Hilary Braun, Senior Product Manager for Windows 365;
We’re excited to announce that, starting today, Windows App is generally available for Windows, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and web browsers—and in public preview for Android. This unified app serves as your secure gateway to connect to Windows across Windows 365, Azure Virtual Desktop, Remote Desktop, Remote Desktop Services, Microsoft Dev Box, and more.
With Windows App, you can enjoy a unified experience that makes it simple for people to connect to the Windows experience they know and love from any device. Enhance productivity with features such as customizable home screens, multi-monitor support, and USB redirection. Windows App also offers advanced security features, including multifactor authentication, to ensure a seamless and robust connection and enable efficient work from any location, at any time.
This could be where “Windows OS” is going in the cloud, the device that you will be using is just a way to access your “Windows-Account” that holds all your apps, files and cloud services.
You can find the specs of the Microsoft Surface Pro 11 here.
Price for the Surface Pro 11 2-in-1 and the Surface Laptop 7 starts at SAR 4,699.00. Price may vary depending on your preferred configuration. Shipping is expected to start between 11 – 20 September, 2024. You can preorder here.
Amazon just announced Q, a generative AI-powered assistant that aims to “answers to pressing questions, solve problems, generate content, and take actions using the data and expertise found in your company’s information repositories, code, and enterprise systems.”
From their press release;
Amazon Q provides information and advice to employees to streamline tasks, accelerate decision making and problem solving, and help spark creativity and innovation at work. Designed to meet enterprise customers’ stringent requirements, Amazon Q can personalize its interactions to each individual user based on an organization’s existing identities, roles, and permissions. Additionally, Amazon Q never uses business customers’ content to train its underlying models. Amazon Q brings generative AI-powered assistance to customers building on AWS, working internally, and using AWS applications for business intelligence (BI), contact centers, and supply chain management to help organizations of all sizes and across industries use generative AI safely. Amazon Q is available to customers in preview, with Amazon Q in Connect generally available and Amazon Q in AWS Supply Chain coming soon.
Amazon Q will compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Copilot, which is also powered ChatGPT. Amazon Q will be available in 2 Pricing plan; Amazon Q Business for $20/month/user, while the Amazon Q Builder will be $25/month/user.
Microsoft just release the preview version of Windows App, an app that acts as a central hub to access Azure Virtual Desktop, Windows 365, Microsoft Dev Box, Remote Desktop Services, and remote PCs, securely connecting you to Windows devices and apps. Aside from macOS, iOS and iPadOS, the Windows app is also available for Windows OS and web browsers. Windows app is not currently available for Android.
The Windows app support multiple monitor, custom display resolutions, dynamic display resolutions and scaling, with device redirection, such as webcams, audio, storage devices, and printers. Windows app also supports Microsoft Teams optimizations. Windows App is available to when you have an active Microsoft business account, features to use a personal account is not yet available.
If successful, Windows app could signal’s Microsoft ambitions to move Windows as a cloud service than an OS that’s installed locally in our devices. To learn more about the Windows App, you can head over to the Windows App documentation page.
Microsoft has officially acquire Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, the deal has now been finalized after a lengthy regulatory review. The announcement was made by both company and published official statement on their respective website. Bobby Kotick will continue to serve as CEO of Activision Blizzard, and he and his team will maintain their focus on driving efforts to further strengthen the company’s culture and accelerate business growth. Once the deal closes, the Activision Blizzard business will report to Phil Spencer, CEO, Microsoft Gaming and will be part of Microsoft’s Xbox Team.
Activision Blizzard is one of the largest and most successful video game companies in the world. It is the publisher of popular franchises such as Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Candy Crush, and Diablo. Microsoft is already a major player in the gaming industry with its Xbox console and Xbox Game Pass subscription service. However, the acquisition of Activision Blizzard gives Microsoft a significant boost in market share and makes it the third-largest gaming company in the world, behind Tencent and Sony.
When the deal was first announced, it faced regulatory pushback and was delayed due to concerns about competition in the cloud gaming market. To address these concerns, Microsoft made several concessions, including giving consumers in the European Economic Area free licenses to stream their Activision Blizzard games. Microsoft also signed agreements with console rivals Nintendo and Sony, promising them access to Call of Duty games for 10 years.
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) was the last regulator to approve the deal. The CMA stated that the concessions made by Microsoft were a “game-changer” that would allow for competitive prices and better services.
Microsoft will soon remove WordPad in the coming release of Windows, this announcement was made by the software giant early this month after it published a “What’s New” article with a title – Deprecated features for Windows client.
In the article, Microsoft said that “Each version of Windows client adds new features and functionality. Occasionally, new versions also remove features and functionality, often because they’ve added a newer option. This article provides details about the features and functionalities that are no longer being developed in Windows client.”
