In a world where we can manage our iPhones and iPads from the cloud and need never plug them into a computer thanks to iCloud, it's easy to forget that actually iTunes exists for the very same purpose. We know that we don't all use it here at Redmond Pie, and at least one writer doesn't even have an iTunes library to call his own. Music streaming services like Spotify and Rdio make iTunes even more redundant, so when Apple released iTunes 11.1.4 today it took some work to get excited about it.
The App Store and Google Play Store is far from short of remote control apps. That is, apps to control a PC or Mac from a smartphone or a tablet. With apps like LogMeIn and Splashtop proving popularas well as countless other lesser lights keeping the big boys honest, owners of phones and tablets aren't short of choice when it comes to remotely controlling their computers. Still, that apparently isn't going to stop Google from entering the fray.
The Windows Experience Index that was initially introduced in Windows Vista is probably the most basic form of benchmarking that you can get for a Windows based PC. Although Microsoft didn’t really introduce it for benchmarking, but rather, as a measure to determine whether your PC will be able to handle a certain application software or not. However, in modern day computers, Windows Experience Index (WEI) was an easy means of tracking which component was bottlenecking the performance of your machine. With Windows 8.1, however, that was no longer the case.
Winamp was the digital music player that many of us grew up with, and while it's safe to say that in its basic form it wasn't the most best looking app ever made, it was certainly part of the reason that MP3s grew into the CD-destroying format that it did.
Concepts are a great way to envision what upcoming products might look like, while at the same time, tipping off the developing companies to what the user base would appreciate having. Just a couple of days back, we tipped our readers off to rumors pertaining to Windows 8.2, and what “Threshold” might mean for the end user. Taking cues from the same rumor base and building on it further, comes Andrew Ambrosino’s Windows 8.2 (or Windows 9) design concept, which basically highlights what could be improved with the next generation of Windows from the Redmond giant.
Every year, Microsoft holds its BUILD conference, consisting of a series of workshops for developers as well as a few keynote speeches outlining upcoming products and releases. Next year, BUILD will be held from April 2nd to April 4th in San Francisco, the Redmond company has confirmed, and with talk already circulating about the next version of Windows and indeed, Windows Phone, the conference will certainly mark a significant couple of days in the tech calendar.
Microsoft's outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer has been talking to Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley in what will probably be his last interview while still in charge of the Redmond firm that was once the ruler of the world. Now though, and partly under Ballmer's stewardship, Microsoft has found itself falling behind its competitors in all kinds of metrics.
When Windows 8 was just starting to make waves, one of the things that caught many people off guard was the fact that the Start button was gone. Not hidden, not moved, but removed completely. With Windows 8's move to Metro as an app launcher, there was deemed to be no need for a Start button. The Internet, nay the world disagreed.
Windows and OS X have been competing for years in the battle of the two major desktop platforms, and although Windows has been comfortably ahead since the beginning of time, Apple's Mac operating system has certainly made some headway in more recent times. Microsoft's Windows 8.1 and OS X Mavericks 10.9 are the latest entrants to the market, and although, as noted in the headline, Windows 8.1 has just sneaked ahead of Mavericks in terms of reach, the latter's 2.42% market share has now surpassed that of each of its predecessors.
Sometimes it's easy to forget that Apple's iPad isn't the only tablet in town. The world may sit up and take notice whenever Apple's announced a new iPad as shown by the latest iPad Air and iPad mini releases, but the same can't be said about the competition. That's why that competition often tries to gain notoriety by prodding Apple and sometimes even the people that buy its products. Yes, we're looking at you Samsung.
