Windows Archive

"WHAT are you on? The 'fuck Windows' strategy?" Back in the late 1990s, when Bill Gates was still Microsoft's boss, any employee who had the temerity to suggest something that could possibly weaken the firm's flagship operating system was sure to earn his wrath. Even after Steve Ballmer took over from Mr Gates in 2000, that remained the incontestable law at the company's headquarters in Redmond, in Washington state. Everything Microsoft did had to strengthen Windows, to make it ever more crushingly dominant. Many of the company's best innovations were killed because of this "strategy tax", as it was known internally.

Today the rules are different in Redmond. The new boss who took over last year, Satya Nadella (pictured, centre, with Mr Gates to the left and Mr Ballmer on the right), recoils when he hears the term "strategy tax" and says he now tells his staff simply to "build stuff that people like".

The result is Surface 3, as well as a mobile-broadband version, Surface 3 (4G LTE). It's the thinnest and lightest Surface we've ever shipped. It runs full Windows, including desktop applications. It includes a one-year subscription to Office 365 to help you really get down to work. And it starts at just $499.

In the beginning there was the word, and the word was Metro. And then it was Windows 8-style. And then it was Modern. And then it was Windows Store. And then it was Universal. And today, Microsoft has decreed that henceforth these apps - which are all ultimately based on Windows Runtime - will be known as Windows apps.

Historically, of course, "Windows apps" (or "Windows programs") referred to standard, Win32-based executables that ran on the Windows desktop. Under the new naming scheme, these Win32 apps will now be called Windows desktop applications. As you can see in the slide above, despite the new nomenclature, the differences between the two types of app remain the same.

Microsoft is now allowing developers to create apps for Windows 10. While the software maker is planning to release its operating system some time in the summer, developers can start getting used to the available tools today. Windows 10's apps will run across a variety of devices, including the Xbox One, PCs, phones, and tablets. This initial SDK preview will let developers tweak their apps to work across varying screen sizes and optimize them for both touch and mouse/keyboard usage.

Microsoft is putting a big effort into improving trackpad navigation for Windows 10. While Windows 8 introduced new precision trackpads with the help of Intel, Microsoft is building on its previous work by standardizing gestures for laptops that use precision trackpads. Windows 10 will include multi-finger gestures to access new features like the notification center, Cortana, and virtual desktops. Windows trackpads have traditionally been a pain point for laptop owners, and it's something PC makers have largely ignored despite it being the primary input mechanism and key to using a laptop.

Neither Microsoft nor Xiaomi provided specific details of the Windows 10 software being trialled, but TechCrunch understands from sources that it effectively overrides Android, turning the Xiaomi phone into a Windows 10 device complete with Microsoft services. (Which the company hopes will dazzle Android owners into making the switch.)

That's to say that the software doesn't offer a dual boot option, which Microsoft has pushed in the past in India. This is a ROM, based on Windows, that operates much like software from Cyanogen - a company Microsoft was incorrectly linked with an investment in - and other custom ROMs developed by the likes of Tencent and Baidu in China.

Windows devices can be lightweight and highly mobile, yet, when you need it, have the full capabilities of the Windows OS. The Windows Storage and Deployment Teams, the people who bring modern storage APIs, Storage Sense, setup, and servicing to your phone, tablet, laptop, and desktop would like to introduce you to how they are giving Windows 10 a compact footprint.

Microsoft hasn't released a new build of Windows 10 in several weeks but that doesn't mean we can't get a look at the upcoming Spartan browser. Thanks to a new leak from a build that has not been released, we can get a closer view of what this new feature will look like.

For Windows to be a truly global product, anyone in the world should be able to type in their language. The first step to unlocking text input for the world is to be able to display any of the world's languages. This is a challenging task, one which most people don't need to worry about because their language is already supported, but for millions of people around the world getting basic text support has been a problem. The stumbling block in most such cases is a little-known component called a "shaping engine". A shaping engine is used for so-called complex text layout, which is needed for about half of the world's writing systems. For many years, Windows customers have been able to install their own fonts and keyboards but before Windows 10, if there was no shaping engine for your script things wouldn't look right.

From a high level this works by using FiddlerCore to intercept the traffic going to the Microsoft WPflights server that controls the Insider app and responds with our own custom data. The app accepts registry editing information from the web responses and acts upon that. This allows us to write stuff to select locations in the registry. In the case of the Windows 10 Preview, it appears to only look for your phone's PhoneManufacturerModelName to decide if it should be offered previews. Windows Update also checks this value. Other devices like Samsungs or HTCs may need different settings.

Today, Microsoft released their latest Patch Tuesday. This Patch includes a fix for vulnerability CVE-2015-0057, an IMPORTANT-rated exploitable vulnerability which we responsibly disclosed to Microsoft a few months ago. As part of our research, we revealed this privilege escalation vulnerability which, if exploited, enables a threat actor to complete control of a Windows machine. In other words, a threat actor that gains access to a Windows machine (say, through a phishing campaign) can exploit this vulnerability to bypass all Windows security measures, defeating mitigation measures such as sandboxing, kernel segregation and memory randomization.

Interestingly, the exploit requires modifying only a single bit of the Windows operating system.

I have become completely dependent on my computer for all sorts of things. Obviously, I use my computer to develop software, but I also use my computer for banking, email, my personal phone book, my appointment schedule, playing games, and so on.

I am not quite at the point where I leave my machine on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but soon I will be able to carry a computer in my pocket during those rare hours my desktop machine is not at easy reach (like when I'm flying back and forth between Seattle and San Francisco). This computer's official name has not been announced yet, but its codename is Pegasus. It's being created by Microsoft with six hardware partners. I'll start by showing you the Pegasus hardware from the user's perspective. In the second part of this article I'll dive into the details of the software platform and discuss the programming issues you need to understand to write cool Pegasus apps.

A bunch of screenshots have been obtained by ITHome.it, a Chinese website, claiming to show off Windows 10 Build 10009, although the build information is covered up in the images, we'll just have to take their word for it.

In the images it can be seen that many more standard icons have received the flattened treatment, among them: the Recycle bin, Control Panel and Drive icons. New icons have also appeared, but the images are rather small, but embedded for your enjoyment below.

Two weeks ago we shared our plans to introduce new, Universal Office apps for Windows 10 including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote, that can be installed on PCs, tablets and phones. Today, we're excited to announce that Word, Excel and PowerPoint are now available for technical preview on PCs, laptops and tablets running the Windows 10 Technical Preview! In the coming weeks, we'll open up our preview for the same apps on phones and tablets running Windows 10.