New submitter bondman writes: Windows 95 was released a full quarter century ago today, on August 24th, 1995. Long gone, nearly forgotten? I'm surprised to not have come across a retrospective article yet. I've linked to the Wikipedia article. As for me I still haven't grown to re-like The Rolling Stones "Start Me Up" yet. I got so sick of hearing it with all the pre-launch and post-launch hype, as the song was tied heavily to the Win 95 launch event. Microsoft paid the Stones a princely sum to use it. I still remember how exciting it was to see the full-length, full-screen video included on the installation CD-ROM, "Buddy Holly" by Weezer. Mind-blowing to watch a whole music video on your computer. Crappy resolution by our standards today, and a very limited palette to my memory. But as I said, amazing in the day. Windows 95 had many fans and many critics. At the time, I recall it as an exciting OS (or GUI on top of DOS, if you prefer). PC users were riveted to all the magazine and other media coverage pre-launch. I remember it fondly (with all the obligatory respect due Mac OS, the Amiga, and all the other early GUIs of course).

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Last October, Microsoft unveiled a transcription feature -- Transcribe in Word -- that is designed to let users leverage the power of the cloud to transcribe audio. After nearly a year in development, Transcribe in Word is now generally available in U.S. English at no cost to existing Microsoft 365 subscribers. It will come to Android and iOS later this year. From a report: You could say Microsoft is late to the party -- speech-to-text is hardly novel, after all. But Microsoft project manager Dan Parish says the company is "uniquely positioned" to provide a one-stop shop for transcription. "You don't have to worry about fussing around with different Windows apps," he said during a briefing with reporters. "What we're trying to do with all of our investments in the natural user interface space -- whether they have touch or voice, you name it -- is enable everyone to work in the way that's best for them so that they can be more effective, they can spend less time and energy creating the best work, and they can really focus on what matters most." Microsoft 365 subscribers using Edge or Chrome will now see a Dictate menu under the Home tab when they create a new Word document from Office.com. Selecting Transcribe will start a recording, which can be paused at any time, while hitting the "Save and transcribe now" button will send the recording to the Azure cloud for transcription. Prerecorded files in .wav, .mp4, .m4a, and .mp3 formats can be uploaded via the new Upload audio option.

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Microsoft has stepped into the brewing legal battle between Apple and Epic Games over the former's policies with regard to its ubiquitous App Store. From a report: In a declaration filed on Sunday, a senior Microsoft engineer said that allowing Apple to block Epic Games' developer account would deal a significant blow to game makers including Microsoft by making them unable to use Epic's Unreal Engine. The Unreal Engine, a type of gaming engine, is a widely used set of technologies that provides a framework for the creation of three dimensional graphics. Epic licenses the engine to companies that use the technology for a fee. "If Unreal Engine cannot support games for iOS or macOS, Microsoft would be required to choose between abandoning its customers and potential customers on the iOS and macOS platforms or choosing a different game engine when preparing to develop new games," Kevin Gammill, Microsoft's general manager for Gaming Developer Experiences, said in the declaration. He added that "Apple's discontinuation of Epic's ability to develop and support Unreal Engine for iOS or macOS will harm game creators and gamers." While there are alternative gaming engines, Gammill said that "very few" are available with as many features and the same functionality. The declaration came as part of a lawsuit brought by Epic against Apple over the iPhone maker's rules guaranteeing itself a 30% cut of in-app purchases. The suit is filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Epic Games tested Apple's policy by sidestepping the rule in an update to its hit game Fortnite, and then sued after Apple removed the game from the App Store. The company has brought a similar suit against Google over its Play Store.

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SmartAboutThings writes: Microsoft released Flight Simulator 2020 but many people who bought it online are having problems downloading it, installing it, or simply running the new game. Some users simply didn't get to download the game even if they tried several times to do so. When the download was finally complete, they received an error while trying to install it. Even if some users also got through the installation, they faced another problem: the game freezes at the starting screen. Microsoft didn't present a solution yet but Windowsreport.com wrote first about these problems and offered some workarounds and possible solutions.

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Microsoft will end support for Internet Explorer 11 across its Microsoft 365 apps and services next year. The Verge reports: In exactly a year, on August 17th, 2021, Internet Explorer 11 will no longer be supported for Microsoft's online services like Office 365, OneDrive, Outlook, and more. Microsoft is also ending support for Internet Explorer 11 with the Microsoft Teams web app later this year, with support ending on November 30th. While it's still going to take some time to pry enterprise users of Internet Explorer 11 away, Microsoft is hoping that the new Internet Explorer legacy mode in the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser will help. It will continue to let businesses access old sites that were specifically built for Internet Explorer, until Microsoft fully drops support for Internet Explorer 11 within Windows 10. Microsoft's move to stop supporting Internet Explorer 11 with its main web properties is a good first step, though. Alongside the support changes, Microsoft is also planning to drop support for its existing legacy version of Microsoft Edge on March 9th, 2021. After the end of support date, the legacy version of Edge will no longer receive security updates. Microsoft has been moving existing Windows 10 users over to new its Chromium-based Edge browser, and the company says new devices and future Windows feature updates will all include the new Edge browser.

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Microsoft just launched a new website "to showcase how it's embracing open source to 'bring choice, technology and community to our customers,'" reports ZDNet: Microsoft, under CEO Satya Nadella, has said and done a lot to shed its image as a pariah of Linux and open-source software communities. With a Linux kernel for Windows 10, GitHub, a new Android Surface Duo, and the commercial cloud as its main source of revenue, Microsoft is a very different company than it was 30 years ago when it was afraid open-source software would gobble up its intellectual property and revenues. Nowadays, it's got a growing number of open-source projects, including its hugely popular cross-platform code editor Visual Studio Code (VS Code), .NET Core, the hit JavaScript-based programming language TypeScript, and new open-source Windows developer tools like PowerToys and Windows Terminal... According to the company, over 35,000 engineers at the company are using GitHub Enterprise Cloud to host and release official Microsoft open-source projects, samples, and documentation.... Jeff Wilcox, a software engineer with the Microsoft Open Source Programs Office, announced the new site Thursday. He notes that it is "built by the Ruby open-source project Jekyll (that also powers GitHub Pages)".

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Microsoft begins taking orders for its dual-screen Surface device in the U.S. on Wednesday, an attempt to re-enter the mobile handset market with a product that blends the features of a tablet with those of a phone. From a report: The Android-powered Surface Duo starts at $1,399 and will be available Sept. 10, said Microsoft Chief Product Officer Panos Panay. The device will be sold on Microsoft.com as well as by AT&T and Best Buy. It is the thinnest Surface ever, with screens that unfold completely to serve as a phone or act like a book to provide more space for different apps. The gadget represents Microsoft's return to the handset market following an ignominious retreat in 2016 after the company's acquisition of Nokia's handset unit crashed and burned in a costly writedown. It's also the company's first Surface device running Google's Android operating system, which Windows Phone once sought to vanquish. Why Android? Panay told reporters it came down to the need for apps -- Microsoft's previous efforts were largely doomed because of the lack of mobile developer support.

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