• Melinda French Gates said she struggled leading up to and during her divorce from Bill Gates.
• French Gates wrote about her nightmares and feeling panicky in her new memoir, "The Next Day."
• Their divorce was finalized in 2021, over a year after their private separation.

Breakups are hard, even if you're guaranteed to walk away a billionaire.

Melinda French Gates' divorce from Bill Gates was years in the making — and presaged by nightmares and bouts of panic that made her face her feelings, she told People in an interview.

Gates and French Gates announced their split in a joint statement in 2021. In her coming memoir, "The Next Day," she wrote about her feelings leading up to their official divorce. French Gates said she experienced cryptic nightmares beginning in 2019 that left her in a panic. The final blow was a vision of herself plummeting into a void while her family stood on the edge of a cliff.

French Gates wrote that that was the moment she knew it was time for her to make a big life decision on her own. In 2020, she told her then-husband that she wanted to live separately.

"It was one of the scariest conversations I'd have had," she wrote.

However, Gates was "understanding and respectful" upon hearing the news, though he was "sad and upset," French Gates wrote. Months later, in the summer of 2020, she asked him for a divorce.

Her panicked feelings didn't end with that revelation. French Gates said she started "having panic attacks" in the months during and leading up to their divorce proceedings.

"Bill has a reputation for being one of the toughest negotiators in the world," French Gates wrote.

Their divorce was finalized in August 2021 after "grueling" and lengthy proceedings, she wrote in the memoir. She walked away with $6.3 billion worth of Microsoft stock, and her net worth is an estimated $30 billion, Forbes reported.

These days, French Gates is continuing her philanthropic endeavors through her company, Pivotal Ventures, and reportedly dating. Late last year, she was spotted holding hands with Philip Vaughn, an entrepreneur and former Microsoft employee.

Correction: April 2, 2025 — Corrects French Gates' estimated net worth to $30 billion, not $30 million.

• OpenAI's ChatGPT-4o boosted user growth after its Ghibli-style image creation feature took off.
• Microsoft stands to benefit from OpenAI's growth, wrote Jefferies.
• OpenAI's latest $40 billion funding round raised its valuation to $300 billion.

A new AI trend has taken the internet by storm, and at least one Big Tech giant stands to make a killing.

Last week, OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT-4o, an upgraded image generator that users piled into to create images in the Japanese animation firm Studio Ghibli style. The trend is helping fuel a record spike in users, so much so that OpenAI is struggling to keep up.

The surge in ChatGPT users would benefit Microsoft because the spike boosts OpenAI's growth, computing needs, and valuation, Jefferies analysts led by Brent Thill said in a note on Tuesday.

Microsoft is a major investor in the artificial intelligence firm and its primary cloud provider. The company also integrates OpenAI's large language models into its products. Last week, Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella, said the company may build its own generative AI capability to complement its partnership with OpenAI.

"We would glean that surging ChatGPT user growth likely indicates surging ChatGPT+ growth i.e. revenue growth for OpenAI," the analysts wrote.

The analysts also touted OpenAI's most recent funding round as beneficial to Microsoft. On Monday, OpenAI announced it closed the largest private tech funding round on record. The company raised $40 billion from SoftBank and other investors, bringing the company's valuation to $300 billion. The ChatGPT maker was last valued at $157 billion in October.

Jefferies has a buy rating on Microsoft and a price target of $500. The stock closed at $382 on Tuesday. It is down 9.3% in the past year.

Record ChatGPT usage

ChatGPT has become a household name since its launch in November 2022, but last week's animation trend sent demand soaring.

On Monday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote on X that ChatGPT had just added one million users in the past hour. At launch two years ago, it took five days to reach that number of users.

Last week, ChatGPT's weekly app downloads, weekly active users, and revenue from subscriptions and in-app purchases reached an all-time high — increasing 11%, 5%, and 6%, respectively, week-over-week — according to data from market intelligence firm SensorTower.

Besides Microsoft, producers of graphic processing units stand to benefit from the Ghibli hype. Nvidia, AMD, and Intel are some of the biggest GPU companies.

"Working as fast we can to really get stuff humming; if anyone has GPU capacity in 100k chunks we can get asap please call!," Altman wrote on X on Tuesday.

