Tag: microsoft
Google paid Activision Blizzard to stay on Play Store
Florian Mueller (via Michael Tsai): The world now knows that in January 2020, Google signed a three-year agreement with Activision Blizzard King (“ABK”), “pursuant to which Google agreed to pay ABK approximately $360 million” in order to dissuade Activision Blizzard from creating its own Android app store. Three-hundred and sixty million dollars for not competing. Bad timing.…
PowerPoint sending your data to Microsoft
Roger González Gutiérrez (via Michael Tsai): Microsoft is phoning home the content of your PowerPoint slides. […] Make a new slide with a title of your choice. Choose “Designer.” Look at your network traffic as you do. It makes sense: the tool is reading your text and suggesting designs/delivering stock photography. But this means that any data…
UK COVID-19 Cases Missed Due to Excel Glitch
Michael Tsai: James Tapsfield: The extraordinary meltdown was caused by an Excel spreadsheet containing lab results reaching its maximum size, and failing to update. Some 15,841 cases between September 25 and October 2 were not uploaded to the government dashboard. […] Alex Hern: But while CSV files can be any size, Microsoft Excel files can…
Microsoft Store announces new approach to retail
Microsoft: (“Microsoft”) today announced a strategic change in its retail operations, including closing Microsoft Store physical locations. The company’s retail team members will continue to serve customers from Microsoft corporate facilities and remotely providing sales, training, and support. Microsoft will continue to invest in its digital storefronts on Microsoft.com, and stores in Xbox and Windows,…
Microsoft is downloading Windows 10 to PCs, even if you don’t “reserve” a copy
Ars Technica reported on Microsoft downloading Windows 10 to PCs, even if you don’t “reserve” a copy. According to The Inquirer, the situation was first reported by an anonymous reader who claimed to have discovered a hidden directory called $Windows.~BT on his computer, despite not opting in for a free upgrade to Windows 10. The…
Even when told not to, Windows 10 just can’t stop talking to Microsoft
Ars Technica reported on Windows 10 talking to Microsoft even when told not to. For example, even with Cortana and searching the Web from the Start menu disabled, opening Start and typing will send a request to www.bing.com to request a file called threshold.appcache which appears to contain some Cortana information, even though Cortana is…
Microsoft posts record loss as it writes down Nokia
Reuters reported on Microsoft’s record loss as it writes down Nokia. Microsoft Corp reported a $3.2 billion quarterly net loss, its biggest ever, as the company wrote down its Nokia phone business and demand fell for its Windows operating system. No big deal. It’s just $3.2 billion loss. I mean, look at Apple, they are…
Windows 10 will use your bandwidth to push updates to others
Ubergizemo reported on Windows 10 tapping on users’ bandwidth to push updates to others. For the most part the updates are pretty fast although it seems that with Windows 10, it looks like Microsoft is finding ways to make pushing out updates even faster, and apparently one of the ways they’re looking at is to…
Difference in how Microsoft and Apple announce new products
Gus Muller wrote about how Microsoft and Apple handle expectations. You know deep down that the HoloLens isn’t going to be what they say it is, because it never is with Microsoft. For a great example of this, read Ben Kuchera’s “Skeptical of HoloLens? It’s time to rewatch how Microsoft sold us on the Kinect”.…
Apple sued for false advertising of iPhones
WSJ reported about Apple being sued for false advertising of iPhone storage capacity. Mann said an iPhone 6 Plus with 16 gigabytes of storage can hold only 12.7 gigabytes of photos, songs, apps and other user data. That is 21% less than the advertised 16 gigabytes of storage. For the 16GB iPhone 6, the available…