Microsoft

Microsoft believed it would take decades to have a useful quantum computer. Majorana 2 just pushed that deadline to 2029

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Finding the Majorana particle would be the best thing that could happen to them. quantum computers. The Italian physicist Ettore Majorana mathematically described its existence in 1937, and since then many researchers have become obsessed with it because it has a characteristic that makes it unique: it is both a particle and its own antiparticle. What makes it very attractive for quantum computing is that, when it appears, it does so in pairs and its topological nature gives it a resistance to external noise that conventional qubits do not have. This distribution of information at two separate points means that local errors triggered by vibrations, temperature or radiation cannot easily erase it. The coincidence of this duplicity and its stability suggests that these particles could be used to make qubits that are more stable and less prone to external perturbations than the qubits used in current quantum computers. Or that, at least, is what Microsoft is pursuing, although with an important nuance: it sounds very good, but after the cold water of 2021 physicists are extraordinarily careful when dealing with them. Microsoft promises to have a functional quantum computer in 2029 Microsoft does not work with Majorana fermions in the strict sense of the elementary particle predicted by Ettore Majorana. What you are looking for are Majorana modes or Majorana quasiparticles: collective excitations that emerge in certain topological superconducting materials and that behave as if they were Majorana fermions. They are not fundamental particles; They are emerging phenomena in the field of condensed matter. This strategy allowed Microsoft officially present in February 2025 Majorana 1, the first topological quantum processor. However, the scientific community received it with skepticism. And it did so because the Redmond company claimed to have created a state of matter in silicon that until then it only existed in theory. His proposal was to use Majorana modes as a basis for more stable quantum computing. Majorana 2 has been developed with the help of Discovery artificial intelligence The problem is that Microsoft had tried to demonstrate something similar before, in 2018, and the scientific article that supported it ended up being retracted by Nature three years later. Majorana 1 was, in that sense, both a technical advance and an attempt to regain credibility. And now Majorana 2 arrives. Microsoft has confirmed that this new quantum processor has been developed with the help of its artificial intelligence (IA) Discovery, and has also explained that it incorporates new materials with the purpose of accelerating the arrival of an error-resistant, and therefore fully functional, quantum computer. Chetan Nayak, CTO and Corporate Vice President of Quantum Hardware, has explained that the Microsoft Quantum team has improved the materials stack used in Majorana 1 for the purpose of create a more stable topological phase. Majorana 2 replaces aluminum with lead, and upgrades the semiconducting active region to a combination of indium arsenide and indium arsenide-antimonide. This change in materials has triggered, according to Microsoftsignificant performance improvements. And it also helps protect the fragile qubits of cosmic disturbances that can destabilize them. Be that as it may, this statement from Nayak summarizes the impact that Microsoft believes Majorana 2 will have on its roadmap: “Based on this rapid progress, we are accelerating our plan toward a scalable and practical quantum computer: we have cut our schedule in half and now aim to reach this goal in 2029.” It is an ambitious promise. And with Microsoft’s track record in quantum computing, the scientific community has reason to continue to be demanding when evaluating it. Image | Microsoft More information | Microsoft In Xataka | 38% of AI experts in the US have been trained in China. They are essential to sustain your leadership

Bill Gates is responsible for the “biggest mistake of all time” that cost Microsoft 400 billion, according to the co-founder of Android

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Nobody is perfect. Not even the great tycoons who have taken technology companies to the peak of success. One of these examples is Bill Gates who during an interview recognized What has been the biggest mistake he has made in his time running Microsoft. And the co-founder of Android did not hesitate to mock him through social networks several years after this confession. Today we all associate the Android operating system with Google, which is the company behind it. But in its beginnings Android was in limbo between Microsoft and Google. This is where Bill Gates’ mistake was, who did not decide to bet on this operating system, causing Google to keep it and get the great performance it has today. Android co-founder gives a different version of Gates’ “biggest mistake” It was a few years ago during an interview with Julia HartzCEO of Evenbrite, where the Microsoft co-founder acknowledged that the biggest mistake he has made ““It’s the mismanagement that I got involved in that caused Microsoft to not be what Android is.” This mismanagement caused Google will develop Android before Microsoftand achieved the great success it has today. In addition to the many benefits that Android leaves today for being the operating system with the largest market share, 72.46% global share according to statistics from the end of 2025. That is why a bad decision and problems with antitrust laws meant that this operation was not closed. Although he tried to do something similar with Windows Phone, it didn’t turn out well as we have already seen. For Bill Gates there is only room for an operating system other than iOS on the market. And this is something that figure at 400,000 million dollars that he lost with this bad decision 20 years ago. He related it in the following way: The biggest mistake of all was the mismanagement I got into that caused Microsoft to not be what Android is, meaning Android is the standard platform for non-Apple phones. In reality, it is a winner-take-all market. If you have half as many applications or 90% of them, you are on your way to total ruin. There’s room for exactly one non-Apple operating system, and how much is that worth? 400 billion dollars that would be transferred from company G (Google) to company M (Microsoft). For Gates, this is one of the biggest mistakes in history, and he has no doubt that if he had reached the mobile market before Google, Microsoft would be the company that would be dominating today. Their mistake was leaving Google with Android “free” until it developed Windows Phone. The best part of this story comes when the co-founder of Android appeared last year to comment on these words through your X account. In a publication he details that his goal when developing Android was to prevent Microsoft from controlling phones “as it did with computers, stifling innovation.” Click on the image to access the publication. With this concern that Microsoft could control the mobile world, the co-founder of Android affirms that “Sorry Bill, but you’re more responsible for the $400 billion loss than you think.” On this topic Steve Ballmer also spokethe charismatic former CEO of Microsoft, who admitted that this mistake by Microsoft was motivated by overconfidence and “arrogance” focused on the supremacy of the Windows brand. This led them to underestimate the competition and assume that they could dominate any new market by imposing their ecosystem, but evidently this was not the case. Images | Wikimedia Commons (UK Government) Via | Windows Central In Xataka | “In five years they will have to pay taxes”: Bill Gates has pointed out the elephant in the room of AI and humanoids A version of this article was published in 2025 in Genbeta