The Jefferies analysts said few vendors can deliver this much capacity and estimated that any deal with OpenAI could bring in $1 billion to $2 billion a year for the GPU provider.

The Xbox Series X and Series S are excellent machines directly out of the box, but there’s always room for improvement. Add-on accessories like the Elite Series 2 Controller and the Xbox Wireless Headset can help you get the most out of your new gaming console, while others, like Seagate and Western Digital’s expansion cards, can help ensure you have ample storage space to stow all of your favorite games.

Below, we’ve listed some of the best accessories available for the Series X and Series S, many of which often go on sale at most major retailers.

Controllers

Xbox Wireless Controller

The last-gen Xbox wireless controller from the Xbox One generation is compatible with the Series X / S consoles. However, the older controller lacks a few features only found in the newer, better version. For instance, the revised controller (which comes with every new Series X and Series S) has a dedicated button for saving and sharing clips and screenshots, a USB-C port for wired use or charging Microsoft’s play-and-charge rechargeable battery, and an improved D-pad.

In addition …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Members of ZeniMax Workers United, a union of over 300 quality assurance workers in Texas and Maryland, have voted to authorize a strike.

The vote, which passed with over 94 percent in favor of authorization, does not mean workers have gone on strike like SAG-AFTRA members have in the ongoing video game voice actors strike. But should contract negotiations break down, the ZeniMax union now has the permission to call a strike.

This authorization comes as contract negotiations between union members and parent company Microsoft continue into a second year.

The strike authorization is the latest escalation between the union and management. Last year, ZeniMax Workers United participated in a one-day strike claiming that Microsoft did not adequately address employee concerns over its return to office policies and its outsourcing practices. Those concerns have come up again in negotiations alongside better pay and benefits.

“Our in-house contractors have been working on minimal wages with no benefits, including no paid sick time,” said associate QA tester Aubrey Litchfield in the press release announcing the strike authorization. “Workers are choosing not to start families because of the uncertainty of finances. We’ve released multiple titles while working fully remote. When will enough be enough?”

“Our quality assurance team is an integral part of our business and is key to our ability to deliver games our players will love,” Microsoft spokesperson Delaney Simmons says in a statement to The Verge. We respect the team’s right to express their viewpoints and are deeply committed to reaching a fair and equitable resolution that acknowledges the teams’ contributions. There has been substantial progress over the course of the negotiations, reaching tentative agreements on a majority of the topics at the table. We have presented a package proposal that we believe is fair — if accepted it would result in immediate compensation increases, even more robust benefits and is in alignment to the company’s hybrid model of 3 days in office. We look forward to continuing this progress during negotiations.”

ZeniMax Workers United is one of several unions under the Microsoft umbrella. It formed in 2023 and was once the largest union within the company with 300 members before Activision Quality Assurance United organized roughly 600 quality assurance workers last year.

At GDC 2025, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) announced the launch of the United Videogame Workers, a nationwide direct-join union open to any worker in the video game industry.

• Henry Lee left his corporate accounting career to open a Korean fried chicken franchise.
• Lee bounced between Big Four firms like Deloitte and Ernst & Young, seeking salary increases.
• He now owns six Bonchon fried chicken locations in Colorado and plans to open a large food hall.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Henry Lee, a 46-year-old franchise owner in Aurora, Colorado. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Academics were never my strong suit. My GPA was barely 3.0 while I attended a small school in Tennessee on a football scholarship. I majored in finance and economics.

My goal was to get to the NFL, but when I realized that was not happening, I started looking for a job related to my major.

After working as an accountant for multiple companies, including Big Fours, I left my corporate career to open a fried chicken franchise. I'm so much happier now.

Once I got to my first Big Four, I jumped around

My first job was for PRG-Schultz, a debt recovery company specializing in sales tax recovery. I found the position and applied through a job site.

After that, I worked as a sales tax accountant at International Rectifier. My manager told me I should try to get a job at a Big Four. I didn't have an impressive résumé, but I applied, interviewed, and got hired as a senior tax associate at Deloitte. Working in sales tax is incredibly niche, and I think that helped me get the job.

Working at Deloitte opened up many doors

Everyone majoring in accounting hopes to one day work at a Big Four. Once you have one of these companies on your résumé, it doesn't matter where you attended college.

