Tag Archives: Microsoft

Skype

Skype app for iPhone due out from Microsoft today

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But years of disappointment with the iPhone Skype app have undoubtedly led many users to switch to other options long ago

Microsoft promises that a revamped Skype app for the iPhone will be significantly better than the current version, although it may be too late for users who have long since switched to other options.

Microsoft is hoping users will be lured back, saying that version 5.0 of the IM, audio/video communications and IP telephony app, due out Thursday, has been rebuilt from the ground up. The company pledges it is faster and more stable than the old version, and that its user interface has been redesigned to make it simpler and more fluid.

“We’re excited for you to see how the new app has been redesigned to put your conversations first, providing you with a smoother, leaner and more integrated experience,” wrote Microsoft official Gary Wong in a blog post.

Microsoft is also promising that Skype 5.0 for iPhone will stay synchronized with users’ other instances of Skype on other platforms, so that, for example, read messages won’t appear elsewhere as unread, a major complaint with the previous version of the app.

Last week, Microsoft gave a sneak peek at some of the app’s major enhancements, including smoother scrolling among screens and the ability to send messages and photos to users who are offline.

Apparently, Microsoft plans to speed up the pace of improvements for the app going forward. “Skype 5.0 for iPhone is just the beginning of a new Skype experience on iPhone,” Wong wrote, a statement that’s in line with the company’s strategic shift under new CEO Satya Nadella to make sure its software products work well on non-Windows platforms.

Skype 5.0 for iPhone requires iOS 7 or a later version. An iPad edition of the app is in the works.

 


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Tech

Surface Pro 3 deep-dive review: Has Microsoft finally got it right?

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The latest Windows 8 device is supposed to work as both a tablet and a laptop. After working with it for a week, does our reviewer agree?

There’s a saying about Microsoft that I’ve heard for a long time: It takes three tries for the company to get something right. For example, it wasn’t until Windows reached version 3.0 that the operating system really took off, and it was only when Word 3.0 hit that the word processor became a market standard.

But is this also true about the Surface Pro 3, the third iteration of Microsoft’s tablet line? Microsoft touts the Surface Pro 3 as a device that, when equipped with an added Surface Pro Type Cover, does double-duty as a productivity tablet and a true laptop.

So how is the Surface Pro 3 as a laptop — or a tablet? To test that out, I carried it around and used it, forgoing the MacBook Air that I typically use when I work away from my desk. It was an ideal test case, because Microsoft has clearly aimed the Surface Pro 3 at the MacBook Air. In fact, on Microsoft’s Surface website, there’s an entire section devoted to comparing the specs of the Surface Pro 3 to the Air.

Microsoft Surface Pro 3
I had previously tried to use its predecessor, the Surface Pro 2, as a primary laptop, and found it impossible to do. But the Surface Pro 3 was generally up to the task, although with some drawbacks.

A look at the specs
Before I go into details about my experience with the Surface Pro 3, let’s take a look at its basic specs.

In this area, it certainly seems as if Microsoft got it right this time. The Surface Pro 3 has a 12-in. display, 40% larger than the Surface Pro 2’s 10.6-in. screen. And it’s quite spectacular, with 2160 x 1440 resolution and a 3:2 aspect ratio — more like a traditional computer’s than the Surface Pro 2’s aspect ratio of 16:9.

Despite the larger screen, the Surface Pro 3 is thinner and lighter than the Surface Pro 2 — it’s 0.36 in. deep and weighs 1.76 lb., compared to the Surface Pro 2’s depth of 0.53 in. and weight of 2 lb. That may not sound like much of a difference, but in use, it really matters (as I explain later in this review). Depending on the model you choose, the device is powered by an Intel i3, i5 or i7 processor. Storage ranges from 64GB up to 512GB, and RAM from 4GB to 8GB.

There’s the usual complement of ports, including a USB 3.0 port, microSD card reader and mini DisplayPort. There are front- and back-facing 5-megapixel cameras capable of 1080p video. And it comes with an interesting stylus; more about that later.

The device connects via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth; I found that the Surface Pro 3’s Wi-Fi connection is a very good one. Not only did it always connect well in public places such coffee shops, it even did well in what is often a dead zone in my house, an upstairs room fronting the street in which my home network connection is always iffy. In the worst area in my home, where my iPhone gets no Wi-Fi and my MacBook Air gets it intermittently, the Surface always maintained its connection, albeit a slow one.

One especially useful feature is the kickstand, which comes standard as part of the Surface Pro 3. It has been considerably improved — you are no longer limited to a few pre-set angles; instead, you can set it to any angle between zero and 150 degrees, just as you can position the screen of a laptop.

And how much will all this cost? Even though it’s a considerably better device than the Surface Pro 2, Microsoft has dropped the price of the Surface Pro 3 by $100, so it starts at $799. That gets you a device with an i3 processor, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. If you want to go whole hog, $1,949 buys you a Surface Pro 3 with an i7 processor, 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.

