Windows Archive

Peter Bright making the case for subscription-based Windows.

The facts and rumours do line up, but honestly - free/subscription-based Windows is right up there with a TV from Apple when it comes to long-running, always-returning but never materialising rumours.

Microsoft released Windows Phone 8.1 to those who enrolled in the developer preview program (i.e., everyone).

Ars' Peter Bright in his review of 8.1:

Update: Here's an 8X with Cortana working just fine, so the original worries clearly aren't necessary.

I never liked Windows XP (I used BeOS during XP's early days, and Mac OS X and Linux during XP's later days), so I'm glad to see it go. This terrible operating system should have died out years ago.

During the Build keynote, Microsoft also officially unveiled Windows Phone 8.1. Most of its features have long been known, so I'm not going to go into all of them in detail, but suffice it to say this is a huge update. Microsoft focuses a lot on its Google Now and Siri alternative Cortana (The Verge has a great article on it), which works more or less in the same way, but with one interesting strength: integration with third party applications.

Windows Phone 8.1 will become available for developers this month, and will be pushed to current devices in the coming months. It will also be available on new devices during that same timeframe - and it'll arrive on all Windows Phone 8 devices (every time a Microsoft employee points this out, an Android 2.3 device explodes).

I am very psyched for this massive update. It might not make much of a difference in the marketplace, but that doesn't really matter for me personally. This simply looks like a fantastic update, and I can't wait until my developer-ready HTC 8X gets the developer update.

Don't try this on a production machine.

Pretty sure Google will introduce windowing support soon in Android, possibly within the next 18-24 months (Android 5.0, perhaps?). It seems inevitable. iOS, on the other hand - we'll see.

Major scoop by Tom Warren.

Now, I have a very crazy theory about this whole thing. I obviously have no inside sources like Warren has, so load this image in another tab while reading this, but what if instead of this being an attempt to bridge the 'application gap', this is the first step in a Microsoft transition towards Android as a whole?

Much like the PC world, which eventually settled on two players, the mobile world has settled on two players: Android and iOS. It's the cold and harsh truth. Does it really make sense for Microsoft to focus all that energy on developing Windows Phone - not to a whole lot of avail so far - when they could just take Android, add their own services, and more importantly, their own very popular and ubiquitous enterprise software, and sell that instead? Microsoft actually started out as an application software provider, and not as an operating system vendor, so it's not like they would do something they're not comfortable with.

The biggest reason this crazy, unfounded theory came to my mind is that I simply cannot believe Microsoft would actually make it possible to run Android applications on Windows Phone. First, running Android applications on another platform is not exactly issue-free. Second, this has not exactly helped BlackBerry (and Sailfish, for that matter) either. Third, Windows Phone (and Windows 8 Metro) are already afterthoughts for developers, nothing more than mere side-projects in between iOS and Android work. Why would any of them develop native applications if they can just send their already completed APK to Microsoft? It'd be the death of Windows Phone and Metro.

Combined with the news that Nokia's Android phone is actually going to come out, it wouldn't surprise me at all if Microsoft is thinking about phasing out Windows Phone, with the ability to run Android applications on the platform as a first step in this migration.

There are major issues with such an approach, of course, not least of which the problem Amazon has also run into: no Google Play Services, meaning several popular applications won't run at all. If you're truly, truly outrageous, you could even consider a pact between Microsoft and Google, a combined effort that would take some possible antitrust heat off Google's back, and would give them a united front against Apple and iOS. Even this has precedent: unlike what some think, Microsoft and Apple have a long history of close cooperation. There's no reason Microsoft wouldn't do it again, if needed.

In any case, this is all very interesting stuff, and it shows just how much of a problem the lack of any presence in the mobile world has become for Microsoft. The new CEO has some very tough calls to make.

A lot of new features in Windows Phone 8.1 - to be released around April - are starting to appear. First and foremost, it seems Windows Phone is finally getting a notification centre, which was long overdue. Microsoft originally intended live tiles to replace notifications, but as someone who has used Windows Phone extensively, live tiles are annoying in that they don't always show the notification count, and on top of that, are generally too small to contain enough information, forcing you to go into the application anyway, defeating their purpose. It seems Microsoft has finally figured out that a notification centre is pretty much mandatory these days.

Furthermore, the private SDK releases reveal some more information, including some low-level changes.

There's more interesting stuff in there, like the ability to change the default messaging application, the back button will no longer terminate applications but suspend them, an improved camera application, and more.

All in all, it does look like a worthy update for Windows Phone users, but there's nothing in there that other platforms haven't been enjoying for years now. In other words, it doesn't really contain anything that gives the platform an edge over the competition or that makes it stand out. None of these features is going to convince an iOS or Android user from leaving their platform behind. Still, these are just the new features and changes extracted from the private SDK, so there's bound to be more stuff hiding in the shadows that we don't yet know about.

It's curious though that the preview SDK releases are private, something that was met with lots of complaints back during the run-up Windows Phone 8, since it means developers can't get their stuff ready before the release hits. Luckily, though, the new developer program does mean anyone can get the 8.1 update as soon as it's released.

I'm hoping my relatively old HTC 8X won't be left out of the loop, because this looks like a worthy update for Windows Phone users.

Wow, a touch interface does not work with a mouse and keyboard. Who saw that coming.

I expect photos of many people eating crow.

Seems like some welcome changes, but it's going to take a lot more for people to warm up to Metro. The biggest problem to me is that since there aren't any compelling Metro applications, there's simply no reason to put with its idiosyncrasies, especially on desktops. I cannot think of a single Metro application that is better than its desktop counterpart, nor is there any Metro application that is better than similar applications on competing platforms.

Developers need users, and users need developers. Right now - Metro seems to lacks both.

Paul Thurrott on the next version of Windows and the future of the platform.

With even Paul Thurrott claiming Windows is in trouble, it becomes virtually impossible to deny it is so.

Windows has virtually no presence in the two biggest things to hit computing in a long time, and it's starting to show. Microsoft may not be in trouble - but Windows is.

Pretty sure this update will turn it all around.