Gabe Aul, the former head of the Windows Insider Program announced on Twitter today that he has joined Facebook after working at Microsoft for almost 27 years. Today is Aul’s first day as Vice President at Facebook, and the former Microsoft employee has yet to share more details about his new job.

Today is my first day as a Facebook employee. After more than 2 decades at Microsoft I am excited for a new adventure. I want to thank immensely all of the #windowsinsiders who I have been so fortunate to connect with over the years on Twitter.

— Gabriel Aul (@GabeAul) June 24, 2019

Aul started his career at Microsoft in 1992, and his latest role was Corporate Vice President of the Windows Engineering System team. Aul is mostly known for being the man behind the Windows Insider Program, which has become a massive beta testing program over the years with more than 15 million Windows Insiders. In June 2016, Aul passed the Windows Insider Chief torch to Dona Sarkar, which has since taken the program a step further with a new #Insiders4Good arm.

Facebook has been the subject of many controversies in recent months, many of them related to privacy subjects, but the company remains highly attractive for tech veterans. Aul actually isn’t the only high-profile Microsoftee that joined Facebook this month: Clint Rutkas, a former Senior Product Manager focusing on the developer platform announced two weeks ago that he was now Developer Advocate for the big blue app.

We wish both Aul and Rutkas the best of luck at Facebook and hope they’ll be able to help it become a better company.

Update: According to Dona Sarkar, Gabe Aul is actually joining Oculus, the VR company that Facebook acquired back in 2014.

Super proud of our friend & mentor @GabeAul for joining @oculus.

V/A/M Reality == best reality! ❤️ https://t.co/eRbWeEh2Wj

— Dona Sarkar at #AbilitySummit (@donasarkar) June 24, 2019

The new Raspberry Pi 4 is here with upgraded technical specifications, including 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB RAM versions. The Raspberry Pi 4 pricing starts at $35 (1GB), $45 (2GB), and ends at $55 for the 4 GB DDR4 RAM version. Additionally, the Raspberry Pi 4 is now using USB-C for power, getting rid of the old USB micro-B connector, available in older models.

Two other big changes are the removal of the full-sized type-A HDMI connector in exchange for two Type-D micro HDMI connectors, and the placement of the Gigabit Ethernet jack next to the 4 USB connectors. The Raspberry Pi 4 also sports 2 USB 2.0 ports and 2 USB 3.0 ports. Here’s the video showing off the new Raspberry Pi 4.

As noted in a post on the Raspberry Pi blog, here’s a look at all the updated specifications available in the new Raspberry Pi 4 Model B:

• A 1.5GHz quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A72 CPU (~3× performance)
• 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB of LPDDR4 SDRAM
• Full-throughput Gigabit Ethernet
• Dual-band 802.11ac wireless networking
• Bluetooth 5.0
• Two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports
• Dual monitor support, at resolutions up to 4K
• VideoCore VI graphics, supporting OpenGL ES 3.x
• 4Kp60 hardware decode of HEVC video
• Complete compatibility with earlier Raspberry Pi products

Besides the Raspberry Pi 4 upgrades and older models’ legacy support, Raspberry Pi will abandon the legacy graphics driver stack used in previous Raspberry Pi models.

“Instead, we’re using the Mesa “V3D” driver developed by Eric Anholt at Broadcom over the last five years. This offers many benefits, including OpenGL-accelerated web browsing and desktop composition, and the ability to run 3D applications in a window under X. It also eliminates roughly half of the lines of closed-source code in the platform.”

The Raspbian Desktop software is getting revamped too. Based on the upcoming Debian 10 Buster release, the new Raspbian Buster desktop software offers “a modernised user interface, and updated applications including the Chromium 74 web browser.” Head on over to the Raspberry Pi downloads page to download the new Raspbian Buster desktop for yourself. The new Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB RAM) offers enough technical specifications to run full Windows 10.

Buy the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B from the Raspberry Pi Store.

