One of the best Copilot+ features comes to Intel and AMD, but Snapdragon still has the lead Hallie Frederick | usagoldmines.com

The Windows Forecast is a look at the future of Windows that comments on the latest news for Windows Insiders, as well as other major announcements in the Windows space each and every week. My name is João Carrasqueira, and I’ve been covering the world of Windows professionally since 2018. If there’s something you’d like to see covered, you can reach me at joao@xda-developers.com.

We’re fully entering the holiday season, and Microsoft has officially stopped releasing new Windows 11 builds for the year. We got one last whiff of new features this week, and it’s some retty interesting news. But what’s potentially even more interesting is what we’re not getting just yet. Let’s talk about it.

Real-time translation comes to Intel and AMD PCs

But Snapdragon gets another advantage

It’s relatively well-known if you follow XDA that Qualcomm had some kind of exclusivity deal around Copilot+ PCs, and that it likely included Recall, since it was

made available to Snapdragon PCs
just a couple of weeks before Copilot+ features as a whole

came to Intel and AMD laptops
. However, those Intel and AMD PCs didn’t immediately get all the Copilot+ features, and it seems like, in some way, Microsoft is still prioritizing Snapdragon.

This week, Microsoft rolled out real-time translation in live captions to Intel and AMD-based Copilot+ PCs. As you may know, real-time translation currently only works if the target language is English, though it can translate from over 40 languages. That’s exactly what Intel and AMD PCs are getting.

But along with that, Snapdragon PCs got their own update that puts them back on top — real-time translation is also rolling out for Chinese users, meaning you can translate into Chinese Simplified as well. Since this is all still happening in Insider channels, I do wonder if Microsoft is planning to keep this advantage on Snapdragon PCs when a broad rollout happens, or if it’s just happening now during the development cycle because it’s easier to develop this way. After all, Snapdragon PCs didn’t get a lot of interesting Copilot+ features before Intel and AMD PCs started getting them too, so it kind of makes sense to let them have an edge for a little bit longer.

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But while we’re on the topic of translation, what I’d really like to see is the ability to translate not just spoken dialog, but any text we come across. I feel like this should be even easier to do, but it would be nice if at any time, we could select text we’re reading on any app and translate it to a language we actually understand. That would be a completely justified feature to have built into Click To Do, for example. It would be even more interesting (but much harder to do) if translations were done automatically in real-time. I might be daydreaming here, but I think this would be an awesome addition.

Also, please expand beyond English and Chinese. This could be a huge accessibility feature for dozens of languages that aren’t as widely spoken and make English-spoken content more accessible to millions of people. It needs to happen.

Microsoft is improving user guidance

Small hints can go a long way

This change is far from a huge deal feature-wise, and it’s not even officially available, but Bluesky user phantomofearth spotted an interesting change this week that I think is worth highlighting. Microsoft is seemingly planning to add a text blurb to the activation surfaces for

Snap layouts
, letting users know they can easily snap windows next to each other. Initially, a month ago, the same user spotted some new text shown when hovering over the restore button in a window (or pressing Windows + Z), and earlier this week, a similar blurb was added to the Snap layouts bar that appears at the top of the screen, which is more geared towards touchscreens. For now, this feature is hidden behind a feature flag, but it will hopefully come sooner rather than later.

The text simply appears on the existing UI element and it lets the user know they can drag the window into that bar to snap it into a specific position on screen. This kind of non-intrusive hint is something Windows needs more of because it often feels like users have no idea about some of the best features Microsoft adds to the operating system. It may not seem like much, but I think this is a great addition that should have been there from the start to let users know what’s happening.

I’d say a lot of things could benefit from this. A little tooltip next to the text cursor could let users know about the clipboard history or emoji panel, for example. As long as the user can still type and isn’t forced to dismiss the message in order to use the computer, this would be a non-intrusive experience, and it would actually be useful. Windows has a problem where it often feels like when it wants to teach you something, it tries to take attention away from what you’re doing, but these messages could be implemented in a less intrusive way that still feels useful to users, in my opinion. Hopefully, we’ll see more of that.

Windows 11 version 24H2 gets held back (again)

Another major issue arises

Without much else new for Insiders, the last thing to touch on this week is the announcement of yet another compatibility block for Windows 11 version 24H2. Microsoft acknowledged two major issues this week. One has to do with Auto HDR, a feature than enables HDR support in games that weren’t designed for it. In this case, colors may be displayed incorrectly when the feature is enabled, or the game may stop responding entirely. That one is fairly easy to work around, since you can just disable the feature until the issue is fixed.

The other issue is that some PCs with a specific audio controller may lose all audio output after installing Windows 11 version 24H2. This is a pretty big deal, and Microsoft has placed a compatibility hold on these PCs until the issue is fixed.

This kind of thing is nothing new, but it is interesting just how many issues have arisen with this update. Microsoft’s release health dashboard shows as many as 15 issues with version 24H2, and only three have been marked as resolved. Many of these have resulted in compatibility holds — when Microsoft blocks the update on devices that might be affected by a particular issue. These include compatibility problems with the game Asphalt 8, problems with wallpaper customization apps, older versions of Easy Anti-Cheat, and more.

Some issues are bound to slip through the cracks with big updates like this, but it seems like the Windows Insider Program isn’t doing enough to really catch many of these problems before they make it to a stable release. Considering how long these updates spend in testing, it sometimes seems inexcusable that this kind of problem still happens. One can only hope things will improve for future releases, but that doesn’t seem awfully likely.

Enjoy the holidays!

This is the last edition of The Windows Forecast before Christmas, and the last time we’ll see new Insider updates this year. We’ll still be back next week with a bit of a different edition, but for now, I wish everyone a happy holiday season.