Accessories include a $200 docking station with a keyboard port, a DisplayPort, an audio input/output jack, an Ethernet port, one USB 3.0 port and three USB 2.0 ports. There’s also a $40 Ethernet adapter available. And, of course, there’s the Surface Pro Type Cover, which does double-duty as a cover and keyboard, and which costs an additional $130. (More on that later.)
An excellent display

One of the biggest problems I had with the previous-gen Surface Pro 2 as a laptop was its screen. At 10.6 in., there simply wasn’t enough screen real estate for me to get real work done on spreadsheets or Word documents. And while its 16:9 aspect ratio was fine for watching movies and videos, it required far too much side-to-side scrolling to be suitable for work.

The Surface Pro 3 improves on that dramatically. I found the 12-in. screen to be large enough to get whatever work I needed done, and the 3:2 aspect ratio was more comfortable than the 16:9 ratio of the Surface Pro 2. In fact, I discovered that 12 in. is quite roomy enough for real work. I had expected that it would feel cramped compared to my MacBook Air’s 13.3-in. screen. But that wasn’t the case at all — because of its 2160 x 1440 resolution, I was able to fit quite a bit on it.

That high resolution comes at a price, though. Text and images were at times too small to be read comfortably. Zoom capabilities solved the problem, but not always. That’s because, although Windows 8 Store apps (previously called Metro apps) can be zoomed in and out, not all desktop apps work with zoom. That was problematic at times.

I found that the SugarSync desktop client, for example, was barely usable because of how small the type was. True, I could always lower the desktop resolution to make it more readable, but when I did that, less space was available on screen for other apps. In addition, the SugarSync Windows 8 Store app lacked some of the most basic capabilities of the desktop app, so it wasn’t a good alternative.

In other words, using desktop apps can be a crapshoot with the 12-in. screen.

The new Type Cover
The new Surface Pro Type Cover, which doubles as a cover and a keyboard, is a big improvement over the previous version.

To begin with, I always had an issue with the touchpad on the Surface Pro 2’s Type Cover: It was small and not recessed, difficult to find and equally difficult to use. At times I found myself accidentally moving the cursor because it was hard to know where the touchpad stopped and the bottom of the keyboard began. And when I did find the touchpad, it was too unresponsive to be particularly useful. I resorted to a Bluetooth mouse.

Not so with the new keyboard. The touchpad is recessed, so it’s easy to find; I never had to fumble for it. Because the touchpad is larger (and felt more responsive), I could more easily control the cursor. It’s a small change, but a very big improvement, so much so that I no longer had to bring a Bluetooth mouse with me to get work done.

In addition, the Type Cover now has a magnetic hinge that raises the keyboard to a slight angle. This is well-suited for working with the Surface Pro 3 on your lap, but I also found it useful on a desk or table top, because I favor slightly angled keyboards. (I’m a fast touch typist and I like to pound a bit on the keyboard; with the angled keyboard, I’m no longer drumming directly on the table.) It’s another example of how a small engineering change has made a big difference in the Surface Pro 3’s usability.

Is it better than the 13.3-in. MacBook Air keyboard? Not for me. Having some separation between keys, as you have on the MacBook Air but not on the Surface Pro 3, allows me to type more quickly and make fewer mistakes. And because it’s a “real” keyboard, the Air’s keys have more give and feedback than do the Surface Pro’s.
The Surface Pro 3 as a tablet

The Surface Pro 3 may do double-duty as a laptop, but its basic design is as a tablet. And there, despite some very nice hardware, it falls short.

As mentioned before, the 12-in. screen is nothing short of spectacular, with vivid, crisp images and no noticeable lag or other issues with motion. No matter what movie or TV show I played on it, I found myself wanting to watch more. The speakers, as with the previous Surface Pro, are excellent, with Dolby stereo audio so realistic that it feels as if the sound is coming from the room itself, not from the speakers.

Microsoft says the speakers are 45% more powerful than the previous Surface Pro, but I never thought the previous speakers had a problem with volume, so this claim may or may not be meaningful. As a media-consumption tablet, it’s stellar — much superior to my iPad or Google Nexus 7.

That large screen also makes a difference when browsing the Web, offering a full experience, rather than the mobile one you get on smaller tablets. For example, when you’re using mapping apps, it provides far more detail and context than do smaller-sized tablets.

And the large screen also makes the Surface Pro 3 useful as a productivity tablet. For example, when I was using Microsoft Office, not only could I see more of any document onscreen, but I could touch type on the virtual keyboard because of the larger keys, something not possible on smaller tablets.

But I found the large screen to also be somewhat of a mixed blessing. Because of its size, it’s bulky to carry compared to a 10-in. iPad, and its 1.76 lb. is still significantly heavier than the 1-lb. iPad Air.

However, the real shortcoming with the Surface Pro 3 as a tablet is its dearth of apps compared to the iOS and Android platforms — as I’ll discuss in a moment.
Styling with the stylus

The Surface Pro comes with something that most competing tablets don’t have — a stylus. The Surface Pro 3 has gotten a stylus makeover, to good effect. The old stylus (manufactured by Wacom) was black plastic and felt somewhat cheap, and never felt quite right in my hand. The new one (now built by N-Trig) is made of polished aluminum, and not only looks better, but is heavier and has a far more pleasing and substantial feel to it.