Back in the day, Microsoft seemingly kept a long list of enemies otherwise known as competitors, as the company’s product portfolio grew in ambition. However, the days of vindictive and arguably petty Microsoft seem to be behind the company as it’s enemies list shrinks and its collaboration roster expands, yet, there are still a few areas in where the company keeps a healthy competitive nature and to that end, some software, services, and companies remain on a figurative and literal blacklist.

According to a report from GeekWire, not only does Microsoft have a figurative blacklist, there is a literal blacklist of products that have been obtained and services from the following companies are frowned upon in internal use by the Redmond-based software company including obvious names such as Amazon Web Services and Kaspersky as well as a few head-scratchers in Grammarly and GitHub.

Perhaps, the most noteworthy exclusions comes from recent IPO darling Slack, to which Microsoft offers a competitor product in its Teams communication service. Unlike its more neutral stance on cross-platform usage and development, Microsoft seems to be taking an active roll in discouraging and even prohibiting the use of Slack by company employees.

However, before the anti “M$” stans hit the internet, GeekWire does explain the full context of Slack’s addition to Microsoft’s blacklist. Microsoft does not appear to be arbitrarily picking and choosing software and services to keep its employees from using, but rather justifies the list primarily with security concerns.

According to Microsoft’s reasoning, Slack usage within the company to transmit and receive sensitive data puts could put projects and company divisions at risk.

“It’s not just the risk that Google will try to find trade secrets from data stored on their servers,” said Christopher Budd, who has worked in security technology for 20 years, including past roles in Microsoft security and privacy communications. “When you’re at Microsoft, you’re at risk of state sponsored industrial espionage. These days we generally think of hacking in criminal or traditional geopolitical espionage. But industrial espionage is still out there and brings the full force of nation-state hacking to bear.”

To that end, here is the reasoning Slack, GitHub, AWS, and Grammarly make the list.

Slack Free, Slack Standard and Slack Plus versions do not provide required controls to properly protect Microsoft Intellectual Property (IP). Existing users of these solutions should migrate chat history and files related to Microsoft business to Microsoft Teams, which offers the same features and integrated Office 365 apps, calling and meeting functionality. Learn more about the additional features that Teams can provide your workgroup. Slack Enterprise Grid version complies with Microsoft security requirements; however, we encourage use of Microsoft Teams rather than a competitive software.

GitHub is perhaps the most surprising inclusion on the “discouraged” list, given Microsoft’s ownership of the coding repository. However, it’s not an outright ban. Microsoft cautions employees not to use GitHub “for Highly Confidential types of information, specs or code.”

Amazon Web Services, which competes with Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, and Google Docs, which competes with Office 365, are both “discouraged for use” and “will require a business justification” to be used, according to the internal Microsoft summary. “It is highly recommended to start a migration plan to Azure prior to engaging the Governance team for new request or renewals,” the summary reads.

Grammarly, the writing and grammar-checking technology, is on the “prohibited” list. “The Grammarly Office add-in and browser extensions should not be used on the Microsoft network because they are able to access Information Rights Management (IRM) protected content within emails and documents,” Microsoft said, cautioning that this could lead to the exposure of sensitive data, and noting that Microsoft security is evaluating what can be done to make the technology secure for use within the company.

While Microsoft may have a valid security concern to put competing software such as Slack on its ‘prohibited and discouraged’ blacklist both companies have publically admitted that they are active and direct competitors in a market. Microsoft finally acknowledges Slack as its main rival in chat communication in its annual 10-K report, despite Slack chipping away at both Outlook and Skype audiences for years. Slack also made note of Microsoft’s presence in chat with both a full-page ad in the New York Times two years ago as well as listing the company as its “primary competitor in IPO documentation last year.

