The Microsoft Connect(); // 2016 developers event happened this Wednesday and some interesting announcements were made there. One of them is that Google is now a member of the .NET Foundation and will expand .NET support in its services, including the Google Cloud Platform. Google has already been one of the most active contributors even before joining the .NET Foundation for the past two years and now will be more involved in developing the future of .NET.
Author: Roman Linev
Long time news writer, Microsoft ecosystem fan, Android user. Loves Japanese culture, photography and his cats. You can also follow Roman on Twitter.
MSN Weather app gets a transparent live tile on Windows 10 Mobile
The MSN Weather app from Microsoft recently got an update for Windows 10 Mobile Insiders on the Fast ring. Aside from minor fixes and performance improvements, there's one highly requested feature that's worth mentioning: with version 4.17.72.0 rolling out, Microsoft is finally bringing a transparent tile to the MSN Weather app on Windows 10 Mobile.
Microsoft may reveal more about third party VR plans at WinHEC
Earlier this year, Microsoft announced its plans to bring Windows Holographic to 3rd party hardware from partners. This includes not only VR-ready PCs from Windows OEMs, but also head-mounted displays (HDMs): the company is actively working on HDM specifications in collaboration with Intel. The goal of this project is to create a new hardware category for consumers allowing almost everyone to get into the world of Virtual Reality without spending large amounts of money on buying a compatible device.
Chrome becomes faster on Windows with Profile Guided Optimization
Google Chrome on Windows was criticized many times for its enormous RAM usage and crashes when there were a lot tabs open. Moreover Google never admitted the problem and continued to improve other aspects of the browser not taking into account the performance, and making only small changes and optimizations that weren't enough. However, with the recent releases of Chrome 53 for 64-bit Windows systems and Chrome 54 for 32-bit Windows, Google claims to have finally improved its performance significantly.
Microsoft rebrands Xamarin Studio as Visual Studio for Mac
Earlier today, Microsoft announced that its own Integrated Development Environment (IDE), Visual Studio, is now available on macOS. This is made possible by the joint effort between the Visual Studio for Windows team and Xamarin which Microsoft acquired earlier this year. The new Visual Studio for Mac is based on the existing Xamarin Studio and MonoDevelop IDEs and has all of its features while the UI and UX improvements are coming from 'classic' Visual Studio.
Windows DVD Player gets a major update on Windows Insider Fast Ring
When Microsoft shipped the original version of Windows 10 to the market in July 2015, there was a lot of talk about the separate Windows DVD Player app which was going to be sold in the Windows Store for $14.99. Most user reviews says the app is too basic for the amount of money they're charging and lacks many features that other DVD software includes for free. Microsoft hadn't done anything to the app lately so it was considered abandoned. However, last week Microsoft released a major update for the Windows DVD Player which includes some playback tweaks and improvements to the overall user experience.
Microsoft is working on a new file format for 3D documents
During last week's Microsoft event, company officials spent a lot of time talking about 3D technologies being a focus for future Windows 10 development. Microsoft announced tools to create and insert 3D content more easily and also released a preview version of Paint 3D, allowing everyone to try and create something new with just a Windows 10 PC. Microsoft also announced that they are working on a new, open file format for 3D files along with their partners.
NVIDIA GeForce 375.70 comes with support for Titanfall 2 and more recent games
NVIDIA has released a 375.70 update for its GeForce software experience, introducing full support for the recently released game Titanfall 2 and fixing some performance issues on Windows 10 with existing games. The 375.70 update should improve stability and performance in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition and also Dishonored 2 which is not yet released and will be available on November 11.
Microsoft’s Office event is happening November 2
Earlier this month, Microsoft sent out press invites for its November 2016 Office event. It's not clear what exactly the company is going to announce during that event, but you can expect to see not just upcoming changes for Office 365 but also some new products. This is probably where the long-rumored Slack competitor, Microsoft Teams, is going to be announced.
October 2016 edition Windows developer evaluation virtual machines are now available for download
Microsoft today released the October 2016 update for Windows 10 virtual machines for Universal Windows Platform app developers. The company has been releasing pre-configured VMs for developers for a while and now all of them come with all the latest updates for the OS itself and pre-installed developer tools. These virtual machines can be used with Hyper-V, Parallels, VirtualBox and VMWare.
