Gregg Keizer

Author Archives: Gregg Keizer

Analysts peer into Microsoft’s rumored Windows 10 Cloud

Talk of a new version of Windows 10, dubbed "Cloud," surfaced last week as eagle-eyed bloggers uncovered clues in a recent beta and preliminary code leaked to the Internet.It was unclear what purpose another edition would serve, but because it will apparently run only Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps obtained from Microsoft's store, many assumed that Windows 10 Cloud would play rival to Google's Chrome OS, the browser-based operating system for Chromebook personal computers.[ Related: Fix Windows 10 problems with these free Microsoft tools ] Chromebooks have gained ground in education, where their low cost -- both in device price and in managing those devices -- has been irresistible to many schools. In response, Microsoft joined forces with chip maker Qualcomm to announce that the former's partners would market Windows PCs powered by ARM-based silicon later this year. For its part, Microsoft will craft a version of Windows 10 for ARM chips.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft hasn’t moved the Windows 10 needle in months

Microsoft has been stuck on the 400 million mark for Windows 10 for more than four months, as the head of the company's operating systems group yesterday repeated the milestone when he spoke to developers."We now have over 400 million users all around the world. This is consumers, people in schools, people in the enterprise," Terry Meyerson, who leads all Windows efforts, said at a developer's day Wednesday that was also webcast by the company.[ Related: Windows 10 Redstone: A guide to the builds ] Yesterday's number was first announced by Microsoft in September 2016.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft readies Vista for retirement

Microsoft will stop all support for Windows Vista in two months, ending the problem-plagued operating system's usefulness when it issues final patches on April 11.The OS won't be missed: According to analytics vendor Net Applications, which estimated user share by counting unique visitors to tens of thousands of websites, Vista ran on less than 1% of all personal computers powered by Windows last month. Still, even that small percentage translated into approximately 14 million PCs when using Microsoft's claim that 1.5 billion devices run Windows.Vista was never a break-out hit for Microsoft, as were both its Windows XP predecessor and its successor, Windows 7.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mozilla zaps residue of Firefox OS as it shutters IoT group

Mozilla confirmed that it is shuttering a group tasked with creating an operating system for connected devices, the category pegged as the "Internet of things," or IoT.It was the second defeat in 14 months for Mozilla projects aimed at producing commercial hardware products."We have shifted our internal approach to the IoT opportunity to step back from a focus on launching and scaling commercial products to one focused on research and advanced development," a Mozilla spokesman said in an email reply to questions. The open-source developer will dissolve its connected devices project, and will instead "incorporate our IoT explorations into an increased focus on emerging technologies."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft asks Trump administration for travel ban exceptions

Microsoft today asked the U.S. government to create a mechanism for granting exemptions to last week's executive order on immigration that would meet "the pressing needs of real people," including scores of company employees and their families.In the letter to the heads of the Department of State and Department of Homeland Security, Brad Smith, Microsoft's chief legal officer, asked for exemptions that would apply to people with non-immigrant work visas, student visas or family members. The exceptions would let them come to and go from the U.S. for business trips and family emergencies, those trips not to exceed two weeks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

New Office 365 subscriptions for consumers plunged 62% in 2016

Four years after the introduction of Office 365 for consumers, Microsoft last week said subscriptions to the productivity software had reached nearly 25 million.Subscribers, however, were harder to find last year than in 2015, according to the numbers Microsoft reported: Additions to Office 365's rolls were down 62% in 2016 compared to the year before.During an earnings call with Wall Street analysts last week, CEO Satya Nadella touted revenue increases for the Office products aimed at consumers -- which include Office 365 -- and of the latter said that the company had, "continued to see an increase in ... subscriber base."That it did.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Boutique browser maker to Microsoft: ‘Stop stealing the default’ in Windows 10

The CEO of Vivaldi Technologies, the maker of a niche browser, today blasted Microsoft for forcing Edge, the default browser in Windows 10, onto users."I understand that Microsoft is concerned with the low usage of Edge, but instead of building a better browser, Microsoft is forcing its product onto people in the most unapologetic manner," said Jon von Tetzchner, the co-founder and CEO of Norway-based Vivaldi.Vivaldi's same-named browser reached version 1.0 in April 2016, following more than a year of beta testing. The browser runs on Windows, OS X/macOS and Linux.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft revives free Windows 10 upgrade for SMBs

