Articles about Microsoft

There are many annoyances associated with owning a computer -- spam emails, phishing attacks, viruses and online advertising to name but a few -- but technical support scams are among the most worrying. They take advantage of people's ignorance and/or better natures, posing as tech support operatives from big companies over the phone.

Being one of the best-known technology companies in the world, it's little surprise that a huge number of these tech support scams purport to be Microsoft calling to offer help with computer problems. Such scams are responsible for conning people out of large amounts of money, but progress has been made in India where -- following reports from Microsoft -- arrests have been made at a number of call centers.

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The US Army has revealed that Microsoft has won a contract worth $480 million to supply prototype augmented reality equipment. The deal could see the Army purchasing 100,000 HoloLens headsets from the company.

Microsoft says the deal is an extension of its existing relationship with the Department of Defense. The company has previously faced criticism from its employees for bidding for military contracts, but it responded by saying it believed that those defending the US should have access to the best technology. Winning this latest contract -- the aim of which is to "increase lethality by enhancing the ability to detect, decide and engage before the enemy" -- is likely to face similar criticism.

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The Windows 10 October 2018 Update might be a mess, but that’s not deterring Microsoft from putting in the hours on the next big feature update -- codenamed 19H1 -- due out next spring.

The latest release to Insiders on the Fast ring is Build 18290, and it comes with a number of improvements and additions.

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Windows 10 is terrible these days for many reasons. It started out pretty great, but the quality of the operating system has been rapidly declining with every passing update. The only thing seemingly worse than Windows 10 is the horrible Microsoft Store -- an embarrassing collection of low-quality apps with a handful of decent ones sprinkled in.

Earlier this year, Apple brought its popular iTunes to the Microsoft store, and today, another music app shows up there -- Tidal. Yes, rapper Jay-Z's struggling streaming music service now has an app for Windows 10 in the Microsoft Store. Does anyone really care, though?

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The latest feature update for Windows 10 -- the October 2018 Update, aka Windows 10 1809 -- has resulted in chaos for a lot of users. The list of problems with the OS is very long, and diverse.

One of the issues was to do with Apple iCloud, and caused updating and syncing issues with shared albums, as well as preventing new installations. If that’s a problem you’ve experienced, there’s some good news -- it’s now been fixed.

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Microsoft is rolling out new features to the mobile version of OneDrive. The company has also announced that it is introducing a new Block Download feature in "late November" that can be used to stop people from making copies of a file or its contents.

Android and iOS users can look forward to improvement to the MyAnalytics component, but the big OneDrive news is that the Camera Upload feature has now left beta and is available to everyone -- if they are using Android, that is.

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The Windows 10 October 2018 Update has been one of the most problematic Microsoft releases ever. It seems that every time the company pushes out the update, yet another issue arises.

The Windows 10 October 2018 Update has already caused issues with Apple iCloud, file associations, data loss... the list goes on and on. The latest problem sees the update breaking Windows Media Player.

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In May 2010, I wrote about Apple's market cap passing top-valued Microsoft; it's only fitting to follow up with an analysis about the unbelievable turnabout that, like the first, marks a changing of technological vanguards. Briefly today, the software and services giant nudged past the stock market's fruit-logo darling. A few minutes after 1 p.m. EST, the pair's respective market caps hovered in the $812 billion range, with Microsoft cresting Apple by about $300 million. By the stock market close, a rally for Apple put distance from its rival: $828.64 billion to $817.29 billion, respectively (Bloomberg says $822.9 billion, BTW). Consider this: As recently as October, Apple's valuation touched $1.1 trillion. But since the company announced arguably record fiscal fourth-quarter earnings on November 1st, investors have punished shares, which currently are down about 21 percent.

Apple has long been a perception stock, even when under the tutelage of CEO Tim Cook company fundamentals deserved recognition. But perhaps Wall Street finally realizes the problem of iPhone accounting for too much of total revenues at a time when smartphone saturation saps sales and Apple pushes up selling prices to retain margins. More significantly: Apple has adopted a policy of fiscal corporate secrecy by stepping away from a longstanding accounting metric. I started writing news stories about the fruit-logo company in late 1999. Every earnings report, Apple disclosed number of units shipped for products contributing significantly to the bottom line. No more. Given current market dynamics, everyone should ask: What is Cook and his leadership team trying to hide?

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The latest feature update of Windows 10, the October 2018 Update, or Windows 10 1809 if you prefer, has been something of a disaster for Microsoft, and even more so for some early adopters.

The list of problems users have encountered with it -- so far -- include data loss, file association issues, Apple iCloud not working, mapped drives not reconnecting, Edge problems, and much more. Microsoft pulled the update for a considerable amount of time to fix a bunch of problems, but even more new ones are emerging on a regular basis.

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Last week, Apple's latest iPad Pro was put through its paces by JerryRigEverything. We're not talking benchmarks of speed here, we're talking durability tests -- the iPad Pro was scratched, burned and bent to see what sort of punishment it could take.

In short, Apple's tablet was found to be extremely bendy. Actually, scratch that… it basically folded like a wet tissue. Now JerryRigEverything has turned its attention to the Surface Pro 6, finding that it is far more durable and able to withstand a bend test much more impressively.

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Microsoft's update procedure for Windows 10 has been a little, er, wobbly of late. The Windows 10 October 2018 Update proved so problematic that it had to pulled, and even the re-released version is far from perfect.

Now it seems the cancer is spreading to Office. Having released a series of updates for Office 2010, 2013 and 2016 as part of this month's Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has now pulled two of them and advised sysadmins to uninstall the updates if they have already been installed.

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The woes inflicted on users by the re-released Windows 10 October 2018 Update continue, with the latest issue concerning Apple iCloud.

The problem affects the latest version of iCloud for Windows (7.7.0.27), and is causing updating and syncing issues with shared albums. In addition, if you try to install iCloud on a system running Windows 10 1809 the installation will fail.

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Stunningly, Microsoft lost the smartphone wars despite getting a huge head start with Windows Mobile, and going back even further, Windows CE. Despite having a stranglehold/monopoly on desktop computing, the company made too many missteps with mobile, and ultimately, has been forced to exit the very profitable business. Microsoft even took down Nokia in the process, destroying a once beloved company.

Following smartphones, the next big thing was voice assistants, and Microsoft was ready with Cortana. Unfortunately, unlike Apple and Google who had successful mobile operating systems to push their assistants, Microsoft was once again left trailing behind since consumers passed hard on Windows Phone. Online retailer Amazon came out of nowhere and dominated this field too. Ultimately, Cortana has become a thing that exists solely to annoy Windows 10 users. This is a shame, because Cortana is actually pretty good.

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Windows 10 version 1809 -- aka the October 2018 Update -- was such a mess that Microsoft was forced to pull it and spend weeks trying to fix the numerous problems that early adopters had encountered, which included (but were not limited to) data loss, Windows failing to remember default app choices, driver issues and much more.

On Tuesday, the software giant finally re-released the update, but if you were hoping things would go a lot smoother this time around, you’d be wrong. Windows 10 1809 still has some pretty major issues for users to be aware of.

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Ads in your inbox. Sounds like something you'd expect from the likes of Google or Yahoo, but Microsoft appears to be about to get in on the act as well.

And we're not talking about online ads in your Outlook.com account -- we're talking about ads in the Mail app that's included with Windows 10. A new report says that Microsoft is currently testing ads with Windows Insiders, so it could be just a matter of time before they spread wider.

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