Windows 8 launched to mixed reviews just over half a year ago, and Microsoft has dutifully pushed out nearly 740 tweaks and updates over the intervening months. Even so, rumblings of a sizeable update (codenamed “Windows Blue”) have been making the rounds for months now, and we’ve finally got a firm idea of when to expect the first public preview.
Microsoft Windows chief Julie Larson-Green… → Read More
By most accounts, Windows 8 isn’t all that popular, but according to Microsoft’s latest numbers, the company has now sold more than 100 million copies of the latest version of its desktop operating system. In January, the last time Microsoft provided updated numbers for Windows 8, the company said that it had passed the 60 million mark. Windows 8 users are also getting used to using… → Read More
Don’t write off Microsoft’s chances in mobile just yet. It may still be struggling to make itself count in the smartphone space but early signs are more promising for Windows plus tablets. Microsoft has gone from having no share of the global tablet OS market in Q1 last year to taking 7.4% one year later, with 3M Windows 8 tablets shipped in Q1 2013, according to Strategy Analytics. → Read More
Our long, national nightmare is over: according to a rumor sourced by the Verge, Redmond will bring back the Start button in the lower left corner of the upcoming Windows 8.1. This icon – essentially a copy of the “charm” that appears on the right side of the desktop when you mouse to the edge of the screen – will simply bring up the live tile interface. It is not, however, a real start menu like… → Read More
During its Q3 2013 earnings call today, Microsoft’s outgoing CFO Peter Klein noted that the company plans to bring Windows 8 to smaller devices. Until now, Windows 8 was mostly geared toward desktops and larger tablets, including Microsoft’s own Surface and RT machines. With the forthcoming Windows 8 Blue, rumor had it that Microsoft would enable its OEMs to run Windows 8 on smaller… → Read More
Two weeks ago, Microsoft launched its Windows 8 Quickstart kits for web developers who want to test their web apps on Internet Explorer 10 and Windows 8 on their Macs. That offer sold out very quickly, but today, Microsoft announced that it is making another 1,000 of these kits available on Swish, with 10,000 more coming throughout the rest of the year. The offer will go live at 2:30 p.m. PT… → Read More
It’s a blip: a Russian Microsoft portal aptly named MicrosoftPortal discovered a boolean setting called “CanSuppressStartScreen” that suggests that users of the upcoming version of Windows, thus far called “Blue,” will be able to bypass the start screen and drop right into the classic Windows environment? While this sounds like a boon to some, it marks a distinct step… → Read More
Microsoft today launched updates for five out of its six Bing Apps for Windows 8. With this update, the News, Finance, Sports, Travel and Maps apps – all of which are installed by default on Windows 8 systems – now all sport a number of new features and improvements that, as Microsoft puts it, “make it easier to customize and personalize them to best suit your needs.” The… → Read More
The next version of jQuery, the popular JavaScript library, will drop support for Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8, but that doesn’t mean Microsoft isn’t very bullish about getting developers to use jQuery 2.0 and HTML5 to develop “a new wave of jQuery-based Windows Store applications.” As Microsoft announced today, Microsoft Open Technologies, the company’s wholly owned… → Read More
Microsoft will be releasing an initial public preview release of Windows Blue, its next-generation desktop operating system, at its annual Build developer conference in late June, according to a new report from The Verge’s Tom Warren. Warren says that “sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans” said work began on the preview version this month, and will be made available for download the way past… → Read More
Barnes & Noble content and tablet subsidiary Nook Media, part-owned by Microsoft specifically to help boost content for its new Windows 8 platform, today put some of that strategy into action: it has announced that people who download the Nook app for Windows 8 will get five books and five magazines free of charge. → Read More
It’s been said that there aren’t many apps available for Windows 8. I’ve said that on occasion. But that’s not entirely true. According to MetroStoreScanner.com, there are now more than 50,000 apps available for Windows 8 and Windows RT, effectively making me a liar. → Read More
Aviary, the company that provides a fully customizable SDKs for applications that want to include photo editing, has announced the launch of its Windows 8 SDK in collaboration with AMD and Microsoft. This means that apps for any Windows 8 PCs and tablets can start including photo editing immediately, not just ones with AMD processors. The company has already gotten serious traction by being… → Read More
Twitter just launched its first app for Windows 8 and Windows RT. It’s been a long time coming, but the new app does seem to do the platform justice, with a number of Windows 8-centric features, including support for the Windows 8 Share and Search charms, snap view (so you can park the app on the side of the screen), live tiles and notifications. The Discover tab uses Windows 8′s… → Read More
Today, Internet Explorer 10 in Windows 8′s Metro/Modern UI mode and on Windows RT blocks Flash by default and only allows sites on Microsoft’s curated Compatibility View (CV) lists to play Flash content. Tomorrow, that’s changing: all Flash content will run by default and the CV list will now be used to block sites from playing Flash content. Windows 8 users previously had to… → Read More
I love the idea of the Surface: compelling hardware, striking form factor, and, in the case of the Pro, smart compromises to offer a good value. But the products fail to live up to their promise. They have first generation bugs. But maybe a low-priced Surface with a smaller screen could finally help bring the Surface promise to life. It just better run Windows Phone 8 and not Windows RT. → Read More
BlueStacks, the startup bringing Android applications to PCs and Macs, is today releasing a version of its App Player software optimized for new Surface Pro PCs and others running Windows 8. The move comes on the heels of key distribution agreements with several companies in the PC ecosystem, including AMD, Asus, MSI, and most recently, Lenovo. The various deals will see BlueStacks’ software… → Read More
It’s about damn time. Microsoft announced the Surface product family on June 18th. After eight months of waiting, Microsoft announced that on February 9, the fully-capable, Windows 8-packing, Intel-powered, actually-really-novel Surface 8 Pro will finally hit stores in the U.S. and Canada. The Surface Pro is the big daddy in the Surface family. Unlike the $499 Surface with Windows RT, the… → Read More
So I’m giving the Surface RT another go. I took it down from the shelf, blew off the dust and loaded some movies on it for several trips this month. But during our CES meeting concerning the Surface Pro, I committed to giving Windows 8 a real college try. Why not, really.