Microsoft last week resurrected its free Windows 10 upgrade, but aimed the deal at small- and mid-sized businesses that had passed on the earlier offer."They're extending the free upgrade to this segment of customers to help them get to Windows 10," said Wes Miller, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft who specializes in the technology company's complex licensing rules and practices.Like the 12-month upgrade deal that ended last August, the new offer applies to personal computers running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. But the new program is limited to a select group of customers. Only businesses that have signed up for one of the Windows Enterprise subscription plans can take advantage of the free upgrade.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

iPhone 7 Plus accounts for bigger piece of U.S. pie

U.S. iPhone buyers significantly shifted purchase preference to the larger 7 Plus in 2016, boosting the 5.5-in. smartphone's share of all Apple handsets, a research analyst said Thursday."The U.S. market finally likes these bigger phones," said Mike Levin, of Chicago-based Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP).Levin cited CIRP's latest survey, which polled 500 U.S. consumers who had purchased between October and December, to prove his point. Of those who bought a new iPhone in the fourth quarter, 32% selected the iPhone 7 Plus, one of two models introduced in September. Another 40% chose the smaller, less expensive iPhone 7.The iPhone 7 Plus share of the total approached double that of the then-new iPhone 6S Plus the year before: Just 19% of all fourth-quarter iPhones in 2015 were the bigger-screen model.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft labels Windows 7 ‘outdated’ as it stumps for 10

Microsoft on Monday reminded customers running Windows 7 that they have just three years of support remaining, told them that the aged OS was "long outdated" and urged them to upgrade to Windows 10.Windows 7 will exit what Microsoft calls Extended Support on Jan. 14, 2020; at that point, the company will stop all security updates.Microsoft used the three-years-and-counting milestone to simultaneously denigrate Windows 7 and promote its successor. "Windows 7 is based on long-outdated security architectures," said Markus Nitschke, the head of Microsoft Germany, in a post to a German-language company blog, adding that the OS "does not meet the requirements of modern technology, nor the high security requirements of IT departments."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft makes minor concessions on Windows 10 data collection

Microsoft on Tuesday promised that it will dial back diagnostic data collection from Windows 10 devices when users select the "Basic" setting for the controversial harvesting."We've further reduced the data collected at the Basic level," said Terry Myerson, Microsoft's top Windows executive, in a post to a company blog. Myerson did not elaborate on what was to be struck from Basic, the lowest level of diagnostic data collection offered to those running Windows 10 Home or Windows 10 Pro.[To comment on this story, please visit Computerworld's Facebook page.]To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft’s OS supremacy over Apple to end in 2017

Apple will steal a march on Microsoft this year when for the first time this century shipments of devices powered by its operating systems outnumber those running Windows, research firm Gartner said today.In 2017, Apple's combination of iOS and macOS -- the former on iPhones and iPads, the latter on Macs -- will take second place from Windows on the devices shipped during the year. The gap between the two will widen in 2018 and 2019, with Apple ahead of Microsoft both years.According to Gartner, which provided Computerworld with its latest device shipment forecast broken out by operating system, in 2016 Windows powered about 260 million devices of the 2.3 billion shipped during the year. Windows accounted for approximately 11.2% of the total devices, which overwhelmingly ran Google's Android.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Mac’s share falls to five-year low

Apple's Mac share of personal computers worldwide fell to a five-year low in December, mimicking the company's own numbers that have portrayed a four-quarter sales slowdown.According to web analytics vendor Net Applications, Apple's desktop and notebook operating system -- formerly OS X, now macOS -- powered just 6.1% of all personal computers last month, down from 7% a year ago and a peak of 9.6% as recently as April 2016.Net Applications measures operating system user share -- an estimate of the proportion of all personal computer owners who run a device powered by a specific OS -- by counting systems whose browsers reach websites of its clients.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Windows 10 growth ebbs as 2016 ends