I didn't consider the work difficult — I rarely get stressed out and don't take things too seriously. You're expected to bill lots of hours and work overtime. There's also a lot of office politics.

Over the next 10 years, I hopped around to work at different companies, staying only about a year each time. Back then, people would leave to work at other companies for salary increases, which is how I ended up at Ernst & Young.

I chased the highest possible salary bumps

A former colleague referred me to EY. We got referral bonuses, so everyone tried to refer as many people as possible. After that, another position opened up with Deloitte in San Diego, and I left for another salary bump.

My salary increased by two to three percent annually, so it was more profitable to move to another company and get a 20% to 25% salary increase plus a signing bonus.

I was laid off from my second role at Deloitte in 2008 during the recession. After working at Burger King as a senior tax specialist, I was referred to Accenture in 2011 as a senior consultant by a former colleague.

My experiences at the Big Four companies were similar

My performance reviews were usually good to average. I didn't consider myself a superstar or a high-performing employee. The working environment was similar in all three of them. Only the people were different.

Deloitte was fun because the people in my department weren't uptight. EY was more strict overall.

PwC, where I started working in 2014, was my favorite company. I formed a relationship there with a former Microsoft employee who referred me to Microsoft in 2013. Microsoft had the best work-life balance of all the companies.

Eventually, I was tired of the internal politics at these companies and the endless Zoom meetings, which were a waste of time. I thought, 'I couldn't just be born to do taxes,' and the work was not groundbreaking, rewarding, or challenging. I was unproductive and uninterested in the job. They call it quiet quitting nowadays.

I was considering what to do next. Growing up, my family owned a Chinese restaurant. I missed Korean fried chicken in Colorado, which was so good in Los Angeles but terrible here.

I decided to open a Korean fried chicken franchise myself

I decided to franchise with Bonchon because I missed it from living in Los Angeles. I invested my life savings into opening the first location and the initial franchise fee by cashing out my 401(k) of around $100,000.

I underwent three weeks of kitchen training, during which I learned how to fry chicken, cook the dishes, and prep the veggies. Training also included front-of-house training.

While opening the restaurant, I still worked at Microsoft but quit eight months in. As a senior tax manager, the salary I left behind was just under $160,000.

After opening the first location in Denver in 2018, the business took off

I bought all the franchise rights in Colorado and now have six locations. I also own a boba tea shop, and my next venture is opening a 15,000-square-foot food hall with seven restaurants.

The most significant difference is that in corporate, you're expected to be in the office for 40-50 hours regardless of if you have work or projects to do. When you own a business, you work when needed.

When I first opened Bonchon, I cooked and ran day-to-day operations in the kitchen. I worked around 60-80 hours a week, seven days a week. It was a grind for the first year because of the steep learning curve.

By the time I opened my third location, I was hands-off on the day-to-day operations and relied on my managers. I'm much happier now.

I have a wife and two kids and can spend much more time with them now.

I would never, ever go back to corporate

Working in corporate is like being stuck in the matrix; after you find your way out, it's like night and day. You can't go back once you experience the freedom to do whatever you want.

When you leave corporate, you realize you're capable of so much, but leaving the security, steady paycheck, and benefits was scary. I have an increased net worth, and getting capital to expand or fund others is much easier. I wish I left much earlier in my career.

• Product managers will work closely with AI agents, said Microsoft's chief technology officer.
• AI agents — AI that acts independently, including as digital coworkers — are a hot topic in tech.
• Tech's top execs are psyched about AI agents. Jensen Huang said Nvidia could have 100 million of them.

Product managers need to be "domain experts" in AI agents, said the chief technology officer of Microsoft.

Kevin Scott said on an episode of the Twenty Minute VC podcast published Monday that product managers play a crucial role in setting up "feedback loops" to make AI agents better.

AI agents — AI that can act and make decisions independently — are a hot topic in tech and the workforce. Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, said in January that "the age of agentic AI is here" and said last year that Nvidia's 50,000-person staff could work with 100 million agents. OpenAI's Sam Altman predicted that AI agents could start entering the workforce this year.

AI agents are intended to be digital coworkers or assistants to human workers in fields ranging from healthcare and supply chain management to cybersecurity and customer service.

But for now, AI agents lack something fundamental, Scott said.

"They are conspicuously missing memory, which makes them awfully transactional," Scott said. Even the agents that do have memory, he added, have a very limited form of it.

