Items tagged with Software
Microsoft wasn't always particularly pro-open source. In fact, for much of its history, the software giant was very much focused on its own offerings often to the detriment of anything open source. That isn't the case today with Microsoft contributing to open source projects and developing versions of its popular programs like Skype specifically for Linux. One of Microsoft's bread and butter products is Office, and there is a version of the Office suite that can be used on Linux thanks to Android. Android support is something Microsoft was forced to adopt due to Windows Phone's abysmal market...
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When Microsoft released Windows 10 to the general public at the end of July in 2015, it generously offered free upgrades to Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1 users for a full year. Sure, it was in Microsoft's best interest to get as many people as possible to run Windows 10, and at times the company was more than a little bit obnoxious about it, but those who took advantage of the offer benefited from improved security, DirectX 12 support, and many other features. That offer expired around five months ago, but there are still ways to upgrade to Windows 10 at no cost.For people with accessibility needs...
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As most US-based companies have learned by now, it's very difficult to penetrate the Chinese market (just ask Microsoft), with the country's government being at the crux of the issue more so than cultural differences. Apple in particular has had a rough go at feeling comfortable in China, and recently, things have been made more difficult with sliding sales. In the past year, Apple had to mold its products to better-suit the Chinese market, which included getting rid of iTunes Movies and iBooks, and crippling its popular news app. Since then, Apple has invested more in the Chinese market, which...
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Everyone has birthdays and anniversaries, but not everyone considers them to be that significant. However, an occasion that is hard to argue as being anything but notable is the anniversary of the first webpage going live on the World Wide Web (remember when we used to call it that?). This weekend marks the 25th year for the first publicly-accessible webpage. To say we've come a long way since that day on August 6th, 1991 would be an incredible understatement. By the mid-90s, many school computer labs began to gain internet access, and at around the same time, or not long after, home users began...
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Researchers from Purdue University have developed a software tool for Android smartphones that purportedly slows down battery drain when handsets enter a sleep state. With the software tool installed, the researchers claim that smartphone battery life can be extended by nearly 16 percent.Called "HUSH," the software solution was developed in response to what the researchers say is the first large-scale study of smartphone energy drain occurring from everyday use by consumers. The researchers conducted the study in collaboration with Intel and startup mobile company Mobile Enerlytics, who together...
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Apple announced a handful of products yesterday, including a new iPhone, a 12.9-inch iPad Pro that's better suited for productivity than its other iPad tablets, and a refreshed Apple TV set-top box. However, there's one thing that kind of flew under the radar, and that's the impending release of Mac OS X 10.11, otherwise known as El Capitan.The successor to OS X Yosemite was officially unveiled earlier this summer with a developer preview made available to Mac Developer Program members. At the time, Apple said the OS would release sometime "this fall," but didn't offer up a specific date. Now we...
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I'm a sucker for nostalgia, especially as it relates to technology and gaming, so I particularly enjoyed the latest Forza 6 Motorsport TV commercial. It's filled with sights and sounds from several decades of racing games dating all the way back to 1974 with a nod towards Gran Trak 10, a single-player racing title released by Atari. That's far from the only racing reference in the 1-minute 47-second ad spot. Forza 6 developer Turn 10 Studios and publisher Microsoft Studios paid homage to several other racing classics, including R.C. Pro-Am (1987), Pole Position (1982), Outrun (1986), Chase H.Q....
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As you might expect following a flurry of positive reviews, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is off to a fast start. It released to Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One less than a week ago on September 1, 2015, and like its predecessor, has shipped over 3 million copies worldwide. That figure comes from an advertisement with Japanese lettering. It was first spotted by a NeoGAF forum user who screen captured the ad and uploaded it to Imgur, a free image hosting service. There's reason to believe the figure is accurate. Not only did Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns...
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Hundreds of Atari 2600 cartridges of E.T. The Extra Terrestrial that were excavated last year from a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico collectively raked in nearly $108,000 through eBay auctions. Some $65,000 of that will go to the city of Alamogordo, while the Tularosa Basin Historical Society will receive over $16,000. Over $26,600 went to shipping fees and other expenses. A team of excavators led by operational consultant Joe Lewandowski unearthed the E.T. cartridges in front of a film crew. The high profile (among gaming historians) dig was the basis a documentary called Atari: Game Over,...
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A new version of Microsoft's popular productivity suite is nearing release for Windows users. Yes, we're talking about Office 2016, which incidentally was released to the Mac OS X platform early last month, ending a nearly five-year drought (prior to Office 2016, the last Office release for Mac was in 2011).Citing a source "close to Microsoft," German-language website WinFuture.de says that Office 2016 is scheduled to launch for Windows exactly four weeks from today on September 22. The forthcoming launch will cover home and professional users, with a SKU for enterprise users coming at a later...
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Do you remember what you were doing two decades ago? Depending on your age, you might have been waiting in a long line for Windows 95. Yes, there were lines to purchase Windows 95, the revolutionary operating system that launched at midnight on August 24, 1995, 20 years ago to the day. Codenamed Chicago, Windows 95 was a big upgrade over Windows 3.1. It was a 32-bit OS with a customized version of MS-DOS baked in to serve as a boot loader and a compatibility layer for legacy 16-bit device drivers. Enhanced multimedia features accompanied the dressed up graphical user interface, and so did built-in...
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One of the first things we all do when firing up a new smartphone for the first time is to see which unwanted apps we're allowed to uninstall. It's not just wireless carriers and smartphone manufactures that are guilty of pre-loading their software on our phones, but also Google, which doesn't let phone makers cherry pick its apps. The good news is, Google's trimming the selection of apps that are required.At this point you might be wondering, "Isn't Android open source and free?" True and true, and any manufacturer or individual can do pretty much anything they please with the platform. That's...
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The wait for Windows 10 is finally over, and has been since July 29, the day Microsoft released what it says will be the last version of Windows. So too is the wait for official support from Apple's awesome Boot Camp tool, which allows users to install Windows on compatible Mac desktops and laptops. What's neat about Boot Camp is that it offers native access to Windows via a dedicated partition -- Boot Camp is not virtualization software.Apple's latest Boot Camp build supports 64-bit flavors of Windows 10 on several Macs, including MacBook Air models from mid 2012, MacBoo Pros from mid 2012, MacBook...
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Somewhere out there Jimmy Hoffa's body is buried. Right next to him is a classified document detailing what really goes on at Area 51, and on top of that is a piece of paper with an official count of Windows 10 installs to date. That's to say, we simply don't know how many devices are running Windows 10, though there are a few figures floating around the web, the latest of which pegs the number 25 million.Or it could be as high as 27 million, "sources" tell Neowin. So if going by those un-named sources, Windows 10 is installed on somewhere between 25 million and 27 million machines -- let's split...
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