Microsoft - page 17

Microsoft has inadvertently leaked plans to release a new chat app for iPhone called Flow, which will allow users to have “rapid email conversations.” The service will be a part of Outlook, but it will focus on quick communication with “no subject lines, salutations, or signatures.”

More than four years after its debut, Windows Phone still has a native app problem. Microsoft has now accepted that’s not going to change anytime soon, so in an effort to attract new users to its platform, it’s going to allow them to run Android and iOS apps… sort of.

Microsoft’s early attempts to the tablet crown from Apple hasn’t really gone according to plan. All the Surfaces from the original to the Pro 2 were flops, but Microsoft seems to have hit its stride with the Surface Pro 3. Now it’s ready to take on the iPad with an even cheaper tablet.

Today, Microsoft unveiled its thinnest and lightest tablet ever, the Surface 3. At 1.37 pounds it’s just a little bit heavier than the iPad Air 2, but boasts a bigger screen and price tag that starts at $499.

Tablet sales are on the decline, and the iPad is “the weakest leak,” according to the latest report from International Data Corporation.

The organization has scaled back its five-year forecast for tablets, expecting market growth to come to a near standstill. With 234.5 million units expected to be sold in 2015, the tablet market will only gain a modest 2.1 percent year-over-year.

Apple’s customer service is tops. Go into any Apple Store, and a Genius will be happy to assist you with even the most trivial of technical support problems.

I bet the guy on the other end of a call from an alleged Microsoft tech support guru wished he was talking to an Apple Genius instead. The “support” guy turned out to be a scammer, and when the victim called him out on it, the fake Microsoft agent actually threatened to murder him.

The Nasdaq has been flirting with busting past the 5000 mark for days now, but investors are blaming one stock on holding it back: AAPL.

Apple shares have ballooned to their highest value ever over the past month. After weeks of growth, the stock’s performance has been flattish the last few days, which is a big problem for Wall Street because Apple now accounts for 10% of the Nasdaq’s index value.

Anyone wanting to see what productivity tools would look like on an iPad with stylus need look no further than Microsoft’s updated OneNote iOS app.

Having just updated its OneNote app for Mac, the iPad app adds OCR scanning of text within images, alongside the neat ability to add handwritten notes — either using your finger or, better still, a third-party stylus. While this feature has previously been available for the Windows and Android versions of the OneNote app, this is the first time iPad users can get in on the fun.

Boom! That’s the sound of AAPL stock hitting yet another all-time high Tuesday, making Apple the first $700 billion company in history.

Microsoft made history in 2000 when it became the first company to close at $600 billion, so this feat must make Tim Cook and the entire Apple team incredibly proud.

What’s better than buying one of the most beloved calendar apps for mobile? Buying two of them.

After snatching up Acompli in December, Microsoft has acquired Sunrise, another popular calendar app on iOS and Android.

Back in December, we noted that Microsoft had acquired the popular iOS and Android email app Acompli, which offered a more task-oriented approach to email, with the ability to schedule meetings, edit your calendar, and in your most important emails to the top of the page.

Just under two months on, and Microsoft is launching a cross-platform version of Outlook for the first time ever — incorporating pretty much all the tools previously found in Acompli.

And don’t worry: if you’re not a user of Microsoft’s email services, Outlook also supports Yahoo, iCloud and Gmail accounts.

Apple acquired TestFlight maker Burtsly last year and quickly added it to iOS in an effort to improve the iOS beta testing experience for both developers and testers. Now Apple plans to close the independent site TestFlightapp.com to Android users and everyone else, forcing iPhone and iPad owners to only test apps through the official TestFlight iOS app.

Microsoft showed off a few neat concepts at yesterday’s Windows 10 conference. But while looking at the stage showed a company secure about its place in the tech world, turning around and facing the audience revealed a very different picture: a room full to bursting with MacBook-wielding journos.

Grasswire co-founder Austen Allred tweeted the above image taken at the event, adding the pithy understatement “A couple MacBooks at the Windows 10 Unveiling…”

If one were needed, it’s yet another reminder for longtime tech followers about just who won the PC war in the long run, despite Microsoft’s dominance during the 1990s. We can’t say we’re brokenhearted about it, either.

Microsoft just unveiled the future of Windows 10 today in Redmond. Along with some crazy holographic goggles that take on Google Glass and Oculus, company executives revealed the ambitious plan to make the next generation of Windows the first truly universal platform for desktop PCs, laptops, smartphones and more.

The 2.5 hour keynote was packed with new features coming to Windows 10 devices and the Xbox, but eagle-eyed Apple fanboys have already noticed a few ways Microsoft was influenced by some of Apple’s best features.

Here are 5 plays Microsoft stole from Apple’s playbook:

Forget about spreadsheets and Word docs — Microsoft thinks the world is ready for holograms.

