Microsoft has hit a pretty big milestone for Windows 8, with the Windows Store passing the 100,000 apps mark. It’s taken just over seven months for Microsoft to hit the big 100K after Windows 8 launched in late October last year, although the milestone didn’t quite happen quickly enough as it managed to miss Microsoft’s BUILD 2013 developer conference by roughly a week.
At the same time, Microsoft has also confirmed the development of some new exciting Metro apps, including a Facebook client that would allow users to access their profiles from the Modern UI. Flipboard and Rhapsody will also develop [...]
Microsoft says its fourth-quarter earnings slipped 4 percent, despite a lift from its latest version of Windows.
The Redmond, Washington-based software giant posted revenue of $21.46 billion and net income of $6.38 billion, with earnings per share of 77 cents. That’s largely in line with what Wall Street had been expecting, though a bit lower on the revenue side and higher on the earnings side — ahead of today’s financial report, the analyst consensus was that Microsoft would post earnings of 75 cents a share on $21.53 billion in revenue.
The results [...]
Speaking at the company’s annual shareholders meeting on Wednesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer waxed enthusiastic about Windows Phone 8, claiming sales were off to “a great start.”
Without citing any exact numbers, Ballmer said Redmond is selling four times as many Windows Phone devices than at this time last year.
In addition, he said the Windows Phone Store now offers more than 120,000 apps, and that it will soon have “46 of the top 50 apps that people use.”
Those aren’t bad results for a product [...]
Microsoft has found the issue that’s causing some Windows Phone 8 users devices to randomly reboot. It’s certainly frustrating and it’s happen to other platforms in the past.
Hundreds of users of the Nokia Lumia 920 and HTC 8X smartphones have reported on Internet forums that their phones were repeatedly and spontaneously rebooting. The reports identified several different mobile operators in the U.S. and Europe. The forums didn’t identify a consistent culprit for the problem.
Initially, it was speculated that the patch to fix the rebooting [...]
Microsoft Corp said the head of its flagship Windows division and the driving force behind Windows 8, Steven Sinofsky, will be leaving the company with immediate effect, days after the software giant launched the Surface tablet.
Just weeks earlier, Microsoft released Windows 8, the company’s biggest overhaul to its flagship software product in years. The departure raises questions about how Microsoft, one of the giants in the technology business, will prepare itself for a new generation of leadership.
In an e-mail sent to all employees Monday [...]
There is no doubt that Windows Phone 8 is beautiful, fast and, most importantly, a huge upgrade over its predecessor.
But one thing that Microsoft didn’t change, to the chagrin of almost every WP7 user, was the way the OS deals with notifications. When WP7 debuted in late 2010, neither iOS nor Android had what could be called great notification systems. Yes, Android has, from the beginning, had its drop-down shade, but one couldn’t dismiss individual notifications until Android 4.0. iOS, until its fifth iteration, had arguably the worst and most disruptive way of dealing with [...]
Microsoft has brought thousands of people to New York to celebrate the launch of its Windows 8 operating system and its Surface RT tablet, available October 26th. Touting 670 million users of Windows 7 and over 15 petabytes of data stored in its Skydrive cloud, Microsoft is confident that Windows 8 will become even more successful than its predecessor.
One major aspect of the announcement is bringing more attention to Windows RT, a version of Windows 8 optimized to run on ARM-based processors such as Nvidia’s Tegra 3 and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 [...]
We have seen a large rise in the number of Windows 8 apps that users of the RTM version can see from the Windows Store. Today, a third party site that has been tracking the numbers of those apps stated that it has now passed the 1,000 milestone.
McAtkins Online says that in its latest app count shows there are now 1,004 apps that are visable for Windows Store users. This number includes both desktop apps (which cannot be directly downloaded from the Windows Store) and the “Modern” Windows 8 apps. Just a few days ago, the same website said there were 839 apps available on [...]
In advance of the Windows 8 launch on Oct. 26, Microsoft today unveiled a new logo that’s 25 years in the making.
The world’s largest software company is introducing a dash of color in its first logo redesign since 1987, using a new multi-colored square next to a plain rendering of its name, replacing its well-worn italic style logo.
Microsoft is rolling out its new Windows 8 operating system along with new Office and phone software this autumn, and is hoping the new logo unifies customers’ experience of the company, much like [...]
Microsoft on Wednesday announced that its next-generation operating system tailored for a world shifting from personal computers to smartphones and tablets will be available on 26 October.
Windows unit boss Steven Sinofsky revealed the Windows 8 debut date at a sales meeting, Microsoft communications manager Brandon LeBlanc said in a blog post.
Windows 8 will be available in 109 languages across 231 markets worldwide, according to LeBlanc.
Microsoft has promised to make the new operating system available in August for computer, tablet or smartphone makers to build into hardware.
The Redmond, Washington-based firm has gone on record stating that [...]
Microsoft has updated the SkyDrive for Windows App with a new user interface.The newest update to SkyDrive for Windows (version 16.4.6003.0710) includes quite a few improvements that are said to bring “performance, reliability, and compatibility.
Apart from that the app, no longer crashes out as it used to, and looks good while it downloads or uploads files. The new status windows allows users to see time and data remaining to be synced. The new SkyDrive logo also seems to be readied for the Windows 8 Metro UI
Windows server 8 will introduce the Resilient File System, or ReFS, as a “next generation file system” built on the foundations of the NTFS. The new gen file system is designed by reusing NTFS’ API / semantics engine to retain a high level of compatibility with NTFS features. The new file system design is aimed to protect against latent disk errors, resist data corruption, uphold metadata integrity, grant large volume, file and directory size. The whole concept is to reduce the massive file corruption and fragmentation users face with NTFS and Windows in general.