In the News

Microsoft has updated the Windows Store with support for pre-orders, and the first products to take advantage of it are certainly worth checking out. The store is now accepting pre-orders for three Xbox Play Anywhere games that users can buy once on either Xbox One or PC and enjoy them on both platforms at no extra charge. On offer are sci-fi adventure ReCore, racing title Forza Horizon 3 and multiplayer shooter Gears of War 4.

With the lot-awaited Anniversary Update out the door, Microsoft is back again to get the job done on the improvement of the following stage of Windows 10 codenamed ‘Redstone 2’. It has now stimulated the eager Insiders with the release of a few new preview builds. But there have been no new aspect additions in the same. The Insider group has just been creating beneath-the-hood adjustments to greater optimize the OneCore for potential updates.

Microsoft has expanded its bug bounty programs to cover the open-source .NET Core and ASP.NET Core application development platforms. The .NET Core and ASP.NET Core technologies are used to create server applications that can run on Windows, Linux, and Mac. The ability to write code once and have it run on multiple platforms have made these technologies popular with enterprise software developers.

Video game publisher Warner Bros. released a comparison video detailing how Batman: Return to Arkham, its remaster of Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City, is panning out. In addition to this, it also revealed the compilation’s release date. The remastered bundle including all previously released DLC for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One will be released on October 18, 2016.

Rumors have been doing the round about a potential second generation Surface Phone launch by Microsoft at the IFA conference in Berlin. While all eyes are now on the launch of the Surface Pro 5, the Surface Phone will be nothing short of a beast, if rumors are to be believed. It is likely to come in three options, the lowest variant with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, followed by another with 6GB of RAM with 128GB of storage and finally a version with a whopping 8GB of RAM and 500GB of storage.

In sync with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government’s Digital India initiative, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (IT) plans to bring in private operators to provide cloud-based services for government departments, according to government officials. As part of the exercise aimed at facilitating various e-governance initiatives, the ministry has shortlisted 11 firms including Microsoft India Pvt. Ltd, IBM India Pvt. Ltd, Tata Communications Ltd and Sify Technologies Ltd, among others, for empanelment to offer cloud services for an initial period of two years.

Cyanogen has begun rolling out an update for OnePlus One users in India, bringing in functionality from Cortana, Microsoft’s digital assistant. Indian OnePlus One users running Cyanogen OS 13.1, can receive the OTA update as soon as they connect the phone to Wi-Fi. Unlike on other platforms, Cortana has been deeply integrated into the Cyanogen OS, so users can take full advantage of the voice commands available.

Windows 10’s Anniversary Update is having its share of problems, but Microsoft has solved at least one of them. The company announced that it had released a patch to fix the login freeze issue. Anyone who was experiencing the issue can now upgrade to the latest version of Windows 10. The patch fixing the bug will be automatically applied when you move up to the Anniversary Update.

Windows 10 has presented an opportunity for VMware and Microsoft to collaborate and work on their co-opetition. At VMworld 2016, the company launched its unified endpoint management (UEM) for Windows 10, merging the benefits of enterprise mobility management and PC lifecycle management as a single solution. In specific, VMware Fusion 8.5, Fusion 8.5 Pro, VMware Workstation 12.5 Player, and Workstation 12.5 Pro will all have support for Windows 10 Anniversary Edition and Windows Server 2016 built-in to their versions.

Although Windows 10’s growth slowed in August, the one-year-old operating system didn’t slam on the brakes as expected, according to data from multiple analytics sources. The smaller-than-anticipated slowdown may signal the start of enterprise deployments, a move that would vindicate Microsoft’s efforts to nudge businesses to adopt the OS faster than they had earlier editions. According to U.S.-based metrics vendor Net Applications, Windows 10 gained 1.9 percentage points of user share during August, putting its mark at 23% of all personal computers for the month.