Latest news with #Windows
Miami Herald
2 hours ago
- Miami Herald
Microsoft makes huge change to Windows
When was Microsoft Windows great? Was it ever great? That will depend on your experience and age. The oldest version of Windows I tried was version 3.11. It wasn't great. Windows 7 was decent. I suspect most would agree Windows Vista and Windows 8 weren't. Related: How Apple may solve its Google Search problem The operating system is a huge program. It consists of many smaller programs. The graphical interface you see when you use it is just a shell or desktop environment. The main program that interacts with hardware and controls all the other processes including the graphical interface, is called the kernel. Why do I have such a low opinion of Windows? I'd probably need a couple of articles to express my opinion on just that topic. For now, let's focus on one key problem: Microsoft's approach to how applications made by other companies interact with the Windows kernel. pop_jop/GettyImages If you use Microsoft (MSFT) Windows long enough, you'll eventually witness its infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). Why does the BSOD happen? It happens when the kernel enters a state where it can't recover from an error. Applications can run in two modes, user mode or kernel mode. The application running in kernel mode can do pretty much anything, and if the developer hasn't been very careful, it can break stuff easily. For example, if you have a sound card with a Realtek chip, you need drivers for it. As the kernel controls the hardware, this driver should ideally be part of the kernel. That is the default approach on Linux. Windows does it better, right? Related: Apple WWDC underwhelms fans in a crucial upgrade I'll simplify things a bit here, saying that Windows drivers are applications that run in the kernel mode. Unlike Linux drivers, which are not applications but code that has been vetted by Linux developers to be merged into the kernel, Windows drivers are applications that sometimes misuse kernel-mode "powers" and behave like they're in the Wild West. I can't remember how many times I had to remove Realtek sound drivers from someone's machine while I was still working in IT. They are my favorite cause of BSOD. More Tech Stocks: Amazon tries to make AI great again (or maybe for the first time)Veteran portfolio manager raises eyebrows with latest Meta Platforms moveGoogle plans major AI shift after Meta's surprising $14 billion move Talking about BSODs, do you remember the CrowdStrike incident? In July 2024, CrowdStrike released an update that caused hundreds of millions of computers running Windows to be stuck on a BSOD. Needless to say, the CrowdStrike application that caused the problem was running in kernel mode (It has a "kernel driver" to be technical). David Weston, vice president of Enterprise and OS Security at Microsoft, wrote after the incident: "Kernel drivers are often utilized by security vendors for potential performance benefits." It seems that the incident made Microsoft think about whether the performance benefits are worth it. Weston announced on Microsoft's blog on June 26th that the company will deliver a private preview of the Windows endpoint security platform to a set of Microsoft Virus Initiative partners in July. "The new Windows capabilities will allow them to start building their solutions to run outside the Windows kernel. This means security products like anti-virus and endpoint protection solutions can run in user mode just as apps do," wrote Weston. Related: Analyst sends Alphabet warning amid search market shakeup It will be interesting to see if Microsoft mandates in the future that all cybersecurity vendors use this new userspace system. If they do, it might cause some backlash, as Microsoft would be the only one left with a kernel-mode performance advantage for its cybersecurity software. The company is also simplifying the "unexpected restart experience" (a kind name for a BSOD). They provided the picture, and it looks like that BSOD will become a black screen of death. The company will also introduce Quick Machine Recovery (QMR), a recovery mechanism for machines that cannot restart successfully. In a widespread outage, Microsoft can use QMR to deploy fixes to affected devices via the Windows Recovery Environment. It should be generally available later this summer, together with the new BSOD experience. Related: OpenAI makes shocking move amid fierce competition, Microsoft problems The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.
