Topic: Software
Microsoft Launches Mobile Edge Browser and Launcher for Android to Bridge Ecosystems (Oct 5, 2017)
At its Build developer conference earlier this year, Microsoft laid out a vision for an ecosystem that would bridge its first party Windows operating system running on PCs and a variety of software experiences running on the two major mobile platforms, iOS and Android. At the time, it wasn’t entirely clear how that would work, and on iOS in particular there are major barriers to third parties providing deep integration. But it was a novel concept, and intended to offer an alternative to Apple’s hardware-based ecosystem lock-in and Google’s software-and-services-layer lockin by combining some of the best of both while offering more neutrality and flexibility.
Today, Microsoft announced two new mobile products intended to further that vision: a version of its Edge browser for iOS and Android, and an Android launcher that builds on an earlier, subtler effort. The Edge browser offers integration with the PC version, in a manner very similar to what Chrome and Safari already offer when used across platforms. The launcher, meanwhile, takes advantage of Android’s flexibility to integrate third party experiences directly into the operating system and offers some clever integrations for hopping between Android and PC experiences. This is the closest Microsoft is going to come in the near term (or probably ever) to having its own platform on mobile again, though of course it’s absent on iOS. Although Apple obviously offers tight integration between Macs and iPhones, the vast majority of the iPhone base doesn’t own a Mac, and many use PCs for work, school, or in their personal lives, so there’s clearly a need here Apple itself hasn’t worked all that hard to meet. That opportunity is likely even larger on Android, where an even higher portion of the base uses a Windows PC. These are early steps, and they certainly don’t execute on the vision Microsoft laid out at Build in its entirety, but it’s a good start.
via The Verge (Edge) and The Verge (Launcher)
Apple Issues Software Update to Fix WiFi/LTE Bug in Apple Watch (Oct 4, 2017)
Apple has issued watchOS 4.0.1 for Apple Watches, which fixes the WiFi/LTE bug that caused problems for some Apple Watch reviewers (and presumably some early regular users as well). That’s a pretty quick turnaround but a critical bug fix given how the issue impacted reviews from at least a couple of outlets. I’ve been using the Apple Watch with LTE for the past week and haven’t had the issues described, which I’d guess will be typical for many users, but the bad press Apple deservedly got over the issue was utterly avoidable and a big goof for a company which should have had one of its best launch periods in years. As I mentioned when the reviews first came out, it’ll likely take some new positive coverage of how the Watch works with the fix in place to change perceptions, but I’d hope that going forward the device works well and people can use it as intended.
via Mac Rumors
Microsoft Announces Non-Cloud Office 2019 to Release in 2018 (Sep 26, 2017)
Today’s Ignite announcements appear to be far less notable than yesterday’s, but there’s still one biggish one: Microsoft has announced that its non-cloud version of Office will have its next major release next year, and will be called Office 2019 (apparently borrowing from car manufacturers’ tendency to decouple model years from calendar years). Microsoft refers to this version of Office as “perpetual” because it still uses the old perpetual licensing model associated with boxed and downloaded software rather than the subscription model associated with Office 365. The latter is now the main way Microsoft wants to sell Office, but in recognition of the complexity and sluggishness of many corporate IT departments, it has to continue to sell using the old model as well, and this release is really just a way to package up many of the incremental improvements made in Office 365 into a single version for those customers. That highlights some of the challenges of straddling the legacy and cloud worlds in software, and of course of the fact that Microsoft is the only major company now charging for productivity software, while Apple and Google offer their suites for free to individual users.
via Microsoft
Microsoft’s Windows 10 Starting to Reach End of Support on Some PCs (Jul 17, 2017)
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Microsoft Begins Bundling Windows and Office for Businesses (Jul 10, 2017)
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★ Microsoft Makes Cloud, Cortana, IoT Announcements at Build Conference (May 10, 2017)
I’m at Microsoft’s Build developer conference this week, and got a little preview of some of what’s being announced in a private session for analysts yesterday. Today’s day 1 keynote is focused on Microsoft’s broad vision for this year’s event and its cloud and AI business. Many of the things I cover most closely will actually be in tomorrow’s keynote, which will cover more of the consumer-facing parts of the business. But there were still several notable announcements today that are worth talking about, even on a site like this that’s more consumer tech-focused. Firstly, it’s worth noting CEO Satya Nadella’s philosophical intro, which emphasized the ethical and other responsibilities tech companies have as well as the limits of tech in solving the world’s problems. That’s an admirable stance and a theme we’ve seen more from Nadella than any other tech leader in recent years.