Interestingly enough, there seems to have been a time when Microsoft employees weren’t so forcibly discouraged from using Slack as HoloLens developers had and maintained a pretty trafficked channel on Slack. Presumably, the use of Slack was allowed, if not simply just frowned upon, prior to the rollout of Microsoft’s own homebrewed Teams software and the recent IPO of its competitor.

For Microsoft, the days of petty feuds and industry squabbling seem to be behind mostly the company, but Slack’s recent IPO and Microsoft Teams recent traction with businesses have put the two offerings on a collision path of sorts, and we’ll see how long the two remain relatively civil and keep their rivalry to just internal blacklists.

Earlier this week, Zac Bowden, who’s apparently been intently watching the calendar and lying in wait, posted his countdown to when Microsoft’s promise of more news about Windows 10 Insider version 19H2 coming “later this spring,” would be, well, late:

So what are we all thinking? Will Microsoft stick to its schedule or do we have a delay on our hands? FIND OUT ON FRIDAY ? pic.twitter.com/znXzIL7gxk

— Zac Bowden (@zacbowden) June 19, 2019

To recap, Microsoft has been in a cadence of twice per year updates to Windows 10, but recently has been coy about any discussion of the second release for 2019, known as 19H2.  Instead, Microsoft has been charging ahead with updates for 20H1, the first of two releases scheduled for 2020. In a post on Windows Central, Bowden contends that “Microsoft has fallen behind schedule with its plans for this (19H2) release.”

Bowden goes on to state the obvious, that “Windows 10 is not getting two major feature updates this year,” and contends that Windows 10 19H2 will be “a much smaller cumulative-type update that will essentially sit on top of 19H1.”

There are multiple reasons for that, including as Mary Jo Foley posted back in February, that Windows isn’t its own org anymore, it sits with Azure, and some adjustments in release cycles need to happen:

(T)he impact of last spring’s big Windows reorg which resulted in Windows engineering moving to the Azure team, is starting to manifest. Azure has been using a customized version of Windows 10 Server as the core of the Azure platform for quite some time. But the team behind the Windows core OS — which (confusingly) is not the same thing as WCOS — hasn’t really prioritized Azure up until now. Instead, it’s been prioritizing the needs of Windows client, Server and Xbox.

This is starting to change. Beginning with the next major update to Windows core, which is the guts of Windows (meaning the kernel, file system, networking stack and such), the Azure team at last will be using the most-up-to-date version of Windows core instead of a much older version, my sources say. Moving forward, the Windows core features the Azure team wants will get top billing.

In addition, enterprise clients have been clamoring for a revamping of Microsoft’s twice yearly update pattern, with many calling for a single release per year, at most. Microsoft has steadfastly refused to back off the twice yearly cadence, but did make changes to the licensing agreements, extending H2 updates to 30 month coverage while limiting H1 releases to 18 months. This, along with the lagging appearance of 19H2, strongly suggests that Microsoft is looking at a major/minor release cycle each year.

To say that 19H2 development is “delayed” suggests that there is some kind of technical issue or new feature not quite ready that’s slowing down an announcement of what’s happening with the next release of Windows. We’re not sure at all that’s correct.

Instead, with some 14 million Windows Insiders who are clamoring for new builds and new stuff every week, a new message, and perhaps even a new way of running the Windows Insider program needs to be crafted. What happens when, for half the year, almost nothing new is introduced? (What’s happening now, is that 20H1 testing is being stretched out over the whole year). Has Microsoft handled this messaging poorly, as Bowden says, or is this delay in communication both embarrassing or a disservice to customers, as Paul Thurrott says in his (premium) post this morning? Well, yes and yes.

Microsoft, it appears, is shifting to a cadence more closely aligned with Azure, more in line with a once per year major release, and that’s going to be good news for the enterprise and not so good news for Insiders. Why the company can’t just come out and say that is baffling, and leads to the kind of public hand-wringing we’re seeing coming out of the likes of Thurrott and Windows Central. But what’s delayed is not work on 19H2, only the messaging.

Happy summer to the northern hemisphere!