After more than 20 years using Microsoft Office, I have switched to LibreOffice. Now I realize everything I’ve missed

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After more than two decades of unwavering loyalty to Microsoft Word, a couple of years ago I made the leap to LibreOffice. This change was not something I had planned, but rather a spontaneous decision born of frustration and fatigue. It happened one day after formatting my PC, at which point I decided to take the step and install LibreOffice. Below these lines I tell you what my experience has been like in case you are also considering something similar. 20 years of Word and Excel are exhausting For practically my entire life with computers, Microsoft Word has been my inseparable companion. I have installed it religiously on every new version of Windows, from XP times to current versions. I have witnessed its evolutionits interface changes, its sometimes controversial ribbon, and how little by little it was integrating with the cloud. I also spent some time using the web version of Office, one of the methods to have it for freewhich although I found it useful for simple tasks when I was away from home, always seemed like a decaffeinated version of its older brother. It’s fine to get by, but when you need all the features, there is no color. LibreOffice, download, install and that’s it Everything changed a few weeks ago. My PC was beginning to show symptoms of fatigue, slowness, and some random errors that made me suspect that it was time for a format. I started using it on Windows 10 before its end of support, since I had Windows 10 and 11 on different computers to stay up to date with everything that happens in Microsoft systems. So I proceeded with the formatting, installed Windows 10 again and quickly installed everything I had before and without bloatware. And that’s when I stopped to think: Do I really want to go back to Office, go through the hoops of having a Microsoft account linked, keeping track of the subscription and a thousand other moves just because I like Word? It is incredibly comforting to use free, comprehensive, open source software like LibreOffice I was honestly tired, so that It was my turning point. to opt for LibreOffice once and for all. And I know that I don’t discover anything new to those who have been using it for a long time, but this change tasted so good to me that I wanted to share it through this article. Other colleagues too They have taken this leap and explained it. LibreOffice was not unknown to me. I had tried it occasionally in the past and it had always seemed like a decent alternative, but inertia and the comfort of sticking with the familiar had kept me in the Microsoft ecosystem. This time, however, I decided to give it a serious chance.. I downloaded the latest version and installed it. The process was surprisingly easy compared to what I was used to before: download, install and go. No product keys, no linked accounts, no subscriptions. A refreshing sensation. My main work tool is the word processor, so LibreOffice Writer was my first stop. The interface, although different from Word, was quite intuitive to me. Yes, there are notable differences, but after a couple of days of continuous use, my workflow was almost as efficient as before. It should be noted that It is a very complete tool. All the functions that I usually use in my work were there: track changes, paragraph styles, spell check, page numbering, indexes… Even some options that in Word are hidden in submenus were more accessible here. It is true that the transition was not perfect. Some old DOCX documents opened with minor differences, but nothing I couldn’t fix in a few minutes. Writer saves by default in ODT format, but can export directly to PDF or save in DOC or DOCX format if you need to share documents to other users who use Office. I’m not a spreadsheet expert, but I need something reliable to organize information, create simple graphs, and occasionally apply a formula. Therefore, Calc has pleasantly surprised me. The transition from Excel was even easier than from Word. The basic formulas work practically the same, the creation of graphs is intuitive and, for my level of use, I have not missed anything at all. What I value most about LibreOffice is the feeling of freedom it gives me. It’s incredibly reassuring to use free, comprehensive, open source software like what you offer, which doesn’t rely on renewable subscriptions or constant connections to cloud services. During these years of intensive use I have not experienced any crashes or loss of information. Furthermore, another notable aspect is its lightness. LibreOffice starts noticeably faster than Office and consumes much less system resourceswhich is always appreciated. Regarding the interface, I must admit that At first I found it a bit cumbersome.. Unlike the Office ribbon, LibreOffice presents a jumble of features that can be overwhelming for a newcomer. However, as the days go by and you become familiar with its layout, you begin to appreciate having all those possibilities in view. Now that I’ve gotten used to it, I find it even more efficient to have direct access to so many features without having to navigate through multiple tabs like in Office. LibreOffice is not perfect. It has its quirks, and during this time I’ve dealt with things like opening DOC and DOCX documents almost always ending up in a bad modification of the document structure, although this is something that it has already been solved. However, for daily professional use it more than meets the requirements. The transition requires a bit of a learning curve and some patience, but the freedom you gain is worth every minute invested. After 20 years with Microsoft Office, I can say that LibreOffice is not only a viable alternative, but it will become my default tool from now on. In Xataka Basics | Microsoft 365 for free: how to get free Office on your PC … Read more