Secondly, Microsoft’s big push this year is a shift from Nadella’s earlier mobile-first, cloud-first vision to a new vision around intelligent cloud combined with intelligent edge. What that means is that Microsoft sees the cloud as being less centralized and more distributed, including in edge devices, and its new Azure IoT Edge concept takes cloud computing functionality and puts it in potentially tiny devices at the edge of the network. That’s a somewhat unique vision for the cloud, especially from a company that’s also strong in the core cloud context. If Microsoft is right about this vision, and I suspect it is in the industrial world especially, then that raises interesting questions for other vendors and their ability to push that capability into edge devices, where operating system companies are strong but others tend not to be.
Thirdly, Microsoft is pushing what it calls its Graph, which is a sort of backend for its own services but also opens up to developers, and began as an agglomeration of data about users and is expanding to include those users’ activities in apps and across devices. The idea is that this Graph will power continuity between apps and other activities for users through both first-party and third party features. It’s a good concept and in some versions is reminiscent of what Apple does with Handoff and Continuity in its operating systems. But the big challenge for this vision at Microsoft is that it’s got a huge gap in its Graph around mobile, because people spend the vast majority of their mobile time outside Microsoft devices, operating systems, and apps. I can’t see it changing that, and that’s going to reduce the value of the Graph significantly, especially in the consumer world. I’ll have more commentary on some of the consumer-focused announcements in tomorrow’s keynote.
Lastly, one kind of consumer-focused announcement today, which has been subtle on stage but covered somewhat in the press regardless based on pre-briefings is Cortana Skills, which were announced way back in December but are now going more generally available to developers. What’s interesting here is that unlike Amazon’s Alexa Skills, at least some of these third party capabilities will be built in even if users haven’t explicitly installed or enabled the apps, including weather app Dark Sky and Domino’s Pizza. We’re still in the very early days here, but it will be interesting to see how skills on a PC-centric assistant like Cortana evolve differently from those on speaker- or phone-centric assistants like Alexa or Siri.
via Techmeme (and about a thousand articles on different announcements made today which you’ll find linked there)
★ Microsoft Misses on Revenue as Hardware Weakness Partly Offsets Cloud Strength (Apr 27, 2017)
Microsoft was one of numerous big tech companies that reported Q1 2017 financial results (its fiscal Q3 results) this afternoon, and the only one of the big three to miss on revenue. That revenue miss was largely due to a shortfall in hardware revenue as Surface had its first big year on year decline in a year and a half due to a lack of new mass market hardware, and phone revenue dropped to essentially zero. However, these two businesses together make up just 4% of Microsoft’s revenue, which continues to be dominated by software and to an increasing extent services, while growth is dominated by the move to the cloud. Microsoft’s cloud revenue run-rate is now at an annualized $15.2 billion, compared to Amazon’s $14.5 billion in actual annual revenue, though Microsoft’s definition of cloud here is far more expansive than Amazon’s. The productivity business had a particularly strong growth quarter at over 20%, while the Intelligent Cloud segment also improved a little to just over 10%. But margins continue to fall overall as the newer cloud services generate less profit than Microsoft’s old massively profitable software business did, and that picture isn’t likely to change. Microsoft is growing again after both lapping the introduction of Windows 10 and the revenue deferral associated with the new business model, and also getting past the biggest drops in the phone business, but it’s mostly doing so by doubling down on enterprise products and services while its consumer and hardware businesses mostly continue to struggle to find growth.