It’s got two buttons, so offers more flexibility, depending on the app you’re using it with — for example, in OneNote you can hold down one of the buttons and the pen acts as an eraser. The two buttons also do double-duty as mouse buttons. All in all, when I used it, I felt as if I really were using a pen, and a nice one at that, rather than just a tube made of plastic.

The stylus no longer attaches to the place where the power cord goes, as it had in the Surface Pro 2. That’s both good and bad. It’s good because in the past if you wanted to charge the Surface Pro, you had to first take out the stylus. But it’s bad because there’s now no place on the device itself to attach the stylus. If you buy a Type Cover, there’s a small loop on the side for tucking in the stylus, but even then, I worry whether the holder will fray and tear over the long term. (If you lose it, a new stylus will cost you $50.)

Before trying out the Surface Pro 3’s stylus, I was never much of a stylus fan. But after spending time with it, I’m a believer, particularly for note taking. The combination of OneNote (which is included) plus the stylus is a potent duo. Not only can you hand-write notes and draw with it, but the Surface Pro also has handwriting recognition. So instead of using the virtual keyboard, you can write by hand using the stylus, and the tablet translates that into text. My handwriting is exceedingly bad, but when I slowed down and wrote carefully, it rarely made a mistake. Even when I wrote quickly and sloppily, it did better than I expected, making a mistake only about every fourth word or so.

I even wrote part of this review using the stylus in Word, although it’s not an experience I would care to do again, because it requires slow and careful handwriting. Still, for jotting down notes, it’s a winner.

For drawing, it’s good as well. It’s pressure sensitive — press the pen on the screen lightly and it draws a light line; press it harder as you draw and the line thickens. Microsoft claims that the stylus recognizes 256 different levels of pressure. Being no artist, I can’t vouch for whether it’s really that sensitive, but when used with an art program such as ArtRage 4, I found it quite responsive. There is also little or no lag between pressing and moving the pen and a line appearing. It feels as natural as using a real pen.

The upshot? The pen is a true productivity tool, and not a toy or an afterthought. Professionals on the go who want a tablet with pen input would do well to consider the Surface Pro 3.
The app gap

So what’s not to like about the Surface Pro 3? In a word, apps — or more precisely, the lack of them.

The Windows Store ecosystem doesn’t come close to either iOS or Android when it comes to app choice. For example, when I did a quick search, some of the popular apps that were missing included eTrade, the Chase and Citibank banking apps, Google Maps, LinkedIn, Spotify, Pinterest, Yelp, Sonos and others.

At a Glance
Surface Pro 3
Microsoft
Starting price: $799
Pros: Excellent 12-in. screen, very good keyboard cover, useful stylus and handwriting recognition, lightweight
Cons: Expensive, Windows 8 lacks many apps, keyboard cover costs $130 extra

And even when there is a desktop app and a Windows Store app for the same application, the Windows Store app typically lacks many of the important features of the desktop one. For example, the Windows Store note-taking Evernote app, called Evernote Touch, doesn’t include all of the features that the desktop version does, including good browsing and searching capabilities. In fact, even Evernote itself suggests that Evernote Touch users also install the Evernote desktop app to get “the full-featured Evernote Desktop.”

In short, the hardware is willing, but the apps are weak.
The bottom line
Microsoft touts the Surface Pro 3 as a tablet that does double-duty as a laptop and, if you buy the Surface Pro Touch Cover, what the company says is generally true. Still, the cover still isn’t as good as a full-blown laptop keyboard. At 12 in., the Surface Pro 3 has enough screen real estate so that it’s a real laptop, not a tablet pretending to be one. At 1.75 pounds, it’s ultraportable, although a bit on the heavy side for a tablet.

As a tablet, there’s still a shortage of apps, so if it’s apps you’re after, you won’t be after the Surface Pro 3. But as a productivity tablet it shines because of its stylus and large screen.

What you think about the Surface Pro 3’s price will depend on how you plan to use the machine. If you look at it as a traditional tablet, you’ll be disappointed. At a starting price of $799, this is a very expensive tablet, especially if you compare it to the iPad Air’s starting price of $499.

However, if you think of the Surface Pro as a laptop plus tablet, things look better. You’ll have to buy a Surface Pro Type Cover for $130, putting the total starting price at $930. That’s not a bad price for a premium laptop that doubles as a tablet — in fact, it’s just about the same price as the $899 starting price for the 11-in. MacBook Air, yet gives you more display real estate, a touch screen and a pen. On the other hand, the MacBook Air’s keyboard is superior to the one on the SurfacePro Type Cover.

So will this be the tablet-laptop combo that convinces you to use Windows 8 if you’re not already committed to it? No. But this machine shows that a tablet-laptop combo is not as much of a Rube Goldberg mashup as you might have imagined. It even makes sense.

With each iteration, the Surface line improves. Microsoft still hasn’t quite nailed it yet. But it’s getting close. If it closes the app gap, the Surface Pro 3 could be a big winner.

 

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Windows XP hack resurrects patches for retired OS

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But security researcher who tried the hack isn’t sure the fixes will actually keep exploits at bay

A simple hack of Windows XP tricks Microsoft’s update service into delivering patches intended for a close cousin of the aged OS, potentially extending support for some components until 2019, a security researcher confirmed today.

