Pedro Hernandez

iPad owners have propelled Microsoft to the top of the charts on the rival Apple App Store. A week after the March 27 launch of Office for iPad, the company announced that the new apps had amassed millions of downloads. On April 3, the company tweeted, “More than 12 million downloads of Word, Excel, PPT […]

Today, for the first time, Windows XP users are in uncharted territory. As the company has repeatedly warned during the past year, it has officially ended support for the 12-year-old operating system. “Windows XP support has ended,” reads an attention-grabbing headline on a Microsoft Website devoted to Windows XP’s support deadline. “As of April 8, […]

One of the highlights at Build developer conference last week was Cortana, Microsoft’s Bing-powered answer to Apple’s Siri and Google Now for Windows Phone 8.1. Despite a few glitches, Cortana—named after the holographic AI character in the popular “Halo” video game series—was a crowd-pleaser during an April 2 keynote session at the developer conference in […]

Often used to stream live interviews on newscasts, Skype is no stranger to TV. Nonetheless, Microsoft envisions a bigger role for the technology, and the company is sharing those ambitions at the National Association of Broadcasters’ 2014 NAB Show in Las Vegas. With the conference as a backdrop, Microsoft announced Skype TX, software that enables […]

Microsoft is gearing up for the release of Kinect for Windows v2, an updated version of the motion-sensing peripheral that ships with the Xbox One. At the Build developer conference in San Francisco, the company demonstrated some of the capabilities that the new sensor will provide when it launches this summer in a bid to […]

The Windows XP era is drawing to a close in just a few days, and businesses that don’t move quickly to transition from the operating system are flirting with disaster, warn industry experts. On April 8, Microsoft is cutting off support for the 12-year-old desktop OS, meaning that the company will no longer issue security […]

Included with the many mobile-centric features announced for Windows 8.1 Update and Windows Phone 8.1 during Microsoft’s Build conference in San Francisco were a number of enhancements that allow organizations to balance mobile work styles with enterprise-grade user management. In a session headed by Erwin Visser, general manager of Windows and Windows Phone, the company […]

April 8 is a big day for Microsoft. Not only is the company saying good-bye to Windows XP, the date will also mark the release of the Windows 8.1 Update, announced Microsoft Corporate Vice President Joe Belfiore at the Build developer conference in San Francisco on April 2. Developers get to test the software now. […]

Google and Amazon sparked an “insane” cloud services price war last week, sending the cost of storing data and placing computing workloads on their respective clouds plummeting. Google cut the cost of its services by 32 percent to 85 percent, depending on the offering, while Amazon announced its “42nd price reduction since 2008” in its […]

When Satya Nadella took over for Steve Ballmer as CEO of Microsoft on Feb. 4, he left a pretty big vacancy. Now that spot is filled. Nadella announced in a March 31 email to Microsoft staffers that Scott Guthrie, who had been acting as the Cloud and Enterprise chief for the company, has been promoted […]

In a sign that Kinect for Windows v2 is nearing release, Microsoft has published images on its Website of what the final hardware will look like. At first glance, the new sensor looks very similar to the Kinect that ships with the Xbox One. Microsoft made the controversial decision last year to bundle the Kinect, […]

Microsoft has launched a new product called Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS), the software giant’s stab at the booming market for business mobile device management solutions. During his first major press event after being named CEO, Satya Nadella hinted that Microsoft had more to show off than the long-awaited Office for iPad. Delivering a speech laced […]