Microsoft first asked Nintendo to be acquired, then offered to build its consoles in January 2000. Both failed, and Square and Midway said no too. Microsoft bought Bungie instead, and Halo made the Xbox. Here's how Nintendo and XBOX ended up on very different paths 25 years later.

Baca explains why an unlock step could add friction and interfere with taskbar icons and the system tray, reveals Windows 10 saw a significant volume of accidental taskbar moves, and says nothing is beyond reconsideration, just as the movable taskbar itself returned in 2026.

Microsoft confirmed "PC-to-PC Migration is no longer available" just a year after launching it. We compare what the local Wi-Fi transfer tool moved (any folder, 118GB in Microsoft's own demo) with Windows Backup's five folders and 5GB of free OneDrive storage.

A year after Meta killed the native app, WhatsApp's WebView2 wrapper still lags. I tested WhatsApp Web, the Edge-installed web app (579.6MB hiding behind a 2.5MB entry), Smart Connect streaming at 83.5MB and Telegram at 340.1MB, and asked why Meta can't build a native app.

Microsoft says it's fully committed to building native apps for Windows 11 and ditching WebView entirely, but Teams will remain a crap.

If you've been planning to finally ditch Outlook Classic for New Outlook's unified inbox, you might want to hold off.

Windows 11 lets you move the taskbar from Settings, and Microsoft says that's intentional. We revisit Tali Roth's reflow explanation, the hidden Left/Top/Right/Bottom menu in testing, and why power users and Windows 10 holdouts deserve more weight than internal metrics give them.

Marcus Ash says Diego Baca had a working prototype of the Quick Settings speed test within a day. In our tests, it matched phone results in under 30 seconds. With WinUI finally gaining tables and charts and legacy dialogs moving over, Clipchamp, Weather and Teams deserve to be next in line.

Microsoft says crash dumps aren't collected unless you send Optional diagnostic data, but Required data still flags the long press itself. Here's what the Diagnostics & feedback page, Kernel-Power Event ID 41, and Microsoft's little-known 0x1C8 bug check with its "release the power button" screen reveal.

Windows Latest found that Windows 11's new taskbar Search lists Android apps from your linked phone as Mobile App results. Selecting Bluesky opened it on my Samsung A26 and mirrored it to my PC via Phone Link, while Microsoft now confirms Search can also call, text and turn on Do Not Disturb.

Microsoft promised a DataGrid and charts for WinUI at Build 2026. TableView, Chart and InkCanvas are now in an experimental Windows App SDK release, almost five years after third-party vendors started selling these controls for WinUI. Here’s what each one does and what’s still missing.

Windows 11 24H2, 25H2 and 26H2 share one servicing branch, so 26H2 is a tiny master switch for up-to-date PCs. Windows 11 23H2 is on the older 22H2/23H2 branch, so it needs a full OS swap built on a 5.3GB base image, and 23H2 Enterprise support ends on November 10.

You don't have to pay Adobe if you just want to edit, extract, merge, or organize PDFs on Windows 11, thanks to Microsoft Edge.

Microsoft's own docs say Task Manager's ancestor ran at high priority to respond under any load, but Raymond Chen says priority can't help a thread stuck waiting on a lock, a slow network file or Windows' UI system. Here's what AutoBoost, focus boosts and QoS can and can't do.

Windows 10's end of support pushed PC shipments up 9.1% in 2025, but Microsoft now says that boom, OEM inventory drawdowns and weak demand cut Windows OEM revenue 27%. With Windows 10 still on over a quarter of PCs and memory prices rising, Microsoft expects things to get worse.