What’s unclear is whether those patches actually protect a Windows XP PC against cyber criminals’ exploits.

The hack, which has circulated since last week — first on a German-language discussion forum, then elsewhere as word spread — fools Microsoft’s Windows Update service into believing that the PC is actually running a close relation of XP, called “Windows Embedded POSReady 2009.”

Unlike Windows XP, which was retired from security support April 8 and no longer receives patches, Embedded POSReady 2009 is due patches until April 9, 2019.

As its name implies, POSReady 2009 is used as the OS for devices such as cash registers — aka point-of-sale systems — and ATMs. Because it’s based on Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), the last supported version of the 13-year-old OS, its security patches are a superset of those that would have been shipped to XP users if support was still in place. Many of POSReady 2009’s patches are similar, if not identical, to those still offered to enterprises and governments that have paid Microsoft for post-retirement XP support.

Jerome Segura, a senior security researcher at Malwarebytes, an anti-malware software vendor, tried out the hack and came away impressed.

“The system is stable, no crashes, no blue screens,” Segura said in an interview, talking about the Windows XP virtual machine whose updates he resurrected with the hack. “I saw no warnings or error messages when I applied patches for .Net and Internet Explorer 8.”

The Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) update Segura applied appeared to be the same one Microsoft released May 13 for other versions of Windows, including POSReady 2009, but did not deliver to Windows XP.

But although he has run the hacked XP for several days now without any noticeable problems, he wasn’t willing to give the trick a passing grade.

“[POSReady 2009] is not Windows XP, so we don’t know if its patches fully protect XP customers,” Segura said. “From an exploit point of view, when those vulnerabilities are exploited in the wild, will this patch protect PCs or will they be infected? That would be the ultimate proof.”

Microsoft, not surprisingly, took a dim view of the hack.

“We recently became aware of a hack that purportedly aims to provide security updates to Windows XP customers,” a company spokesperson said in an email. “The security updates that could be installed are intended for Windows Embedded and Windows Server 2003 customers and do not fully protect Windows XP customers. Windows XP customers also run a significant risk of functionality issues with their machines if they install these updates, as they are not tested against Windows XP.”

 

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Open sources software’s are expensive than Microsoft

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Microsoft cheaper to use than open source software, UK CIO says

British government says every time they compare FOSS to MSFT, Redmond wins.

 

A UK government CIO says that every time government citizens evaluate open source and Microsoft products, Microsoft products forever come out cheaper in the long run.

 

Jos Creese, CIO of the Hampshire County Council, told Britain’s “Computing” publication that part of the cause is that most staff are already familiar with Microsoft products and that Microsoft has been flexible and more helpful.

 

“Microsoft has been flexible and obliging in the means we apply their products to progress the action of our frontline services, and this helps to de-risk ongoing cost,” he told the publication. “The tip is that the true charge is in the totality cost of ownership and exploitation, not just the license cost.”

 

Creese went on to say he didn’t have a particular bias about open source over Microsoft, but proprietary solutions from Microsoft or any other commercial software vendor “need to justify themselves and to work doubly hard to have flexible business models to help us further our aims.”

 

He approved that there are troubles on together sides. In some cases, central government has developed an undue dependence on a few big suppliers, which makes it hard to be confident about getting the best value out of the deal.

 

On the other hand, he is leery of depending on a small firm, and Red Hat aside, there aren’t that many large, economically hard firms in open source like Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft. Smaller firms often offer the greatest innovation, but there is a risk in agreeing to a significant deal with a smaller player.

 

“There’s a huge dependency for a large organization using a small organization. [You need] to be mindful of the risk that they can’t handle the scale and complexity, or that the product may need adaptation to work with our infrastructure,” said Creese.

 

I’ve heard this argue before. Open source is cheaper in gaining costs not easy to support over the long run. Part of it is FOSS’s DIY ethos, and bless you guys for being able to debug and recompile a complete app or distro of Linux, but not everyone is that smart.

 

The extra problem is the lack of support from vendors or third parties. IBM has done what no one else has the power to do. 20 after Linus first tossed his creation on the Internet for all to use, we still don’t have an open source equivalent to Microsoft or Oracle. Don’t say that’s a good thing because that’s only seeing it from one side. Business users will demand support levels that FOSS vendors can’t provide. That’s why we have yet to see an open source Oracle.

 

The part that saddens me is that reading Creese’s interview makes it clear he has more of a clue about technology than pretty much anyone we have in office on this side of the pond.
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Microsoft suspends Windows 8.1 Update release to businesses

Bug prompts Microsoft to halt update’s delivery through WSUS, the standard enterprise update service

Microsoft on Tuesday suspended serving Windows 8.1 Update to businesses that rely on WSUS (Windows Server Update Services), saying that a bug would prevent devices from recognizing future updates.

WSUS is Microsoft’s standard corporate update service and is used by IT staffs to manage the distribution of bug fixes, security patches and other updates to Windows devices on a company’s network.

