to the Christmas tree lights over the holidays. I had to pull out a ladder to install the outside lights, but there are just two of them, one over the front door and one over the garage, and both are controlled via the same light switch just inside the front door. So that was easy enough, as was adding them to Apple and Google. That was the end of the simplicity. Everything I’ve done since, or tried to do, has been a struggle. 🏠 The basics When we’re in PA, we don’t (and won’t) use the smart plugs. Instead, we just use the lamps normally. When we’re away, I basically just need to make sure the (dumb) lamps are each turned on. Then, I can control them using either Home app manually, and turning each on and off that way is obvious enough, if tedious. Obviously, some automation is required. Ditto for the outdoor lights. The on/off swit... The post Smart Home 2026: Smart Light Switches and Automations ⭐ appeared first on Thurrott.com.

ADHD sometimes feels like a super power. But sometimes it just gets in the way, making me feel broken and lost. The post From the Editor’s Desk: A Mind is a Terrible Thing ⭐ appeared first on Thurrott.com.

2025 was another monster year for personal technology, with AI, antitrust, and layoffs dominating the headlines. 2025 was also a big year for Thurrott.com. We published 1979 articles and posts overall (including this one). Laurent wrote 880 news stories and an excellent iPhone 16E review, and I feel obligated to point out that his work behind the scenes is invaluable and as appreciated as his writing. I was busy, too, of course. My 2025 contributions included: 1098 articles written overall (including this one) 261 Premium posts (including this one) 13 installments of the new Thurrott Premium newsletter since August and a partnership with Chris Hoffman on his excellent Windows ReadMe newsletter 33 From the Editor’s Desk editorials 48 Ask Paul columns 21 articles in the Online Accounts (2025) series, which was triggered by YouTube removing our access to our channel without warning 34 articles in the WinUIpad (5) and Modernizing .NETpad (2025) (29) programming series 50 episodes of Windows Weekly with Leo Laporte and Richard Campbell (2 with Chris) 50 episodes of Hands-On Windows 173 episodes of First Ring Daily with Brad Sams 11 episodes of Desk to Destination with Stephen Rose since August 2 episodes of RunAsRadio with Richard and 1 episode of iTechGear Weekly with Chris Spera, Larry McJunkin, and Joel McLaughlin There’s no rest for the wicked. So let’s dive into the biggest stories and trends of 2025. Note that this is a human curated list, not a rote “x number of reads/comments” thing. I went through the entire year’s worth of stories twice to come up with this. And yet I feel it still only scratches the surface. It was just that kind of year. 👍 Some good news for a change Despite all the negativity around AI, tech industry enshittification, tariffs and rising prices, uncertainty about Xbox, layoffs, and whatever else, 2025 is perhaps best remembered for all the good news, too. And there was no better news than antitrust regulation finally going after Big Tech and netting some major wins, so that gets its own category below. Here, I celebrate the smaller wins that helped get me—and, I suspect, many of you—through this objectively terrible year. Commodore is back, baby! And in semi-related news, Amiga Forever and C64 Forever got nice updates in 2025 too Affinity 3 arrived and the new owners at Canva surprised everyone by making it 100 percent free to use Microsoft open sourced its 6502 BASIC source code and the first three ZORK games, and Bill Gates open sourced Altair BASIC Microsoft made major advances in security in Windows 11 thanks to the Windows Resiliency Initiative (and so I wrote up how Windows 11 users should secure their PCs) Adobe Premiere shipped on iPad and iPhone for free Some positive news for Xbox and gamers amidst all the terribleness, including Fallout 4 adding Xbox Play Anywhere and Creations support, Red Dead Redemption coming to Andro... The post My Top Stories of 2025 ⭐ appeared first on Thurrott.com.

