Microsoft

We learned late last year that a Microsoft iOS app store was in the works, and the company has now announced that this will launch in July.

Initially, it will be limited to Microsoft’s own games, but will later open up to other iPhone game developers, giving them an alternative outlet to Apple’s official App Store …

Microsoft on Tuesday launched a native OneNote app for visionOS, showing the company’s commitment to its customers who use Apple Vision Pro. This comes after the company released Microsoft Office apps for Apple’s mixed reality headset.

While Microsoft pushes Office 365 subscriptions hard, it has so far retained the option of one-off purchases of new editions – and it has confirmed that this will also be available for Office 2024 for Mac.

The other good news is that we’re expecting the price to be unchanged from Office 2021 for Mac …

Redmond, start your photocopiers! After recently innovating Windows with center-aligned, bottom-docked apps, Microsoft is catching up with macOS in a more useful way. Tom Warren at The Verge reports that Windows 11 is gaining the ability to use a phone as a webcam. 

In September, Bloomberg reported that Apple had held exploratory talks with Microsoft about acquiring Bing as recently as 2020. In newly unsealed court filings this week, more details about the acquisition talks between Apple and Microsoft have surfaced.

Apple’s new app store terms have come under fire for what many are describing as ‘malicious compliance’ with the EU’s Digital Markets Act – that is, technically complying with the antitrust law while completely negating its intent.

A new report says that both Meta and Microsoft have now lobbied the EU, asking it to reject Apple’s new terms as “onerous” and “prohibitive” …

Microsoft isn’t thrilled with Apple’s proposed changes to the App Store and the iPhone in the European Union. The company says Apple’s proposed changes are a “step in the wrong direction,” echoing criticism from the likes of Spotify and Epic Games.

A few Windows laptops are already powered by ARM CPUs rather than Intel ones, but we can expect to see a lot more in the future.

A new report says that Microsoft is accelerating efforts to overcome the current limitations of these, so that more PC brands can follow Apple’s example in using ARM chips …

It was confirmed back in September that Apple will need to comply with antitrust requirements relating to app sales, and it seems most likely this will require the company to allow third-party app stores on iPhones. Microsoft has now indicated its intention to run one of these.

One key driver for the plan is likely Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of mobile gaming giant Activision Blizzard …

While Windows laptop users like to think they have their own version of Touch ID, it appears not to offer the same level of security. The Windows Hello fingerprint authentication system on the top three laptops to use it has been put to the test by security researchers – and all three failed.

To be fair, the team was carrying out the penetration tests at the request of Microsoft – but it was a Microsoft Surface product that turned out to be easiest to bypass …

While not exactly our normal beat, it’s hard to ignore the biggest tech news of the day: the OpenAI drama which saw CEO Sam Altman abruptly fired from the ChatGPT developer. This happened without notice, and for reasons we can guess but which were not stated.

Latest updates: Almost all of the company’s 770 staff have now threatened to quit unless the board resigns and reinstates Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, and it appears that their return to the company is now a strong possibility – more at the bottom …

While you can’t run Windows through Boot Camp on Apple Silicon Macs, there are still several ways to run Windows apps on Macs. But you can now also do the same on iPhone and iPad, using a new official Windows app.

Microsoft’s new app – which is currently available in beta form – lets you run a remote Windows PC and stream the output to your Apple device …

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had his day in court today, where he answered for Bing’s inability to compete with Google Search. In his view, Apple’s Google Search deal protects Safari from being killed by Chrome.

Microsoft has announced plans to discontinue Visual Studio for Mac. The latest version of the company’s IDE (integrated development environment) for Mac will continue to be supported by Microsoft through August 2024.

Apple introduced System Integrity Protection (SIP) with OS X El Capitan in 2015, and it essentially adds multiple layers of security that blocks apps from accessing and modifying system files at a root level. While users can manually disable this feature, it’s not exactly easy to do so. But Microsoft found an exploit that could let attackers bypass SIP.

Back in February Microsoft started testing iMessage on Windows made possible through its Phone Link app. Now the company says it’s rolling out the feature to everyone running Windows 11. While the news may sound exciting, there are some drawbacks to Microsoft’s iMessage experience. Here’s what you should know.

The Mac lineup has seen impressive improvements with Apple Silicon over the last couple of years when it comes to power, efficiency, and more. Now it looks like Microsoft is working to catch up with Apple by working on its own custom silicon and preparing Windows 12 to be optimized for the new ARM chips.

Microsoft has announced the latest way it’s integrating OpenAI’s GPT-4 into its services and software. With a fresh app called Security Copilot, Microsoft believes leveraging GPT-4’s AI will usher in “the new era of security” by helping infosec professionals save time, simplify the complex, catch what others miss, and address the talent gap.

Microsoft launched early access to its major update for its Slack competitor today. Microsoft Teams 2 has been “reimagined” based on user feedback with speed and simplicity as two of the update’s priorities. The all-new experience is available in preview for Windows with the company saying an early version for Mac is coming too.

Microsoft has taken the next step in its plan to evolve its Bing search engine and Edge browser with the latest artificial intelligence has to offer. After integrating OpenAI’s ChatGPT last month, “Bing Image Creator” has arrived on iOS/Android and desktop powered by an “advanced version” of OpenAI’s DALL·E to create an image with just words.

Microsoft is already hard at work preparing for a world in which Apple is forced to allow third-party app stores on iPhone. In an interview with the Financial Times, Microsoft Gaming head Phil Spencer said that the company wants to be “in a position to offer Xbox and content from both us and our third-party partners across any screen where somebody would want to play.”