Microsoft’s ‘Project Latte’ Aims To Bring Android Apps To Windows 10

Windows Central reports: Microsoft is working on a software solution that would allow app developers to bring their Android apps to Windows 10 with little to no code changes by packaging them as an MSIX and allowing developers to submit them to the Microsoft Store. According to sources familiar with the matter, the project is codenamed ‘Latte’ and I’m told it…

Microsoft Engineer Gets Nine Years For Stealing $10 Million From Microsoft

A former Microsoft software engineer from Ukraine has been sentenced to nine years in prison for stealing more than $10 million in store credit from Microsoft’s online store. Ars Technica reports: From 2016 to 2018, Volodymyr Kvashuk worked for Microsoft as a tester, placing mock online orders to make sure everything was working smoothly. The software automatically prevented shipment of physical…

Is Microsoft Planning To Phase Out Xbox Live Gold?

Yesterday, a Microsoft rep confirmed that the option to purchase 12 months of Xbox Live Gold has been removed from the Microsoft Store. That’s exactly a week ahead of the July 23 games presentation, where Microsoft could be announcing a plan to phase out the subscription service altogether with the launch of Xbox Series X. Inverse reports: “At this time Xbox…

Reporter Tests Walmart’s $140 Laptop ‘So You Wouldn’t Have To’

Ars Technica’s technology reporter Jim Salter tested Walmart’s 11.6-inch EVOO laptop, which sells for $139 and ships with just 2GiB of RAM and a 32GB SSD, which he worries “simply is not enough room for Windows itself, let alone any applications.”
The first thing I noticed while looking through the Windows install is that our “internal” Wi-Fi is actually a cheap USB…

Is Microsoft Retaliating For Chrome’s Warnings About Extension Security in Edge?

Several pundits criticized Google for warning Edge users to switch to Chrome if they wanted to use Chrome extensions “securely”. “In Chrome, a plugin can be remotely disabled by the Chrome team if it’s considered unsafe for whatever reason,” notes PC World. “Google lacks the ability to remotely disable the same plugin within Edge, prompting Google to recommend switching to Chrome,…

Microsoft Launches Chromium Edge for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, and macOS

Microsoft today launched its new Edge browser based on Google’s Chromium open source project. You can download Chromium Edge now for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, and macOS directly from microsoft.com/edge in more than 90 languages. From a report: Business features aside, there’s also support for Chrome-based extensions, 4K streaming, Dolby audio, inking in PDF, and privacy tools. For the…

Is Microsoft’s Chromium Edge Browser Better Than Firefox and Chrome?

Android Authority argues that the new Microsoft Chromium Edge browser “is full of neat tricks” and “packs more features than Firefox”: The final major feature is called Apps. Essentially, Apps allows you to download and install web pages and web apps for use without the Edge browser. Previously, you had to find these dedicated web apps via the Microsoft Store, but…

How the Microsoft Store Urges Customers To Trade In Their iPhones

“Have you ever wondered how — or even why — Microsoft is offering $650 to switch from iPhone to Samsung’s latest phones?” asks tech columnist Chris Matyszczyk. “A Microsoft store salesman enlightened me. It was spiritual, as much as factual.” “This is a Microsoft store,” I said. “Why are you pushing these?” “Because three weeks ago, you couldn’t do what you…

Microsoft Is Killing EPUB Support In Edge Classic

Microsoft is killing support for the EPUB document format in Edge classic, and it won’t be supported in the new, Chromium-based version of Microsoft Edge. Thurrott reports: “Download an .epub app to keep reading,” a notification in Edge classic reads when you load an EPUB document. “Microsoft Edge will no longer be supporting [sic] e-books that use the .epub file extension….

‘Paint’ and ‘WordPad’ Will Soon Become Optional Features In Windows 10

An anonymous reader quotes Neowin:
Both WordPad and the classic Paint app can now be found in the list of optional features for Windows 10, joining the ranks of other hallmarks of the Windows of yore, such as Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer. This means that both these apps will be uninstallable in a future release of Windows, likely 20H1, as…