Microsoft's earnings report went out last week, and the company spent a lot on AI in the quarter. Microsoft updates its customers on what it's done to address Windows 11 problems. And Xbox kills Copilot plans for the console.

Microsoft Earnings

• Microsoft announced that it earned a net income of $31.8 billion on revenues of $82.9 billion in the previous quarter.
• Windows: 1.6 billion monthly active devices, a focus on quality after years of enshittification - but revenues from PC makers were down 2 percent YOY.
• Microsoft Edge "has taken share for 20 consecutive quarters," which isn't supported by the evidence.
• Bing "monthly active users reached one billion for the first time," raising questions about how Microsoft defines the term "user."
• Xbox: "The team is recommitting to our core fans and players, and shaping the future of play," new records for monthly active Xbox users and game streaming hours.
• AI: Capex spending in the quarter was $32 billion, down from previous quarter as previously described, but up 49 percent YOY.

More earnings

• Apple, Google/Alphabet, and Amazon.
• AMD - Up because of AI datacenter.
• Qualcomm - Plus, Intel just hired away a key Qualcomm exec.

Windows

• Microsoft shares an update about what it's done to address Windows 11 pain points so far.
• Marcus Ash is one of the good guys.
• Some of this is happening in Insider, some is rolling out to retail.
• Windows Insider Program and Windows Update improvements we discussed last week - two primary channels in WIP now.
• Simplifying AI experiences - fewer Copilot icons (Notepad, etc.).
• File Explorer improvements - performance, fewer hangs, better polish and consistency.
• Widgets - Feed will be off by default, fewer interruptions, no hover activate.
• System performance - Smaller memory footprint, more aggressive RAM restoration, and more.
• Soon: Taskbar updates, Start updates, and more to share at Build in June.
• Week D update arrives with a peek at May's Patch Tuesday.
• Major: Xbox Mode, AI agents on the Taskbar are the first two big features of 2026.
• Minor: Also adds File Explorer improvements, new haptic feedback effects, touch keyboard improvements, and more.
• Shocking new report that Microsoft Edge is incredibly insecure should surprise no one.

AI

• Microsoft Agent 365 Platform is out of preview, supports local AI agents and Copilot Cowork Agent arrives on mobile with plugin support.
• Microsoft launches a Legal AI Agent in Word.
• Apple's plan to open up to multiple third-party AIs is a good one.
• Canonical's plan to add AI to Ubuntu is also good, but you're never going to believe what happened next.

Xbox and Gaming

• Asha Sharma reorgs Xbox, kills Copilot on the console.
• Forza Horizon 6, more coming to Game Pass in May.
• Xbox April Update is out with updates for all platforms.
• Next Call of Duty will not ship on Xbox One, PS4.
• Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is coming to the Mac for some reason.
• And finally, with the Supreme Court refusing to block the implementation of the ruling in Epic v. Apple, Microsoft's Xbox game store for mobile is one step closer to happening.

Tips and picks

• Tip of the week: Embrace inconvenience.
• App pick of the week: Windows Defender.
• RunAs Radio this week: Securing Active Directory with Spencer Alessi.
• Brown liquor pick of the week: Stalk & Barrel Whisky.

These show notes have been truncated due to length. For the full show notes, visit https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly/episodes/982

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell

Sponsors:

• outsystems.com/twit
• threatlocker.com/twit
• joindeleteme.com/twit promo code TWIT
• helixsleep.com/windows
• cachefly.com/twit

Download audio: https://pdst.fm/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/294/cdn.twit.tv/megaphone/ww_982/ARML3541053303.mp3

Ready to go nano? Carl and Richard talk to José Simões about the open source .NET nanoFramework - a community-driven project to provide .NET for embedded systems. José talks about the evolution from the .NET microFramework, to something even smaller, while at the same time, microcontrollers have gotten much more powerful. The conversation looks beyond the hobbyist and educational uses of these systems into commercial IoT applications. The development cycle is one you'll recognize, working in Visual Studio (or Visual Studio Code) and executing against an emulator, or to the actual controller via USB. And yes, you can set breakpoint in the controller!



Download audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/71899697/dotnetrocks_2001_dot_net_nanoframework.mp3

And almost nobody is talking about it.

About 6 months ago, Anthropic launched “Cowork” an AI agent system designed to work alongside you across apps, devices, and workflows. It shook the SaaS market. Microsoft stock is down 20% since the announcement.

Then Microsoft announced a partnership with Anthropic to license it's Cowork stack. (details in comments)

At first, most people assumed this was just another “we licensed a model” deal.

