Microsoft

The outage affecting services like Exchange Online, Teams, and Outlook email hasn't been resolved despite starting early Monday morning. Now Microsoft's status page is forecasting a resolution "within 3 hours."

The Microsoft 365 status reports it’s “started to deploy a fix,” after noting issues overnight affecting Exchange Online and Microsoft Teams. Its status page mentioned there have been problems for some while accessing Outlook via the web or desktop, Sharepoint, and Universal Print.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 has had a pretty rough launch, and now Microsoft has put out a hotfix aimed at addressing some of the performance and stability issues. “We will continue to investigate any issues and keep the community informed,” says game lead Jorg Neumann.

Microsoft’s head of Experiences & Devices, Rajesh Jha, just quietly announced a strange change to Microsoft 365 at Ignite today.

“Over the next couple of months we will change the Microsoft 365 app icon to the new Microsoft 365 Copilot icon,” says Jha. The new icon is identical to the Copilot one, instead of the blue and purple Microsoft 365 icon that’s used right now. Microsoft has been struggling with its Copilot branding recently.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 launches on Xbox and PC today, and in addition to hot air balloons and firefighting planes, Joby Aviation has announced that its electric air taxi will also be available to fly in the game.

Joby worked with the game’s developers to digitally recreate its air taxi, including its interior, exterior, and unique vertical take-off capabilities.

A new “improved” Windows search will allow you to search for documents, photos, and other files by just describing them — even when you’re not connected to the internet. The new AI search experience will roll out to Windows Insiders on Copilot Plus PCs early next year.

The enterprise-focused feature downloads updates in the background that “become effective immediately upon installation, eliminating the need for a restart.” It’s supposed to pair with Windows Autopatch, a cloud service that automates updates across Windows, Microsoft 365, Edge, and Teams.

Windows Hotpatch is now available in preview to commercial customers.

Meta has been working on improving the Windows VR experience with its Quest headsets in recent months, and now Microsoft says the full capabilities of Windows 11 are coming to the Meta Quest 3 and Quest 3S in December. You’ll be able to have a large multiple-monitor workstation through Quest 3 headsets in public preview next month.

We’re still waiting to hear when Windows Volumetric Apps will be available, though.

Microsoft is making Places, its new app to coordinate in-office days with colleagues, available to everyone today. Microsoft Places uses AI and a dedicated location plan section where you can set and share the days you’ll use the office and view which days your co-workers are heading in. Microsoft is also planning to integrate this all into Copilot soon, too.

The idea with Azure AI Foundry is that it will help organizations manage their AI tools. As Microsoft says in a blog post:

Azure AI Foundry helps bridge the gap between cutting-edge AI technologies and practical business applications, empowering organizations to harness the full potential of AI efficiently and effectively.

In the waning months of Democratic control, the Federal Trade Commission is getting ready to probe Microsoft for alleged anticompetitive behavior, The Financial Times reports.

It plans to demand documents from Microsoft related to allegations that it makes it unduly difficult for customers to move from the Azure cloud by imposing sharp exit fees and other tactics. The FTC declined to comment.

As my colleague Tom Warren reported last week, Xbox’s AI-powered search will let you enter things like, “FPS games with zombies” or “cozy farming games with fishing,” which should come in handy if you forget the title of a game, or don’t know what you’re looking for.

The upgraded search experience is coming to the Xbox console and Xbox app on Windows.

The app launched last month, but was initially was only available for paid users. Now, all users can try it, OpenAI says.

Phil Spencer has been dropping hints about a portable Xbox for some time now. But in a new interview with Bloomberg, he cautioned that, while the company is working on prototypes, the release of an actual handheld is still a few years out.