Thurrott Daily: October 7, 2015

Here’s what’s happening today.

10/7/2015 7:37:40 PM

110 million

Not sure how I forgot this. But Microsoft announced during its Wednesday hardware event that there were now over 110 million PCs/devices running Windows 10. The firm had previously claimed 75 million installs, on August 29. So this suggests that the uptick has slowed considerably, which of course makes sense. And I’m pretty sure this means there are now more Windows 10 users than all Mac users combined.

10/7/2015 7:05:01 PM

An incredibly busy couple of days

The past two days have obviously been incredibly busy. Please excuse the mess. 🙂 But I’ll have more write-ups from this week’s epic Microsoft event in the days ahead.

Microsoft expands the preview of Skype for Business services in Office 365

Back in July, Microsoft announced a preview of new Skype for Business voice and meetings capabilities in Office 365, including PSTN Conferencing and Calling, Cloud PBX and Skype Meeting Broadcast. This week, the preview is being expanded to 11 additional countries—Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom—while Finland, Norway and South Africa will come onboard in November. And there are new features, too. You can learn more on Microsoft’s Office Blogs.

“Microsoft’s new Windows phones: They’ll have to do for now”

Kind of a shitty headline. But I mostly disagree with the overall assessment, that “they’re not the marquee products Windows fans have been waiting for.” That’s not the case at all. These new Lumias are the real deal.

Oh, and there’s a Lumia 550 too

In addition to the much-touted Lumia 950 and 950 XL, Microsoft also quickly announced–seriously, it got about 17 seconds of time—a third Lumia that will ship in Europe this December. Dubbed the Lumia 550, this new low-end phone will cost just $140 unlocked and comes with Windows 10 Mobile, a 1.2 GHz Snapdragon 210 processor, 8 GB of storage, and … yeah, whatever.

It’s Time for Microsoft to Reboot Office

As much as it pains me to agree with The Wall Street Journal, I have to wonder if Geoffrey Fowler isn’t onto something here. It’s not that Office isn’t awesome, it is. And I use it every day. But my needs aren’t exactly mainstream, and of course few people need the power of full Office.

What’s interesting is that I think Microsoft gets this. That is, yes, it’s continually updating the core Office desktop applications, but it’s also offering a growing range of smaller, more focused mobile apps on a variety of platforms. And while some of those apps are new takes on old favorites, many are just … new. And they map more closely to the way people “work” today, though work is in many ways the wrong word.

I’m not leading the charge to Google Docs or anything. But Microsoft’s Office Mobile apps or web-based Office Online apps are probably enough for most. This is something I would like to explore further.