The article further list at least 50 features and services available on Windows that will soon be removed in future update of the OS and one of them is the WordPad.
WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows. We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents like .doc and .rtf and Windows Notepad for plain text documents like .txt.
WordPad was introduced 28 years ago, as a small windows application that can edit, read, format and print document files with Rich Text Format (RTF), it is basically the stripped down version of MS Word, which is why it is not surprising the Microsoft recommended Microsoft Word, its paid word processor.
Saudi Basic Industries Corp (SABIC), one of the world’s largest petrochemicals manufacturers, and Microsoft just announced that they will be launching the ‘Microsoft Ocean Plastic Mouse’ – the first consumer product made from recycled ocean plastic. The Microsoft Ocean Plastic Mouse is made from 20% recycled ocean plastic.
We are excited to announce that we have collaborated with @Microsoft to create its first consumer electronic product – The Microsoft Ocean Plastic Mouse – with an exterior shell containing 20% recycled ocean plastic.
Ocean plastic is defined as plastic that has been certified by a third party as recovered from any ocean or ocean-feeding waterways or where it washed ashore from these locations. Ocean plastic differs from ocean-bound plastic in that ocean-bound plastic is recovered from ocean-feeding waterways, shorelines, and inland areas within a 50-kilometer radius of the ocean. The two recycled products play complementary roles in helping address the issue of ocean plastic waste.
Microsoft design team initially goal was to create a new plastic resin with 10% ocean plastic, after several rounds of reformulation, SABIC was able to exceed Microosft’s 10% goal and then final product contains 20% recycled ocean plastic by weight in its external casing or “shell.”
SABIC added that “this project has also provided a blueprint to demonstrate to the broader industry sector that recycling and reusing valuable plastic resins that have been recovered from the ocean, ocean – feeding waterways or where they have been washed ashore from these locations, is achievable when value chain partners use their knowledge and expertise and work together.”
SABIC added that “the SABIC-Microsoft collaboration envisions SABIC providing a new XENOY™ resin for Microsoft product use that is comprised of 20% ocean plastic, as part of SABIC’S TRUCIRCLE™ portfolio and services. This new XENOY™ resin with recycled ocean plastic can help reduce plastic waste in the ocean. For example, based on a resin grade comprised of 20% recycled content, for every 1kT of product containing recycled ocean-plastic XENOY™ PC/PET compound, an equivalent of 24 million single-use 0.5liter PET water bottles is removed from the ocean, ocean-feeding waterways, or ocean-adjacent shores.”
Microsoft first unveil the “Microsoft Ocean Plastic Mouse” during their September 2021 Event, which will can be pre-order in selected market for $24.99 or around SAR 94.00.
Microsoft has officially the next version of Windows, the Windows 11. Even though the company previously said that Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows, if unclear why the company branded the next version of their operating system to “Windows 11”.
Windows 11 will feature a new UI, updated window management system, and support for Android applications, which is a similar move that Apple made with the “Project Catalyst“.
Here’s a 2-min introduction video that Microsoft release for Windows 11.
Just like with Windows 10, Windows 11 will be a free update to all users running Windows 10 but there’s a caveat, you need to meet the system requirements of Windows 11.
Windows 11 minimum system requirements;
Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster with 2 or more cores on a compatible 64-bit processor or System on a Chip (SoC)
Microsoft has updated the Xbox App, for both the iOS and Android, to introduce a number of cool features like “console remote play, remote game installs, chat and more.”
The announcement was made by Harrison Hoffman, Senior Program Manager for Xbox;
The new Xbox Beta app is now available for Android and iOS, keeping you connected to Xbox, wherever you are, featuring console remote play, remote game installs, chat, and more! Check it out!
Both the Xbox Series X and Series S are available with the following retail price;
Xbox Series X 1 TB – SAR 2,299.00
Xbox Series S 512 GB – SAR 1,349 (at Extra, it mentioned that the storage is 1 TB).
The pre-order period starts on September 22nd, 2020 until November 6th, 2020 while quantities last. Shipping for the Xbox Series X is expected to be between November 7th , 2020 and November 12th, 2020, while the shipping for the Xbox Series S will be between November 13th , 2020 and November 18th, 2020.
An interesting experiment by Microsoft, wherein they drop an entire data center (864 servers) to the bottom (117 feet deep) of the Scottish sea, aways from human’s physical interaction and away from the daily elements.
Earlier this summer, marine specialists reeled up a shipping container-size datacenter coated in algae, barnacles, and sea anemones from the seafloor off Scotland’s Orkney Islands. The retrieval of the Northern Isles datacenter launched the final phase of Project Natick, a years-long research effort that proved the concept of underwater datacenters is feasible as well as logistically, environmentally, and economically practical.
