First look: Microsoft is sticking with smaller, incremental Windows 11 updates, and its next release will follow the same pattern. There’s no major feature rollout tied to Windows 11 26H2. Like version 25H2, it will arrive as an enablement package that toggles changes already present in the OS. On PCs already running Windows 11 24H2 or 25H2, the upgrade should be a quick enablement download, a single reboot, and a few minutes of install time, with no obvious changes on the desktop.

This approach dates back to Windows 11 24H2, released in October 2024, which marked the last traditional feature update. Since then, Microsoft has kept new versions on the same underlying platform. In practice, 25H2 and now 26H2 mostly exist to extend support timelines rather than add new capabilities.

New features are no longer tied to these annual releases. Instead, Microsoft is delivering them through monthly cumulative updates, allowing changes to roll out continuously. Recent updates have added a Low Latency Profile, with support for a movable taskbar expected in an upcoming Patch Tuesday release.

As a result, the annual “feature update” now acts more like a maintenance marker than the main way new features arrive.

Microsoft has positioned this update model as a way to reduce disruption, particularly for enterprise environments where stability is critical. “The next annual update for Windows 11 is coming soon… continues our focus on delivering a predictable, low-disruption update experience for organizations and IT professionals,” the company said in recent documentation.

Enablement packages are small, often under 500KB, and work by activating dormant code already present in the OS. Because the platform itself doesn’t change, installation is faster and tends to be less disruptive than a full upgrade.

That shift also changes what a version number represents. Moving from 24H2 to 26H2 doesn’t bring a new feature set; it keeps the same codebase while advancing the support timeline for that installation.

For 26H2, support runs through October 2028 for Home, Pro, Pro EDU, and Pro for Workstations. Enterprise, Education, and IoT Enterprise versions will receive updates until October 2029, in line with Microsoft’s standard lifecycle model.

Hardware requirements remain unchanged. Any system capable of running Windows 11 24H2 or 25H2, which requires at least 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and a 64-bit dual-core processor, will support the new version.

A separate release, Windows 11 26H1, is tied to newer silicon platforms such as Nvidia N1 and Snapdragon X2. It’s based on a different platform baseline and doesn’t introduce exclusive user-facing features, so for most users, it isn’t a meaningful upgrade.

The broader shift is that Windows is now evolving through steady, incremental updates rather than periodic overhauls. The most meaningful changes arrive through monthly patches, while annual releases serve primarily to maintain and extend the platform.

Microsoft hasn’t said whether this model will continue beyond 2026, and didn’t confirm if the same approach will apply to a future 27H2 release. For now, though, the company appears committed to a cadence built around smaller updates and more predictable deployment.

The Mac lock screen has always felt a little underused. You see the time, your wallpaper, and not much else. macOS already supports desktop widgets, but once your Mac is locked, that extra information disappears.

WidgetScreen is trying to fix that in a pretty simple way. The free Mac app, made by UK computer science student Sam Cook, adds glassy widgets to the lock screen so you can quickly check things like the weather, clock, calendar, battery, music playback, countdowns, and system information.

The app is intentionally limited to the lock screen. The widgets appear when the Mac is locked and disappear when the user signs in, so they do not compete with macOS desktop widgets.

What does WidgetScreen actually do?

WidgetScreen is built for quick glances. You can arrange widgets on a grid, resize them, choose frosted or clear glass styles, change units and time format, and decide which display they appear on.

Claude Guillemot, one of five brothers who co-founded Ubisoft in 1986, has died in a plane crash near the coastal town of La Baule in western France. He was 69. Guillemot and a flight instructor from Rennes were both killed when their twin-engine Cessna 421 crashed in a field near La Baule aerodrome on the afternoon of 19 June.

French authorities confirmed that the aircraft was on fire when emergency crews reached the scene. Guillemot, a member of a local flying club, had departed Rennes and was travelling to an aviation gathering that was expected to draw more than 100 aircraft to the area. The cause of the crash has not been determined, and an investigation is underway.