The market researchers at IDC warn that an “unprecedented” memory chip shortage could impact PC and smartphone sales in 2026. The post IDC Says Global Memory Shortage Could Tank PC and Smartphone Sales in 2026 appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Samsung announced that its Galaxy A17 5G smartphone and Galaxy Tab A11+ tab;et will arrive next week with entry-level pricing. The post Samsung Galaxy A17 5G and Galaxy Tab A11+ Arrive Next Week appeared first on Thurrott.com.

2025 was an incredible year for PCs, Macs, iPads, iPhones, Android devices, and other hardware. Even the venerable Commodore 64 made the list. 🔝 Best of the best: HP OmniBook 5 16 In 2024, Copilot+ PCs based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chipset set my world on fire, turning Windows 11 on Arm into the obvious path forward for Windows and the PC. There is so much that goes into that, but the key, to me, is reliability. Intel- and AMD-based PCs are interesting for all kinds of reasons, but x86 is dead architecture walking at this point. I returned to this theme repeatedly in 2025 because it’s so important. Reliability matters and I love when it just works. Qualcomm built out its Snapdragon X family of chips with X Plus and X Plus 8-core variants in late 2024, and then it introduced the entry-level Snapdragon X in January 2025, lowering prices further and giving PC makers a platform they could use to transform the critical $500 to $800 space. PC makers responded, but a May announcement by HP about a coming line of Snapdragon X-based OmniBook 5 laptops had me particularly interested. PC makers regularly send out high-end configurations to reviewers like me. But I wanted to see what the entry-level Snapdragon X could accomplish. Just about anything, as it turns out. I bought one with my own money and fell in love. As I wrote in HP OmniBook 5 16 Review: It’s a Snapdragon Miracle, the OmniBook 5 is nearly perfect, and superior to x86 laptops that cost two, three, or even four times as much. The performance is consistently excellent, as is its reliability and efficiency. You get almost 10 hours of battery life, Windows Hello ESS security, and all the goodness that comes with every Copilot+ PC. Since then, I upgraded my OmniBook 5’s SSD to a 1 TB unit, which went flawlessly. What I haven’t written is that I can’t stop using it. I planned to leave the OmniBook 5 behind in Mexico when we came back to the U.S. in mid-November, so I would have an excellent Snapdragon-based laptop in both homes. (My Surface Laptop 7 is here in PA.) But I couldn’t bear to be apart from it, so I flew home with the OmniBook 5. And I still can’t stop using it. I love this laptop. I’m using it to write these words, in fact. ❤️ Feel-good hardware story of the year I’m struggling to not buy one for myself because the pull is strong, but I love that a YouTuber and Commodore enthusiast hatched a plan to bring back Commodore, somehow orchestrated the acquisition, brought back a ton of ex-Commodore luminaries to help him out, and launched a new line of Commodore 64 computers, and then started shipping the first units to customers in time for the holidays. This is the feel-good tech hardware story of the year, and a nice reminder that not everything has to suck in this age of Big Tech enshittification and political nonsense. Every time I think about it, I just start smiling. And thinking, maybe next year we’ll get a new Amiga too. Fin... The post My Favorite New Hardware of 2025 appeared first on Thurrott.com.

