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Schools Are Ditching Chromebooks For MacBooks By the Thousands

3 weeks 1 day ago
Apple says its lower-cost MacBook Neo is beginning to displace Windows laptops and Chromebooks in K-12 schools, with several districts purchasing thousands of units. According to the company's latest earnings call, nearly half of the large MacBook Neo purchases made by U.S. educational institutions last quarter reportedly replaced competing platforms. 9to5Mac reports: Apple's commentary highlighted some large district deployments moving to Neo Pinellas County Schools, one of the largest districts in Florida, which is moving its 25k students off Windows and onto MacBook Neo across its 18 high schools. In Washington, Peninsula School District 401 moved over its 8,000 students from Chromebooks to MacBook Neo. Midwest City-Del City School District in Oklahoma purchased more than 6,000 MacBook Neos to become an all-Apple district for students.

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Microsoft Is Bringing Xbox 360 Games to PC

3 weeks 2 days ago
Microsoft reportedly plans to let developers bring Xbox 360 games to PC and next-generation Xbox devices, with a gradual rollout expected between 2027 and 2028. A separate disc-to-digital program would also give players transferable digital licenses tied to their physical Xbox discs, preserving the ability to resell or trade them. The Verge reports: With 360 games, developers can opt into making them backward compatible, and they will have control over things like a game's price and if it's available on Game Pass. The feature is expected to have a "gradual" rollout between 2027 and 2028 "across next-gen devices." The "full launch" of original Xbox games on PC is also set for October 2026; the initial program announced in July included just four games. The document also includes details about a way for players to get a digital version of a game that they already own on a physical disc, which The Verge's Tom Warren reported on in July. The document says that if a player puts an Xbox One or Series game on disc into an Xbox One or Series X console with a disc drive, they'll be granted a digital license that's bound to "that disc and the player's account." The license will stay with a player across Xbox devices, but if the disc "changes hands," the license will transfer to the new person. That should mean that gamers can still trade and sell discs; once the original owner of a disc does so, they can't play the digital version they got from that disc anymore. According to the document, a public beta for the disc-to-digital program was set for July with general availability set for August. We understand Microsoft had originally planned to test its disc-to-digital program with Xbox Insiders in July, but the beta was delayed. It's unclear if the timeline of August general availability is still accurate.

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Microsoft CEO Touts His Own DIY AI Project To Wall Street and His 20 Million Followers

