Posted inNews

Microsoft may bring Android app support to Windows

Microsoft may have given up on making smartphone operating systems. But sometime next year the company may make it easier to run smartphone apps on a Windows laptop, tablet, or desktop computer. According to Windows Central’s Zac Bowden, Microsoft is “toying with” the idea of “bringing Android apps to the Microsoft Store,” and the feature […]

Posted inNews

Lilbits: Microsoft’s app store, Google’s 5G network, and Fedora for phones

Apple and Google have been taking a lot of heat for their app store policies recently, with developers bristling at the companies’ insistence that apps distributed through their respective stores follow very tight restrictions that many see as anti-competitive. Microsoft, meanwhile, also has an app store. You probably don’t use it very much, and developers have […]

Posted inNews

Microsoft releases Windows Terminal preview (with tabs, GPU acceleration, and more)

Microsoft’s new Windows Terminal app is here… or at least a public preview is. First announced in May, the new app provides a bunch of features that Microsoft’s earlier command line tools lacked. It also brings all those command line tools together in one place: you can use Windows Terminal to interact with the Windows […]

Posted inNews

Periodic reminder that you DRM means you don’t really own eBooks, movies, or other content (Microsoft’s eBook store is shutting down)

A few years ago Microsoft built support for reading eBooks into its Edge web browser, and began selling eBooks through the Microsoft Store. Today the company stopped selling eBooks. It’s canceled pre-orders. And it’ll start issuing refunds for any books you might have purchased. While that last bit sounds downright consumer-friendly, this next bit doesn’t: any […]

Posted inNews

Microsoft Store will stop pushing app updates to Windows 8.x phones next summer, Windows 8.x computers in 2023

If you’re one of the handful of folks still using a smartphone running Windows Phone 8 or Windows Phone 8.1, starting next summer it’s going to be an even less useful operating system than it already is. On July 1st, 2019, the Microsoft Store will stop distributing app updates to Windows Phone 8.x. Developers will […]

Posted inNews

Report: Microsoft Movies & TV coming to Android, iOS, and other platforms

Microsoft may have gotten out of the digital music business by killing its Groove Music app, but the company continues to sell movies and TV shows through the Microsoft Store. There’s one small catch though: you can only watch them on Windows devices including a Windows PC, a Windows 10 Mobile phone, or an Xbox […]

Posted inNews

Kodi media center now available for the Xbox One (coming full circle)

Kodi is a popular, open source application that turns a PC, an Android device, or many other gadgets into a full fledged media center with a TV-friendly user interface for accessing music, movies, photos, and more. It got its start many years ago as a project designed to turn the original Xbox game console into […]