The latest Microsoft Edge Insider builds will now display media info from the top left volume pane in Windows 10 that can be accessed by hitting on of the physical volume key on the device or keyboard (via MSPU). This contrasts to just showing nothing at all, like the old version of Edge, or the less-than-useful “chrome.exe” that is show when playing media from Google Chrome.

This feature works best with YouTube and YouTube Music, showing the video title or song name at the at the larger top line, its uploader or artist in the smaller second line, as well as the video icon on the right. This is definitely useful to those who use YouTube as their primary music streaming application.

Every other website that also supports Windows 10’s media controls also work, although not to the same extent. From other sites, the volume pane will pull the name from the tab, displaying the song’s name and artist in the title in Spotify web player, but just the website’s name in most others. So just seeing “Netflix” while you multitask and watch the Stranger Things season 3 trailer might not be quite as useful, at least it’s there and something that could potentially be fully implemented later.

On the brighter side, this is definitely an important aspect to look at in the growing world of Progressive Web Apps. Multimedia PWAs, in particular, will feel a lot more like real apps once they are fully integrated into Windows 10’s media controls.

Hopefully, other websites will see the value of this new feature and swiftly add the capability into their own apps. Which web apps do you think could best take advantage of the media controls in Windows 10?

Two days ago, Microsoft released a new Windows 10 20H1 preview build that contained a couple of hidden features, including a new Cortana Beta app. Once enabled, the app still appears next to Windows Search in the taskbar, but it comes with a revamped design and the same conversational UI that is already available on iOS and Android.

Here's the new Cortana app in action. Very reminiscent of current mobile experiences. pic.twitter.com/2wX7oLXVuX

— Albacore (@thebookisclosed) June 19, 2019

This hidden Cortana Beta app was first discovered by Twitter user Albacore, but Rudy Huyn, the former prolific Windows Phone developer has since revealed more secrets about the new client. According to Huyn, this new Cortana app is a full UWP app that could work on other platforms where UWP apps can already run. However, it appears that the app does rely on a separate Win32 process that can work in the background, as do other UWP apps such as Dropbox (Rudy Huyn had a big role in the development of the Dropbox UWP app, FYI).

The confusion comes from a second process named win32Bridge.Server. If you aren't aware, a full-UWP app can run a secondary win32 process in background to get access to more API (Only when running in desktop). Article from @StefanWickDev here: https://t.co/BFOYUeC7I1

— Rudy Huyn (@RudyHuyn) June 21, 2019

In the same Twitter thread, Huyn also added that Cortana Beta is actually a Store app, which means that Microsoft will be able to update it at convenience, in a similar way to the Xbox Game Bar on Windows 10. The existing Cortana didn’t always require a full new Windows 10 build to get new features, as Microsoft has been able to do some server side changes over the years. However, this new Cortana Beta app, which the company has yet to officially announce, could be updated much more frequently.

The Windows 10 May 2019 Update (19H1) finally separated Cortana from Windows Search, it seems that Cortana could finally get some love with the 20H1 Update. The digital assistant has been pretty much stagnating in recent years, and Microsoft can’t really afford to rest on its laurels now that Alexa is available for everyone in the Microsoft Store.

The official Twitter app for Windows 10 devices made a pretty significant change today when it completely revamped its main menu on the left side of the screen.

Previously, the Twitter app would feature the user’s avatar at the top of the menu which could be clicked at any time to navigate to their profile. This link has now been moved to the near-bottom of the menu and has been replaced with the Twitter bird icon which goes to the main timeline.

A new ellipsis icon has also been added to the menu. This opens up the app’s settings screen.

It’s unclear if anything else has been changed as no new release notes have been posted. It’s likely that this change was simply pushed out to the app and official release notes will be posted at a later date after more changes have been made.

Previous Twitter updates added support for multiple accounts and the new quote-tweet gif feature.

