Now that the company has accepted the inevitable, that most people would rather have Office on their iPad than buy a Surface, the question is: was it worth the wait … ? Expand Expanding Close
At its BUILD conference, Microsoft officially unveiled its personal assistant for Windows Phone named Cortana. The similarities to Siri are rather uncanny (and three years late) but in some areas, Siri could definitely learn from Cortana’s feature set.
Cortana certainly does a good job of cloning Siri’s appearance and functionality. However, it goes further by allowing third-party applications to do tasks and answer questions as well. For instance, you can ask Cortana to add a film to your Hulu watch list with natural language.
Microsoft finally took the wraps off of its long-awaited Office for iPad suite this morning, only to reveal that most of its functions require a $99 subscription to the Office 365 service. Even though you can get a discounted subscription through Amazon, $70 may seem pretty steep. Rest assured, Microsoft is planning to offer free one-year subscriptions to the service tomorrow.
All you have to do to get your free subscription is show up at one of Microsoft’s retail stores with your iPad in hand. The first 50 people to do so will get the sub completely free of charge. Microsoft announced the promotion in a tweet earlier today: Expand Expanding Close
When Microsoft announced its Office for iPad apps earlier today, it confirmed that the software will require a subscription to Microsoft’s $99/year Office 365 service for most functions. If you don’t have one already, you can get a subscription directly through the Office apps for the regular price of $99.
As you may recall, Apple and Microsoft went toe-to-toe last April on the issue of whether or not Apple should get a 30% cut for SkyDrive storage space purchased through the SkyDrive app. Apple has always maintained the position that any goods or services sold through iOS apps should use the in-app purchase system created by Apple—allowing the Cupertino company to take its regular 30% cut of the price.
In the case of the SkyDrive dispute, Apple’s decision remained unchanged, which prompted Microsoft to simply remove the option to purchase additional storage space through the SkyDrive app altogether. In the case of today’s Office launch, however, the two companies seem to be on much better terms.
In case you missed it, Microsoft finally released its suite of Office apps for iPad today with the introduction of standalone Word, PowerPoint, & Excel apps in the App Store. The Office app for iPhone remains the same apart from dropping the requirement of a 365 subscription (it’s now free for all!), but the new iPad versions of the Office apps WILL require an Office 365 subscription to create or edit documents. So, if you plan on using the Office apps on your iPad in the future, you’ll want to take advantage of a big discount on 365 subscriptions currently on Amazon.
Normally $99/year or $10/month, you can grab a 1 year Office 365 Home Premium subscription for $67.15 with free shipping. That’s a savings of $32.84 (33%) and gets to an access code for 5 Macs or PCs with access to all Office 365 app and services. That includes 20GB OneDrive storage for each for up to 4 household member, 60 minutes of Skype calls per month and all the apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, and Access.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s new CEO following Steve Ballmer’s retirement earlier this year, outlined Microsoft’s new cloud and mobile strategy for the company today including full Office for iPad support. Unlike the Office 365 app Microsoft introduced early last year, Microsoft’s new apps today include individual apps for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.
Microsoft’s Office suite of apps will each be available as a free download, but will require an Office 365 subscription (which offers a 30-day trial) to create and edit documents. Users can still read and present documents with Office for iPad without a subscription. Office documents will rely on Microsoft’s OneDrive service for syncing content.
Fortune drew our attention to acool interactive graphic that lets you watch in real-time the revenues and profits made by a dozen tech companies. While Samsung wins the revenue race, Apple is by far the most profitable, at $71,000 a minute.
Both The Verge and ZDNet are independently reporting that Microsoft will finally launch Office for iPad at the end of this month on March 27th, according to sources. According to The Verge, the suite will (unsurprisingly) be very similar to the Office app already on the iPhone App Store.
Now that we’ve had our first look at at least an early take on iOS 8, what stands out most to me is how little the basic appearance of the iOS homescreen has changed over the years. On the left is iOS 1, on the right the recently-leaked iOS 8 homescreen.