GOG announced that it is being acquired by one of its original cofounders so it can focus on videogame preservation. The post GOG is Leaving CD PROJEKT appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Big Tech and Big AI are over-hyping AI with a “bigger is better” message that only the biggest tech companies in the world with the biggest and most expensive and inefficient datacenters can deliver on the promises of this technology. But sometimes less is more. There are Little Tech cloud AI alternatives that use open source models or anonymized access to Big AI models. And there are Little AI alternatives that let you use small language models (SLMs) locally, on-device. Both are evolving to the point where they are, or soon will be, “good enough” alternatives to Big Tech and Big AI. And while both should be broadly interesting to just about anyone, I feel that these Little Tech and Little AI solutions should be particularly compelling to those who fear, hate, or distrust AI today. 🤏 Little Tech I identified the Little Tech companies and products I trust last summer, and it’s no surprise that several of them are pursuing standalone AI solutions in the form of chatbots or, if they’re browser makers, AI that integrates directly into their products. Proton and DuckDuckGo are among those with standalone chatbots with a privacy focus. Proton Lumo is open source, secure, and private, it doesn’t log your chats, can’t share data with others, and doesn’t serve ads. It uses open source AI models like Mistral Nemo, Mistral Small 3, and Nvidia OpenHands 32B, plus its own custom models, and not Big AI models. The free version can be used without an account with limits, though signing in will save your chat history and provide more chats. And the paid version is $12.99 per month, though it’s on sale as I write this for $9.99 per month. There’s also a version for businesses. DuckDuckGo’s Duck.ai provides smaller Big AI models like Anthropic Claude Haiku 3.5, Meta Llama 4 Scout, and OpenAI GPT-5 mini to all users, and some bigger models like Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.5, Meta Llama 4 Maverick, and OpenAI GPT-5.1 to paying customers. But access to these models is anonymized, of course, and DuckDuckGo also offers a web search engine with integrated AI Answers and an eponymous web browser, both of which are likewise private and secure. Anyone can use all of these products and services for free, with the expected limits on Duck.ai. But DuckDuckGo also offers a Privacy Pro subscription for $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year that provides anonymized access to those bigger AI models in addition to the VPN, personal information removal, and identity theft restoration services. For those who prefer to access AI through a web browser, almost every Little Tech web browser maker is doing something in this space. The notable exception, of course, is Vivaldi, which said in August that it will not add AI features to its browser because users who need that functionality can find it on the web or through extensions. Brave is the only web browser I can recommend without hesitation or caveat and, like DuckDuckGo, it offers an i... The post Little Tech, Little AI ⭐ appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Leo, Richard, and Paul ditch the headlines for whisky-soaked tech stories, behind-the-scenes Microsoft confessions, vintage hardware, and more. The post Windows Weekly 964: Happy New Year! appeared first on Thurrott.com.

2025 was a strange year for podcasts: I added four new shows but my overall listening time was down by about 50 percent year-over-year. I chalk that up to a big lifestyle change this past year in which we spent over half our time in Mexico City, where we walk everywhere every day. But we do that together, so I can’t listen to podcasts, audiobooks, or music at that time. And since we walk so much, I don’t see any point in walking solo just so I can catch up on content. I’ll try to review the life balance thing in 2026. But the way I listen hasn’t changed: I still use and prefer Pocket Casts, and recommend it to everyone. ❤️ Favorite bingeable podcasts Every once in a while, I discover a podcast that I enjoy so much I want to listen to every episode. But even those come and go. I was a big fan of How Did This Get Made for several years, for example, but stopped listening a few years back. And while The Rewatchables is still a favorite, I’ve listened to all the previous episodes I would like to listen to and now just cherry–pick from the new episodes as they appear, which explains why it’s moved into the next section. But the following three endure, in alphabetical order. If Books Could Kill This might be my favorite podcast overall because the hosts are consistently smart and funny and land on the correct side of big issues. It skewers and debunks so-called “airport books,” those books, often of the self-help variety, that somehow sell in the millions despite being absolutely terrible and in many cases objectively wrong. Think Freakanomics, The 4-Hour Work Week, The Secret, and similar drivel. Classic. Made by Google I’ve been listening to this podcast since its inception and it added a video version in the most recent season. I like the host, I like hearing from those who work on Google’s products, and I make a point to listen to (or, now, watch) every episode. (The video version is not in Pocket Casts, but it’s available on YouTube.) Scott & Mark Learn To I could not have been happier last year when I saw that two of my favorite people at Microsoft started this podcast. It’s still a favorite, and I look forward to each episode. 👍 Favorite podcasts for cherry-picked episodes I don’t have time to listen to every single episode of every podcast I subscribe to, but I have several that are favorites depending on the topic. This is pretty much why my Pocket Casts playlists view is set to “New Releases.” You never know when the next great show is going to pop up. Here are my favorites, in alphabetical order. .NET Rocks Richard Campbell and Carl Franklin are friends and two of my favorite people, and they’re terrific together on this developer-focused podcast, which may now be the longest-running podcast in history. Hanselminutes Scott Hanselman (of Scott & Mark Learn To fame) is a tech-focused content maker who I’ve know for decades and really enjoy. Thi... The post My Favorite Podcasts of 2025 ⭐ appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Windows 11 quietly shifted the way we manage apps, protect data, and interact with our devices in 2025. This episode reveals the must-try upgrades. The post Hands-On Windows 170: Best Windows 11 Features of 2025 appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Paul Thurrott is back to talk about everything that happened to Windows in 2025, and what that might hold for 2026. The post RunAsRadio #1016: What Windows Wants for Christmas with Paul Thurrott appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Bonjourr is a free Momentum-like minimalist New Tab replacement that I use in every web browser and recommend to everyone. The post Bonjourr Updated With Pomodoro Timer, Improved Customization appeared first on Thurrott.com.