But the deeper you look, the more interesting it gets.

Because Microsoft didn’t just appear to license the LLM.

They appear to have integrated the entire agentic interaction layer, the orchestration, delegation, and multi-step workflow experience.

And now the timelines are getting hard to ignore:

→ Anthropic adds mobile task delegation

→ Weeks later Microsoft announces phone-based Copilot Cowork flows

→ Anthropic pushes persistent agent workflows

→ Microsoft rolls out long-running Copilot tasks

→ Anthropic experiments with “computer use”

→ Microsoft expands Copilot actions, plug-ins and adds a Marketplace.

We may look back at the Microsoft + Anthropic deal as the moment the industry quietly shifted from:

“Who has the smartest agent?”

to

“Who owns the AI operating layer for work?

#Cowork #Copilot #Anthropic #HealthcareAI

Improving AI with domain expertise

AI agents are generalists, but when it comes to professional Flutter development, “general” isn’t enough. To build production-grade apps, you need an assistant that understands the nuance of localization, the latest Dart language features, and how to add integration tests.

Today, we’re introducing Agent Skills for Flutter and Dart — a new way to give your AI tools domain-specific expertise.

Beyond the knowledge gap

One of the primary challenges in AI development is the “knowledge gap.” Flutter and Dart can launch new features more quickly than LLMs can update their fixed training data. As a part of how we are thinking about AI, we are looking for ways to not only address the knowledge gap but also ensure the agent applies that knowledge to achieve the task accurately and efficiently following the most optimal workflows.

A little over a year ago, Model Context Protocols (MCP) were the way to provide more AI domain-specific expertise. While MCP gives an agent access to specialized tools, an Agent Skill teaches the agent how to use those tools for a specific task. Think of it this way: MCP provides the hammer and nails (the tools), while a Skill provides the blueprint and the professional know-how to build the house.

Skills improve context efficiency through “progressive disclosure”. This is similar to how deferred loading works in Flutter, where apps can load libraries when needed, coding agents load Skills when they are relevant to what you’re trying to do .

For Flutter and Dart, these Skills provide tailored instructions for common workflows, and enhance the tools provided in the Dart MCP server to reduce the knowledge gap, which improves accuracy and lowers token usage.

A task-oriented approach

Our early experimentation revealed that Skills that only provide documentation don’t add as much value as we initially assumed. Since Flutter’s comprehensive and well written documentation is open-sourced, modern models are already highly capable of finding relevant information for most questions and tasks.

So, we pivoted to creating Skills that are “task-oriented”. Every skill in our GitHub Flutter Skills or Dart Skills repositories focuses on developer tasks like building adaptive layouts- by providing instructions for agents to reliably complete the task. We have conducted extensive manual evaluations to define our initial set of launched skills, and are working on an automated evaluation pipeline that we will share soon.

Using the Skills

To start using these Skills in your workflow, first install the Skill set in your project directory:

npx skills add flutter/skills - skill '*' - agent universal
npx skills add dart-lang/skills - skill '*' - agent universal

You will be asked to select the Skills you want to install. Pick all or select the specific ones you might find most useful.

Then choose the agent that you prefer to develop with.

Now, prompt your AI agent as usual. Here are 5 ways you can use these Skills today:

Skill #1: flutter-add-integration-test

Configures Flutter Driver for app interaction and converts MCP actions into permanent integration tests.

Add an integration test for the checkout flow in my app

Skill #2: flutter-setup-localiztion

Adds localization support to your Flutter project

Set up localization in my app

Skill #3: flutter-build-responsive-layout

Uses LayoutBuilder, MediaQuery, or Expanded/Flexible to create a layout that adapts to different screen sizes.

Ensure that the checkout screen uses repsonsive layout

Skill #4: dart-use-pattern-matching

Refactors code to use Dart’s pattern matching language capabilities where appropriate

Refactor my code so that it uses pattern matching where possible

Skill #5: dart-collect-coverage

Uses the coverage package to collect unit test coverage and generate an LCOV report.

Collect test coverage for my project

For more prompt examples, check out the readme Flutter Skills or Dart Skills repositories on GitHub.

Tell us what you think

These initial core Skills, designed to handle the most common Flutter development hurdles, are just the beginning. We want to build the future of AI-assisted development with you, our community. As you use these Skills and create new ones for your projects, file issues (Dart Skills repo, Flutter Skills repo), and let us know what additional work you’d like to see. We look forward to helping improve your productivity as you use these Skills!

