Thurrott Daily: May 11

A few tech tidbits from around the web.

5/11/2016 8:57:04 AM

Microsoft more profitable than Apple at $1 trillion milestone

Jeff Reifman reported this week that Microsoft quietly surpassed the $1 trillion mark in all-times revenues in its most recent quarter. He also notes that Apple as-quietly surpassed the $1 trillion in revenues mark last year. But here’s the interesting bit.

Apple cumulatively earned only $261.6 billion in profit to Microsoft’s $265.2 billion.

What does that mean? It means that Microsoft has been historically even more profitable than Apple. That’s rather amazing, given the huge margins that Apple earns on its hardware, but it at least proves the theory that selling software has less overhead than selling hardware. Even when you’re Apple, which does a better job of selling hardware than any company in history.

WhatsApp comes to Windows desktop … as a Win32 app

If this were a UWP app, it would warrant its own article. But WhatsApp has released a Win32 classic desktop app for its service for some reason.

Today we’re introducing a desktop app so you have a new way to stay in touch anytime and anywhere – whether on your phone or computer at home or work. Like WhatsApp Web, our desktop app is simply an extension of your phone: the app mirrors conversations and messages from your mobile device.

The new desktop app is available for Windows 8+ and Mac OS 10.9+ and is synced with WhatsApp on your mobile device. Because the app runs natively on your desktop, you’ll have support for native desktop notifications, better keyboard shortcuts, and more.

Just like WhatsApp Web, the new desktop app lets you message with friends and family while your phone stays in your pocket.

“Nokia Posts a Surprise Loss”

Surprise! They still have no idea what they’re doing.

Microsoft releases Visual Studio ’15’ Preview 2

Microsoft this week released a second preview version of Visual Studio “15.” From the horse’s mouth, a phrase that is just as relevant today as “with a grain of salt”:

We primarily focused on bug fixes and a few feature updates. New features include; making the account settings dialog more accessible to screen readers, diagnostics improvements to help track down focus related issues, Edit and Continue for XAML apps, and simplified debug configuration in Folder view. Preview 2 also includes the latest Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova Update 9 which supports Cordova 6.1.1.

Check out the Visual Studio “15” Preview Release Notes and Visual Studio “15” Preview 2 Known Issues for the complete list of what’s available in Visual Studio “15” Preview 2.

Amazon releases a new video service to compete with YouTube

I joked on Twitter yesterday that they should just call it “Amazon Suicide,” but it’s a bit early to say whether this thing will be the next Fire Phone or the next AWS. Time reports.

On Monday, Amazon announced Amazon Video Direct, a new self-service program that will let video creators post videos on the company’s streaming platform and either sell them, rent them, make them available to Amazon Prime members or offer them for free with advertising.

It’s the ad-supported videos that pose the biggest threat to YouTube. The Google-owned video site has come to dominate the world of online video by amassing a huge repository of videos and convincing marketers to sell ads against them. YouTube went largely unchallenged in this space for years, until Facebook’s aggressive push into video in 2014. Now Amazon will be another competitor with the deep pockets and technical infrastructure to be a potential threat.

Still, Amazon will face many challenges in order to take on the current video giants.

You think?

You can learn more about this new service here.

“The Mi Max is Xiaomi’s new 6.44-inch smartphone”

The audience? People who thought that the Lumia 1520 was just a tad too small.