one where Google, Amazon and Microsoft pay a toll so that we all have internet

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In March 2024, several countries in East Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia began experiencing strange internet outages and massive slowdowns in digital services. The origin was not in a cyber attack or an electrical blackout, it was on a ship reached during an attack in the Red Sea that had accidentally dragged its anchor onto the seabed and damaged several undersea cables essential for global communications. Iran’s plan B. For decades, the Strait of Hormuz was seen as the great bottleneck energy of the planet, the route through which much of the world’s oil circulates. It happens that the war with the United States and Israel has made Iran discover something much more important: the Internet also circulates under those waters. As? Apparently, CNN told that Tehran has understood that the submarine cables that connect Europe, Asia and the Gulf are an infrastructure as strategic as oil tankers, and it wants to convert that geographical position into a new source of power. The idea that begins to emerge in Iranian discourse is very clear: if the world needs to pass data under Hormuz, large technology companies such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft or Meta should accept some kind of tolllicense or submission to Iranian rules. In other words, Hormuz would no longer be just a lever about global energybut also about the digital economy. The invisible cables. The great Iranian strategic discovery is born from an inconspicuous reality: almost all global traffic data depends on physical cables laid on the seabed. Banking payments, cloud services, military communications, streaming platforms, stock market operations and much of the artificial intelligence infrastructure pass through them. Some of these cables cross areas near Iranian waters, especially in the Persian Gulf. Although many of the international routes were designed to directly avoid Iranian territory, Tehran understands that proximity is enough to put pressure. The regime has understood that interrupting or threatening these corridors could generate enormous economic and psychological damage, even without firing a missile. The threat of submarine warfare. At this point it should be noted that Iran has not promised to sabotage cables directly, but it has launched deliberately ambiguous messages about possible interruptions or damages. Precisely this ambiguity is part of the strategy. The country has underwater drones, mini-submarines and capable naval forces to operate in the Gulfwhile its regional allies have already accidentally demonstrated in the Red Sea the enormous impact that a simple underwater incident. The real Western fear is not, therefore, a total internet blackout, but rather a chain of disruptions: financial delays, problems in data centers, degradation of business networks or difficulties in repairing critical infrastructure in the middle of a military crisis. In a world completely dependent on data, touching these cables means little less than touching the global economy. The inspiration of the Suez Canal. Tehran clearly looks to the Suez Canal as a model. Egypt has been monetizing for decades its strategic position by charging tolls and taking advantage of the passage of submarine cables between Europe and Asia. Iran wants to partially replicate that logic, although applied to a much more hostile and militarized environment. In fact, the media linked to the Revolutionary Guard they already talk about compulsory licenses, passage fees and exclusive rights for Iranian companies in charge of maintenance. Legally the scenario is complex and many operators will probably ignore the threats while US sanctions are in place, but the simple fact that Iran is openly raising this idea demonstrates how it has changed his strategic vision on Hormuz. The new discovered power. In short, and as we have already seen with crude oil, what is truly important is not whether Iran will one day manage to collect money from the big Western technology companies, but rather that it has discovered a new form of pressure global. For years, Tehran believed that its greatest weapon it was oil. Now you have understood that the world depends even more on invisible data flows that happen under the sea. That is possibly the great geopolitical transformation that Hormuz is currently revealing: a classic maritime strait is also becoming a critical point for the global digital economy. And that means that future international tensions will no longer revolve solely around the control of energy, that too, but also the control of the infrastructure that supports nothing more and nothing less than the internet. Image | Nara, Wikimedia, Collinpetty In Xataka | The war in Iran is doing something that not even Ryanair imagined: making 20 euro flights a relic of the past In Xataka | Dubai has come to the same conclusion as Russia. To protect your oil from drones there is something better than missiles: giant cages