via Microsoft
Apple Debuts Clips, a New Way to Create Videos on iOS (Mar 21, 2017)
Alongside the iPad announcement it made this morning, Apple made three other announcements, of which this is the most interesting (the other two concern a PRODUCT(RED) iPhone and new languages for Swift Playgrounds). Clips looks like a hybrid of Snapchat and iMovie, with lots of new filters, stickers and other effects and an easy editor for creating a montage of video clips and photos, but apparently without any kind of social component. This is a funny sort of inbetweener software product from Apple, which doesn’t have an explicit social network and whose creative tools around editing photos and videos are far less used among young people than those which come with the social networks they use. I don’t necessarily see that changing with this product, though there are some clever-looking features like auto-generating titles. The proof will be in the pudding, though – the app comes out in April, though I’m guessing it may appear in developer betas before then, giving us a chance to try it out. It’s interesting to see Apple experimenting to try to fill a gap here, but I’m not convinced it’s got it right just yet.
via Apple
Nest adds automatic door detection and animated push notifications for subscribers – VentureBeat (Feb 14, 2017)
This is fairly minor news from Nest, but that seems to be the only kind of news it’s capable of making these days. Other than a new outdoor camera in the middle of last year, it’s mostly just refreshed existing hardware over the last couple of years, and there hasn’t been a completely new hardware category for several years. However, these software and machine learning-based enhancements do show the value of a smart device – hardware already in market just got more functional thanks to a software update. It’s not clear from the coverage here whether Nest is leveraging any Google expertise or whether it’s building the necessary technology in house, but one hopes it’s the former.
via VentureBeat (more on Techmeme)
Apple now offers Final Cut, Logic, and other pro apps for $199 through education bundle – 9to5Mac (Feb 4, 2017)
Apple has always been strong in the education market – a much higher percentage of schools than homes use Macs as their primary computers, and hardware discounts have been part of that strategy for a long time. But recently Google has made significant inroads in education with a combination of Google Apps and Chromebooks, and of course a big part of the appeal is that the software is free or very cheap. By contrast, both Apple’s hardware (whether iPads or Macs) is expensive, even with discounts, and its pro creative software runs to several hundred dollars each for the core apps. This new bundle addresses that by bringing the price down quite a bit (given that the bar a customer has to clear to qualify for the bundle is pretty low, it can’t be priced too aggressively or it’ll undercut sales much more broadly), making it more affordable for schools. Many schools, of course, won’t require anything beyond iMovie or GarageBand for movie and audio editing respectively, but for those teaching higher-order creative tasks, this will help bring down the costs of those programs.
via 9to5Mac
GarageBand and Logic Pro X Music Apps Get Major Updates – Apple Press Release (Jan 18, 2017)
One of the criticisms of Apple which has become loudest lately is that it is increasingly ignoring the professional creatives who use Macs to do their work, and I’ve seen this not just in relation to Apple’s Mac lineup but also a supposed neglect of Apple’s pro apps. However, at the MacBook Pro launch event a couple of months ago, Apple provided a big update to Final Cut Pro, which I’m told by video pros is a big deal, and now we’re seeing a big update to another of Apple’s big creative apps, Logic Pro. While I think some of the Mac criticism is reasonable (though I still think we’ll see an update on the desktops soon), this stuff about the pro apps clearly isn’t true – Apple is still investing in a big way here.
via Apple – GarageBand and Logic Pro X Music Apps Get Major Updates
The Next Big Thing in Smartphones? The Software – WSJ (Jan 11, 2017)
The foundation of the claims made in this piece – the idea that smartphone growth is slowing driven by saturation and longer upgrade cycles – is absolutely accurate, the headline feels off. Software has always been a critical component of smartphones, so there’s nothing new there. And hardware continues to be extremely important too – see the iPhone 7’s dual cameras and the functionality they’ll support today and tomorrow, or conversely the Note7 recall. So the headline and thrust of the article is overblown, but there’s still some truth here, in that the focus of software innovation in smartphones is changing, and hardware is mature enough that the innovation is happening at the edges, not in huge leaps forward in basic hardware performance.
via The Next Big Thing in Smartphones? The Software – WSJ