Scott said he hopes AI agents can remember user interactions over time, allowing them to "conform" themselves more to users' preferences.

This kind of memory would give agents "abstraction and compositionality," making them feel less like simple chatbots and more like intelligent digital coworkers, he added.

Eventually, he said, the goal is for AI agents to handle increasingly complex tasks — just like a real colleague would.

Product managers' role

In the tech world, product managers have been referred to — both affectionately and critically — as "mini-CEOs" of the products they oversee.

They act as a bridge between engineers, sales teams, customer service, and other departments, ensuring that products align with user needs.

But the role has become a polarizing one, Business Insider's Amanda Hoover reported in November. Some tech workers argue that product managers add little value.

According to ZipRecruiter, the average product manager in the US makes about $160,000. Software engineers, meanwhile, average about $147,000, and tech marketing specialists average about $87,000.

Microsoft wants to increase the number of engineers relative to product or program managers, BI's Ashley Stewart reported last month. Other companies like Airbnb and Snap are rethinking the need for product managers.

The call for executives to go "founder mode" — a concept coined by the Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham and touted by Airbnb's CEO, Brian Chesky — has some leaders questioning whether they should delegate product decisions to product managers.

In 2023, Chesky merged product management with marketing, and Snap told The Information in the same year that it laid off 20 product managers to help speed up the company's decision-making.

Others believe product managers' influence will only grow in the age of AI.

"The future really does belong to product managers," Frank Fusco, a product manager turned CEO of a software company called Silicon Society, told BI in November.

As AI becomes more capable of handling coding and other engineering tasks, Fusco said it's an opportunity for product managers to take on an even greater role.

With investors and executives eager to capitalize on AI and consumers still skeptical, the demand for product managers will only rise as they help bridge the gap, he added.

Microsoft is making its AI features widely available on Copilot Plus PCs equipped with Intel and AMD chips. One of the most notable of these features will be Live Captions, which translates audio to English subtitles from dozens of different languages in real time.

Microsoft first started testing Live Captions on Intel and AMD devices last December, and it’s now available through the latest Windows 11 update. The update also includes Cocreator, an AI tool in Paint that creates an image based on a text description and what you’re currently drawing. On top of that, Microsoft is also expanding access to its AI image editor and generator in the Photos app.

These features were previously only available on Copilot Plus PCs with Qualcomm chips. Microsoft started testing Recall, an AI feature that takes screenshots of your activity on a Copilot Plus PC and lets you search through them, with Intel and AMD devices last year, though there’s still no word when it will become widely available.

Additionally, Microsoft is updating Voice Access — an accessibility feature that lets people control their PC with their voice — on Qualcomm-powered Copilot Plus PCs. Microsoft says Voice Access users on these devices will now “be able to communicate with their PCs using more descriptive and flexible language.” It’s also adding the ability to translate 27 languages into Simplified Chinese. Microsoft says it plans to roll out both of these features to Intel and AMD devices in the future.

This week, on April 4th, Microsoft turns 50 years old. The company has gone through sweeping changes over that time — from two guys in New Mexico to more than a quarter-million employees worldwide, from making text-based operating systems to holographic video games — but through the decades, it’s remained a foundation of the tech world.

Microsoft has made a lot of products over its 50 years, ranging from file formats and PC accessories to cloud servers and design languages. A great many were duds — it’s hard to nail everything over five decades — but a lot were memorable, fascinating, or simply excellent products that would go on to be used by billions of people or change the industry in their wake.

For Microsoft’s 50th anniversary, The Verge spent time sorting through all of those products to decide on the 50 best — the ones we loved, the ones that changed the tech world, or at least the ones we couldn’t get out of our heads.

Our general rule was this: everything on the list had to be a consumer product or otherwise something consumers engaged with. (Sorry, Azure.) The specific version we mention also has to have been made or published by Microsoft at the time of i …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Microsoft has announced that it’s overhauling its Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) error message in Windows 11. The new design drops the traditional blue color, frowning face, and QR code in favor of a simplified screen that looks a lot more like the black screen you see when Windows is performing an update. It’s not immediately clear if this new BSOD will remain as a black screen once Microsoft ships the final version of this update.