Microsoft has funded a report showing that Windows laptops are better than the MacBook Neo. There are many questions

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Almost two months after the launch of the MacBook NeoApple’s cheap laptop continues to surprise. To Apple the firstwhich had sales forecasts that they had to fold because it seems that the model has taken off very well in the market. In fact, so well that can be a problem for the company itself. It has also caught walking changed to a segment of Windows laptops that compete in potential, but show that there are sections in which the smallest of the Apple family has no rival. The competition is being tough and something that shows that the Neo is the most successful MacBook in recent years is that Microsoft has supported a report to compare several Windows laptops against the MacBook Neo. And of course, controversy has broken out because the report does not point to key sections that make the Neo so interesting for certain sectors of users. All vs the MacBook Neo Microsoft dominates the laptop landscape. Although there is a recent movement to move to Linuxespecially after Microsoft’s latest actions filling your operating system with ‘junk’ which makes PCs slower (something the company’s CEO himself has acknowledged, stating that they are going to relax their foot on the accelerator of AI), Windows is THE computer operating system. It is accessible, it has been very easy to use for many years and if you buy a PC, it will most likely come with its license. In the highest range they have competition from MacBooks, but for less than 1,000 euros there is no discussion. A laptop for office use, one as a second computer or one for studying is Windows almost yes or yes. There are also Chromebooks out there, but sometimes not even Google remembers them. But of course, a MacBook Neo has arrived with a very attractive price, especially in the United States where, with the student discount, you can get it for $599. As we say, it seems that is entering that segment like a sharp knifeor even for those who already have a Mac and want a simpler one for other types of tasks. And Microsoft is not interested in having market share eaten away. Therefore, as we read in Wccftechhas financed a report to Signal65 to compare certain Windows laptop models against the MacBook Neo. What models? On paper, all four models have better features in many aspects such as storage, RAM, ports or the power of the processors. These are the points where the MacBook Neo falters the most (especially in storage) because its SoC is the A18 Pro of the iPhone 16 Pro with a totally different philosophy. If we look at the Signal65 comparison tables, it is evident that Windows laptops have an advantage over Apple’s. The problem is when you start reading the fine print. For example, in the performance tests, they were all done with the power adapter and here it is important because, while Windows laptops perform better with the adapter, Apple laptops do not distinguish between being plugged in or not (unless they are in power saving mode). On the other hand, comparative tables show certain biases such as pointing out that a larger screen (15.3 inches versus 13 inches) is better for the mere fact of being larger when the MacBook’s has more resolution and pixel density. The battery test has also sparked controversy because yes, one on the list, the IdeaPad Slim 3x, has 56% more battery, but the MacBook’s screen is brighter and, while the IdeaPad has a 60 Wh battery, the MacBook’s is 36.5 Wh. And then the issue of price. While the IdeaPad Slim 3x starts at $449, being a very aggressive device in this sense, the HP starts at $599, the Yoga 7i at $1,099 and the Omnibook at $949. In addition, two of them are convertible, so they are directly in another category. What is overlooked in the comparison is that the MacBook Neo, although it is true that it is not the most powerful, It has a design and build quality that a manufacturer with Windows cannot match for that price, nor can the screen and autonomy in a mobility environment in which you are not always with maximum brightness. It also does not address the efficiency of one system versus the other because, in the end, it is not an analysis, but rather a comparison that does not aim to honestly measure the devices. All five are very interesting and all five have their place in the market, but from the moment you compare pears with apples is when things start to not add up. Asus’s own financial director already pointed out that the launch of the Neo was a blow to the market, stating that all PC manufacturers should look carefully. In the end, the real problem is not how each team performs in the comparison, but rather that it is not a serious analysis either because of the choice of opponents or, above all, because of that great “financed by Microsoft” that shows that Asus’s financial director is not misguided and that the industry must take this Apple product seriously. That Microsoft has funded a biased comparison is important because it enhances the value of independent analyzes and, above all, because if the MacBook Neo is really harming the Windows laptop sector, they will surely respond with products that can stand up to it at the same price and users will win. The bad news is that both the Neo and any type of competition arrive at the worst time, being in the middle of a crisis with no end in sight and that is causing all manufacturers to offer worse RAM and storage configurations… and that is hard impacting even an Apple which has stopped offering some versions of its products. And something important in the background in the comparison: there are sectors in which things are not so much about specifications as about experience, and with the current Windows the experience … Read more

Microsoft wanted to create a mega data center in Kenya. To function, half the country had to live without electricity