News18
5 hours ago
- Business
- News18
Google's Gemini CLI AI Agent Wants To Help Developers Code And Solve Problems: Know More
Last Updated: Gemini CLI is an open-source AI agent from Google that is designed to help developers code, solve problems and even automate their tasks. Google is building more AI agents so that people can automate tasks and let AI do most of the heavy lifting. The latest in this series is Gemini CLI which is an agent designed to help developers write code, execute them, generate images and solve complex problems on the fly. The company claims Gemini CLI is open source and offers an easy and lighter access to the AI chatbot for free on Windows, Mac and even Linux systems for developers. You can even customise or instruct Gemini AI to work according to your needs and structure that you follow with your work. AI agents are being pitted as the next-gen AI tools that promise to simplify tasks and help people with multi-tasking to let them focus on the important work. Gemini CLI is doing just that and having it in open source just makes it even more dynamic in the long run. The company is basically offering the source code for the AI agent and giving them the room to improve it, keep it secure and even upgrade the underlying codes. Gemini CLI is available for free if you have a personal Google account and free Gemini code assist license. Having these gives you access to the Gemini 2.5 Pro model and over 1 million tokens that come with the package. Developers have other advanced plans that come with more features like Google AI Studio and other enterprise related solutions. The AI agent is also letting you plug prompts into Search for web pages and source them for your materials. There is a lot on offer here and Google is hoping that the new AI agent shows you the right and the automated way to get the work done. First Published: June 26, 2025, 10:48 IST
Digital Trends
7 hours ago
- Business
- Digital Trends
Windows has a major AI problem, and it's pushing me closer to Apple
Just over a year ago, Apple Intelligence was announced. It continues to be somewhat of a 'meh' affair compared to other rival products like Microsoft's Copilot and Google's Gemini. What was not 'meh' was the support for Apple's generative AI bundle, which extended all the way back to the M1 silicon introduced in 2020. Even the fresh batch of AI features — such as live translations and intelligent Shortcuts — are fully supported on the machines that will soon be five generations old. I can't say the same about Windows and its AI-powered rebirth with the Copilot package. Before confusion ensues, let me clear things up. Recommended Videos Copilot is a suite of AI features, just like Gemini or Apple Intelligence. Then we have Copilot+ machines, which is a branding for PCs that meet certain hardware-level requirements to enable AI-powered features on Windows laptops and PCs. Here's the weird part. A healthy bunch of Intel silicon launched in 2025 — even those in the powerful 'H' class — don't meet those AI processing requirements. All of it has created a weird kind of divide in the Windows ecosystem where certain advanced AI features are locked to a handful of cheaper machines, even if you paid a much higher price to get a laptop with a far more powerful processor. Oddly, it's not just the hardware, but the software experience that now feels different. Copilot+ is not merely AI hype Before we get into the hardware limitations, let's break down the features. Copilot+ machines require a powerful hardware chip for AI acceleration to enable certain features, down to the OS level. For example, in the Settings app, Microsoft is pushing its own Mu small language model (SML) that runs entirely on the NPU. The NPU on a chip, however, must meet a certain performance baseline, something not even Intel and AMD silicon launched in 2025 fulfill universally. Let's start with the AI-powered Settings app interactions. It can now understand natural language queries and make suggestions so that users can directly take action with a click. If you type something like 'My screen doesn't feel smooth,' the Settings app will show a dialog box underneath the search bar, where you get an actionable button to increase the refresh rate and make the interactions smoother. Apple is chasing something similar and has implemented it within the Spotlight system in macOS Tahoe. Next, we have Recall. It's like a time machine system that takes snapshots of your PC activity in the background and analyzes them contextually. In the future, if you seek to revisit or find something, you can simply type a natural language query and find a record of the activity, complete with a link to the webpage or app you were working with. It almost feels magical, and you can read more about my experience here. The crucial benefit is that a healthy bunch of Copilot+ AI features will run on-device, which means they won't require an internet connection. That's convenient, but in hindsight, it's a huge sigh of relief that all user activity remains locked to your device and nothing is sent to servers. Copilot+ hardware also enables a bunch of creative features such as Cocreator and Generative Fill in Paint, Super Resolution, Image Creator, and Restyle in the native Photos app. But there are a few that are meaningful for day-to-day PC usage. With Click to Do in the Snipping Tool, the AI analyzes the text and image on the screen, somewhat