The news is perhaps about as predictable as when Call of Duty: Black Ops II swept past Halo 4 to take its usual position is market leader, but Windows 8 has - just three months after its initial release - surpassed Apple's OS X Mountain Lion in terms of market share. The Redmond company has seen a positive, if not overwhelming public response to its new operating system, and with many opting to upgrade online as opposed to purchasing a more expensive physical copy, the entire Windows process looks to be headed towards Apple's download-only direction.
With Windows 8, Microsoft made some different (if not difficult) choices, especially when it comes to licensing. You would already know that Windows is a closed-source operating system, and hence, when you purchase a copy of Microsoft Windows, you’re basically acquiring a ‘license to use’ for the operating system, and not the OS itself. When the company released Windows 8, one of the approaches that they took to making it even more popular (and combat piracy at the same time) was making it available for lower prices as compared to previous versions. This, at the same time, brought on some tough licensing choices, too. For instance, Microsoft had to do away with native DVD playback capability in Windows 8, because the patent holder for MPEG-2/4 (the video codec required to play said media) charges Microsoft $2 per copy of Windows 7 (the relative figure) sold. They had to cut back on such costs to achieve the pricing point that Windows 8 claims.
With the Surface Pro almost upon us, Microsoft has naturally offered consumers a subtle nudge as to why the tablet + ultrabook is the right device for them. Since consumers and commentators have doubted the Surface RT's credentials as a true PC (for obvious reasons), the Redmond company has felt inclined to remind the market of the Surface Pro's PC prowess. While the RT has come under fire for not running legacy apps, lacking power, and generally failing in many of the key areas one would expect a PC to deliver, the Surface Pro is a different animal. And boy, do Steve Ballmer and Co. want to emphasize that point.
Speculation regarding Microsoft's next-gen gaming console is starting to gather serious pace, but it seems that not everything will pan out exactly as the majority of us have guessed. As part of their intentions to converge the brand and a wave of potential new products, Microsoft is planning on going back to the original roots of the console and calling it the plain and simple 'Xbox'.
Despite being a paid service in a sea of free alternatives, Microsoft's Xbox LIVE remains the most popular online hub of all the high-end consoles. At $60 for a year's service, it offers fairly good value for money, and for a very limited time, you can get a twelve-month subscription for just $35.
It has been several years since the Xbox 360 released in a hail of glory, and with its life cycle now coming to an end, we've to contend with an almost weekly barrage of rumors and speculation with regards to its successor. According to the latest specs leak, the next-gen Xbox will be a real powerhouse, featuring an 8-core x64 CPU running at 1.6Ghz, 8GB of DDR3, USB 3.0 - get this - a 50GB 6x Blu-ray Disc drive. More (potentially outlandish) rumored specs after the jump!
Microsoft is set to replace Xbox Chat with a new Skype-powered offering, at least in the new Xbox, according to reports.
Microsoft has today outlined its plans to help Windows 8 and Windows RT compete with the well established competition. That plan appears to involve leveraging the Xbox gaming platform, and who can blame them?
A few months back, Microsoft announced the Surface, an ultra-mobile laptop/tablet hybrid running Windows, taking advantage of Windows 8 and Windows RT’s new touch-screen user-interface. Since then, many have been hoping for a Surface smartphone: while no announcements have been made, several artists have created concepts depicting what they expect a Surface Phone to look like.
There is a lot of fuss being made in the tablet industry at the moment, centering around the pros and cons of the most well-known tablets on the market and which piece of hardware will reign supreme in the race to be king of the slates. Contenders include the Apple iPad, the Microsoft Surface, the ASUS Nexus 7 and the Nexus 10 manufactured by Samsung. They are all extremely capable options, but look past their feature sets and you will ultimately find that they all have a similar set of issues that affect our user experience. If you happen to have opted for the Microsoft Surface RT tablet, then the discoveries of one individual could go some way to eradicating any touch-screen responsiveness issues you may have been facing.