Ubisoft confirmed the death in a statement, saying the company was “deeply saddened to learn of the death of Claude Guillemot.” The five Guillemot brothers, Claude, Yves, Michel, Christian, and Gérard, founded Ubisoft on 28 March 1986 in the Brittany village of Carentoir. What began as a software distribution business grew into one of the largest video game publishers in the world, behind franchises including Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Just Dance, and the Tom Clancy series.

Claude served as Executive Vice President in charge of operations at Ubisoft and sat on the company’s board of directors. His brother Yves remains chairman and chief executive of Ubisoft, which employs roughly 19,000 people across more than 40 studios worldwide.

Outside Ubisoft, Claude was chairman and CEO of Guillemot Corporation, the family’s publicly traded holding company that owns Thrustmaster, a major manufacturer of gaming peripherals including racing wheels, flight sticks, and controllers, and Hercules, which makes audio and DJ equipment. Guillemot Corp reported revenue of €197.7 million in its most recent fiscal year.

The Guillemot family’s grip on Ubisoft has been a recurring topic in the gaming industry. Despite holding roughly 11% of outstanding shares, the family maintains control through France’s Florange Act, which grants double voting rights to long-term shareholders. In 2022, Tencent, the Chinese conglomerate that has aggressively expanded its gaming portfolio, invested approximately €300 million in Guillemot Brothers Limited, the family’s private holding company, acquiring a 49.9% economic stake while receiving only 5% of voting rights.

That deal was widely interpreted as a defensive move, allowing the Guillemots to maintain control of Ubisoft while keeping Tencent’s influence capped. Tencent also holds a direct stake of approximately 9.46% in Ubisoft and invested €1.16 billion in Vantage Studios, a new Ubisoft subsidiary created in 2025 to manage the company’s biggest franchises. The question of whether Tencent and the Guillemot family would eventually pursue a full buyout has lingered for years, with no deal materialising as of June 2026.

Ubisoft has faced significant headwinds in recent years, including studio closures, layoffs affecting hundreds of employees, and a corporate restructuring that split the company into five creative divisions. The successful launch of Assassin’s Creed, a franchise that has expanded beyond games into film and television, helped stabilise the company after a difficult 2024, with Assassin’s Creed Shadows surpassing five million players within four months of its March 2025 release.

Claude Guillemot’s death comes at a particularly complex moment for the family business he helped build. Ubisoft is navigating activist investor pressure, an ongoing strategic partnership with Tencent, and a broader gaming industry contraction that has seen tens of thousands of jobs eliminated across the sector since 2023.

He is survived by his brothers and his family. French media reported that tributes from the gaming industry and the Brittany business community began arriving within hours of the announcement.

Asked about the privacy implications of chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude, Signal President Meredith Whittaker answered, “These are not your friends. These are not conscious beings. These are not sentient interlocutors.”

Whittaker made those comments in a broader interview with Bloomberg about policy, privacy, and Signal. She acknowledged that she uses AI tools “to format a document here and there,” but insisted, “I don’t ask them questions. I’m very serious about my thinking and writing, and I don’t want the process of working through an idea […] to be foreclosed or eclipsed by the response of a system that’s averaging what’s already out there.”

As for Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman’s prediction that users could let Microsoft Copilot handle all their Christmas shopping this year, Whittaker argued this scenario — where Copilot is eavesdropping on the family group chat to determine who wants want — means giving it “access to my credit card, my browser, my Signal, the ability to message my siblings on my behalf, my home address [and] my calendar.”

“What you’ve just described is a system with very pervasive access across multiple applications and services,” Whittaker said. “In the context of Signal, it would constitute a kind of a backdoor.”

Movie studios keep hunting for ways to make a trip to the theater feel essential again. Sony Pictures landed on one clear path with its next Spider-Man film. The studio worked directly with CJ 4DPLEX to present Spider-Man: Brand New Day in SCREENX, a format built to spread the action beyond the front screen and across the side walls of specially equipped auditoriums.