like Google Lens and Apple Intelligence. You can select text, look it up on the web with a single click, send email, open a website, summarize, rewrite, and take a wide range of image actions such as copy, share, visual search in Bing, erase objects, remove background, and do more — without ever opening another app. On the more practical side of things, we have translated Live Captions that cover over 40 languages. The translation and captioning happen in real-time and work during video calls and video watching, too. Finally, we have Windows Studio Effects, which can perform chores such as automatic frame adjustment, portrait lighting tweaks, switch background effects, minimize noise, and even make gaze adjustment. The Copilot+ hardware wall Even if you splurge $4,899 on a Razer Blade 18 with an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX processor and Nvidia's top-of-the-line GeForce RTX 5090 graphics, your beastly gaming laptop still won't be able to run the Copilot+ features in Windows 11. That's because the NPU on this processor can only manage 13 TOPS, but a pint-sized $800 Microsoft tablet with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X processor can handle all the exclusive Copilot+ features just fine. It's disheartening, because the Copilot+ experiences in Windows 11 are meaningful OS advancements. Most of them, at least. I have used a few of them extensively, and they feel like a practical evolution. Yet, depriving machines that merely miss out on a powerful NPU, despite packing plenty of compute and graphics processing power, is simply unfortunate. Microsoft has laid out tight hardware requirements for machines that can bear the Copilot+ badge — 256GB of storage, 16GB DDR5 RAM, and a processor with a dedicated AI accelerator chip that can output a minimum of 40 TOPS performance. That's a bottleneck from both ends. First, there are still a healthy bunch of machines that ship with 8GB of RAM, and that too, the DDR4 type memory. Take, for example, the Asus Vivobook 17, which costs $700 and ships with 8GB of DDR4 memory on the entry-point configuration, even with the variant that packs a 13th-generation Intel processor. Let's say you pay up to reach 16GB of RAM. Despite that added stress on your wallet, you are still limited by the RAM type and won't be able to run Copilot+ tools on the machine. It's worth mentioning that there are a LOT of Windows machines that still pack 8GB of RAM, and even when they go up to 16GB capacity, they still rely on the DDR4-type memory. Now, it's time to address the elephant in the room. The silicon situation. The latest from Intel is the Ultra 200 series processor family, which is bifurcated across Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake lines. These Ultra 200 series processors are available in four formats: V-series, U-series, H-series, HX-series, and H-series. Out of the four brackets, only the V-series processors support Copilot+ experiences on Windows 11. Even the enthusiast-class H and HX series processors don't meet the NPU requirements, and as such, they are devoid of the Copilot+ AI features. As perplexing as the situation remains with Intel Core 200 series silicon, the situation with AMD and its Copilot+ readiness isn't too different. At the moment, only AMD's Ryzen AI 300 series processors fall under the Copilot+ bracket. That means if you invested in a top-shelf AMD silicon in the past few years, or even aim to build an AMD gaming rig this year, you either lose out on Copilot+ perks or must pick from the Ryzen AI 300 series line-up. Even older Macs do better The situation with Copilot+ is weird because it has created fault lines in the Windows 11 experience that don't make sense, neither from a price perspective, nor from a firepower angle. It even makes one feel bad about spending a fortune on a top-tier Intel processor, only to find it locked beyond next-gen AI features in Windows 11 because the NPU isn't up to the task. The only other option is to pick a Qualcomm Snapdragon X-series processor. But in doing so, you run into the compatibility hurdles that come with Windows on Arm. Plus, the GPU limitations rule out gaming or other demanding tasks where you need a powerful GPU. Right now, it seems like Copilot+ is a bag of serious caveats. And as Microsoft's team comes with more AI-first experiences, the gulf within Windows 11 is only going to widen. An $800 Copilot+ machine will run native AI experiences that even a powerful desktop won't be able to handle in the near future. The situation within the Apple ecosystem is just the opposite. Even if you have a nearly five-year-old M1 MacBook Air, you can run all the Apple Intelligence features just fine. Now, one can argue that AI is not the deciding factor for picking up a laptop. But as companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Google deeply integrate AI packages such as Copilot, Siri, and Gemini across their OS at the native level, these AI features will essentially serve as a key computing evolution. Google has already given us a glimpse of how tightly interweaving Gemini across its Workspace tools can flesh out, and somewhat similar is the progress of Apple Intelligence within maCOS. But when it comes to the OS-level AI progress, it's Microsoft that finds itself in an odd place where a huge chunk of Windows 11 users are going to feel left out, while macOS users will move forward just fine even on aging hardware.