“There is a known issue which causes some PCs updated with the Windows 8.1 Update to stop scanning against Windows Server Update Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 (WSUS 3.0 SP2 or WSUS 3.2) servers which are configured to use SSL and have not enabled TLS 1.2,” Microsoft wrote on its WSUS blog.

Microsoft released Windows 8.1 Update on Tuesday. The refresh was a follow-on to last October’s Windows 8.1, which in turn was a major update to 2012’s Windows 8.

The problem affected WSUS 3.2 running on Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2, Windows Server 2008 SP2, and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 when HTTPS and SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) were enabled but TLS 1.2 was not.

Until the Redmond, Wash., company comes up with a fix, customers that have already deployed Windows 8.1 Update can apply workarounds — enable TLS 1.2 or disable HTTPS — that will let PCs recognize future WSUS-delivered updates.

It’s unclear how many businesses were affected, and Microsoft did not provide an estimate. But neither HTTPS nor TLS 1.2 are enabled by default on WSUS.

Even so, Microsoft halted Windows 8.1 Update’s rollout via WSUS.

“Microsoft plans to issue an update as soon as possible that will correct the issue and restore the proper behavior for Windows 8.1 Update scanning against all supported WSUS configurations,” Microsoft said. “Until that time, we are temporarily suspending the distribution of the Windows 8.1 Update to WSUS servers.”

Microsoft has stumbled over updates numerous times in the past 12 months. Last September, Microsoft shipped several flawed updates, including one that emptied Outlook 2013’s folder pane and others that repeatedly demanded customers install them even after they had been deployed. In the months before that, Microsoft yanked an Exchange security update, admitting it had not properly tested the patches, and urged Windows 7 users to uninstall an update that crippled PCs with the infamous “Blue Screen of Death.”

Microsoft did not hint at a timetable for fixing the bug, but discouraged customers who rely on WSUS from manually deploying Windows 8.1 Update, which is also available from Windows Update, MSDN (Microsoft Developers Network) and the Microsoft download center.

“We recommend that you suspend deployment of this update in your organization until we release the update that resolves this issue,” Microsoft said.

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Microsoft scraps ‘Windows-first’ practice, puts Office on iPad before Surface

New CEO Satya Nadella comes out swinging on ‘cloud first, mobile first’ strategy

As expected, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella today hosted a press conference where the company unveiled Office for iPad, breaking with its past practice of protecting Windows by first launching software on its own operating system.

CEO Satya Nadella expounded on Microsoft’s ‘cloud first, mobile first’ strategy today as his company unveiled Office for iPad as proof of its new platform-agnosticism.

Three all-touch core apps — Word, Excel and PowerPoint — have been seeded to Apple’s App Store and are available now.

The sales model for the new apps is different than past Microsoft efforts. The Office apps can be used by anyone free of charge to view documents and present slideshows. But to create new content or documents, or edit existing ones, customers must have an active subscription to Office 365.

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Microsoft labeled it a “freemium” business model, the term used for free apps that generate revenue by in-app purchases.

Today’s announcement put an end to years of speculation about whether, and if so when, the company would trash its strategy of linking the suite with Windows in an effort to bolster the latter’s chances on tablets. It also reversed the path that ex-CEO Steve Ballmer laid out last October, when for the first time he acknowledged an edition for the iPad but said it would appear only after a true touch-enabled version had launched for Windows tablets.

It also marked the first time in memory that Microsoft dealt a major product to an OS rival of its own Windows.

“Microsoft is giving users what they want,” Carolina Milanesi, strategic insight director of Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, said in an interview, referring to long-made customer demands that they be able to run Office on any of the devices they owned, even those running a Windows rival OS. “The connection to Office 365 was also interesting in that this puts users within Microsoft’s ecosystem at some point.”

Prior to today, Microsoft had released minimalist editions of Office, dubbed “Office Mobile,” for the iPhone and Android smartphones in June and July 2013, respectively. Originally, the iPhone and Android Office Mobile apps required an Office 365 subscription; as of today, they were turned into free apps for home use, although an Office 365 plan is still needed for commercial use.

Talk of Office on the iPad first heated up in December 2011, when the now-defunct The Daily reported Microsoft was working on the suite, and added that the software would be priced at $10 per app. Two months later, the same publication claimed it had seen a prototype and that Office was only weeks from release.

That talk continued, on and off, for more than two years, but Microsoft stuck to its Windows-first strategy. Analysts who dissected Microsoft’s moves believed that the company refused to support the iPad in the hope that Office would jumpstart sales of Windows-powered tablets.

Office’s tie with Windows had been fiercely debated inside Microsoft, but until today, operating system-first advocates had won out. But slowing sales of Windows PCs — last year, the personal computer industry contracted by about 10% — and the continued struggles gaining meaningful ground in tablets pointed out the folly of that strategy, outsiders argued.

Some went so far as to call Windows-first a flop.

Microsoft has long hewed to that strategy: The desktop version of Office has always debuted on Windows, for example, with a refresh for Apple’s OS X arriving months or even more than a year later.

Microsoft today added free Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps for the iPad to the existing OneNote.