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In May 2024 Microsoft announced what seemed like a historic agreement for Kenya’s technological development. The goal: create a gigantic data center that would be powered by geothermal energy. This center was going to be created in the Olkaria region, but the Kenyan president, William Ruto, has been blunt with Microsoft’s energy claims: to power the total requested 1 GW capacity, the country “would have to shut down half the nation.” too fair. Kenya has an electrical capacity installed capacity of between 3 and 3.2 GW, with peak demand that already reaches 2.44 GW. Microsoft’s project would consume approximately a third of the country’s total capacity. Even the first phase, which requires a capacity of 100 MW, would take a huge bite out of the production of the Olkaria geothermal complex, which generates about 950 GW in total. Kenya seems to be clear that sacrificing domestic consumption was not worth it when most of the project’s profitability will end up in the hands of a large foreign technology company. Financial disagreement. In addition to the energy problems, the negotiations have ended up getting stuck in the economic field. According to sources close to the process cited in BloombergMicrosoft and the investment firm G42 have reportedly asked the Kenyan government for a financial commitment. Specifically, payment for a certain amount of capacity each year, something with which the Kenyan leaders did not fully agree. The project has not been canceled. John Tanui, head of Kenya’s Ministry of Information, explained that his country is still in negotiations with Microsoft and G42, and that the agreement “has not failed or been abandoned. The scale of the data center they needed requires some structuring,” and that includes solving both the energy and economic problems. A project with a lot of geopolitics behind it. This project was not only a technological milestone for Microsoft and Africa, but also a diplomatic one. It is part of a $1.5 billion deal between Microsoft and Abu Dhabi-based G42, which was designed to counter potential deals on this continent with China. In fact, as a condition for the G42 agreement had to divest its Chinese assets and remove Huawei equipment from their systems. While the project is on hold, however, the Chinese company continues to expand in this region and has recently launched new broadband services over fiber with the largest Kenyan operator, Safaricom. Bottlenecks everywhere. The case of Kenya is not the only one that is stopping Microsoft’s plans. The company has announced a capex of 190 billion dollars by 2026 that will be invested in data centers, and the company is adding approximately 1 GW of computing capacity each quarter globally. However, about half of the data centers planned in the US this year have been canceled or delayed due to the shortage of electrical infrastructure. Image | Microsoft In Xataka | In 2024, Big Tech spent absurd amounts of money on AI. In 2025, they managed to spend 77% more

Europe has been depending on Amazon, Google and Microsoft for its most critical data for years. You are about to cut off their access

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The European Commission is taking action. This organization is expected to present its “Technological Sovereignty Package” on May 27. This directive will include a series of measures aimed at boosting the EU’s strategic autonomy in sensitive areas, and that means something unique: stopping depending as much as possible on US hyperscalers to store critical data. The fear of the off button. The measures are being applied due to growing political instability and some recent cases that have demonstrated the power that the US has over the European technological infrastructure. In May Microsoft “cancelled” the email of Karim Khan, a prosecutor who had been directly cited in an executive order from Donald Trump. Microsoft he denied itbut the damage had already been done, and these problems have raised fears that Trump could use a kind of “off button” against European institutions that depend on the hardware and software infrastructure provided by companies like Microsoft, Google or Amazon. Legal espionage. The CLOUD Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act) is a 2018 US law that allows law enforcement to force US-based technology companies (such as Google, Microsoft or Amazon) to provide data, regardless of where it is stored, whether inside or outside the United States. This law updates the Stored Communications Act to prioritize data control over its location. Or what is the same: if you use the services of US hyperscalers, the US may end up accessing your data. And since you’ve accepted their terms of use, you agree to let them legally spy on you if they “need to.” If you want my critical data, you’ll have to protect it. The new regulations require service providers who want to work with critical European data to demonstrate that they are not subject to requests from non-EU governments. This automatically excludes Microsoft, Google or Amazon, because all three are subject to the CLOUD Act. Europe is thus looking for providers that guarantee that critical data will not be in the possession of companies that then have to transfer it to foreign powers. Europe depends on the American cloud. The reality is that today Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure) and Google (Google Cloud) currently control more than 70% of the Cloud Computing market in the old continent. Losing these institutional contracts would mean a significant financial blow, but it also sends a powerful signal to European private companies: if Brussels does not trust the US with its secrets, why should European corporations? The domino effect could be huge. Europe has its own clouds. This directive would give an important opportunity to initiatives that seemed stalled like GAIA-Xbut there are also companies with their own infrastructure such as OVH (France) or T-Systems (Germany). There are significant technical challenges in that area, because US hyperscalers have been refining their offering over the past two decades. However, Brussels seems willing to accept a somewhat less efficient or complete service in exchange for greater autonomy. The options existno doubt, but the challenge is enormous. Migrating is going to be expensive. It is one thing to make the decision and quite another to complete that migration that will require moving decades of data and systems to a different infrastructure. Current data centers would have to be expanded to meet demand, they say some analysisand that would mean a cost of between 14,000 and 24,000 million euros. Consulting companies like Forrester they don’t see anything clear that the EU can achieve cloud sovereignty, and other experts also make it clear that Europe will not abandon the hyperscalers. Traceability. In addition to changing suppliers, the board also wants to impose strict requirements regarding transparency. AI systems that have access to that data must be auditable by the newly created EU AI Office. The Commission wants to know who has access to the code, who maintains the servers and who has the technical capacity to manage and even intercept such data transfers. Data too sensitive. In comments to CNBCEU officials explained that there are active debates demanding that financial, judicial or health data used at the government level and in the public sector have a sovereign cloud infrastructure. That’s also true for military data, of course, and There are already movements in that direction. Fragmented Internet. The move confirms that the world appears to be heading toward a future with a fragmented internet and one that will have important geopolitical boundaries. While the US tries to defend its technology against China, Europe and the entire world are trying to avoid or at least mitigate their excessive dependence on American technological solutions. Image | İsmail Enes Ayhan and François Genon In Xataka | Europe no longer trusts Google. That is why several start-ups are designing an independent payment system on Android