“We’re previewing a new, more streamlined UI for unexpected restarts which better aligns with Windows 11 design principles and supports our goal of getting users back into productivity as fast as possible,” explains Microsoft in a blog post about the change. “We’ve simplified your experience while preserving the technical information on the screen.”

Windows Insiders can try out the new BSOD in test versions of the Beta, Dev, and Canary Channels, but it will appear as a green screen in these test builds before it’s eventually shipped as a black or blue screen. It’s the first major change to the BSOD since Microsoft added a sad face to the screen in Windows 8. This new design includes the BSOD error or faulty driver, and simply states “your device ran into a problem and needs to restart.”

Microsoft did briefly turn the BSOD to a black screen in test builds of Windows 11 in 2021, but the company then reverted back to the blue screen it had been using since Windows 8. It looks like this new BSOD will be rolled out to the existing Windows 11 version 24H2 soon, and we’ve reached out to Microsoft for more information on whether it’s switching to a black screen instead of a blue one.

Microsoft is no longer playing around when it comes to requiring every Windows 11 device be set up with an internet-connected account. In its latest Windows 11 Insider Preview, the company says it will take out a well-known bypass script that let end users skip the requirement of connecting to the internet and logging in with a Microsoft account to get through the initialization process of a new PC.

As reported by Windows Central, Microsoft already requires users to connect to the internet, but there’s a way to bypass it: the bypassnro command. For those setting up computers for businesses or secondary users, or simply, on principle refuse to link their computer to a Microsoft account, the command is super simple to activate during the Windows setup process.

Microsoft cites security as one reason it’s making this change:

We’re removing the bypassnro.cmd script from the build to enhance security and user experience of Windows 11. This change ensures that all users exit setup with internet connectivity and a Microsoft Account.

Since the bypassnro command is disabled in the latest beta build, it will likely be pushed to production versions within weeks. All hope is not yet lost, as of right now the script can be reactivated with a registry edit by opening a command prompt during the initial setup (Press Shift + F10) and running the command:

reg add HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\OOBE /v BypassNRO /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f shutdown /r /t 0″

However, there’s no guarantee Microsoft will allow this additional workaround for long. There are other workarounds as well, such as using the unattended.xml automation that lets you skip the initial setup “out-of-box experience.” It’s not straightforward, though, but it makes more sense for IT departments setting up multiple computers.

As of late, Microsoft has been making it harder for people to upgrade to Windows 11 while also nudging them to move on from Windows 10, which will lose support in October. The company is cracking down on the ability to install Windows 11 on older PCs that don’t support TPM 2.0, and hounding you with full-screen ads to buy a new PC. Microsoft even removed the ability to install Windows 11 with old product keys.

Microsoft is starting to test Quick Machine Recovery, a feature designed to prevent incidents like last year’s Crowdstrike catastrophe. It’s rolling out in its latest Windows Insider Preview build (6120.3653) and allows IT professionals to remotely recover Windows 11 devices even if they won’t boot.

Microsoft first announced Quick Machine Recovery last year as part of its Windows Resiliency Initiative, which came in direct response to the Crowdstrike outage. Last July, Crowdstrike rolled out a faulty kernel-level update that caused the Blue Screen of Death to appear across millions of Windows devices, impacting banks, airlines, TV broadcasters, and more. IT admins struggled to quickly get them back online because many needed physical access to the machines to issue a fix.

But Quick Machine Recovery should at least help prevent similar outages. It prompts a device to enter the Windows Recovery Environment, where the machine can access the network and provide Microsoft with diagnostic information. Microsoft can then remotely deploy fixes via the Windows Update system.

The feature is enabled by default for home users, and Windows Insiders can try it out now using a simulated environment.

• PwC launches "agent OS" a new platform for AI agents to interact.
• Agent OS ensures agents won't operate like "ships passing in the night" PwC exec Matt Wood told BI.
• Big 4 professional services firms from Deloitte to EY are revving up investment in AI agents.

PwC wants to help your AI agents talk to each other.

The professional services firm has been building and deploying AI agents for the past nineteen months for different clients, operating separately. In that time, leadership has noticed agents often operate "like ships passing in the night," Matt Wood, PwC's global and US commercial technology and innovation officer, told Business Insider.

PwC doesn't think silent communication will work in the AI era. Its goal, Wood said, is "moving them from ships that pass in the night to being an armada that's working together."