This brings us to the TechCrunch Windows 8/RT app. We have one. It just launched and no one told us here at TechCrunch. → Read More
Whether you’re a Microsoft user or not, you have to respect the fact that its install base for operating systems is massive. The company spans plenty of sectors, specifically enterprise, but of course in the home, too. Today, the company announced that its latest operating system, Windows 8, has sold 60 million licenses. Finding out how many of these licenses are consumer and how many have… → Read More
The good news keeps rolling in for BlueStacks, the startup best known for making technology that enables one and all to download and use Android applications on their desktop PCs — and more recently, their Macs. In anticipation of CES, the company announced today that it has secured a global distribution deal with Chinese PC maker, Lenovo.
Lenovo, which some say recently surpassed HP as the… → Read More
Patrick Husting runs a small development shop, ExtendedResults where he sells a product called PUSHBI, a mobile business intelligence app. While the app was popular on iOS and Android, he found some interesting results when he moved it onto Windows 8 – his sales, once flat on Windows, went up to the tune of 2,500 downloads in the last few weeks. He admits it’s not a huge sample size but it’s some… → Read More
Tiggzi, a DIY mobile app maker, just announced that it has added support for Windows 8 to its cross-platform drag-and-drop development suite. The services, which already offered support for Windows Phone, Android and iOS, will now allow users to create Metro-style apps with support for all the standard Windows 8 features like Live Tiles, Snap views and the Share and Search charms. → Read More
The Gillmor Gang — Doc Searls, Robert Scoble, Dan Farber, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — celebrated another undisclosed term of imprisonment in the siloed world of Twitter. Sure, we talked about lots of stuff. Microsoft losing its huge bet on Windows 8 and Surface. Netflix and Spotify carving up the media that used to be called TV and radio. How the Internet is too big to fail or be taken… → Read More
I’ve been using Windows 8 off and on for the past few weeks and, while I agree with many of the sentiments expressed by folks like Chris Pirillo and our own MG Siegler, especially regarding the Surface RT, I still think Microsoft did a good (not excellent) job on Win8. → Read More
For retailers and publishers in video games, Christmas is the busiest time of the year. On the digital side, Christmas is often one of the slower periods but, when the dust settles and spring begins, often new heroes emerge. For both, the holidays mark when we begin to wonder what’s going on for games in 2013? → Read More
Microsoft earlier this week made a point of noting that there have been 40 million downloads of Windows 8 since it launched a month ago, putting it ahead of where Windows 7 was at the same point in its sales cycle. But according to figures out today from NPD, in the midst of an overall slowdown in PC sales, this is not translating into robust hardware sales in the influential U.S. market. → Read More
Microsoft might be figuring out that the best way to get users to use its product isn’t by charging an arm and a leg for updates and releasing them only once every few years. Redmond is reportedly switching to an approach like that taken by rival Apple, delivering inexpensive, annual updates that are less dramatic but which are designed to get all users on board a unified platform. → Read More
Microsoft just announced that it has sold 40 million Windows 8 licenses so far. This is the first update the company has given since it announced that it had sold 4 million upgrades over the first weekend after Windows 8 went on sale earlier this month. According to Microsoft, “Windows 8 is outpacing Windows 7 in terms of upgrades.” → Read More
The world’s tech pundits have already written quite a bit about how Windows 8 will likely see very little adoption by business users, but Emirates, the fast-growing Dubai-based airline, just announced that it has developed a Windows 8-based line-of-business app called Knowledge Driven Inflight Service (KIS) to help its crews provide better in-flight service. → Read More
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