The day a small dispute over the Tab key ended up revealing the big difference between IBM and Microsoft

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There are companies that have lived so long that their story is no longer told only through big launches, acquisitions or business battles. It is also told in small details, in those seemingly minor scenes that, seen over time, end up explaining an era better than many official statements. Microsoft and IBM belong to that category. Their paths crossed when the personal computer It was still defining many of its rules, and some of those discussions, even the most minute ones, revealed something deeper than a technical difference. The scene has been recovered Raymond Chena veteran Microsoft engineer who has been linked to the evolution of Windows for more than three decades and who for years has gathered in The Old New Thing some of the most curious stories of the Windows and Microsoft ecosystem. Chen does not present the episode as his own experience, but as the memory of a colleague who was assigned to the IBM offices in Boca Raton, Florida, during the collaboration between both companies in OS/2. OS/2 was much more than just another name lost in software history. IBM and Microsoft presented it in 1987 as an operating system designed for the IBM PS/2 line and intended to take the PC beyond the limitations of DOS, with a more modern base and ambitions typical of computing that was beginning to look further afield. The collaboration came from a joint development agreement signed in 1985when the project was not yet called OS/2. In that context, any interface decision could have more weight than it seems today, because many conventions of the modern PC were still being established. Two very similar and also very different companies The problem is that that collaboration brought together two companies at very different times in their lives. Microsoft was still a young company, very attached to software and a more direct way of working, while IBM arrived with decades of history, a huge structure and the weight of a much more established corporate culture. Chen sums it up like a clash of perceptions: from Microsoft, IBM was seen as trapped in a meaningless bureaucracy, and from IBM, Microsoft was seen as undisciplined hackers. Its own nuance is important: there was probably something right in both readings. The specific anecdote begins in Boca Raton, where a colleague of Chen’s worked assigned to the IBM offices. At some point a discussion arose about which key should be used to move from one field to another within the dialog boxes. The Microsoft engineer made a decision that is almost invisible to us today because of how assumed it is: use Tab for that function. IBM was not convinced by the choice and asked that the matter will be escalated to the person responsible from that engineer in Redmond, a reaction that already hinted at the extent to which the discrepancy went beyond the key itself. In Redmond, the petition was not understood as an issue that deserved to be raised much higher. The engineer’s manager responded with a very clear idea: if Microsoft had sent someone to Boca Raton, it was so that they could resolve decisions like that there. Translated into a more institutional tone, the message that came back to IBM was that Microsoft supported the choice of the Tab key. IBM’s reaction was just the opposite. Instead of shutting down the discussion, the company elevated her up its own chain of command to a vice president, several levels above those who were programming. IBM had not only elevated the discussion, it also wanted a response to the same hierarchical height. If its vice president was against using Tab, Microsoft had to find someone equivalent to argue the opposite. Chen’s colleague then responded with a wonderful phrase, translated here into Spanish: “Bill Gates’ mother is not interested in the Tab key“It was a pretty nice way of saying that it wasn’t worth going up the corporate elevator anymore. It wasn’t necessary to go to the heights of Microsoft to decide how to move from one field to another in a dialog box. The phrase worked, at least according to Chen’s account: apparently, after that response, the discussion ended and Tab remained the key chosen to advance between fields. The detail is funny because today almost no one stops to think about it: we simply press Tab and wait for the cursor to jump to the next available space. But there was a time when that convention was not so closed. And what we see in this story is just that: a small interface decision turned into a clash between custom, hierarchy and technical criteria. The exact date, however, does not appear in Chen’s account. We know that the episode belongs to the years of collaboration between Microsoft and IBM around OS/2, whose joint development agreement dates back to 1985 and whose Public arrival occurred in 1987. This allows us to limit the context, but not to set the day or year of the discussion by Tab. There are many decisions behind the products and services we use every day. Some are huge and visible, but others fly under the radar: a key, a gesture, an interface convention that we learn once and repeat for years without wondering where it came from. Surely many have a story behind them, although most never transcend and others would not be particularly interesting. From time to time, however, an anecdote like this appears and allows us to peek into something we almost never see: how things are handled within the companies that build the technology we use. Images | Kaatvrtg (Wikimedia Commons) | In Xataka | In 1993 Microsoft created Encarta to revolutionize knowledge. Twenty years later it would be devastated by a tsunami

