With just days left ahead of Microsoft’s promised release window for Windows 8 RTM*, the company is going through the very final steps of the software development cycle - involving things like checks and verifications. We’ve received news from TheVerge that the final build of Windows 8 will be 9200.16384.WIN8_RTM.120725-1247 (or just 9200) and not 8888 as it was previously being reported. TheVerge cites their own sources as well as Win8China for the story.
Microsoft next big developer conference, BUILD, will take place at the company's Redmond campus this year, with the fun set to kick off on October 30th. Developers from around the globe will be invited to take part in Microsoft's big annual developer conference, and this time it will be held at Microsoft's own office complex. It's not quite Apple's spaceship campus, but we can't have everything in life now, can we? I guess not.
With a considerable amount of ground to make up already on the various app hubs available from the likes of Apple, Microsoft needs to deliver the goods with its Windows 8 Store, and the Redmond company has now released details via the MSDN Blog of how its new store will distribute apps.
Microsoft's Windows 8 marks a significant change in direction for the Redmond company's landmark operating system, and although the software maker had previously offered a release bracket, Steven Sinosfky has put minds and speculation to rest by announcing it will begin retailing on Friday 26th October.
Following yesterday's official debut of Office 2013 (and the Customer Preview, which is now available for download as we reported yesterday), Microsoft has today followed up with a post that shares more information about Office 2013's role in the cloud as well as its future on the Windows Phone platform.
Here's a rather interesting idea, and one that we honestly can't decide whether we would say is a good one, or a bad one. We'll take the length of this post to decide. Microsoft has today shown off a handy little USB stick which could potentially make itself indispensable to businesses and home computer owners alike, especially if they use more than one Windows machine on a daily basis.
The war of the operating systems has almost reached a boiling point, with Microsoft all but ready to push out the final build of Windows 8 and Apple looking likely to release OS X Mountain Lion later on this month, it represents nothing but a winning situation for the consumer. Windows 8 has been receiving some fantastic reviews from people who feel Microsoft have really stepped up with this version, with the only real contentious point being the price of the OS in comparison to Apple's $19.99 Mountain Lion offering.
With Microsoft's Surface tablet not yet even slated for a release date or given a public price, one of the company's co-founders has claimed that the upcoming tablet may lead Microsoft to re-think its tablet strategy. In fact, the one and only Bill Gates believes that Apple may even need to make its own Surface in order to compete.
It doesn't matter which company we are talking about, or what software or hardware they are intending to release, there is always going to be something which users will never like. In this instance, Microsoft is a company involved, and the product is the rather beautiful looking Windows 8. A few feathers were ruffled and noses disjointed when the Redmond company took the decision to remove the Start button from the Consumer Preview of Windows 8.
As of right now, the existing consumer tablet market is dominated and was essentially created by Apple when it released the first iPad. Since then, Microsoft and Google have been working to catch up and get their foot in the door of this Apple-dominated market. Google's Android tablet OS has managed to gain some ground, and we can expect Windows 8 tablets to hit the shelves later this year. However, in the past two weeks, both Microsoft and Google have announced special tablet hardware devices that they hope will help them gain even more ground in this market.