Do you like this change to the Windows 10 Twitter app? Let us know why or why not in the comments below and then follow us on Twitter for more Windows news.

Microsoft has made two important announcements on its Education blog this morning. First of all, Immersive Reader, the company’s tool to improve reading and writing comprehension in apps like OneNote is now available as an Azure Cognitive Service . This means that third-party developers can integrate Immersive Reader in their apps, and Microsoft shared a list of 15 new parters today.

NEW! We are launching the public preview of Immersive Reader as an Azure Cognitive Service ????, which means any #EdTech app or publisher can integrate Immersive Reader! Early partners ???? #edchat #accessibility #MIEExpert #MicrosoftEDU

Details: https://t.co/rPp0oLwIXS pic.twitter.com/kkKZtaGTP9

— Mike Tholfsen (@mtholfsen) June 20, 2019

Immersive is also coming to several Microsoft apps including Forms, Whiteboard, and even Minecraft: Education Edition. “We want to allow all students to engage in Minecraft: EE, and this includes reading signs, boards, in any form or any language,” explained Mike Tholfsen, Product Manager on the Microsoft Education team.

In addition to expanding Immersive Reader to many more apps, Microsoft also announced major news for students and teachers with Google EDU accounts. Starting in the US, Microsoft will allow G Suite for Education users to sign in to Office 365 for free with their Google accounts, and access apps and experiences such as OneNote, Immersive Reader, and Microsoft Teams.

NEW! Teachers & Students will be able to login & use free @Office365 apps with their Google EDU account ????

Use G-Suite & Google Classroom along with apps like #OneNote ????, Immersive Reader, and @MicrosoftTeams #edtech #edchat #ISTE19 #MicrosoftEDU

???? https://t.co/b0J9eSSxit pic.twitter.com/9goH3ugjPr

— Mike Tholfsen (@mtholfsen) June 20, 2019

The Customer preview of what Microsoft calls “simpler sign-on” will work with Chromebooks that have already been set up by IT admins, qs the solution will require a new version of Microsoft’s Office Online extension for Google Chrome. “With simpler sign-on, once you sign in to your school’s Chromebook, you can be automatically signed in to Office 365 in just two clicks, without retyping a username or password,” the blog post reads.

Microsoft is acknowledging that Google Education tools are already popular in US classrooms, but the software will make it easy for teachers and students to transition to Microsoft apps. As an example, Microsoft has built a tool to import content from Google Classroom to a OneNote Class Notebook. “You’ll be able to create and distribute assignments in OneNote and push the grades back to Classroom, so you can view all your assignments and grades in one place,” the company explained.

To join the Customer Preview of Office 365 for Google Education customers, Microsoft is inviting school districts and their IT admins to sign up on this page. Microsoft will provide free guidance to school districts and even help IT admins do all the configuration for free.

Following the release of Microsoft Edge Insider on macOS, Microsoft has made its new Chromium-based web browser officially available on Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 today. For now, only the Canary channel is available on these older versions of Windows, though Microsoft said today that the Dev channel which gets less frequent updates will be available “soon.”

“Delivering the next version of Microsoft Edge to all supported versions of Windows is part of our goal to improve the web browsing experience for our customers on every device, and to empower developers to build great experiences with less fragmentation,” Microsoft explained today. “Microsoft Edge will have the same always up-to-date platform and the same developer tools on all supported versions of Windows and macOS. This will reduce developer pain on the web, while ensuring all Windows customers have the latest browsing options,” the company commented.

Microsoft also highlighted today that the first Edge Insider Canary builds on Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 have a couple of known issues: Among highlights, dark theme and signing with an Azure AD accounts are currently not supported. The software giant is committed to improve its Edge Insider browser by listening to user feedback, and you can share your thoughts about the new Chromium-based Edge by clicking the smiley face next to the Menu button.

You can download Microsoft Edge preview builds from the new Edge Insider website, where Microsoft also publishes a detailed roadmap with upcoming new features.