Seven years apart, yet still essentially identical in form: a grid of static icons. Looked at in one way, that’s incredibly impressive: that a user-interface that worked in 2007 still works today. But it does make me wonder at what point the iOS homescreen will move beyond this format? Expand Expanding Close
Microsoft has just published a new iOS app for Windows Azure Active Directory users. The app, called “My Apps,” allows users to login to a variety of web apps and services using a single Active Directory login, saving them the trouble of having to manually log into those services through the mobile Safari browser every time.
Microsoft is considering taking Xbox Live cross-platform and allowing developers to integrate the service in iOS and Android games, according to a report from The Verge. The report cites a job listing from the company’s website seeking an engineer to work on “a modern framework that is open-source, lightweight, extensible and scalable across various platforms,” including iOS and Android. The report also cites its own sources reportedly familiar Microsoft’s plans to take Xbox Live cross-platform.
“New Devices and Gaming” is looking for passionate and experienced developers to join us. Your contribution will have direct impact on how we win back our game developers from our competitors. As a member of the newly formed team, you will have the rare opportunity to influence our planning and design from the beginning. We will create a modern framework that is open source, light-weight, extensible and scalable across various platforms including Windows Store, Windows Phone, iOS and Android. Working on the gaming technologies, you will collaborate with both internal partner teams across the company and external ecosystem partners to enable end-to-end gaming scenarios.
The idea, according to the report, is that Xbox Live would act as a cross-platform alternative to Apple’s Game Center and similar services, allowing users to earn achievements, manage friends and more through a single service across Xbox and mobile platforms. No details on specific features or when we might expect to see more.
The Verge provides a first look at the animation for Cortana, Microsoft’s answer to Siri. While it’s a still photo rather than a video, it seems pretty clear how the circular animation works … can anyone think of where they’ve seen anything like that before?
Cortana – named after the AI character in the Microsoft game Halo – is set to appear in the forthcoming 8.1 update to Windows Phone. The feature looks like a relatively direct Siri clone, with some features borrowed from Google Now – such as the ability to scan your emails for things like flight numbers and plans to schedule meetings.
It’s not yet known whether Cortana will be the public name of the feature, or just an internal codename. Expand Expanding Close
Some sums done by ComputerWorld show that Mac users are four times more likely to upgrade to the latest available version of the operating system than Windows users.
Microsoft has convinced just 11.6 percent of Windows users who acquired their system since 2001 and still actively use it to go online to migrate to the current edition of its operating system […]
Apple’s convinced 41.6 percent of Mac users who acquired their system since 2001 and still actively use them online to adopt the current edition of the OS.
But Apple has also offered a simpler upgrade path, adding features rather than making major changes to the core user-interface. OS X also operates more efficiently, allowing Mavericks to run well on far older hardware than is the case for Windows 8.
Apple just might find itself shopping around for a new finance partner for its retail stores after Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes likened the company’s future potential to that of Microsoft.
Downgrading AAPL from a buy to a hold, Reitzes said that while he was excited by the iWatch and Apple television ideas as a consumer, he didn’t see either driving double-digit growth. Quoted by Business Insider, he said:
We look at a valuation analogy vs. Microsoft from 2000 to about 2010 and see no precedent that large-size tech companies simply start to broadly outperform again after a tough year or two if the law of large numbers is catching up to them and margins have peaked.
Microsoft Office for iPad is still on the way, and could be launched before the Microsoft even releases a Windows 8 version of the productivity suite, according to a report from ZDNet. The app (or suite of apps) is said to require a paid Office365 subscription and will sync with Microsoft’s services.
But with the iWork now shipping for free on all new Macs and iOS devices—requiring only a free iCloud account to sync and accompanied by an open public beta of a cross-platform web version—is Microsoft preparing to offer too little too late?
Following the announcement last August that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was out the door as soon as the company could find a new captain to lead the ship, the Board finally announced today that it has found its guy: Satya Nadella.