On his first day on the job, however, Nadella hinted at change when he said Microsoft’s mission was to be “cloud first, mobile first,” a signal, said analysts, that he understood the importance of pushing the company’s software and services onto as many platforms as possible.

Nadella elaborated on that today, saying that the “cloud first, mobile first” strategy will “drive everything we talk about today, and going forward. We will empower people to be productive and do more on all their devices. We will provide the applications and services that empower every user — that’s Job One.”

Like Office Mobile on iOS and Android, Office for iPad was tied to Microsoft’s software-by-subscription Office 365.

Although the new Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps can be used free of charge to view documents and spreadsheets, and present PowerPoint slideshows, they allow document creation and editing only if the user has an active Office 365 subscription. Those subscriptions range from the consumer-grade $70-per-year Office 365 Personal to a blizzard of business plans starting at $150 per user per year and climbing to $264 per user per year.

Moorhead applauded the licensing model. “It’s very simple. Unlike pages of requirements that I’m used to seeing from Microsoft to use their products, if you have Office 365, you can use Office for iPad. That’s it,” Moorhead said.

He also thought that the freemium approach to Office for iPad is the right move. “They’ve just pretty much guaranteed that if you’re presenting on an iPad you will be using their apps,” said Moorhead of PowerPoint.

Moorhead cited the fidelity claims made by Julie White, a general manager for the Office technical marketing team, who spent about half the event’s time demonstrating Office for iPad and other software, as another huge advantage for Microsoft. “They’re saying 100% document compatibility [with Office on other platforms], so you won’t have to convert a presentation to a PDF,” Moorhead added.

Document fidelity issues have plagued Office competitors for decades, and even the best of today’s alternatives cannot always display the exact formatting of an Office-generated document, spreadsheet or presentation.

Both Milanesi and Moorhead were also impressed by the strategy that Nadella outlined, which went beyond the immediate launch of Office for iPad.

“I think [Satya Nadella] did a great job today,” said Milanesi. “For the first time I actually see a strategy [emphasis in original].

“Clearly there’s more to come,” Milanesi said. “It was almost as if Office on iPad was not really that important, but they just wanted to get [its release] out of way so they could show that there’s more they bring to the plate.”

That “more” Milanesi referred to included talk by Nadella and White of new enterprise-grade, multiple-device management software, the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS).

“With the management suite and Office 365 and single sign-on for developers, Microsoft is really doing something that others cannot do,” Milanesi said. “They made it clear that Microsoft wants to be [enterprises’] key partner going forward.”

Moorhead strongly agreed. “The extension of the devices and services strategy to pull together these disparate technologies, including mobile, managing those devices, authenticating users for services, is something Microsoft can win with. It’s a good strategy,” Moorhead said.

“This was the proof point of delivering on the devices and services strategy,” Moorhead concluded. “And that strategy is definitely paying off.”

Office for iPad can be downloaded from Apple’s App Store. The three apps range in size from 215MB (for PowerPoint) to 259MB (for Word), and require iOS 7 or later.

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The greatest security story never told — how Microsoft’s SDL saved Windows

‘We actually had to bus in engineers.’

Microsoft has launched a new website to “tell the untold story” of something it believes changed the history of Windows security and indeed Microsoft itself – the Software Development Lifecycle or plain ‘SDL’ for short.

For those who have never heard of the SDL, or don’t have the remotest idea why it might be important, the new site offers some refreshingly candid insights to change their minds.

Without buying into the hype, the SDL can still fairly be described as the single initiative that saved Redmond’s bacon at a moment of huge uncertainty in 2002 and 2003. Featuring video interviews with some of its instigators and protagonists, the new site offers outsiders a summary of how and why Microsoft decided to stop being a software firm and become a software and security firm in order to battle the malware that was suddenly smashing into its software.

Few outside the firm knew of the crisis unfolding inside its campus but not everyone was surprised. Microsoft now traces the moment the penny dropped to the early hours of a summer morning in 2001, only weeks before it was due to launch Windows XP to OEMs.

“It was 2 a.m. on Saturday, July 13, 2001, when Microsoft’s then head of security response, Steve Lipner, awoke to a call from cybersecurity specialist Russ Cooper. Lipner was told a nasty piece of malware called “Code Red” was spreading at an astonishing rate. Code Red was a worm a malicious computer program that spreads quickly by copying itself to other computers across the Internet. And it was vicious.”

Others arrived in the following two years; the Blaster worm, Nimda, Code Red II, MyDoom, Sasser, and on and on. To a world and a Microsoft not used to the notion of malware being a regular occurrence, this was all a big shock.

By January 2002, with attacks on its baby XP humbling the biggest software firm on earth, Bill Gates sent his famous Trustworthy Computing (TwC) memo to everyone at Microsoft. From now on, security was going to be at the root of everything and so help us God.

That turned into the SDL, and it was given priority one to the extent that it took over the whole 8,500-person Windows development team for much of that year and the next. Its ambition was to completely change the way Microsoft made software so that as few programming errors were made that had to be fixed once customers were involved; “security could not continue to be a retroactive exercise.”

Users had also started complaining. Loudly.