---

Introducing Skills for Dart and Flutter was originally published in Flutter on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Shiny.AiConversation wraps chat clients, speech recognition, text-to-speech, audio playback, message persistence, and state management into a single IAiConversationService interface for .NET.

There’s a quiet but growing backlash against the cloud-everything model that dominated the last decade of software. Not a rejection of the internet but a recognition that not every tool needs a server, an account, or a subscription to work. Local-first software is the answer. Your data lives on your machine, works offline, and doesn’t phone home.

Simple QR Code Maker was built from the start with those values in mind.

What Is “Local-First”?

A local-first app keeps your data on your device and processes everything on your hardware. It doesn’t upload your inputs to a server to do its job. It doesn’t require a login. It works when you’re on a plane, in a basement, or on a spotty conference Wi-Fi. Your data is yours; readable, moveable, and not subject to a vendor deciding to sunset their service.

The contrast: most web-based QR generators ask you to type a URL into a box, send it to their server, generate an image, and return it. Every URL you paste is logged. You’re often nudged toward a “dynamic QR” feature that routes through their redirector domain, meaning if they go down or change their pricing, your printed QR codes stop sending your users where you want them to go.

Simple QR Code Maker’s Local-First Architecture

Every core feature of Simple QR Code Maker runs entirely on your Windows PC.

QR code generation and decoding use ZXing.Net, an open-source library that runs entirely in-process. No network call, no API key, no rate limit. You type, it generates, instantly.

Image processing like background removal (powered by new Windows AI APIs), perspective correction for scanned photos, grayscale and contrast adjustments for hard-to-decode images runs on your GPU and CPU via Magick.NET, also fully offline.

Your history, settings, and brand presets are stored as plain JSON files in your local app data folder. There’s no account to sync to. The files are human-readable. If you want to look at them, open them in Notepad.

Backup and restore is built in: the Settings page lets you export your entire history, brand definitions, and settings as a .zip file. You own the archive. Import it on another machine, keep it on a USB drive, or just tuck it away. The app merges imports intelligently so you don’t lose existing entries.

Even the Warnings Encode Local-First Values

One of the more opinionated features of the app is the redirector warning. When you type a URL that points to a known link-shortener or QR redirect service such as bit.ly, tinyurl.com, qrco.de, and a dozen others, the app flags it.

Why? Because those services are the opposite of local-first for your audience. A QR code pointing to bit.ly/abc123 encodes a dependency on a third-party server. If that service changes its terms, goes offline, or decides to monetize your link, every physical printout that carries that QR code breaks. The warning nudges you toward encoding the real destination URL directly, a QR code that will work ten years from now without any middleman.

You can mark specific domains as safe if you have a legitimate use (your company’s preferred URL shortener, for instance), and that allow-list is stored locally too.

What Local-First Buys You

• Privacy by default. The app never sees your URLs, your logos, or your history. They don’t leave your machine.
• Works anywhere. No internet required for any feature. Generate QR codes on a plane, decode them in a server room, print them at the venue.
• Permanence. Your QR codes encode the real destination. They’ll work as long as the destination URL works, not as long as a SaaS vendor’s business does.
• Portability. Your data is a JSON file. Copy it, back it up, read it, write tools against it.
• No subscriptions. The app is free on the Microsoft Store. There’s no cloud tier to upgrade to, because there’s no cloud.

The Tradeoff Worth Acknowledging

Local-first means there’s no sync. If you generate QR codes on your work laptop and want the history on your home desktop, you export a backup and import it on the other machine. It’s a few more clicks than automatic cloud sync, but you’re the one in control of where your data goes and when.

For most QR code use cases like designing assets for print, generating codes for events, encoding contact info or Wi-Fi credentials, that’s a perfectly fine tradeoff. You’re not collaborating in real-time on a QR code with a distributed team. You’re making a thing, saving it, and using it.

Building Software That Respects Your Machine

Simple QR Code Maker is a native WinUI 3 app targeting x64 and ARM64 Windows. It uses your OS’s built-in storage APIs, renders at native resolution, and integrates with system print dialogs. It’s a Windows app the way Windows apps used to be built, not a web page crammed into an Electron shell phoning home to keep the lights on.

That philosophy, use the platform, keep data local, don’t require a server, is increasingly rare. But it makes for software that’s faster, more private, more reliable, and more honest about what it actually needs from you.

Which, for a tool that makes QR codes, is just the URL you want to encode.

Want to try it? Simple QR Code Maker is available on the Microsoft Store.

Joe

p.s. in addition to being a local first app, Simple QR Code Maker is open source on GitHub!