“We’re dreaming about holograms,” said Microsoft’s Alex Kipman as he introduced Windows Holographic and HoloLens, the company’s new wearable holographic computer. He showed off the device, which is strapped to the head and includes see-through lenses and an array of built-in sensors designed to bring high-def holograms into the real world.

It looks like much more than a dream.

If you’re a long time Mac fan like I am, you probably remember a time in the 90’s when you would have paid anything to watch then Microsoft CEO eat shit and die.

Of course, since leaving Microsoft, Bill Gates has become quite the humanitarian… one who is especially concerned with the problem of getting clean drinking water to the rest of the world. So these days, I have no interest in seeing him eat shit and die.

But drink shit and live? Sign me up!

LAS VEGAS — Nobody wants to get hacked like Jennifer Lawrence’s iCloud account. Everyone, including Apple, is pushing two-factor authentication in the wake of the high-profile hack that exposed dozens of celebrities nude selfies, but verifying an account login with a code sent to your phone is a total pain.

In the not-so-distant future, we might all be storing two-factor authentication on our keychains.

Yubico is already providing eight out of 10 Silicon Valley companies with a tiny USB dongle called YubiKey that securely verifies an employee’s online identity. You just plug it into a computer and tap it when it’s time to log in. Now that Gmail has started supporting YubiKey on the front end, anyone can use it as the second verification step for getting into their inbox.

It’s come a long way in recent years, but even so, Internet Explorer may be Microsoft’s most reviled product: a web browser so bad it held web standards back for years. From a Mac fan’s perspective, the best that can be said about Internet Explorer is that, for the most part, you never have to use it at all: the most up-to-date versions only run on Windows.

But that could soon change. A new report suggests that Microsoft could be rebranding Internet Explorer while giving it a radical overhaul… while simultaneously releasing it on non-Windows systems like Mac and iOS.

When people opened up their brand new iPhones and iPads for Christmas, what was the first app they were most likely to download?

Well, the data’s in, and it looks like Minecraft: Pocket Edition had a pretty great Christmas, raking in more money in holiday sales than any other game in the world.

Microsoft’s Xin is already one of the best ways to share photos between devices, even if you’re on Android or iPhone, but it’s getting even better today for iPhone users with a new update that adds Apple TV support, plus a ton of other set top boxes.

Chomecast, Fire TV, Xbox One and web browsers are all getting support for the simple photo sharing app meaning you can now toss pictures to pretty much any smartphone or TV screen in the world.

See how Xim works with Apple TV in the video below:

Star Trek Captains Picard and Kirk could talk to any alien, no matter how different it was from humanity, thanks to the universal translator, a magical sci-fi device that explained away why strange civilizations in far-away solar systems all spoke English.

That future just got a little less far-fetched, thanks to Skype Translator, a new preview service that uses technology from Microsoft Research to translate two different languages back and forth in real time.

This is heady stuff, as school kids in Seattle and Mexico City seem to instantly recognize when they chat back and forth in English and Spanish via the Skype service in the video below.

If you needed any more confirmation that Windows Phone is dead in the water, two of its most high profile supporters have abandoned it for the iPhone.

Veteran Microsoft journalists Ed Bott and Tom Warren both published essays this week in which they criticized Windows Phone for its shortcomings and announced that they’ve stopped using Windows Phones personally. Citing a lack of carrier and third-party app support, both agreed that Windows Phone has missed its shot at being a real competitor in the smartphone market.

Microsoft released its list of the top Bing searches of 2014 this week, and among tech companies, Apple appears to be this year’s big winner, again.

The iPhone 6 and iPad both ranked among the top 5 tech search words of 2014, according to BingTrends. Other top searches included Fitbit and the Xbox One, but the iPhone 6’s biggest competitor – the Samsung Galaxy S5 – didn’t even place in the top 10.

Here are the complete rankings:

Microsoft is digging its roots deeper into iOS and Android this week with the announcement that it has acquired the popular cross-platform email app Acompli.

News of the Acompli acquisition was posted today on Microsoft’s company blog, with VP of Office, Rajesh Jha, saying the company plans to integrate the app into the Outlook redesign his team is currently working on.

Microsoft’s been doing a stellar job promoting Apple lately, securing placement of its “iPad-like tablets” on CNN and the NFL. But it looks like Redmond has decided to give up and start pushing Apple products.

Microsoft published an ad on Facebook today that highlighted Skype’s ability to keep people in sync, but the real headliner is a huge orchestra of MacBooks — and there’s not a PC in sight.

The ad features a photo of a conductor in New York City’s Bryant Park, surrounded by an array of 11 MacBooks connected to the city’s celebrated subway musicians. Microsoft’s ad comes with the tagline, “The world’s first digital orchestra stays in sync with Skype,” but it looks like the MacBooks and iPhones (as well as the musicians using them) steal the show.

Watch the MacBook orchestra’s performance below.