In my previous article, I introduced Apple's new Containerization solution for macOS and compared it with Docker Desktop. In today's post, I'll explain how to install Apple’s new Container CLI—a Swift‑based, open‑source tool—for running OCI‑compliant Linux containers on your Mac. Native container support will launch in macOS 26 (Tahoe), but you can install and utilize the Container CLI on macOS 15 with certain limitations. In the step‑by‑step guide, I will explain how to install, configure, and start running containers with Apple’s fresh alternative to Docker Desktop.

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At WWDC 2025, Apple announced the Containerization Framework and Container CLI, a solution for creating and running Linux containers as lightweight virtual machines on Mac. This article is geared toward developers, sysadmins, and DevOps engineers who want to understand how Apple Container works under the hood and how it compares to Docker Desktop.

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The VS Code May 2025 update (version 1.101), released a few days ago, introduces a range of new features primarily focused on GitHub Copilot. My favorite addition is the custom chat mode, which lets you create a personalized mode alongside the built-in options: Ask, Edit, and Agent. In this post, I'll also explore the new chat tool sets and the undoing edits feature. While the Simple Browser feature was included in the previous release, it deserves discussion. Furthermore, I will briefly summarize the MCP enhancements.

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Windows 11 (version 22H2 and later) lets you add an End task button to the taskbar's right-click context menu. In this article, you will learn how to enable the feature and how to utilize it within the Task Manager.

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The MCP catalog in Docker Desktop has been available for a couple of weeks now. However, MCP support only works properly in the just-released Docker Desktop 4.42. The Docker Desktop MCP server catalog significantly simplifies installing MCP servers for any MCP client. I tested it with Gordon (Docker Desktop chatbot), Anthropic Claude Desktop, and VS Code GitHub Copilot on macOS, but the process should be identical on Windows.

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Windows offers a wide array of security-related features and configuration options, but many are either disabled by default or not configured correctly. While Microsoft’s Security Baselines provide valuable guidance, the free Harden Windows Security tool offers a significantly faster and more comprehensive way to implement robust security settings.

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AWS now allows automatic deletion of associated Amazon EBS snapshots when deregistering EC2 AMIs, reducing storage costs and simplifying cleanup. Previously, snapshots had to be manually deleted, risking orphaned resources. This feature is long overdue. In a previous post, I introduced a Bash script that deleted the snapshot when an AMI was deregistered. The script should still work, but now you can automatically delete snapshots in the AWS Console and the AWS CLI.

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Warp, the top terminal app with AI support, has introduced new features in its GA release, including MCP support and Refine for AI responses. The Preview release now allows image uploads and the saving of reusable AI prompts. I also found a few new features that weren’t mentioned in the Launch Log 3 post.

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Activating the built-in Administrator account in Windows 11 can be essential for IT administrators in specific scenarios. This comprehensive guide explores the differences between the built-in Administrator and user-created administrator accounts, outlines secure methods to enable the account, and discusses best practices to mitigate potential security risks. Whether managing system recovery, configuring deployments, or troubleshooting complex issues, understanding how to activate and manage the Windows 11 Administrator account safely is crucial for maintaining a secure and efficient IT environment.

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Mountpoint for Amazon S3 (mountpoint-s3) now allows you to mount an S3 bucket in AWS at EC2 instance boot time via fstab. However, it remains non-POSIX compliant, so standard filesystem operations like deleting or renaming files still do not work. In contrast, the open-source alternative s3fs-fuse offers substantial POSIX support but comes with its own drawbacks.

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Enabling Administrator protection in Windows 11 significantly improves security by addressing critical User Account Control (UAC) weaknesses. Unlike UAC’s split-token model, where elevated processes share the user’s session and can be exploited by malware, Administrator Protection creates a separate, system-managed administrator account (SMAA) that generates isolated, just-in-time admin tokens for each task, which are destroyed immediately after use.

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Creating an AI agent in Amazon Bedrock involves a relatively complex process. The example in this post has been simplified for clarity. Once you have your first Agent setup working, exploring all the features that AI agents in AWS offer becomes much easier. The Bedrock Agent I discuss uses a Lambda function, which can be triggered by the AI model when the user prompt indicates its usefulness. An AWS Lambda function is a serverless compute service that runs your code in response to events without provisioning or managing servers. These functions may involve complex logic, enabling the AI agent to perform sophisticated tasks autonomously.