I love to read and 2025 was a big year for books, especially technology industry books. Here’s what my year in reading looked like. 📖 Books I read e-books semi-exclusively through Kindle and usually on my iPad Air. 📗 Favorite non-fiction title Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company by Patrick McGee Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company by Patrick McGee is the best and most important book about the personal computing industry in at least a decade. It’s well-researched and well-written, and it unfolds like a whodunit murder mystery in which Apple CEO Tim Cook is revealed over time to be subservient to the Chinese government while undermining his company and country in a manic bid to maximize profits at all costs. It’s such a big deal that I wrote a full review and this book will be heartbreaking to anyone who actually believed that Apple was somehow better than the rest of Big Tech or was in any way patriotic. It may be the most important industry book ever written. 📕 Favorite fiction title Never Flinch by Stephen King That Stephen King is somehow still cranking out books this good is astonishing, as is his late-career turn to crime fiction. This is another book centered on Holly Gibney, the quirky character who first appeared in Mr. Mercedes, still a favorite, and while some of the mannerisms are getting a bit tired, I pretty much can’t get enough of this universe. 🔊 Audiobooks I listen to audiobooks semi-exclusively in Audible, and I still have an Audible Premium Plus subscription. 📘 Favorite non-fiction audiobook Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future Of Blizzard Entertainment by Jason Schreier, narrated by Ray Chase In Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment, Jason Schreier documents over 30 years of history in engaging fashion. I'm steeped in the lore of our industry, but this was a story that was mostly new to me, and one I eagerly consumed over a long weekend. And though I didn't make the connection until I was almost done, this is the third book I've read by Mr. Schreier. His previous titles, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made and Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry, are terrific reads as well. He's been covering the video game industry since 2010 and to unravel this history, he interviewed over current and former Blizzard employees. I recommend it highly. 📙 Favorite fiction audiobook Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, narrated by Thomas Harris This audiobook isn’t new, nor is the original written version. And it’s not even new to me: I first read Red Dragon over 35 years ago and bought the Kindle version in 1999 (!). But this book, which is a prequel to the more famous Silence of the Lambs and is nearly the same story but with a different protagonist, remains one of the all-time great crime thrillers. I bought the audiobook version when I di... The post My Favorite Books and Audiobooks of 2025 ⭐ appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Google may be testing the ability for Gmail users to change their @gmail.com email address. The post Gmail May Soon Let Users Change Their Email Address appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Happy Friday and Happy Holidays! Here’s a short-ish edition of Ask Paul for this short week and extra-long weekend. 📥 The outlook for Outlook Christian-Gaeng asks: Since the Outlook team wants to relaunch the development of the new Outlook around AI, are there any indications that the classic Outlook will remain available beyond 2029? I can't imagine that large corporations will switch to a new Outlook with AI at its core. So many thoughts. The first of which is that there is almost nothing I dislike more than Outlook in all its forms. But most especially the classic desktop app that some can’t bear parting ways with for some reason. The new Outlook is a sort of gift that keeps on giving if all you want is drama because there will always be some feature that one person finds indispensable that isn’t in the new app, and we can just complain about it endlessly. It fills the gap nicely between other dramas real (Crowdstrike) and imagined (Recall). But the combination of the new Outlook and AI? Oh. Chef’s kiss. That’s the unholy nexus of Hell right there. It’s almost too perfect. Outlook has thus far weathered two major shifts: Internet email, which arrived just as Microsoft released the first version of the app, and chat-based