Recent News

Microsoft will offer the high-end version of its Windows 10 software to small businesses via a cloud-based subscription for the first time, expanding the number of products available to a wider range of customers. The company will also rent Surface tablets for a monthly fee. Starting this fall, the Windows 10 Enterprise Edition, which offers more security features, will be available to any size company for $7 a month per user through partners in Microsoft’s Cloud Solution Provider program. Matt Barlow, General Manager, Windows Marketing, Microsoft, said, “It’s basically the price of a cup of coffee and a doughnut.”

‘Digital transformation’ is the new sales push for resellers. While Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella touted “digital transformation” during a 30,000-foot-view speech before thousands of resellers, the Executive in charge of the firm’s global partner group got down to dollars and cents. “It starts for us with our mission. Everything we do, every product we build, every decision we make, in even our partner programs, is grounded in our mission, to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more,” Nadella said shortly after he stepped onto the stage at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference (WWPC) in Toronto.

When Microsoft announced the Xbox One Scorpio, what was hidden behind all the talk of the console’s monstrous specs was the simple fact that developers would still be beholden to the existing Xbox One. Microsoft disallows, apparently, any form of exclusives for the Xbox One Scorpio. Speaking to The Guardian, Xbox head Phil Spencer said, “I think the capability in the consoles that are on the market today to play high-fidelity true console-like experiences in VR … they’re just not powerful enough. To deliver the experience that console gamers expect, that’s really a six-teraflop problem at least.”

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said he’s happy that Pokemon Go was successful for Nintendo because it will be good for him too. “This Pokemon interest will hopefully translate into a lot of interest in HoloLens. I think it’s fantastic to see these augmented reality applications getting built, because the best thing that can happen when you’re creating a new category is for applications that are these killer apps, whether it be game or in the industrial scenario, to get invested in.” Nadella said on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.”

General Electric is making its Predix industrial software platform available on Microsoft’s cloud. The move is an important step for the company, which wants to establish itself as the favored partner for big business. Microsoft hopes that when GE’s Predix becomes available on Azure next year, its longtime industrial customers will be more likely to adopt Azure. Microsoft also intends to make its other cloud offerings, including Office365, Dynamics and Cortana, work well with Predix.

Microsoft has released an early 64-bit version of Office 2016 for the Mac, giving adventurous users a chance to finally make the move off 32-bit, as their Windows colleagues have long done. “The Mac Office team has been working on the transition and we’re currently preparing to release the Office apps in full 64-bit,” the Office for Mac team announced in an undated post to a company blog.

Microsoft launched another alternative to IFTTT (If This Then That) named Conditional Action Programmer. Only this time, it is not as business-oriented as Flow, and users can even use their voice to tell CAP what they want it to do. For those who are unaware of the term, IFTTT or If This Then That is a tool that connects several Web services and apps, and allows users to create workflows that perform a function if a certain condition is met.

The Xbox One Scorpio and the PS4 NEO both look to be treading new ground, at least for the console market. The idea of iterative hardware upgrades has been a mainstay in PC gaming, mobile gaming, and handheld gaming, but consoles have steadfastly avoided the model for years now. Xbox Services Manager Dave McCarthy told, “We want to make that transition as smooth as possible. Some of our retail partners today do trade-in programs and that’s definitely going to be partnerships we continue to move going forward. We’ll try partnerships with our retail partners to smooth it even more with trade-in programs and things like that.”

Microsoft has released inside preview Build 14383 for both Windows 10 PCs and mobiles that will fix a lot of bugs. The company is checking the final code in preparation for the Windows 10 Anniversary Update release slated for August 2. The company will still release other builds from now till the release day for users of the Windows Insiders program.

In March, Microsoft revealed that it was using the open-world game Minecraft to train AI agents to learn how to do things like climbing a hill. The company also promised to make it available to the public so they could work on their own artificial intelligence projects and research, and it’s finally available. Project Malmo (formerly known as Project AIX) is a Minecraft mod that works on Windows, Mac and Linux, and supports just about any programming language you might want to use.