These Windows 11 apps still feel unfinished — because Microsoft can’t help being Microsoft

It hasn’t been long since I finally switched to Windows 11, but I’ve already got a taste of the questionable choices Microsoft has made with the OS. The relentless ads, Copilot bloat, and preloaded services are not what I’m referring to. It’s the overall experience I get when using the OS every day. Many of the built-in Windows apps are nothing but wrappers for web apps. These Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) might seem like desktop applications, but they suffer from performance and usability downsides that native Windows apps don’t. Microsoft has been leaning toward web apps for several years now, with internal development leaning on WebView2 and Electron despite the availability of the modern WinUI 3 framework. The apps on this list are just a few examples, but Windows 11 has a much deeper lack of truly-native applications, something Microsoft is trying to remedy. At a time when Apple has a well-stocked native app ecosystem, and you can recreate the Windows experience on Linux or even macOS, Windows needs to invest in native apps or risk losing its identity.

Sophia Wilson
Atlanta

If a decade-old Nintendo Switch can run PC games, your next handheld doesn’t need to be x86

For years, Arm gaming handhelds have come with an asterisk attached. They're brilliant at Android games and emulation, but if you want to play your actual PC library, the answer has typically been an x86 machine. In other words, something like a Steam Deck, a ROG Ally, or any machine...

Sophia Wilson
Atlanta

Home a**istant slows down over time, but there’s a nuclear option most people don’t realize

The symptoms of a mature but messy smart home might include the dashboard taking three seconds to load, simple automation, like turning on a hallway light when a door opens, suddenly experiencing noticeable lag, and, overall, everything just feeling sluggish. You check your logs, and they are flooded with endless...

Daniel Martinez
Dallas

I replaced Copilot with PowerToys as my Windows 11 command center, and the difference is night and day

When Microsoft introduced Copilot in 2023, around the same time OpenAI's ChatGPT was exploding in popularity, I genuinely wanted to give it a chance, even though I wasn't fully on board with the idea. If AI was supposed to be the future, having it built directly into Windows 11 seemed...

Olivia Miller
Seattle

I got a Crush on this new Terminal-based AI coding tool

Everyone who's been following my work for a while knows I love two things, the terminal, and making it prettier. I also love terminal-based coding tools like OpenCode, Claude Code, and Pi. The terminal window is a perfect place for agentic coding sessions, with a back-and-forth of conversation with the...

Michael Johnson
Chicago

I ditched iTerm2, Windows Terminal, and Konsole for Wave, and I’m not looking back

I absolutely love my terminal emulator, whether it's the built-in Windows Terminal, Tabby, or any other emulator that can keep me in the command line. I use it to manage my container stack, and even to browse and watch YouTube. And who can forget agentic vibe-coding while we're on the...

William Garcia
Boston

Microsoft AI head calls out Anthropic for acting like Claude is conscious

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman says it's "really, really dangerous" for Anthropic to speculate about Claude's consciousness inside its "constitution," or the instructions that tell the model how to behave. During an episode of Decoder, Suleyman argues that this kind of speculation may have set up the chatbot to act...

Isobel Berry
United States

GM thinks EVs can help offset AI’s energy s*** with vehicle-to-grid tech

At an event in San Francisco today, General Motors made a series of announcements around EV batteries, energy storage, and grid resiliency in the face of growing electricity demand from AI data centers. The automaker announced that it would be activating new vehicle-to-grid capabilities for its current EV and home...

Juliane Eeg
Norway

The App Store is going to add subscription bundles soon

Later this year, you will be able to get bundled subscriptions for iPhone apps, as Apple announced it's expanding App Store bundles so they can include offers from different companies. It's similar to streaming video bundles that have combined offers for Apple TV and Peacock, but it also could put...

Vinay Westers
Netherlands

I finally found an open-source Plex client that feels better than the official app

There is no denying that the official Plex app has been heading in the wrong direction for a while. It's bloated with streaming recommendations that I don't want, loading content has become slow. Moreover, somewhere along the way, it dropped a bunch of features that I actually enjoy.

Kent Holt
United Kingdom

Congress just gave DHS another $70 billion

Congress narrowly voted to fund President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda, giving the Department of Homeland Security $70 billion over the next three years. The house voted 214 to 212 in favor of the reconciliation bill Tuesday, following the Senate's 52-47 vote last Friday morning. The vote fell largely along...

Olivia Miller
Seattle

I tried Siri AI, and so far it actually works

Siri, are you there? Parents want one thing, and one thing only, out of AI: to add a list of soccer games or "spirit week" theme days from an email or a poorly formatted flyer onto their calendar in one shot. And I have good news for parents with iPhones...

Jane Smith
Los Angeles

I replaced Pi-hole with Unbound for a week, and the privacy upgrade wasn’t the only win

My DNS setup was working perfectly. Pi-hole handled ad blocking, dnscrypt-proxy encrypted DNS traffic, and Quad9 resolved every query my network generated. I had been running this setup for a long time, and I rarely thought about it. Then I started thinking, if DNS filtering and encryption were already in...