Just a quick post today following build Microsoft Build 2024. Plenty of annoucements as usual but what does all this tell us about Microsofts intentions for the next few years? And I am left wondering, as ever after these kinds of annoucements, will they follow up over multiple years? Or will most of this become abandonware in very short order. There are too many initiatives which are started and either abandoned or given luke warm support until the company eventually pivots to a new strategy. 3D objects, Paint, Holo Lens, Windows Phone, the last attempt at ARM, Surface wearable, and most recently the metaverse.

Here’s a summary of the key announcements so far from Microsoft Build 2024:

AI Integration

• Microsoft’s Copilot AI agents will act as virtual assistants for businesses, automating tasks like email monitoring, data entry, and employee onboarding. These will be available in Copilot Studio later this year.
• The Phi-3 AI model has been upgraded with Phi-3-vision, a multimodal model that can process text and images, useful for image analysis applications.

Microsoft Edge and Teams

• Microsoft Edge will offer real-time video translation between English and languages like Spanish, German, Hindi, Italian, and Russian.
• Microsoft Teams will allow users to create and add custom emojis, with admin controls over who can add emojis. This feature is coming in July.

Developer Tools

• Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows is a powerful device resembling a Mac Mini, with a Snapdragon X Elite chip, 32GB RAM, and 512GB SSD.
• File Explorer in Windows will integrate Git, allowing developers to manage coding projects directly from the file browser.
• The Advanced Paste feature in PowerToys lets users convert clipboard contents to various formats like plaintext, markdown, or JSON, but requires an OpenAI API key.