Audiences who choose this version enter rooms where specific scenes continue to play out on the walls next to them. The primary story remains front and center on the enormous screen in front, but there are supplementary shots playing out to the left and right. The combination of the two produces a very broad, all-encompassing perspective that immerses you in the action rather than making you a distant spectator.

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SCREENX is powered by a multi-projection system, with one projector handling the main screen and additional ones dealing with the side walls. The photos are all aligned using smart techniques like as warping correction and edge blending, resulting in a seamless image despite the fact that the walls are at an angle to the main surface. There are no special glasses required, which is a plus. The extra content is kept under control since it only appears at specified points in the film, rather than running throughout.

SCREENX has been widely used by filmmakers since it first appeared in films rather than only advertisements a few years ago. The amount of extra content on the side walls has been progressively expanding. Some films may only open the walls for a few twenty or thirty minute portions, but newer films can keep them open for an hour or more. Extra material is typically created from existing film or digital elements added later in the editing process.

However, Spider-Man: Brand New Day takes a different approach to the situation. CJ 4DPLEX despatched a crew to the set while the main crew was filming. That team took specialized photographs for the side walls, and this is the first time the format has had unique on-set photography generated particularly for it from the start of a major studio film until its release. Director Destin Daniel Cretton puts it simply: CJ 4DPLEX and their team came in to shoot content for the SCREENX auditoriums.

Jun Bang, the CEO of CJ 4DPLEX, described it as an advancement of the overall SCREENX concept. They collaborated closely with Sony Pictures and Cretton, utilizing their proprietary tools to greatly expand the visual possibilities. The goal was to ensure that they preserved the director’s vision while also immersing the audience in the story, action, and Spider-Man world.

It should come as no surprise that Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, Ariana Grande, and Kendrick Lamar are among the top 20 most streamed artists of all time on Apple Music. Check out the full list.

Apple Music launched on June 30, 2015, and it celebrated 10 years of streaming with a top 500 songs list. A year on, the streamer has shared a new metric.

The new chart is the top 20 artists of all time on Apple Music, shared by Chart Data on social media. It’s an official endorsement, as Apple Music’s account reposted it and replied with a heart and trophy emoji.

It isn’t clear what prompted the post, but we are in proximity to Apple Music’s birthday, so it may simply be that. If you don’t live under the proverbial rock, none of these artists should come at any surprise.

1. Drake
2. Taylor Swift
3. Future
4. Youngboy Never Broke Again
5. Bad Bunny
6. Lil Baby
7. The Weeknd
8. Morgan Wallen
9. Kanye West
10. Post Malone
11. Travis Scott
12. Ariana Grande
13. Chris Brown
14. Kendrick Lamar
15. Lil Durk
16. Gunna
17. Rod Wave
18. Ed Sheeran
19. Justin Bieber
20. Eminem

Apple isn’t promoting the list on Apple Music, at least not yet anyway. If you’re interested in the top 500 song playlist, it’s still available.

Out of the twenty artists present, I have six in my library. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of music represented here is in the rap or pop genres.

If you’d like to see something a little more personalized, there’s your Apple Music Replay. Unlike Spotify Wrapped, it is updated monthly, so your 2026 Replay is already available.

The Sonos Era 100 SL is a wireless speaker that features nearly all the strengths of 2023’s original Sonos Era 100, but at a cheaper price. While it isn’t a surprise that there have been some trade-offs to get that cost down, I doubt they’ll be a dealbreaker for most people.

Sonically speaking, there aren’t many sacrifices at all. In the mid-range, the Era 100 SL is capable of impressive detail. When I played I Want You by Moloko, I was impressed by how well its funky guitar noises, strings and acidy synth line cut through the mix, without interfering with the wonderfully polished vocals.

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Launcher V2 will go through a private beta before a public release.