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Entering a PIN is one of the authentication methods available through Microsoft’s Windows Hello. It offers a simplified sign-in experience, especially for devices that lack biometric capabilities. This option must be explicitly enabled in domain-joined environments or those using Entra ID. However, its functionality is significantly restricted on virtual machines hosted on Hyper-V.

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The Gmail MCP server covered in this post lets you access Gmail from any AI client that supports MCP. I found the MCP server more capable than Google's integration with Gemini in Gmail. The AI-powered search feature proved to be helpful, but the MCP server also offers several other valuable commands. In this post, I used Claude Desktop. However, once you install the MCP server and set up the Gmail API, you can access Gmail through MCP from any compatible AI application by copying the MCP JSON. I expect that the ChatGPT app and even Windows 11 will add MCP support very soon.

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Fedora and Arch Linux, two popular Linux distributions, are now officially available for the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). In the past, installing Fedora or Arch on WSL involved extra effort. Users needed to manually download and import tarballs or rely on unofficial Microsoft Store versions, many of which required payment. The introduction of WSL 2.4.4 marked a shift by adding native support for tar-based distributions, which package their OS files in a tar archive. This update allows distro developers like Fedora and Arch to offer official, free WSL versions.

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OpenAI recently introduced the Agents SDK, a Python-based framework that enables developers and DevOps engineers to build AI agents. The example in this post showcases a script that uses the OpenAI Agents SDK to connect an AI agent to Anthropic’s filesystem MCP server. This integration enables the AI agent to analyze the contents of a monitoring log.

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Microsoft has recently launched Edit, a lightweight terminal editor for Windows and Linux. It revives the spirit of the MS-DOS Editor, which debuted in 1991 as a full-screen text editor for DOS and early Windows systems. Edit eliminates the need to leave the terminal to edit files. While Edit doesn't feature a traditional GUI, it supports tab management and can be navigated using a mouse. On Linux, the open-source tool can be seen as an alternative to nano.

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The leader in coding models has rolled out Claude Code to the public. Anthropic's terminal-based AI coding assistant automates editing, testing, and managing git workflows using natural language commands. Although you cannot install Claude Code as a VS Code extension via the marketplace, its integration into the open-source IDE is straightforward, and the user experience closely resembles GitHub Copilot, Cline, or Roo Code. My review of the preview version was somewhat critical because I dislike coding in the terminal. However, Claude Code now integrates well with VS Code and JetBrains, so I changed my original verdict.

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Windows Server 2025 introduced several advancements that make containerized workloads more flexible, secure, and customizable. One notable feature is the addition of Features on Demand (FoD) in Nano Server containers. This feature allows you to customize Nano Server containers by adding only the necessary components while keeping your container images small and optimized. In this guide, we’ll explore how to enable and use Features on Demand within Nano Server containers, providing real-world use cases that demonstrate this feature's power. We will also examine how it impacts container image sizes.

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OpenAI's Sam Altman envisions a future where countless AI agents operate autonomously across the internet, managing tasks on behalf of users and interacting with each other to perform complex operations without human intervention. Realizing this vision necessitates a new internet protocol that supports the sophisticated communication required for AI systems. Google’s new Agent2Agent (A2A) Protocol addresses this need by providing an open standard that enables autonomous AI agents to communicate across diverse systems. This post delves into the necessity of A2A, its current supporters, distinctions from Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), the types of data it handles, and offers a straightforward example to illustrate its application.

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Windows Server 2025 introduces several new features and security improvements for Active Directory, including a new functional level and the Database 32k Pages feature. To take advantage of these features, you must first upgrade all domain controllers (DCs) and migrate Active Directory to Windows Server 2025. In this article, I'll guide you through the step-by-step migration process.

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In a remarkably short period, MCP has established itself as the standard for secure and efficient connections between AI models and external data sources and tools. Microsoft has integrated MCP into VS Code, Windows will get it, OpenAI plans to implement it for ChatGPT, and the top terminal application, Warp, has introduced MCP support in its Preview version. I installed the official Perplexity MCP server for my test and incorporated it into Warp.

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Instead of walking through the entire wizard in Hyper-V Manager to create a virtual machine, you can speed up the process using Quick Create. By default, this tool uses virtual hard disks (VHDX) provided by Microsoft. Alternatively, you can set up a custom gallery and populate it with your own images.