Forbes
9 hours ago
- Forbes
Microsoft Confirms 2 Free Offers—Windows Users Must Now Choose
Decision time for 700 million users. Microsoft's sudden decision to kill its own October deadline for Windows 10 was many things — but above all it was a surprise. But now for the reality check. Doing nothing is not an option. This reversal means half of all Windows users must now decide. There are now two options on the table — both free — from which to choose. These numbers are stark. There are around 400 million Windows 10 users eligible to upgrade to Windows 11 — that means a PC with the right security hardware onboard. A further 240 million can't upgrade because their PCs fail that eligibility test. All told, that's at least 700 million users with three options to stick to Windows 10. Use Microsoft's cloud backup and extend support for free until october 2026. Use some of the company's rewards points to do the same. Or cough up $30. There is a fourth option of course. Those 400 million users should really take the free upgrade to Windows 11 that's still on the table. Windows 10 retaining security updates for 12-months might be table stakes, but Windows 11 is much more secure. In the same blogpost Microsoft used to confirm its u-turn, it also emphasized the free upgrade point. 'Security is at the heart of Windows 11... Windows 11 is secure by design and by default, with layers of defense enabled on day one to enhance your protection without the need to first configure settings.' I've said before that this u-turn is a mistake. The free 12-month extension should have been limited just to users with PCs unable to upgrade to Windows 11. The threat now is inertia — users that would otherwise have upgraded not bothering until next year. The irony is that those upgrades had finally started to accelerate just as Microsoft issued its surprising news. The danger is that this acceleration will now rapidly slow back down to the crawl it was beforehand. That's not good for users or for Microsoft. So go ahead, upgrade to Windows 11 if you can and have not done so already. And if you can't, use the extended support wizard as soon as it's available. It's currently only available for Insiders, but that will change soon at it hits all PCs. For the rest, the best advice is to see what new PC bargains might crop up through the rest of this year. The Microsoft news will have disappointed PC m akers who want the refresh cycle to continue unabated. You should see some good bargain hunting through the shopping season in the fall as all that inventory chases an unexpectedly soft market. As for all those Windows 10 users, there are now two free offers on the table. Upgrade an eligible PC to Windows 11 or extend support for a year. No excuses for falling off support anymore, making the fared cyber nightmare a reality.
Arab Times
10 hours ago
- Arab Times
Windows' infamous 'blue screen of death' will soon turn black
NEW YORK, June 28, (AP): Nearly every Windows user has had a run-in with the infamous "Blue Screen of Death' at some point in their computing life. Now, after more than 40 years of being set against a very recognizable blue, the updated error message will soon be displayed across a black background. The changes to the notorious error screen come as part of broader efforts by Microsoft to improve the resiliency of the Windows operating system in the wake of last year's CrowdStrike incident, which crashed millions of Windows machines worldwide. "Now it's easier than ever to navigate unexpected restarts and recover faster,' Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft wrote in a Wednesday announcement. As part of that effort, Microsoft says it's "streamlining' what users experience when encountering "unexpected restarts' that cause disruptions. And that means a makeover to the infamous error screen. Beyond the now-black background, Windows' new "screen of death' has a slightly shorter message. It's also no longer accompanied by a frowning face - and instead shows a percentage completed for the restart process. Microsoft says this "simplified' user interface for unexpected restarts will be available later this summer on all of its Windows 11 (version 24H2) devices. And for PCs that may not restart successfully, Microsoft on Wednesday also said it's adding a "quick machine recovery' mechanism. The will be particularly useful for during a widespread outage, the tech giant noted, as Microsoft "can broadly deploy targeted remediations' and automate fixes with this new mechanism "without requiring complex manual intervention from IT.' Microsoft said this quick machine recovery will also be "generally available' later this summer on Window 11 - with additional capabilities set to launch later in the year.
