Barnes & Noble has found a new, major partner in its fight to get an edge over Amazon and Apple in the market for e-books and the devices being used to consume them: it is teaming up with Microsoft in what the two are calling a strategic partnership, name yet to be determined.
It will come in the form of a new subsidiary of B&N that will include all of its Nook business as well as its educational College business. Microsoft is making a $300 million investment in the subsidiary, valuing the company at $1.7 billion in exchange for around 17.6 percent equity in the subsidiary.
The news leaves the door open for B&N to eventually spin these off into a separate business altogether — or even sell them to Microsoft. And it leaves a load of questions about what B&N will do next with the Nook, which is currently built on a forked version of Google’s Android platform. → Read More
With Windows 8 getting ever closer to its release date, Microsoft today announced that it is looking for volunteers to join its invite-only feedback program for active Windows 7 and Windows 8 Consumer Preview users in the U.S. In return for providing feedback to Microsoft – both by sending the company data or by filling out surveys – participants who stay in the program for more than four months will be eligible for “free software and Xbox games such as Microsoft Office 2012, Kinect Disneyland, and Forza Motorsport 4.”
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All the talk these days is of the new iPad and its magical screen. Apple isn’t the only one who can do that, you know. In fact, most display makers are looking forward to post-HD resolutions as one of the big selling points of the next generation of displays. Other tablets are already approaching iPad levels of pixel density and it would be foolish of the likes of Google and Microsoft not to be planning for it.
Fortunately, Microsoft is well aware of the trend and has plans in place for dealing with pixel-dense displays (or “Retina” to the vulgar). → Read More
Microsoft has just posted an overview of the Windows 8 version of Internet Explorer 10, which shows off the features you’d expect from a modern touch-based browser: navigation gestures, full-screen content, and the expected Metro-style multitasking.
The one feature that caught my eye, however, was the “share charm.” Charms are, as you must surely know, the little contextual items that appear when you swipe in a menu from the right side of the screen in Windows 8. Search and settings are there, naturally, and function as expected (the Start one is inexplicably still called Start). The Share one, however, is more powerful and forward-thinking than I was expecting. → Read More
For better or worse, it seems as if Windows 8 will be available in nine separate editions. That’s up three flavors from Windows 7. The unofficial news comes from a registry key found within the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. If this key is to be believed, Windows 8 will be available in the six editions of Windows 7 with the addition of Windows 8 Professional Plus, Enterprise Evaluation, and ARM edition. That makes nine Windows 8 versions in all — seven more editions than Apple’s OS X. → Read More
Former Disrupt winners Soluto love them some Windows. It’s their OS of choice and their products aspire to make it work a little better. Needless to say, they’re pretty excited about Windows 8 and to celebrate their unbridled joy they created this cute little commercial lampooning Apple’s original 1984 bit.
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Microsoft’s official Win8 Twitter feed has confirmed the inevitable: Win8′s Consumer Preview, a beta version of the new operating system, was downloaded 1 million times since launch. To put this into perspective, Microsoft sold seven copies of the software a second in 2010, and, yesterday, gave away 11 copies a second.
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If you were only allowed to read one piece of tech news today, I’d bet you’d read up on the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. The beta became available today, though we were lucky enough to go hands-on with the OS for the past week or so, and people can’t stop talking about it.
Windows 8 is a merging of old with new. A Metro UI offers up live tiles much like Windows Phone, but there are still some apps that require the old-school XP interface, sending you directly into the past when you least expect it. → Read More
If Windows Vista was Microsoft’s folly – a mish-mash of ideas not fully baked and aimed at multiple constituencies – Windows 8 is Microsoft’s rebirth. To get ecstatic about it isn’t quite the direction I’d like to take this mini-review, but let’s just say that Microsoft is on the cusp of getting things right.
As we said before, Windows 8 will ruffle a lot of feathers. The first and most obvious comparison is with the new Windows Phone interface. The “Start” menu is gone, replaced by what amounts to the entire Metro UI. This UI – the one with the multiple, animated squares, is the one that matters. → Read More
Tired of just hearing about Windows 8 all the time? Well then, you’re in luck — Microsoft has finally released the Windows 8 Consumer Preview to the public, so people outside of the tech bubble finally have the chance to take Redmond’s new OS for a spin. → Read More
Wallpapers! Microsoft is holding a big Windows 8 event today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona where it’s expected to announce (release?) the final Windows 8 beta. Plus, as if that isn’t enough, the Windows 8 wallpapers and lockscreens are supposed to be unveiled. I know, right? Wallpapers! Lockscreens!
