WW 657: Bingjacked

Thinking more about Surface Neo and Duo

Last week, Microsoft released the SDK and emulator for the Android-based Duo; ones for Neo coming soonThe Duo SDK for Mac developers also is now available (as of this week) - So let's think ahead about why Microsoft is calling these devices "a new category"Who is the intended audience? It's not creatives (who were big targets of the Surface tablets/PCs)Are these going to be positioned as PCs? Tablets? Is Apple still a primary competitive target for these devices?What kinds of software and services will be preloaded?What are the hardware, M365/O365 and Edge/MSN/Bing teams contributing? (they supposedly develop these new devices together) New launcher, unified search, stuff like Collections?Will developers find these dual-screen devices interesting enough to target? Or not till the UI comes to "regular" PCs?Will Neo and Duo attract users who don't see a need for a PC anymore? Does MS think they could be users' sole (or maybe secondary) devices?

Thinking more about search

Last week, Microsoft made a bad move: Deciding to hijack the Chrome browsers of O365 ProPlus users and switch their search engine to BingSo far, Microsoft has not claimed "based on user feedback" that they're undoing this moveThe real reason for this: Microsoft is starting to push Bing as an Intranet search engine (see MS Search in Bing; Project Cortex, the new Office app experience)Implications of this - Microsoft will lose the moral high-ground if it doesn't do the right thing

Windows 10

Windows version 1909 usage share hits 15 percentNew Insider build, no more Insider PWA appNew CU fixes at least some File Explorer problems for 1903/1909 usersRelated: Microsoft to bring Edge tab management feature to ChromeSemi-related: A major USB-C bug has hit virtually all modern ThinkPads.Not really related, but still worth a mention: Premium Outlook.com users are losing personalized email addresses at end of Feb. (unless you subscribe to O365)

Windows 7!

FSF wants Microsoft to open-source Windows. They're nuts. And yet...Microsoft has one more security update coming for Windows 7

Xbox

New Games with Gold for February

Tips and picks

Tip of the week: Help me pick the next programming project.NETpad (Visual Basic/Windows Forms/.NET Framework) is winding down, so the next one will be a C#/WPF/.NET Framework/Core project. And I need some ideas.App pick of the week: Surface Duo EmulatorEnterprise pick of the week: Dynamics 365 Wave 1 2020Enterprise pick No. 2: Beware the LDAP signing apocalypse in MarchBeer pick of the week: Perennial Abraxas

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