Microsoft put the head of its AI department in charge of Xbox. Now it’s dismantling all of Xbox’s AI

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Asha Sharman is the new CEO of Xbox and has arrived with a mission: to blow up Xbox. At least, that is what he is proposing in the first three months of his mandate in which he took the reins of the company in one of the worst moments in its history, with a diffuse identity and with the responsibility of filling the shoes of a Phil Spencer who had been with the company for 40 years. The most curious thing is that Sharma came from presiding over CoreAI, one of Microsoft’s most important AI divisions, and is doing the opposite of what many of us expected. Dismantle AI from within. Distrust. The Xbox brand is not going through its best moment. Since the disastrous E3 in 2013 where the Xbox boss said that if someone didn’t want an always-connected console (Xbox One) they could stick with their old Xbox 360, things have gone downhill. That someone was a Don Mattrick who was replaced by Phil Spencer and with whom things began to change. Game Pass, studio purchases to feed the ecosystem and strategy changes such as launching games on PC and PlayStation. The accounts seemed to come out in services, but not in hardware or games. After all this time, Phil retired and a totally different profile arrived: that of Asha Sharman. The directive I wasn’t a gamer like Phil, he also had no gaming experience. He came from leading CoreAI, a Microsoft team focused on accelerating the development of AI software for internal and external customers to build and run AI applications and agents. Out with the AI. When it was announced that she would be in charge of replacing Phil, in the midst of the ‘Microslop’ meme, many of us feared the worst for the division. Even one of the fathers of Xbox He pointed out that Sharma was going to bury Xbox. However, through Twitter, the CEO has just launched a release quite interesting: “Xbox needs to move faster, deepen our connection to the community, and address friction for both players and developers.” It would seem like just another message, that typical ‘CEO language’ that so many managers use, but it has gone one step further by committing to something interesting: “Today we promoted leaders who helped build Xbox while bringing in new voices to help us move forward. This balance is important as we get the business back on track. As part of this change, we will begin removing features that do not align with our intentions and plans for the future. “We will begin scaling back Copilot on mobile devices and will stop development of Copilot on consoles.” CoreAI Avalanche. This implies a shift in the strategy of a Microsoft that, like others like Meta, they had become an AI company. They have pushed Copilot to its limits, putting it on capon even on televisions thanks to commercial agreements or by renaming its office suite so that, now, its most important services were Copilot and, therefore, artificial intelligence. These statements, therefore, represent an interesting change, as interesting as seeing who are those who now manage Xbox. Sharma talks about “new voices” and what contrasts with this plan to dismantle Copilot in some of the products is that many of them come from… CoreAI. As they point our colleagues from 3DJuegos, The Verge raises a list of four very important members of that AI division who, now, come to Xbox to work with Sharma when defining the future strategy and the new machine: Project Helix. Return to fan. It is not Sharma’s only turn in this short period at the helm of Xbox. From the “everything is an Xbox” campaign, tremendously controversial because if everything is an Xbox, nothing is, we move on to a “we are xbox“, a return to those origins in which an Xbox is an Xbox, and that’s it. Well, also the PC, which is receiving its ‘Xbox mode‘ to improve the video game experience. There is rumors that they are considering returning to exclusives (PC and Xbox) abandoning launches on platforms such as PlayStation 5 and They have lowered the price of Game Pass Ultimatethat it was shot a few months ago. Of course, although they lowered the price, they also left ‘Call of Duty’ out of the subscription, so that reduction is misleading. I want to believe. Now, you have to be careful with all this. Although they are already taking some actions (that “reduction” of Game Pass or stopping the development of Copilot on Xbox), the return to exclusives and the roots of Xbox are issues that remain to be seen. Until they start taking more forceful action, we won’t be able to assess how far Sharma has gone to do things differently. Furthermore, and it is not to look for spins on Sharma’s statements, the board has pointed out that they stop Copilot on consoles. And that word, “consoles,” is very important because we don’t know what Project Helix will be. Your new machine definitely cannot be classified as a console because the machine itself Microsoft is positioning it as a PCone in which the crisis of components will impact strongly both in availability and price and it remains to be seen if they miss that opportunity to bring AI to the living rooms. But well, it is evident that the new CEO has arrived at Xbox wanting to wage war and we can think “ok, but above it is someone with more power: Satya Nadella.” And yes, Nadella has been one of the great drivers of converting Microsoft into an AI company, but just yesterday the company’s CEO sent a powerful message: clean Windows of so much garbage to win back the fans. Only time will tell, but it is evident that Microsoft’s image is not going through its best moment. In Xataka | France wants to “become independent” from Windows and embrace Linux: Extremadura has a lesson to transmit