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The relatively new VS Code technical terms chat participants, chat variables, and slash commands can be accessed with the prefixes @, #, and / in GitHub Copilot. This post explains the differences and gives usage examples.

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An AI PC is a new class of Windows 11 computers equipped with powerful NPUs, enabling advanced AI features like Recall and Live Captions to run directly on the device. Learn the different methods to check if your computer is a so-called Copilot+ PC.

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While GitHub Copilot prompt files are related to the instruction files I discussed in my previous post, they serve a different purpose. Prompt files are custom Markdown templates that allow you to automate coding tasks through custom AI-driven slash commands in GitHub Copilot for VS Code. Prompt templates are powerful, as they can utilize MCP server commands as tools. In this article, I will explain how to create prompt files and provide a simple usage example.

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Device Encryption is a Windows feature that automatically enables BitLocker-based encryption on the system drive and other fixed drives, protecting personal data from unauthorized access without requiring complex setup. It is especially valuable on Windows Home devices, where traditional BitLocker management features are unavailable.

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In Visual Studio Code version 1.100, Microsoft introduced GitHub Copilot instruction files, which mirror the Rules feature in AI IDEs like Cursor and Windsurf. Instructions allow you to guide the AI assistant’s behavior by providing specific, context-aware directives tailored to your coding standards and project requirements.

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Microsoft recently updated the administrative templates for the Office suite, introducing a significant number of new settings. Most of these are designed to control the interaction with the built-in AI features. In addition, the update includes several security-related policies for individual applications.

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Perplexity is an AI search engine that answers questions by combining real-time web results with conversational, natural language responses. Installing Perplexity's official MCP server on your Mac or Windows PC allows querying Perplexity from any AI model in VS Code GitHub Copilot. Enabling your AI to search the web for the latest updates is a must-have feature for scripting or working in the terminal.

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A structured approach that covers technical steps and strategic planning can streamline the migration of a file server to Windows Server 2025. This article explores two main migration strategies—keeping or changing the file server’s hostname—and demonstrates how to transfer shared folders and data using a custom PowerShell script. By following these methods, you can ensure a smooth transition to the latest server OS while minimizing user disruption and preserving file access settings.

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OpenAI Codex CLI is a new open-source command-line tool that integrates AI models into any terminal. It enables you to generate, edit, and execute code using natural language prompts. I tested Codex CLI on Windows and Mac and concluded that it is no match for advanced AI CLIs such as Warp, Cline, or Roo Code. Do not mix up Codex CLI with OpenAI's Codex model, which was discontinued in March 2023. Perhaps Sam Altman should seek advice from ChatGPT before naming future products.

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Several reasons exist for wanting to turn off BitLocker on an individual machine or across your network. In Windows 11, you can disable BitLocker using three methods: the GUI, PowerShell, or Group Policy.

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Hibernate is a power management function in Windows 11 that saves the current system state to the hard drive and shuts down the device. Disabling Windows Hibernate frees up disk space used by the hiberfil.sys file. You can disable it in the GUI or at the command prompt with PowerShell.

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Windows 11 and Windows Server include additional components and utilities that are not installed by default. Depending on the operating system and the source used for installing these features, Microsoft provides various GUI tools and PowerShell cmdlets. Unfortunately, the overall concept lacks consistency and often leads to confusion.

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Action1 is a cloud-based remote management and monitoring tool for patching, vulnerability management, and other device and software administration tasks. It offers one of the most liberal free licenses in the industry, providing 200 endpoints with no functionality limitations. It also includes a cloud-based management console for managing endpoints, eliminating the need for businesses to provision or maintain on-premises server infrastructure.

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Microsoft Copilot Vision is an AI feature in Microsoft Edge that allows Copilot to visually interpret and interact with the content on your screen, enabling real-time assistance and contextual responses as you browse the web. Additionally, it can summarize YouTube videos, providing concise recaps without watching the entire video. You can enter your questions by typing or speaking, and Copilot Vision will reply with voice and text.

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I compared six frontier AI models—DeepSeek V3, Anthropic Claude Sonnet 3.7, Google Gemini 2.5 Pro, Meta Llama 4 Maverick, OpenAI GPT 4o (GPT 4.1), and Mistral Large 2—in terms of their capabilities in interacting with MCP servers. Surprisingly, the performance in terms of accuracy, token usage, and API costs are quite different..

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