But alas. The wallpapers from the Consumer Preview release leaked early. Win8China got the exclusive and posted a rar file containing the seven wallpapers and six lockscreens. Most of the wallpapers are of the standard floral variety but one is a clever Metro-ish style of the Windows 7 betta fish. Interestingly enough, two of the wallpapers are clearly designed for a dual-screen layout, stating loud and clear Windows 8 will support a more robust multi-monitor support. → Read More
The long-running “Live” name Microsoft has placed on its many connected services (Mail, messenger, photos, etc) is coming to an end in Windows 8, as part of their ongoing, major brand rehaul. Zune, of course, has been on its way out for some time, but will receive the coup de grace in Windows 8.
Their main services are being rolled into bundled applications with a native Metro look and simpler names — Mail instead of Windows Live Mail, Photos instead of Windows Live Photo Gallery, and so on. The new apps will be tightly integrated, as we’ve seen in demos, and will retain much of the Live cross-service functionality. They’ll be unified by a single “Microsoft Account.” → Read More
Microsoft’s SkyDrive is an adequate cloud storage service (and one that boasts 17 million customers to boot), but it’s not something that the folks at Redmond can afford to leave in its current state. With Apple playing up their iCloud integration in their forthcoming OS X Mountain Lion update, SkyDrive program managers Mike Torres and Omar Shahine took to the Building Windows 8 blog to outline what’s next for their own cloud service.
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In a move that demonstrates how cleanly Microsoft intends to cut itself off from the last 20 years of its most widely-used and widely-recognized products, they have given the Windows logo its most significant redesign in 20 years. Ever since Windows 3.1, the slightly curved, red-green-blue-yellow panes have greeted millions on startup, or at least peeked out from the corner of the screen.
No longer: Microsoft has abandoned the shape, color scheme, and even the start button. The new logo is monochromatic (or rather, polymonochromatic), straight, and unfamiliar. If they intended to show just how much they’ve changed the philosophy of the OS, this is a good way to do it. → Read More
Ever since Steve Ballmer made that surprise announcement at CES 2011, there has been a lot of speculation about just how Microsoft would be bringing Windows to the ARM architecture. Would it be a whole separate line? Would it be compatible with old applications? Would it be cheaper?
Many of these questions have been answered in a long and technical post on the Building Windows 8 blog today, as Steven Sinofsky explains how they developed (re-developed, really) Windows On ARM, or WOA, and why they made the choices they made.
Some major points, for those unwilling to read: WOA will be totally incompatible with x86/x64-based applications; it will include a desktop only for Office apps and file management; it will be focused on portability, battery life, and “integrated quality.” → Read More
The Windows release of Kinect is coming up in a couple days, but for most people that won’t be a major event: the Kinect they have is sitting on their TV or in a drawer, waiting to be taken out for an impromptu Dance Central 2 party. Of the 10 million Kinects out there, the only ones connected to computers are the ones being fiddled with by the various hackers and students making science projects out the things.
But according to the Daily, Microsoft is hoping to remedy this particular situation by building Kinect sensors right into your laptops. TechCrunch alum Matt Hickey got to handle a pair of prototypes, which were confirmed to be official, not just one of the many experiments that hide within Microsoft’s various lairs. → Read More
This may seem a bit of inside baseball, but it’s a fairly interesting fact for folks looking forward to thin-and-light Win8 devices running ARM chips rather than Intel. According Computer World, devices running ARM versions of Win8 will not be able to run other OSes, like Android, thanks to something called Secure Boot.
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News of the Lenovo YOGA tablet just broke the other day, and now at ShowStoppers we’ve got the chance to get up close and personal.
It’s pegged as the world’s first multiposition notebook, the its unusual contorting dual-hinge layout makes it a real eye-grabber. The fact that it’s known for running Windows 8 certainly makes it an impressive piece of kit. → Read More
Remember that feeling you got back when Steve Jobs was unveiling the iPhone, and he did the “slide to unlock” gesture for the first time? I remember the way he said it – “You like that? Want to see it again?”
Since then I haven’t seen a lock screen interface that has made me feel that same “how obvious, how elegant!” feeling – until today at the NVIDIA press conference, and later at the Microsoft keynote here at CES. It sounds a little silly, sure, making such a big deal of such a small feature, but it’s just nice to see a genuinely natural and new way of doing something we’ve all done thousands upon thousands of times over the last few years. → Read More
Tonight Microsoft revealed that the public release of its Windows 8 Beta will be taking place sometime in late February of 2012. Along with Windows 8 Beta, Microsoft will also be launching its “Windows Store”, which was announced back in September. (You can check out the details on the Window Store’s new blog.)
In previewing the new app store, Microsoft also revealed some details about what developers can expect in terms of both pricing and revenue share. For starters, as the company has previously said, users will be able to license, purchase, and download Metro-style apps from the Windows Store — meaning that it will be the sole source of Metro apps. (Metro being the name Microsoft uses for the design language it developed for its new, touch friendly Windows Phone 7 interface.) While Microsoft is already operating app stores for Xbox and Windows Phones, this is their big push to create an in-Windows app store to take on iTunes. → Read More
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