“I remember at one point our local telephone network struggled to keep up with the volume of calls we were getting. We actually had to bus in engineers,” the site quotes its security VP Matt Thomlinson as saying.

The fruit of the SDL was XP’s first Service Pack in 2002, followed up by the even more fundamental security overhaul of SP2 in 2004. By then, XP had been equipped with a software firewall, an almost unthinkable feature for an OS three years eariler.

It’s arguable that despite the undoubted gains of the SDL since then, that the firm has yet to fully recover from the trauma of the period. Windows development has seemed less and less certain ever since, following up XP with the flawed Vista and more recent Windows 8 near-debacle. Microsoft still does operating systems but it’s not clear that all its users do.

Still, the SDL programme has proved hugely influential even if it’s not well known outside tech circles. It is now baked into everything. It has also influenced many other software houses and many have versions of the SDL of their own, many modelled on Microsoft’s published framework on how to run secure development.

Whatever mis-steps Microsoft has made in the last decade, security has turned into a bit of a success story right down to the firm’s pioneering and hugely important Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) that conducts the forensics necessary to track down the people who write malware in their caves. Both the SDL and DCU are seen as world leaders.

So let’s hear of for Redmond, the software giant that launched an operating system years behind the criminals but somehow clawed itself back from disaster. Most other firms would have wilted but somehow Gates’s memo rallied the cubicle army.

 

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Microsoft

Hey Microsoft, where’s the next Mac Office?

Microsoft’s suite for OS X is overdue when compared to past development benchmarks

Where is the next Office for the Mac?

Microsoft is behind the schedule it used for the last several iterations, and has not breathed a word about its Mac intentions. In fact, the blog kept by the California-based development team that works on Office for Mac hasn’t been updated since Aug. 5, 2013, more than seven months ago.

That’s what those in the trade call stealth mode.
The last time Microsoft launched a new Office for OS X was October 2011, when it rolled out Office for Mac 2011. Prior to that, Microsoft issued upgrades in January 2008 (Office for Mac 2008), May 2004 (Office for Mac 2004) and November 2001 (Office v. X).

The average spread between Office for Mac editions — going back as far as Office v. X — has been 1,088 days. But as of Thursday, it had been 1,213 days since the launch of Office for Mac 2011.

Historically, Microsoft has hewn to a three-year development cycle for both Office on the Mac and the far-more-popular Office suite for Windows, with a new version of the former following the newest of the latter by several months at a minimum.

Office for Mac 2011, for instance, followed Office 2010 on Windows by 134 days, or just over four months. Office for Mac 2008, however, came 351 days, or nearly a year, after the debut of its Windows sibling, Office 2007. But even the longer lag time of the latter has now been exceeded: Office 2013 for Windows launched Jan. 29, 2013, 13 months ago.

The development team responsible for Office on the Mac, dubbed Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU), requires the lag time to incorporate changes that other engineering groups made to the Windows predecessor. The Windows and OS X Office development teams don’t work in tandem, but in sequence, with Windows taking the lead and OS X following.

What odd is Microsoft’s silence about the next Office for the Mac. The last cycle — for Office for Mac 2011 — the company was comparatively loquacious, announcing its intentions to craft the suite about 14 months before shipping the software, and it gave semi-regular updates on its MacBU blog.

News of the next Office for Mac? Nothing.
There’s no chance that Microsoft will pull Office for the Mac from its portfolio: The company has touted Office 365, the rent-not-own subscription plans for both consumers and businesses, as providing up to five licenses for either Windows or OS X editions of the suites’ desktop applications. To dump the Mac suite, even though its sales are Lilliputian in comparison to that for Windows, would be an embarrassment at least, and seen as a betrayal by those who committed to subscriptions rather than buy traditional “perpetual” licenses.

Still, Microsoft looks out over a different landscape than 40 months ago when it launched Office for Mac 2011.

Last fall, Apple set free its rival suite, iWork, giving away the three OS X applications of Pages, Numbers and Keynote to every new Mac buyer. In households — but not businesses — with multiple Macs, that effectively means all the machines can be equipped with iWork for free.

How Microsoft will deal with a free iWork is unknown. Currently, Microsoft charges $140 for the single-license Home & Student edition, $220 for a one-license copy of Home & Business, and $100 annually for an Office 365 subscription. Even that third option, with its five licenses, may seem pricy to Mac owners used to the free iWork and satisfied with its fewer features.

Also important is the ticking clock on Office for Mac 2011.
Microsoft supports Mac editions of Office for just five years, half the support lifecycle of the Windows’ suite, and Office for Mac 2011’s retirement date is not that far away: Jan. 12, 2016. Microsoft could extend support for Office for Mac 2011 — it did that for Office for Mac 2004 — but if it does not, it needs to provide a replacement soon to give customers time to migrate.

In the past, Microsoft has used the Macworld trade show and conference to demo its upcoming Office for Mac. This year, Macworld, now called “Macworld/iWorld,” is slated to run March 27-29 in San Francisco. (The Macworld/iWorld conference is run by IDG, the parent company of Computerworld and its sister publication and website, Macworld.) However, Microsoft is not on this year’s exhibitors’ list for the trade show.