collaboration as popularized by Slack. In the latter case, Microsoft of course created Teams and has seen incredible success, but it also did that classic Microsoft thing and didn’t leave Outlook users behind by figuring out ways for them to stick with their tool of choice and interact with those who were on the new thing. Also, the whole “One Outlook” thing makes sense in that having a single codebase for add-ons across all app versions is obviously the right choice. (Cue next round of complaining about web apps.) Quick side-trip: Thinking about this, it’s pretty clear that the technology behind Loop is/was the connective glue that makes all that work. And that in the pre-AI era, we were suffering through a similar volume of regular updates all tied to Teams. Pre-pandemic, during the pandemic, and then for the first few years after, it was all Teams all the time. From my perspective having to cover the news, AI/Copilot is just the Teams playbook, but amplified. Obviously, Microsoft is going to integrate AI into the new Outlook. Right? I mean, this is obvious. As obvious, Microsoft is not going to integrate AI into the classic Outlook. This can be viewed cynically, it’s so easy, but pragmatically (this will come up again and again, I bet) it makes sense. Classic Outlook is essentially if not literally deprecated, and it will get security updates, but it also has an end date. Though there is arguably some precedent for thinking otherwise if you’re familiar with the history of OneNote, Outlook is too big and too central to the whole Microsoft 365 productivity story to co-develop two versions of this app for the desktop. There can be only one. Another side-trip: Compl... The post 🎁 Ask Paul: December 26 ⭐ appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Stephen and Paul are both pretty compulsive when it comes to preparing content to listen to and watch before trips. In this episode, they discuss the apps and services they use for music, movies, e-books, audiobooks, and podcasts, some general tips for relaxing in transit, and some very specific entertainment recommendations.

Apple will soon allow alternative iOS app stores in Brazil after agreeing to settle an antitrust lawsuit in the country. The post Apple to Allow Alternative App Stores for iOS Users in Brazil appeared first on Thurrott.com.

I’ve been playing multiplayer first person shooters since the initial release of DOOM in 1993. This was such a long time ago that I had to download the shareware freebie episode, consisting of 8 or 9 levels, over multiple days using my dial-up connection. And then I had to send a check to Mesquite, Texas via snail mail so I could receive the full game in return several weeks later. On floppy disks. This was also such a long time ago that I had to create a special stripped-down MS-DOS boot disk so I could play DOOM on my first PC, an AMD 386SX-based system I cobbled together by hand. I had a friend with an expensive Intel 80486-based PC, and I was jealous that he didn’t have to do that. (If memory serves, the most significant difference in this case was RAM: I believe my PC started out with 2 MB of RAM while his had 4 MB. I think.) In those pre-Internet days, DOOM provided two multiplayer experiences, a two-player cooperative mode and a four-player deathmatch in which four human players would run around whatever level and shoot each other. This would eventually be transformative, but the DOOM networking code was written to work over Novell Netware (IPX/SPX), limiting its reach. Online services like DWANGO quickly appeared to deliver this experience over dial-up, and future games would simply embrace the TCP/IP-based networking protocol used by the Internet. Fortunately for me, I worked in the computer labs at Scottsdale Community College (SCC) and was friends with some of the more technical people there. People who pointed out that we had a Novell Netware network at the school, had access to the labs and classrooms at all times, and could play DOOM together. And so we did, usually in one of the labs where we could hoot and holler as we chased each other around. But a few times, we used the projectors in individual classrooms to play DOOM against each other, with the game displayed on an entire wall. Glorious. I’ve always loved videogames, and I am part of the first generation of people to have videogame machines at home. But multiplayer, the ability to compete against other people in real-time, was a literal game