On Thursday, PwC unveiled "agent OS," a new platform it describes as a "switchboard" for enterprise AI. It lets companies build agents, customize them, and connect them to each other to automate complex tasks.

PwC said in a press release agent OS is built for a world where companies are developing AI agents in a variety of ways, whether they're embedding them as features within platforms, as standalone applications, or as highly specialized agents built on proprietary or open-source software.

Agent OS integrates with systems from Anthropic to Google Cloud to Microsoft Azure, the company said. Users can test workflows directly in agent OS and integrate them into systems their teams or customers are already working with, Wood said.

So, a marketing executive at a retail company could speed through a new ad campaign by connecting creative generation agents built through OpenAI with testing agents on Google Cloud and analytics agents from Salesforce.

PwC said that once the platform is up and running in a client's environment, they can roll out multi-agent solutions in just a couple of weeks.

Agents have taken center stage this year as companies bet on their potential to liberate their workforces. This form of AI technology can execute tasks autonomously, constantly learn from its environment, and troubleshoot when necessary.

Consulting firms especially have invested heavily into building agentic solutions for themselves and clients. This month, Deloitte launched Zora AI, a suite of specialized agents it says can execute tasks across domains from finance and procurement. EY, too, introduced the EY.ai Agentic Platform which it says will assist workers in the firm's tax division with tasks like data collection, document analysis and review, and income and indirect tax compliance.

At PwC, agents have become a way to "amplify" existing talent, Wood said. The firm has built more than 250 internal agents and more for clients, he added.

As companies expand their use of agents, though, it's essential to ensure they can work in tandem.

"Most agents today, they're built in isolation and you kind of have to build them that way because that isolation allows you to drive up the accuracy with which they operate," Wood said.

As a result, they don't have much interoperability, he said.

Agents are isolated by where and how they're built and "don't really often speak the same language, and so they don't know how to collaborate, you know, right out of the box," he added.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella moved quickly to get DeepSeek’s R1 deployed on Azure in January. Nadella appeared to have anticipated the rise of a breakthrough like R1, and now he says a new bar has been set for the company’s own AI work.

Speaking at an employee-only town hall last month, Nadella and his senior leadership team discussed DeepSeek and the company’s own $80 billion investment into AI at length, answering questions from employees about the giant spend and its effect on Microsoft’s carbon-free goals, sources at the company tell me.

DeepSeek made headlines earlier this year after doing a bunch of low-level systems work to optimize below Nvidia’s CUDA layer with architecture changes that allowed its AI models to be more compute efficient. The efficiency, use of pretrained models, and small team required to pull it off all caught Nadella’s attention.

“What’s most impressive about DeepSeek is that it’s a great reminder of what 200 people can do when they come together with one thought and one play,” Nadella said in response to a question about how Microsoft will keep up in the ongoing AI battle. “Most importantly, not just leaving it there as a research p …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Microsoft is planning to improve the startup speed of its Office apps, starting with Word in May. The launch times of Office apps will improve thanks to a new scheduled task that will run silently when you boot your PC to make sure Word and eventually other Office apps open quickly.

“We are introducing a new Startup Boost task from the Microsoft Office installer to optimize performance and load-time of experiences within Office applications,” explains Microsoft in a message to IT admins. “After the system performs the task, the app remains in a paused state until the app launches and the sequence resumes, or the system removes the app from memory to reclaim resources.”

Word will be the first app to get this Startup Boost starting in May, and Microsoft says “support for additional applications will come in future updates.” Startup Boost will only be available for PCs with at least 8GB of RAM and 5GB of available disk space. Startup Boost will also be disabled when Energy Saver mode is active.

If you don’t want Office apps to start quietly in the background at boot then there will be an option inside Word to disable this behavior. You can always delete the scheduled task too, but Microsoft notes that the Office installer will recreate the task when it applies an update, so IT admins will have to manage this through the in-app setting instead.

Microsoft uses a number of scheduled tasks to run Windows tasks silently and optimize the operating system, but they’re not used regularly by most app developers. Google uses a scheduled task for its Chrome updater, and many OEMs use tasks to update drivers and other system components, but most other apps like Adobe Creative Suite run startup processes in the regular startup section of Windows, where they can easily be disabled.