The next Office for Mac is already overdue by Microsoft’s past practice of following the latest version for Windows within a year.

 

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Microsoft

Microsoft offers multifactor authentication to Office 365 users

Since June last year, users with administrative roles had the facility

Microsoft is offering multifactor authentication free as an option to all users of the enterprise versions of Office 365 suite, a hosted set of Microsoft Office tools and applications. It will be available to users of Office 365 Mid-Size Business, Enterprise, and other plans, but not to consumer or small business editions.

The company also plans to add multifactor authentication for Office 2013 client applications, with native multifactor support for applications such as Outlook, Lync, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PowerShell, and OneDrive for Business, planned for release later this year, Paul Andrew, technical product manager on the Office 365 team, wrote in a blog post Monday.

Microsoft also plans to integrate third-party multifactor authentication systems and smart cards such as the Common Access Card of the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. federal Personal Identity Verification card.

Multifactor authentication has been available for Office 365 administrative roles since June last year.

The multifactor authentication requires the user to enter other authentication factors besides the basic password. These could include mobile phones, biometric verification or a personal identification number. “The multifactor authentication increases the security of user logins for cloud services above and beyond just a password,” Microsoft said. Office 365 administrators can enroll users for multifactor authentication through the Office 365 admin center.

The company said in September it was offering multifactor authentication on its Windows Azure cloud platform, whereby in addition to an user name and password, users can authenticate through an application on their mobile device, automated voice call, or a text message with a passcode.

The authentication for Office 365 ranges from acknowledging a phone call, entering a six-digit code sent by text message on the portal to confirmation through apps on smartphones, Microsoft said. “Only after this second authentication factor has been satisfied can a user sign in,” it added.

Microsoft is also adding App Passwords for users so they can authenticate from Office desktop applications as these are not yet updated for multifactor authentication. Once the users have logged in with multifactor authentication, they will be able to create one or more App Passwords, which are 16-character randomly generated passwords, for use in Office client applications.

The company is offering multifactor authentication for Office 365 to midsize business, enterprise plans, academic plans, nonprofit plans, and standalone Office 365 plans, including Exchange Online and SharePoint Online. Organizations on these subscriptions can use the service for free.

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Microsoft

How Microsoft can save itself in the mobile world

Once upon a time, Microsoft encountered a foe in the PC market. What it did then is what it should do now in the mobile market.

Microsoft continues to pursue its fatal attraction to proprietary mobile devices, much like Michael Douglas pursued Glen Close in the 1987 movie Fatal Attraction.

Its earnings announcement last night exceeded analysts’ expectations, and seem to suggest that Microsoft doesn’t need to own the endpoint to thrive. But Microsoft’s odds of outflanking Apple and Google are slim.

With so many positive developments in Microsoft’s core businesses, what can possibly be gained from a small, tenuous share of the smartphone market at the risk of Nokia entering a BlackBerry-like downward spiral?

Though Nokia’s $7 billion acquisition cost is small relative to Microsoft’s wealth, competition with Apple and Google in the smartphone market confuses consumers, and likely confuses Microsoft. Microsoft should take a lesson from itself and accommodate Android and iOS in the same way it once accommodated Apple’s Mac in the PC market. It extended Office and Outlook to the Mac platform and made a great margin on every Mac that shipped to customers who needed document interoperability and email with Microsoft’s enormous base.

Nokia’s performance last quarter was dismal. Radio Free Mobile predicted smartphone revenues to grow by 12% in this last quarter. In comparison Nokia revenue declined by 2%.

Radio Free Mobile’s Richard Windsor noted four main problems described in Microsoft’s earning’s announcement.

“Android is getting better at the cheaper price points, making the Lumia 520 not such great value at $135. Low-end Lumia needs to be refreshed to re-extend the gap to Android.

“Microsoft continues to make a total mess of telling users why they should buy a Lumia device, meaning that there is very little pull for the ecosystem from the handset end.

“The app store is still woefully inadequate when compared to iOS and Android and this is a major turn off for prospective buyers of the devices.

“The change in ownership may have distracted the business from pushing the devices to the best of its ability. I am hopeful that this quarter will see this fix.”

Windsor also noted the truly bright side of Microsoft’s performance:

“Microsoft reported excellent results and guidance, confounding the PC skeptics.”

Revenues and earnings exceeded analysts’ expectations thanks to Microsoft’s strong performance in enterprise, cloud and even consumer segments. Xbox and Microsoft Office shipments were both strong, for example.

Windsor expects a rebound in the PC market due to the end of life and support for Windows XP. Corporations have limited alternatives to remaining on XP. Though locked down, proprietary configurations of XP images may prevail for some time within a well-defended enterprise perimeter, without security available after April of this year, this strategy is a ticking time bomb beyond the short-term transition to Windows 7.

The Nokia business will never produce great margins. If small initial margins were the price for dominating the world’s pockets with Nokia smartphones the way Microsoft once dominated the desktop, the endeavor would be worth it for Microsoft. It is hard to imagine a scenario where that will happen, though.

However, Microsoft could create its own bright mobile future if it would just follow what it learned with the Mac and extended all of its core businesses to integrate seamlessly with iOS.

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