changer. It would be many years before I would mostly give up on single player games, but DOOM set the stage for that transition. It was so important to me that I bought Novell-compatible networking cards for my PCs later in the 1990s just so I could play certain games with others. Things evolved in time and mostly got better. MS-DOS games persisted through the end of the 1990s, but we transitioned to Windows in time. PCs got faster and better. The Internet happened, and I was lucky enough to be in the first major city in the U.S., Phoenix, to be wired for broadband cable Internet access thanks to its flat geography. But there were a few side-steps in those heady days, especially at Id Software, where the coding genius that made all this possible, John Carmack, would turn experiments into shipping products a... The post Have a Blast appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Here’s a look back at the apps, services, and games I started using in 2025. As with previous years, there was a lot of change, and a fairly obvious push to calm down Big Tech predations while adopting more Little Tech solutions. Previous years: 2024, 2023, and 2022. Windows 11 Windows continues to be my focus, but it’s also where I spend all my time working, and I have been evolving the set of apps I use year-by-year, not with a plan in mind, but as apps that are new (or new to me) come to light and are better than what I was using. In 2024, for example, I switched (back) to Typora (a Markdown editor for writing), Notion, Affinity Photos 2.x, and Proton Pass (for password/identity management, also on mobile). 2025 saw a similar shift, though the most important change is tied to the single biggest issue we have using Windows these days. So let’s start there. Windows 11 de-enshittification I will continue using and testing macOS and various Linux distributions. And as many know, when it comes to the latter, I lean more towards those that are simpler, minimalist, and more user friendly like Elementary OS and Zorin OS. But I find that a properly de-enshittified Windows 11 is better than them all for me and, I think, for almost all Windows users. And while I’ve looked at a lot of different ways to achieve this over the past few years, a few solutions rose to the top this year. So much so that I now use these regularly on my own PCs. The first step is to create a clean install of Windows 11 that is de-enshittified from the beginning, and that’s where Tiny11 Builder comes in. If I can’t start over for whatever reason, then I use Win11Debloat to achieve much the same effect after the fact. And Win11Debloat will be useful if (when?) some future Windows 11 update brings back some of the terrible. Alongside those two critical tools, I also use and recommend: Rufus to create clean, de-enshittified Windows 11 installation media on USB ExplorerPatcher to remove the WinUI bloat from File Explorer and restore its underlying performance and reliability MSEdgeRedirect to sever all the forced Microsoft Edge usage and force Widgets, Search, and whatever else in Windows 11 to use my browser of choice Note that when I do use Tiny11 Builder to create a clean install of Windows 11 that I have to use the Windows Package Manager (winget) to install a web browser (see below) because it does not include Edge. Web browsers This has been a big year for web browsers, and though that is a topic for another 2024 wrap-up post that’s coming soon, it’s worth discussing the web browsers I use myself and recommend. This is tricky because I often have to test other web browsers to keep up on what’s going on. But if you literally care about yourself, meaning you want to protect your privacy and security and do so without sacrificing a web that actually works, there is only one choice, Brave. I cannot recommend it enough. Beyo... The post My New Apps, Services, and Games of 2025 ⭐ appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Xbox Cloud Gaming is coming to more Fire TV devices today, with Microsoft’s Xbox app launching on the newest Fire TV 4-Series and Fire TV Omni QLED Series. The post Xbox Cloud Gaming is Coming to the Latest Amazon Fire TV Smart TVs appeared first on Thurrott.com.

iOS 26.3, which is expected to be released in late January, will improve interoperability with third-party Bluetooth earbuds and smartwatches for EU users. The post iOS 26.3 to Improve Interoperability With Third-Party Earbuds and Smartwatches in the EU appeared first on Thurrott.com.