Microsoft just turned an $11 billion startup into a Word feature. It’s more than a legal Copilot

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Brad Smith is more than the vice chairman of the board and president of Microsoft: Smith is also a lawyer and as he himself tellsat the beginning of his career he asked his company for a computer because he firmly believed that computing could change the way lawyers work. In fact, his Wikipedia biography gives more detail: it was the requirement that the Washington, DC law firm Covington & Burling set to join. Said and done: in 1986 he was the first person in the firm to have one, which ran the legendary Word 1.0 processor. Seen in perspective it sounds like marketing, but a tremendous omen: Microsoft just announced Legal Agent for Wordan AI agent designed for legal work. What’s new from Microsoft is not a legal Copilot. Legal Agent is an agent designed to understand and operate within a legal document as a lawyer would: it analyzes risks, compares clauses against the organization’s internal rules, has tracking for the changes it generates, differentiates previous reviews of new proposals and detects potentially problematic provisions. Everything happens within the .docx itself, without leaving Word. What distinguishes it technically is its architecture. The agent does not ask the LLM to generate each edit directly, but instead combines that semantic understanding layer with a deterministic layer that applies the changes in a controlled way. This allows you to insert clauses, delete paragraphs, or add comments while preserving the original formatting of the document, including tables, lists, and change history. The result is a more reliable and predictable system than a chatbot, with fewer hallucinations and with the consistency that legal work demands. Brad Smith’s tweet includes a video that lasts almost a minute and a half where it can be seen in action: Tap to go to the post Why is it important. The key is not so much the technology, which already existed, but rather the distribution: Word is the program par excellence for drafting, reviewing and negotiating contracts around the world. Integrating there means being in the right place at the right time, without friction: it eliminates the need for another service, creating an account and logging in, the learning curve, the workflow between two different apps, data migrations and security. All in one, all easy. The definitive boost is the price. While subscribing to specialty products like Harvey they hover the 1,000 – 1,200 dollars per lawyer per base month, according to market estimates collected by Sacrathe Legal Agent arrives integrated into theCopilot Enterprise subscription of 30 dollars a month that surely many spiteful people already pay per se. The difference in magnitude and the product placement anticipate a voracious entry into this market niche. Context. A troubled river, fishermen’s profit: Microsoft did not start from scratch for this project. At the beginning of the year contract to more than 18 engineers from Robin AI, the legal AI startup that collapsed after failing to close its $50 million round. Probably if Robin AI had not fallen, Microsoft would not have been able to create such a product so quickly. We were talking about other specialized products but the name on the horizon was one: Harveythe sector’s benchmark. Founded by Winston Weinberg and former Google DeepMind Gabe Pereyraoperates with more than 100,000 law professionals in more than 1,300 organizations and is valued at 11 billion dollars. Your latest financing round It was 200 millionclosed in March 2026 and co-led by GIC and Sequoia. It is true that its proposal goes beyond the review of contracts: it has more than 25,000 personalized agents operating on its platform with deep integrations into the document management systems used by large law firms, such as iManage and NetDocuments. Bottom line: It’s not a $30 a month feature. Yes, but. In any case, for now the product is still in early access, only in Word for Windows, with configuration restrictions and some complaints from those who have already tried it. Furthermore, it remains to be seen whether lawyers will trust into a mainstream tool for highly complex cases where a minimal error can be costly. The battle of price and distribution is won, confidence and technical depth is another story. Saying that Microsoft is going to kill Harvey it’s an exaggeration: The Legal Agent is more focused on volume work, that more mundane work of routine reviews, standard contracts, NDAs… that takes legal professionals hours every day. Harvey is strong in more complex and/or high-risk tasks: a multinational with a serious litigation advised by an elite law firm is hardly going to entrust the matter to an agent included in an Office subscription. What the Robin AI story does make clear is that having a good product and customers does not guarantee survival: the group of organizations willing to pay is smaller than the investment rounds anticipated. In Xataka | The relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI is no longer exclusive. It took someone 48 hours to fish in a troubled river: Amazon In Xataka | The results of the technology companies are very clear: the business of AI is not AI, it is renting its infrastructure Cover | Brad Smith on Twitter

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