3 weeks 2 days ago
theodp writes: During Microsoft's 2026Q4 earnings call, CEO Microsoft Satya Nadella took time to tout a dashboard he personally created using AI from a Morgan Stanley analyst's PDF research report, which suggested a rosy payback for the so-called MAG7's ('Magnificent 7' companies) massive capital expenditures on AI (to which Nadella later added a "not financial advice" disclaimer). "It would be fun for you, Adam. I think one of your colleagues put out an ROIC [Return on Invested Capital] document. I took that document to Copilot, which is a PDF, and I said, 'Build me a new Power BI dashboard, essentially.' But here is the thing. It built a rich semantic model that went into my Fabric with OneLake that brought all the data in from the external sources. In fact, it was current with all the SEC filings of all the MAG7. And then on top of that, the repo itself is in GitHub, but the artifact is sitting in my Copilot as a site. That, to me, is a classic example of an enterprise-wide workflow. I, as a knowledge worker, could go create a dashboard. The data engineer can go to Fabric and find the artifact. The professional developer can go to the repo and find it in GitHub. And by the way, it's all registered with Agent 365. That's a little bit of what Amy is describing as the coming together of a new way to work, even while at the same time, bringing IT, security and manageability of it." After Nadella's show-and-tell drew an underwhelming response during the call ("That's very helpful. Thank you." said the Morgan Stanley analyst whose team's work Nadella scraped with AI), Nadella turned to social media with posts on LinkedIn (12M followers) and Twitter/X (8M followers) to make the case for why his DIY project was such a brilliant demonstration of how AI enables governance, controls, security, development, testing, deployment, maintenance, data analysis/modeling, visualization, usability, and value. "Some more detail on the ROIC Intelligence App I built yesterday and mentioned on today's earnings call," Nadella wrote on LinkedIn. "I took the PDF that Brian Nowak at Morgan Stanley put together for Hyperscale ROIC this week and used Copilot code (coming in our new superapp) with a single prompt + skill (/drill-me) to create the plan, then used autopilot in auto to create the full app (with history, lookups, scenarios, what-ifs, etc). And /rubber-duck to test. And the best part is that all the artifacts are in my enterprise environment. My app is in Copilot, my code is in GitHub Enterprise; all my data pipelines/lake/semantic models are in Fabric. And everything is under Agent 365 IT/Sec/FinOps control! So this is not about Tokenmaxxing or vibe coding. Every step of the way the rails are engineered to create value, making everything a long-term reusable asset, with governance/security, and cost controls. This is the full system to drive business value. Disclosures: This is all pulled from public sources, and for illustrative purposes only...not financial advice! :) Here is the app and architecture..." Not unexpectedly, the accompanying screenshot of a splash page for the BI app and a buzzword-laden complicated architecture diagram drew universal praise from LinkedIn fans, but also a few barbs from less-than-impressed commenters on Nadella's Twitter/X post, some of whom suggested Nadella's project might even represent a jump-the-shark moment for AI mania. "That he doesn't see whats wrong with saying 'My app is in Copilot, my code is in GitHub Enterprise; all my data pipelines/lake/semantic models are in Fabric' is exactly why MS is failing at AI,'" replied @PassingPixels on X/Twitter. "Dude is having to run 5 different systems to emulate babies first vibe code." @zigmund_ignatov added, "Why do we call glorified slide show an app?" @Mathupiriyan quipped, "Looks like Copilot just turned a PDF into a profit crystal ball." Unimpressed, @Markusndnb remarked, "So you created a web page using tons of proprietary MS tools." And @FishyAccounting called on Nadella to show-his-work, saying "Post the prompt or it didn't happen." (btw, Microsoft President Brad Smith similarly declined to provide the prompt for his own self-described amazing AI DIY reporting project that he touted at Microsoft's Shareholder Meeting last December). So, does Nadella's self-promoted AI reworking of someone else's PDF research report strike you as an amazing example of everything that's good about AI, or does it conjure up memories of The Emperor's New Clothes?

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Apple's iCloud File Sharing Left Ex-Employees With Access to Secret Documents

3 weeks 2 days ago
Apple's practice of mixing employees' work files with personal iCloud accounts reportedly left some former staff with continued access to confidential documents, messages, and even new updates after leaving the company. "The former employees said many Apple files they had been shared on over their careers at the company -- including planning documents for product launch events -- continued to sync to their personal devices through the iCloud storage service after they left Apple," reports The Information. "In some cases, they even received notifications about fresh updates to the documents. Some former employees said they were petrified to delete the files for fear that doing so would attract Apple's attention." MacRumors reports: Apple files get mixed in with employees' accounts because the company encourages them to use their personal Apple Accounts with their work iCloud account. Employees are given a 2TB iCloud plan and are able to merge the storage with their existing Apple Account or create a new account. Since only one primary account can be signed in at a time, most opt to use their existing account to avoid having to carry two iPhones. Apple has a managed folder for workplace files that it revokes access to when an employee leaves, but some internal documents aren't saved there automatically and shared files end up mixed in with personal content. Employees can also retain access to iMessage chats and files shared via the Messages app. Lingering access to Apple systems is central to Apple's lawsuit against OpenAI. In its filing, Apple alleged that former employee Chang Liu breached Apple's systems using a "rare, previously unknown authentication bug" to download files while he was working at OpenAI. Apple told The Information that the OpenAI lawsuit is unrelated to any files left available on iCloud and that it does not pursue legal claims against former employees who accidentally have Apple documents in their personal iCloud accounts. "This case is about OpenAI employees wrongfully taking Apple's secret and confidential information regarding our unreleased technologies, processes, and products. Nothing in the filing relates to documents shared by, or stored in, iCloud."

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