Windows 10's global growth slowed in December, but the operating system ended 2016 on more than a quarter of the world's Windows personal computers.But in the U.S. Windows 10 continued to gain ground at a consistent clip. By year's end, it powered more than a third of all Windows PCs there.According to analytics vendor Net Applications, Windows 10 gained six-tenths of a percentage point of user share last month, ending on 24.4% of all personal computers. However, Windows 10 ran 26.6% of all Windows machines: The difference between the user share of all PCs and only those running Windows stems from the fact that Windows powers 92% of all personal computers, not 100%.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft’s browsers may have hit rock bottom

Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge browsers may be near the bottom of their unprecedented crash in user share, measurements published Sunday show.Analytics vendor Net Applications reported that the user share of IE and Edge -- an estimate of the proportion of the world's personal computer owners who ran those browsers -- dropped by seven-tenths of a percentage point in December, falling to a combined 26.2%.That seven-tenths of a point decline was notable because it was less than half that of the browsers' average monthly reductions over the last 12, six and three months, which were 1.9, 1.8 and 1.5 points, respectively. The slowly-shrinking averages over the three different spans supported the idea that IE and Edge may be reaching rock bottom.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why Microsoft added 6 years to Windows Server support

Microsoft will extend support for the Windows Server and SQL Server product lines to keep customers, and ultimately convince them to move their workloads into the cloud, an analyst said today.Last week, Microsoft unveiled "Premium Assurance," which will add up to six more years to the support lifespan of Windows Server 2008 and later, and SQL Server 2008 and later. Enterprises with existing Software Assurance agreements will be able to purchase the additional support starting in March 2017.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

EU approves LinkedIn deal after Microsoft makes concessions

The European Union's regulators on Tuersday approved Microsoft's acquisition of social network LinkedIn on the condition that the U.S. company abide by several minor concessions it made to secure the deal.The conditions were reminiscent of those forced on Microsoft in past antitrust actions, including the settlement between the firm and the U.S. Justice Department early in the century, and a later judgment against Microsoft in the European Union (EU).Microsoft promised it would not require PC makers to install a LinkedIn app or Windows 10 tile on machines sold in the European Economic Area (EEA), the region consisting of EU member states as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. Users will be able to remove any LinkedIn app or tile in Windows, Microsoft said, and pledged that it would not use Windows to nag customers to install a LinkedIn app.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Windows 10 posts user-share gains after multi-month stall

After a two-month stretch of no growth, Windows 10 in November gained user share, powering more than a quarter of all Windows PCs for the first time, data published today showed.According to U.S. metrics vendor Net Applications, Windows 10 gained 1.1 percentage points of user share last month, ending with 23.7% of all personal computers. Windows 10 ran 26.1% of all Windows machines: The difference between the user share of all PCs and only those running Windows stemmed from the fact that Windows powered 91% of all personal computers, not 100%.User share is an estimate of the proportion of all personal computer users who run a device powered by a specific operating system. The analytics company measures OS user share by counting devices whose browsers reach websites of Net Applications' clients.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Firefox recovers from near-death experience

Mozilla's Firefox backed further from the brink last month, and Mac owners continued to abandon Apple's Safari, new data released today showed.Also, last month, Microsoft lost another 23 million Internet Explorer and Edge users.According to analytics vendor Net Applications, Firefox's user share -- an estimate of the proportion of all personal computer users who ran that browser -- climbed eight-tenths of a percentage point last month to finish at 11.9%, its highest mark since December 2015. In the last three months, Firefox has regained 4.2 points, recovering from a near-death experience when in August it recorded a user share of just 7.7%.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft declares summer’s Windows 10 upgrade fit for business

Microsoft today promoted its Windows 10 August upgrade to the Current Branch for Business release track, putting the "Anniversary Update" in the queue for automatic download and installation on enterprise PCs.The move will also set in motion a two-month countdown clock on support for the original mid-2015 version of Windows 10."Windows 10 1607, also known as the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, has been declared as Current Branch for Business (CBB) and is ready for deployment," Michael Niehaus, a director of product marketing, said in a post to a company blog that used similar wording to the first upgrade to the CBB. In April, Microsoft moved the November 2015 upgrade to the corporate delivery track.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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