Microsoft is sharing several new Xbox gaming updates for March that include a new look for Game Bar on PC, a new Cloud Gaming feature, and fresh benefits for playing some free-to-play games through Game Pass.

Game Bar on PC, which gives you the ability to quickly launch games, control audio mixes, and monitor game performance, now comes with a cleaner UI. The Home Bar and widgets, including Capture, Performance, Resource, and the Widget Store, now look more lightweight with fewer lines and colors, giving them less of an Adobe Photoshop tools vibe. Microsoft says this is only the beginning of the visual changes rolling out this week.

The update happened the same week Discord changed its UI with improved spacing between sections in the app and support for a full dark mode overlay. Both Game Bar and Discord let you view widgets while playing a game.

As for the Xbox Cloud Gaming update, there’s now a way to shift between games without having to jump out and return to the Home page. For now, it only works with several Assassin’s Creed titles, but Xbox promises it will work with other cloud games soon. Also, Cloud Gaming is expanding more titles that support Stream Your Own Game.

Finally, Xbox is expanding in-game benefits to include more free-to-play titles such as Heroes in the Storm and, in April, Call of Duty: Warzone. It lets you acquire cosmetics, characters, in-game currency, and more in games like Overwatch 2 and Valorant.

Microsoft is rolling out a new sign-in screen for more than a billion consumers that access services like Outlook, Windows, Xbox, Microsoft 365, and more. The updated authentication screen is based on Microsoft’s Fluent 2 design language and even includes a dark mode with Xbox colors.

The entire authentication process for Microsoft accounts has been improved as part of this redesign, with a bigger emphasis on passwordless authentication. “Our new UX is optimized for a passwordless and passkey-first experience,” says Robin Goldstein, partner director of product management for Microsoft Identity. “We’ve reduced the number of concepts per screen to lower cognitive load and speed up the authentication process, plus re-ordered some steps to logically flow better.”

The more simplified design also includes light and dark themes, which are enabled automatically based on your device configuration. “The first place to see this will be on Gaming apps,” says Goldstein. “Other consumer apps will support Dark Mode in the future.”

Xbox users will already start to see this new sign-in experience across the web and on mobile, and the full updates to the authentication screen will roll out throughout March and April. Web and mobile apps will get the new user experience first, followed by Windows apps.

This new design is limited to consumer profiles, so there will be no changes to Microsoft Entra work and school accounts. “However, the learnings from these improvements give my team valuable insights for updating the default Microsoft Entra and Microsoft Entra External ID account experiences in the future, including the common sign-in screen for apps that support authentication via both Microsoft accounts and Microsoft Entra accounts,” says Goldstein.

This new sign-in UI is probably related to Microsoft’s plans to automatically keep you signed into to an account. The software giant sent notifications to Outlook.com users about a potential account change in February, but Microsoft then revealed this was a mistake and edited a Microsoft support article referencing keeping accounts signed in automatically unless you sign out or use private browsing. We’re still waiting to hear when these additional sign-in changes will roll out.

If you’re looking for some solid evidence that Microsoft’s strategy to bring Xbox games to PS5 is seeing some early success, look no further than Sony’s own PlayStation Store today. The top preordered games in the US PlayStation Store are Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Forza Horizon 5, with the $99.99 premium versions of both games proving the most popular.

Resetera posters have noticed it’s the same story in the Canadian PlayStation Store and across a variety of European stores, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK. Microsoft-owned Bethesda announced earlier this week that Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will debut on PS5 on April 17th, with the premium version providing two days of early access starting April 15th. Forza Horizon 5 is also coming to Sony’s rival console on April 29th.

Microsoft may have timed these two games perfectly for the PS5, amid a slow point for Sony’s own game studios, but the software maker has seen success with its earlier Xbox titles on PS5, too. Sea of Thieves debuted on PS5 in April last year and Sony revealed it was the top seller across the US, Canada, and EU markets a month later. It remained in Sony’s top downloads list for nearly six months.

Microsoft’s Xbox everywhere strategy — which I’ve been covering closely in my Notepad newsletter over the past year — is clearly doing well on PS5, and I’d expect to see more titles land on Sony’s console throughout 2025 and beyond. Microsoft is also preparing a similar list of Xbox games for Nintendo’s Switch 2, with reports suggesting the next-gen console will launch in June with third-party games to follow later this year.