As part of the changes, founder and former CEO Bill Gates has agreed to step down from the Board and into a new role as ‘technology advisor’. Gates says he will step up his time at the company meeting with various groups and helping with future products at the request of Nadella. Expand Expanding Close
Just months before the original Mac debuted 30 years ago, it was deeply troubled by an in-house 5.25″ flimsy floppy-disk drive it relied on called the Twiggy (you know, for it’s flimsiness). This was replaced by a more stable 3-inch Sony drive before shipping, but the Twiggy Macs had more than just a different drive.
Interestingly, the operating system featured a Steve Jobs rendtion of Microsoft’s dreaded, now retired Clippy assistant. The Ashton Kutcher resemblance has never been clearer… er… pixelated.
Google data centre at Eemshaven (photo: computable.nl)
iPhoneclub (translation) says that Apple’s rumored plan to build a new data center in Netherlands are now focusing on the town of Eemshaven.
Eemshaven is an ideal location due to the high-speed transatlantic fiber optic cable link to the USA. Google already has a 10,000 square meter data center in the town, and it is believed that Apple has already been granted outline planning permission for its own center … Expand Expanding Close
The latest version of Skype for iPhone adds support for two-way HD video calls (for iPhone 5 and later), and receipt of chat messages on the lockscreen even when the app is closed.
Microsoft also says that chat messages will sync more rapidly across devices.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiyIcz7wUH0] Apple certainly isn’t shying away from using the iPad as a camera anymore.
Airing today is a brand-new TV advertisement touting the abilities of the iPad. The ad is in a serious tone and is voiced over by a quote from the film Dead Poet’s Society. Re/Code has the text from the advertisement:
We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering — these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love — these are what we stay alive for.
To quote from Whitman,
“O me, O life of the questions of these recurring.
Of the endless trains of the faithless. Of cities filled with the foolish. What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer: that you are here. That life exists and identity. That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”
“That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”
What will your verse be?
To go along with the TV ad, Apple has also posted a new webpage with the ad’s theme. This new page shares stories of the iPad being used in film-making, sports, and education. Original from movie below:
If ever there was a simple visual to illustrate just how slow Microsoft was to wake up to the shift into mobile, it’s this one: a full 70 percent of Windows users also own at least one Apple product.
While there will be some joint Windows/OS X users in there, the majority of them will be people with Windows PCs and either an iPhone, iPad or iPod.
There’s been no shortage of debate regarding Apple’s latest holiday commercial as some have found it inspiring and emotional as others find it ridiculous and lacking a clear message. There will be debate in the coming weeks over Apple’s intentions with the message and whether or not they succeeded in tugging at our heartstrings. That being said, Apple looks like a gem, an angel, a bright light on a dark road compared to Nokia’s newest ad for the Lumia 2520. It’s true that Apple may have paused its traditional product-first advertising angle and replaced it with an arguably emotional holiday spot for the iPhone 5s, but it works leaps and bounds better than Nokia’s latest embarrassing excuse for advertising.
Today, Microsoft has released a new iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch application for IT administrators to manage their firm’s Office 365 servers. The application features Microsoft’s new flatter design language with large text. It allows administrators to manage the health and features of their Office 365 implementations.
The Office 365 Admin mobile app empowers IT service administrators to connect to their organizations’ Office 365 service status on the go. The Office 365 Admin mobile app enables administrators to view service health information and maintenance status updates. In addition, administrators can filter information by service subscriptions and configure app data refresh interval.
The application is free, and users obviously need to have Office 365 administrator rights and be apart of a firm with a subscription. Earlier this year, Microsoft released its Office 365 application for consumers. That app allows the viewing/accessing and minor editing of PowerPoint, Office, and Excel documents.
The companies allegedly involved in the “PRISM” program denied turning over any user data to the government, but a leaked NSA slidedeck (seen above) seemed to imply the opposite.
The new collaborative campaign, called Reform Government Surveillance, cites five driving principles in its drive to curb excessive government spying:
