Microsoft

Microsoft to buy Activision Blizzard, become 3rd biggest gaming company

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Wall Street Journal:

Microsoft Corp. agreed to buy Activision Blizzard Inc. in an all-cash deal valued at $68.7 billion, using its largest acquisition by far to grab a videogame heavyweight that has been roiled by claims of workplace misconduct.

And:

The deal, if completed, would sharply expand Microsoft’s already sizable videogame operation, adding a stable of popular game franchises including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush to Microsoft’s Xbox console business and its own games like Minecraft and Doom. Microsoft said the transaction would make it the world’s third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Japan’s Sony Group Corp.

And:

Shares in Activision had been down nearly 30% since California regulators filed a lawsuit against the company in July alleging sexual harassment and gender pay disparity among the company’s roughly 10,000 employees.

And:

Microsoft said in its announcement that Bobby Kotick would remain as Activision’s CEO following the deal, and report to Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer.

From Microsoft’s press release:

Mobile is the largest segment in gaming, with nearly 95% of all players globally enjoying games on mobile. Through great teams and great technology, Microsoft and Activision Blizzard will empower players to enjoy the most-immersive franchises, like “Halo” and “Warcraft,” virtually anywhere they want. And with games like “Candy Crush,” Activision Blizzard´s mobile business represents a significant presence and opportunity for Microsoft in this fast-growing segment.

Huge move. Did the cultural problems drive the price down so much that Microsoft felt the headache worth the long term gains?

Analyst: Google’s “default search engine” FY21 payments to Apple might reach $15B

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Philip Elmer-DeWitt, quoting an analyst note:

We now estimate that Google’s payments to AAPL to be the default search engine on iOS were ~$10B in FY 20.

And:

We now forecast that Google’s payments to Apple might be nearly $15B in FY 21.

And this, full of juicy tidbits:

We see two potential risks to GOOG’s payments to AAPL: (1) regulatory risk, which we believe is real, but likely years away; we see a potential 4-5% impact to Apple’s gross profits from an adverse ruling; & (2) that Google chooses to stop paying Apple to be the default search engine altogether, or looks to renegotiate terms and pay less. We have noted in prior research that GOOG is likely paying to ensure Microsoft doesn’t outbid it. That said, with payments likely to approach $18 – $20B in FY 22, it not implausible that Google could revisit its strategy.

Imagine Microsoft becoming the default Apple search engine. That would be an odd experience. And might antitrust regulators have some say in this? I’d imagine there’d be a lot of lobbying on all sides if that issue heated up.

Hands-on: You can now run Windows 365 on iPad, and Microsoft even has an app for it

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Parker Ortolani, 9to5Mac:

Microsoft’s new cloud PC system, Windows 365, has officially launched for all eligible businesses and enterprises. While it’s not available to consumers yet, we hope to see it in the future. In the meantime, I was able to go hands-on with Windows 365 on my iPad Pro. Here’s what my experience was like.

And:

Previously, we expected Windows 365 to be only accessible through a web browser. I first tried Windows 365 through Safari in iPadOS 15. It wasn’t a great experience, to be honest. But then I noticed Microsoft’s callout to the Remote Desktop app. I flew over to the App Store and downloaded the app, entered my credentials, and boom — I had a smooth virtual install of Windows running in a native app on my iPad from the App Store. Yeah, you read that correctly.

Here’s a link to the pricing page.

The plan starts at $31 per user per month. That’s $372 per year. This is for businesses, not consumer use. My sense is that this is Microsoft getting in front of the work-from-home trend, giving businesses a way to avoid the computer hardware purchase/configuration/disposal cycle.

Hard to judge the value of this pricing, but it certainly is interesting that you can run your Windows install on your Mac, then switch that exact same configuration over to your iPad.

It does feel like it will shift the burden of hardware ownership from the employer to the employee.

Microsoft announces Windows 365, bringing cloud-based Windows to Mac and iPad

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Microsoft:

Windows 365 takes the operating system to the Microsoft Cloud, securely streaming the full Windows experience—including all your apps, data, and settings—to your personal or corporate devices. This approach creates a fully new personal computing category, specifically for the hybrid world: the Cloud PC.

And:

Windows 365 provides an instant-on boot experience that enables users to stream all their personalized applications, tools, data, and settings from the cloud across any device including your Mac, iPad, Linux device, and Android. The Windows experience is consistent, no matter the device.

And:

You can pick up right where you left off, because the state of your Cloud PC remains the same, even when you switch devices.

If any part of your workflow is Windows-based, this is huge news. Guessing this won’t be a substitute for GPU dependent gaming, but that use case aside, seems like this will solve a lot of people’s Windows needs.

How to Install Windows 3.1 on an iPad

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Ben J Edwards, HowToGeek:

Recently, we noticed FastCompany editor (and friend of How-To Geek) Harry McCracken on Twitter experimenting with running Windows 3.1 on an iPad. With his blessing, we’re about to explain how he pulled off this amazing feat.

And:

Here’s the tricky part: To install Windows 3.1 in iDOS 2, you’ll need to somehow copy the Windows 3.1 installation files over to your iPad. The good news is that there’s a completely legal way to do this if you own original Windows 3.1 installation floppies—by literally copying all the files off of the floppies and putting them into a folder. If you do own the disks (and thus, a license to use Windows 3.1), you might also be able to find disk images of the floppies somewhere on the web, but we’re leaving the legal and ethical implications of doing that up to you.

Love stuff like this.

Inside the $10 million Xbox gift card cheat

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Bloomburg:

It’s unclear exactly when Kvashuk stumbled on the gift card glitch in Microsoft’s security system (which the company says has since been closed). But at some point in 2017, around the time Microsoft recruited him for a full-time, $116,000-a-year engineering position, he gleaned that his team’s experimental accounts were programmed only to prevent the e-commerce site from shipping fake purchases of physical goods: PCs, tablets, keyboards, and so on. Microsoft simply didn’t intend for its digital-retail testers to order Xbox gift cards on the job. Kvashuk could have reported the vulnerability to his bosses, but he took the red pill instead.

This is a fascinating read, a real insider con story.

Why I killed the Windows startup sound

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This is a fascinating look back on the history of startup sounds on computers, including Macs.

Don’t miss that live background. That is one helluva beautiful setting.

Microsoft’s new ad dissing MacBook Pro in favor of Microsoft Surface Pro 7

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[VIDEO] Watch the ad, embedded in the main Loop post, then read on.

I find this comparison ridiculous. And disingenuous. That price quoted in the ad gives you a weak-sauce Intel Core i3 processor, along with 128GB of storage and 4GB of RAM. It also includes a pencil and keyboard case. Drop the pencil and keyboard case and the price is $750. Just to make the comparison a bit more equal.

If you are going to compare that Surface Pro configuration against an M1 MacBook Pro or, better yet, against the M1 MacBook Air, you really do need to look at the bigger picture.

  • Battery life on the MacBook Air is about twice as long.
  • GeekBench on the Surface Pro 7 (Intel i3, 2 cores): 774 (single core) and 1851 (multi-core)
  • GeekBench on the entry level MacBook Air: 1744 (single core) and 7685 (multi-core)

Want to bump your Surface Pro up to an Intel i7? Still much slower than the MacBook Air, but now the price floor (without pencil and case) is $1299.

MacBook Air price starts at $999. True, the Surface Pro gives you a built in touch-screen and Windows, if that’s your thing, but you pay a price for that.

With all that in mind, take another look through that ad.

A video look at virtualizing Windows 10 ARM on an M1 Mac

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[VIDEO] I’ve been reading about this for a while now, but it’s nice seeing the process in a video (video embedded in main Loop post).

And those Geekbench scores, wow! Keep in mind, all this is done via emulation. Just imagine how fast this would be if it was native, or even done via Rosetta translation. Amazing.

Microsoft 365 and Office 2019 support for Apple Silicon

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Microsoft:

The latest release of apps including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, and OneDrive can be installed on devices that are based on the Apple Silicon architecture. For the best experience, install the November 2020 release (build 16.43), or later. This release of Office includes the latest optimizations for macOS Big Sur, which is the first operating system to support Apple Silicon.

And:

As demonstrated at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June 2020, we’ve already started the process of moving Mac apps to universal binaries. In the future we will natively support both Apple Silicon and Intel chipsets within the same executable.

In a nutshell, the apps noted above will run in Rosetta 2 emulation or, as they get rebuilt for M1, as native apps. But the features won’t change. They’ll just speed up as they go native. At least, that’s the idea.

Apple TV will be available on new Xbox and PlayStation consoles for the first time

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Here’s the official Microsoft announcement.

And here’s the official Sony announcement (from a few weeks ago).

Gruber, from this Daring Fireball post:

Xbox users who aren’t already subscribed to Apple TV+ will be able to do so right on their Xbox. I’m curious if that’s a thing where Microsoft gets a cut of the subscription — I’m guessing no, because I can’t see why Netflix would go for that.

Giant towers of commerce, all built on exclusive ecosystems, with tendrils working their way across battle lines into opposing camps, all built on foundations of control and exclusion. If anti-trust breaks one of those foundational building blocks, watch out.

If Apple follows its own rules, you’ll soon be able to stream your Xbox to your iPhone

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Sean Hollister, The Verge:

on Monday, Microsoft announced a new Xbox app that lets you stream games from your own Xbox to your own Android phone over your local network for free. There’s an iOS version coming too — and while my colleague Tom Warren originally suggested the console streaming feature probably wouldn’t come to iOS, I’m now willing to bet it will.

And:

Microsoft now tells me the goal is actually to have full parity between the iOS and Android apps, and that Apple is already reviewing the iOS version now.

And:

Sony’s PS4 Remote Play is already on iOS, and it works almost exactly the same as Microsoft’s Xbox console streaming. It similarly mirrors the entire PS4 interface, including access to the PlayStation Store. And though Microsoft’s Android app does include the ability to play over the internet, and a few more creature comforts like remote management of your console, I would think the “generic mirror” rule would keep it from getting kicked out.

That last is the precedent that makes this case. I’d be shocked if Apple blocked the Xbox streaming app.

How Microsoft built its folding Surface Duo

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If you are at all intrigued by Microsoft’s new, folding, Surface Duo, this is a terrific read. Panos Panay, Microsoft’s chief product officer, talks through the path that took him past the failed Surface Mini concept to what ultimately shipped.

I’d absolutely love it if Apple regularly shared its thinking on product design and evolution.

Microsoft’s intriguing new Surface Duo, available for preorder today

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[VIDEO] Microsoft’s Windows blog:

Today, as we look ahead to the next wave of mobile productivity and creativity, we see that same opportunity to create something new with Surface Duo – not to reinvent the phone, but to inspire people to rethink how they want to use the device in their pocket.

I’m intrigued. I like the form factor, though it is about 20% wider than the iPhone 11 Pro Max, so it stretches the concept of a pocketable device. The Surface Duo is 93.3mm wide (3.67″) and the iPhone 11 Pro Max is 77.8mm wide (3.06″)

Not sure why, but this design appeals to me much more than the Samsung Galaxy Fold, feels more stable somehow, the design somehow sleeker.

To see this for yourself, check out the video embedded in the main Loop post. Will Apple follow one of these paths to create an iPhone/iPad hybrid? If so, will it be a true foldable? A hinged device like the new Surface Duo? Or something entirely new?

China refuses to accept ‘theft’ of TikTok if US acquisition goes ahead

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Good rollup post from Tim Hardwick on the whole Microsoft wants to buy TikTok, Trump wants a piece of the action, China likely to retaliate situation.

You’ve no doubt followed this as it’s unfolded. New to the story is in this Reuters article:

China will not accept the “theft” of a Chinese technology company and is able to respond to Washington’s move to push ByteDance to sell short-video app TikTok’s U.S. operations to Microsoft, the China Daily newspaper said on Tuesday.

The United States’ “bullying” of Chinese tech companies was a consequence of Washington’s zero-sum vision of “American first” and left China no choice but “submission or mortal combat in the tech realm”, the state-backed paper said in an editorial.

Add to that this Daring Fireball post, titled, Major American companies with a consumer internet presence in China:

if China decides to retaliate — and why wouldn’t they? — what company might they target other than Apple? Facebook and Google are already banned in China. Amazon has AWS, which has a fair-sized presence there, but AWS is sort of the anti-TikTok in terms of being consumer-facing. Microsoft would be the obvious tit-for-tat target. But does Microsoft have a neatly bundled consumer presence in China?

If I were the dictator of China, and I was angry about the Trump administration forcing a proud Chinese company like ByteDance to divest itself of TikTok, and I was looking for a way to show that China cannot be pushed around by the U.S., I’d look at iCloud and the App Store, and humiliating the biggest company in the world.

And to add to this thought, this Wall Street Journal post titled, Apple Faces $1.4 Billion Lawsuit in China in Siri Patent Fight:

Shanghai Zhizhen Network Technology Co. said Monday that it is suing Apple for an estimated 10 billion yuan ($1.43 billion) in damages in a Shanghai court, after a court decision in June that upheld the validity of its Chinese patent for a chatbot similar to Apple’s Siri.

And:

As part of the suit, Shanghai Zhizhen, also known as Xiao-i, asked Apple to stop sales, production and the use of products flouting the patent—a category that includes virtually all the U.S. company’s devices.

I agree with Gruber’s take, above. Apple does seem the likeliest target for retaliation. What a mess.

Arm-based Macs: Here’s what’s happening to Boot Camp

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Samuel Axon, Ars Technica:

When Apple announced its plans to transition the Mac to its own, ARM-based silicon and away from the x86 architecture used in Intel Macs, the company listed a plethora of tools for making sure as many applications survive the shift as possible. But while it’s helpful that Apple is providing developer tools for adapting Intel Mac apps and virtualization tools for running the apps that won’t make the move right away, there’s one scenario Apple didn’t talk about at all during its keynote: running Windows natively on a Mac.

And:

While virtualization via tools like Parallels or VMWare are usually sufficient for running most Windows apps under macOS, there are some edge cases when the Boot Camp approach is the only option. One of the most common: running Windows PC games, which tend to run more optimally under Windows than they do under macOS, no matter how well done the ports are.

And there’s the rub. Boot Camp allows Windows to run natively, currently as an Intel-targeted OS running natively on Intel platform.

But:

We’ve learned that Boot Camp will not work on Apple silicon-based Macs. This will surely be a surprise to almost no one, of course. You can’t expect to just run a game natively out of the box on a totally different architecture.

Yup. Boot Camp itself doesn’t allow an Intel-compiled OS to run natively on Arm. So will Microsoft allow a version of Windows to be built, targeted specifically at Apple’s Mac/Arm architecture?

Does Apple want Windows on the Mac? Is that an important part of the next generation of Macs?

Jason Snell: Thoughts on WWDC 2020 Day One

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Lots of interesting comments, but this one struck me:

People who rely on running Windows apps on their Macs, however, will not find a comforting story. Apple made a point of highlighting virtualization features that are built into macOS Big Sur running on Apple Silicon, but these seem to be for virtualizing operating systems built for Apple’s processors, not for emulating an operating system built for a different processor. I would imagine that, eventually, there will be a way to run Windows on ARM Macs–but it may take a while and it may be a slow, frustrating experience when it does arrive.

The fact that Apple demoed Linux running on an ARM Mac, and showed off Office apps but not Windows, was certainly noticeable. I’d love to know if there’s a plan in place to install Windows on an ARM Mac, or if that’s a dead path.

Apple Becomes First U.S. Company to Hit $1.5 Trillion in Market Value

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Another milestone. Some tiny thoughts:

First US company? Hmmm. I wonder what other companies have done this. Dig, dig, dig. Ah, here’s a list of publicly traded companies, world-wide, by market-cap.

Number 1, by far, is Saudi Aramco, which passed $2 trillion back in December, in its first day of public trading. Interestingly, Saudi Aramco’s market cap today is about $115B. That’s a pretty astonishing fall. Oil biz.

Next up is Apple, followed closely by Microsoft, just a whisker behind.

Will we one day look back on numbers like these as small? Will Apple hit $2 trillion?

The pioneers of shareware

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This is a great read for a number of reasons. There’s the whole “birth of shareware” aspect, which was a fantastic slice of history.

But beyond that, there’s the amazing picture of Microsoft, circa 1978, all 9 principals, with a very young Bill Gates in the lower left.

And then there’s this:

The PC World issue with the landmark review of PC-File was still on newsstands when Andrew Fluegelman had his next life-changing encounter with a computer: he was one of a select few invited to Apple for an early unveiling of the new Macintosh. He was so smitten by this whole new way of operating a computer that he immediately began lobbying for a companion magazine to PC World, to be named, naturally enough, Macworld. Its first issue appeared in time to greet the first Macintosh buyers early in 1984.

And:

People [say the Macintosh is] more of a right-brain machine and all that. I think there is some truth to that. I think there is something to dealing with a graphical interface and a more kinetic interface; you’re really moving information around, you’re seeing it move as though it had substance. And you don’t see that on [an IBM] PC. The PC is very much a conceptual machine; you move information around the way you move formulas, elements on either side of an equation. I think there’s a difference.

Wonderful read.

[By way of this Six Colors post]

Data race video: Most used operating systems of all time

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[VIDEO] This is a data race, a video (embedded in main Loop post) that shows change in data over time, usually over many years. In this case, we’re looking at market share of operating systems from 2009 (when iOS was a baby) through today.

The big players to keep an eye on are Windows, Android, iOS, and macOS. Obviously, there’s a lot of overlap between all of these, since many (most?) people use more than one, some people use all of them.

Here’s the data source used for the video.

New Microsoft Office app moves out of public preview, now generally available

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Microsoft:

A few months ago, we introduced a new mobile app called Office—a whole new experience designed to be your go-to app for getting work done on a mobile device. It combines Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into a single app and introduces new capabilities that enable you to create content and accomplish tasks in uniquely mobile ways to help you achieve more. Today, we’re proud to announce the Office app is out of public preview and now generally available worldwide for anyone on Android and iOS phones.

If you use Office, follow the headline link for the details on what’s new.

Interesting to see how the market has shifted. It used to be all about the Mac versus Windows, with Mac Office lagging behind new Office releases. But with iOS gaining such prominence, the new release story is much more about iOS and Android, with both getting simultaneous releases.

UPDATE: According to a few folks weighing on in Twitter, and verified here, there’s no native iPad support for the new Office app. Rather, the optimized for iPad experience is more a zoomed in iPhone app. Not the same thing.

Microsoft adds Dark Mode to Office, makes a video to show it off

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[VIDEO] Follow the headline link for an article posted by Microsoft on the process of designing and implementing Dark Mode for Office 365. Glad to see it, interesting post.

But whether you read the post or not, take a minute to watch Microsoft’s Dark Mode video, embedded in the main Loop post. Eerily beautiful, looks like it was all practical effects, old school.

Bill Gates and his take on Steve Jobs as a wizard

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[VIDEO] This Bill Gates interview came out about a month ago, but I just watched it this morning, thought it was worth sharing.

The whole thing is relatively short, all interesting, but the Steve Jobs bit kicks in at about 2:40 in. I definitely get a sense that Bill held a real reverence for Steve. The video is embedded in the main Loop post.

John Gruber: On Bill Gates’s ‘Greatest Mistake Ever’

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John Gruber starts off with the story about Bill Gates calling out his approach to the smartphone market his greatest mistake ever. But he then moves on to thoughts on how Microsoft, more than any other factor, saved Apple at a time when Apple really needed saving.

Terrific read, great food for thought. Can’t help but wonder if Apple, with Steve Jobs and the iMac, would have still managed the improbable rise without that support from Microsoft.

Voice assistant usage poll: Apple’s Siri tied with Google Assistant, Alexa in third, privacy a priority

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From Microsoft’s 2019 voice report:

  • Siri and Google Assistant are tied at 36%
  • Alexa at 25%
  • Cortana at 19%
  • Other at 1%

Another nugget:

In 2018, we found that 23% of respondents currently own a smart speaker with another 30% planning to purchase . In our research in January 2019, we found that 45% of respondents now currently own a smart speaker with an additional 26% planning to purchase one soon.

You can find the report here. It’s an interesting read.

Microsoft joins $1 trillion market cap club

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A billion dollar valuation makes you a unicorn. What do you call a company with a trillion dollar valuation? A basilisk? A chimera? A manticore? A hippogriff? A pegasus?

None of these seem quite right. How about a kelpie? I kind of like that one.

That aside, I think Apple should run an ad similar to the one Steve Jobs ran so very long ago, welcoming IBM to the fold.

Welcome, Microsoft. Seriously.

Microsoft kills their eBook store (AKA, you own nothing)

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Microsoft:

Starting April 2, 2019, the books category in Microsoft Store will be closing. Unfortunately, this means that starting July 2019 your ebooks will no longer be available to read, but you’ll get a full refund for all book purchases. See below for details.

While you can no longer purchase or acquire additional books from the Microsoft Store, you can continue to read your books until July 2019 when refunds will be processed.

Nothing but props for the way Microsoft is handling this. What more could you possibly want them to do? They can’t compete with Amazon and Apple and they’ve turned out the lights. And given folks their money back, to boot.

But this does remind me that we own less and less as consumers. More and more, we license our music, rather than own MP3s, discs and LPs. No more daily papers, no more loaded bookshelves full of favorites we loan to friends.

No more fully working copies of Photoshop, Illustrator, Word, or Excel. It’s all licensed goods.

Not that this is even remotely likely, if Adobe went out of business, you’d lose access to Creative Cloud. If Microsoft went under, you’d lose access to Office 365.

Imagine if Tesla went under. Would the software in your car continue to work? Probably. But no more updates. And that self driving mode? Without updates? That’d be scary.

Don’t mean to be a curmudgeon here. But Microsoft just took their books back.

Microsoft Excel lets you take pic of table, convert to editable spreadsheet

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Microsoft 365 blog:

With Insert Data from Picture, you can take a picture of a printed data table with your Android device and convert that analog information into an Excel spreadsheet with a single click. New image recognition functionality automatically converts the picture to a fully editable table in Excel, eliminating the need for you to manually enter data. Insert Data from Picture will be available in preview for the Excel Android app soon.

Rolling out for Android now, iOS support coming soon. If you use Excel, this is a great feature. It’ll be interesting to see if similar features emerge for Apple’s Numbers and/or Google Docs.

The Microsoft Band, Health Dashboard officially killed by Apple Watch

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Microsoft Band support page:

Microsoft has announced the end of support for the Microsoft Health Dashboard applications and services. This document contains important dates and information regarding the end of support.

On 5/31/2019, the Microsoft Health Dashboard site will be shut down and Microsoft Band applications will be removed from the Microsoft Store, Google Play, and Apple App store.

If you bought into the Microsoft ecosystem, you can get a refund. Follow the headline link for details.

The Apple Watch, at least currently, really owns this space. Another example of Apple’s strategy of entering a space when they know they have the right product and the product right.

[H/T Friend of the Loop Andrew Leavitt]