Microsoft on Thursday debuted five new applications under its MSN banner for Apple's iOS, offering aggregated content from Bing covering a range of topics including news, sports and money.
Microsoft's presence on Apple's iOS continues to grow with the acquisition of Acompli, a popular mobile email client that first debuted earlier this year on the iPhone.
The Safari browser for both iOS and Mac could have a new default search partner as soon as next year, as Apple's current deal with Google is reportedly set to expire in early 2015.
Microsoft on Friday released a short ad bashing lack of enhancing Siri when it released the latest iPhone 6 models, expectedly touting Windows Phone-based Cortana virtual assistant technology.
As Microsoft begins ramping up the holiday ad blitz for its Surface tablets, the software giant has kept Apple's MacBook Air squarely in the crosshairs, continuing its string of television spots that pit the two devices against each other.
The competitive price, strong feature set, and universal compatibility of the Microsoft Band will make it a compelling product for anyone in the market for a wearable fitness and health tracking device, though it does suffer from some of the expected shortcomings of a first-generation product.
Over the last two years, Intel's mobile chip division has lost $7 billion while heavily subsidizing the manufacturing costs of Android Atom tablet makers. It now plans to phase out those generous incentives, which will make it more expensive for iPad competitors to dump cheap tablets into the market.
Apple's A-series Application Processors that power iPads—including the latest and greatest A8X in iPad Air 2—are inciting billion dollar losses for Intel and threatening major problems for rival tablet chips from Qualcomm, Samsung and Nvidia, along with all the companies that depend upon those vendors for their mobile chips.
Enterprise mobile services vendor Good Technology reports that Apple's iPhone 6 launch helped the company win back mobile device enterprise share from Android, boosting iOS to 69 percent of all device activations as firms' deployment of custom mobile apps continues to grow exponentially.
In keeping with the growing importance of Apple's iOS platform, Microsoft's new Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps for iPhone are now far superior than those Microsoft offers for its own Windows Phone 8 platform.
Dedicated versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, comprising the Microsoft Office suite, are now available for iPhone, based on a unified codebase with their iPad counterparts, and also offering both iPhone and iPad users the ability to create and edit documents for free without an Office 365 subscription.
News commentators covering U.S. elections for CNN were given Surface Pro tablets by Microsoft, but continued using iPads on air, covering up the supplied Surface with papers or even the iPad itself.
In its ranking of electronic messaging systems for safety and security, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said no mainstream products passed all of its criteria, but that Apple's iMessage and FaceTime "stood out as the best of the mass-market options."
Apple's wildly popular MacBook Air remains in Microsoft's crosshairs as the Windows maker seeks to break Apple's stranglehold on the premium laptop market, this time compared to Lenovo's Yoga 3 convertible PC in Microsoft's latest television advertisement.
In releasing a new version of Outlook for Mac on Friday, Microsoft also revealed will launch an update to its Office suite for Mac next year, allowing users to test it in the first half of 2015 before a launch sometime in the second half of the year.
Microsoft issued a surprise on Thursday when it launched a new hardware product dubbed the Microsoft Band, a fitness-focused wrist-worn device that connects to both iOS and OS X, and will also integrate with Apple's HealthKit service and Health app for iPhone. AppleInsider offers a first look at the new wearable device.
Popular music subscription service Spotify updated its official iPad app on Thursday with a new look in line with its iPhone client, while also giving users access to the "Your Music" feature. In addition, Microsoft's Skype for iPhone was also updated with the ability to save and delete photo, as well as a faster chat load time.
Microsoft is set to release an all-new version of Office for Mac in the first quarter of 2015, documents revealed on Tuesday suggest, modernizing the Mac version of the popular software suite and bringing it to feature parity with its Windows counterpart.
Microsoft on Tuesday revealed a multi-pronged initiative to supply developers with new Office 365 APIs and open-source SDKs, which can be used to tap into the company's cloud-based productivity platform for deep iOS app integration.
Microsoft is said to be planning to bring a smartwatch to the market "within the next few weeks," beginning sales ahead of the lucrative holiday shopping season and also beating the highly anticipated Apple Watch to store shelves.
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AppleInsider Staff
Neil Hughes
Daniel Eran Dilger
Sam Oliver
