One of my sources, who has been pretty accurate so far about Windows Phone futures, said that neither the GDR2 nor GDR3 updates to the Windows Phone 8 operating system are going to introduce VPN support to the platform. (GDR2 is supposedly rolling out to existing Windows Phone users this summer; GDR3 is rumored for this fall.)

It's unclear if Microsoft will relent  and introduce VPN support with the follow-on to GDR3, which is known as Windows Phone Blue -- which is looking increasingly like an early 2014 deliverble. I hear there's still a chance it could be added at that point.

Microsoft officials said last year that the company had decided to rely on Secure SSL rather than support VPN with Windows Phone 8. One Windows Phone official told me Microsoft considered Secure SSL "a better, light-weight approach" to providing this kind of functionality in the new BYOD (bring your own device) world that is adopting Web servcies.

After Microsoft's introduction of Windows Phone 8, there were renewed rumors that Microsoft was planning to add VPN support to Windows Phone 8 at some point as part of what was known as "Apollo Plus." It turns out Apollo Plus was just a generic Microsoft name for the wave of updates to Windows Phone 8 and not a specific update.

The current plan, from what I'm hearing, is to focus this year on securing new Windows Phone 8 apps and devices. The GDR updates are meant to provide minor updates and tweaks to the Windows Phone 8 operating system. But my sources said the thinking by the powers-that-be in the Windows Phone team is that the base phone operating system is largely good enough for now, and apps and devices are what need the most attention.

The way to think about the three General Distribution Releases (GDRs) is that they are meant to provide bug fixes and specific updates requested by handset makers and mobile operators, I hear. GDR2 is about making some much-needed Xbox music app fixes, allowing Data Sense metering, and CalDAV and CardDAV support. GDR3 is the update that will help support larger screen devices.

Windows Phone Blue is where more major new features will be added. Will VPN be among them? No word so far.

Microsoft, unsurprisingly, isn't talking about GDR3 or Windows Phone Blue. It's shut-up-and-ship over there.

There is some good news for business users on the Windows Phone platform this week, however. Good Technology's enterprise messaging app is now available for Windows Phone 8.

There already was a version of Good's encrypted e-mail for Windows Phone 7.X. But the Windows Phone 8 version of Good's app didn't arrive until today, May 17, according to WPCentral. (The new Good app works on both Windows Phone 7.5 and Windows Phone 8.) The Good WP app provides secure access to email, calendar and contacts; remote lock and wipe; supports blocking copy-paste policy; and more.

The Verge first reported news of the letter, dated May 15, and included a copy of it on its Web site.

The TOS that the Microsoft YouTube app violates has to do with it blocking ads and allowing downloads of videos from Google's YouTube site.

From the letter:

"YouTube’s agreements with creators give them choices inhow their content is presented and distributed, and your application takes away that control.The YouTube Terms of Service and API Terms of Service, posted at http://www.youtube.com/t/terms and https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms, were written to protect content creators from this type of abuse. They clearly prohibit downloads of videos from the site and prohibit accessing any portion of YouTube videos by any means other than through the use of an authorized YouTube player. They also bar applications that modify, replace, interfere with or block advertisements placed by YouTube in videos."

Google is requesting that Microsoft immediately withdraw the app from the Windows Phone Store and disable existing downloads of it by May 22.

Microsoft built the new YouTube app itself, after complaining that Google was blocking access to required metadata. When I asked Microsoft officials recently if something had changed from a policy/API standpoint that allowed Microsoft to deliver this much more robust YouTube app, a Microsoft spokesperson sent the following statment:

"Windows Phone invested additional engineering resources against existing APIs to re-architect a Windows Phone app that delivers a great YouTube experience, including support for unique Windows Phone 8 features such Live Tiles and Kids Corner. Microsoft did not receive any additional technical support to create the Windows Phone YouTube app."

I reached out to both Microsoft and Google for comment on the letter. A Google spokesperson said the company was not offering any comment. No word from Microsoft so far.

Update: Microsoft's official statement via a spokesperson:

"YouTube is consistently one of the top apps downloaded by smartphone users on all platforms, but Google has refused to work with us to develop an app on par with other platforms. Since we updated the YouTube app to ensure our mutual customers a similar YouTube experience, ratings and feedback have been overwhelmingly positive.  We’d be more than happy to include advertising but need Google to provide us access to the necessary APIs. In light of Larry Page’s comments today calling for more interoperability and less negativity, we look forward to solving this matter together for our mutual customers."

Update: On Twitter, @MrRajesh28 told me that Microsoft's YouTube app for Xbox does serve up ads and does not allow video downloading. With that app, there seems to be no violation of Google's Terms of Service. That makes me wonder if Microsoft decided to build the Windows Phone 8 app as part of its "Scroogled" efforts. If not, I'm curious why Microsoft did this. I've asked. If I get more information, I'll add it.

Also the timing of The Verge's report is interesting. Just minutes before it went live, Google's CEO Larry Page, during a Q&A session at the company's annual Google I/O developer conference, criticized Microsoft for taking advantage of Google by interoperating with its Google Talk messaging service and not reciprocating by providing free access to APIs for its own messaging service (presumably Skype).

The programming interfaces Microsoft used to integrate Google Talk with Outlook.com are open, but Google is in the midst of dropping support for the XMPP messaging standard with its just-announced Hangouts, which is the successor to Google Talk and Google's new cross-platform communications service .

On May 14, the company made available UEFI firmware updates for both its Intel-based Pro and ARM-based RT models. Here's the full list of what's available for both kinds of Surfaces:

For Surface Pro:

• UEFI firmware update enables the PXE boot feature. (This feature is only available when using the Surface Pro Ethernet Adapter)
• Trackpad Settings driver for Surface Type Cover to enable interaction with the Trackpad Settings app for Japanese customers
• Continued improvement in Wi-Fi connectivity and stability

For Surface RT:

• UEFI firmware update that enhances Surface RT speaker volume and improves system stability
• Driver pack that improves performance and works with the updated UEFI firmware to enhance Surface RT speaker volume
• Trackpad Settings driver for Surface Type Cover to enable interaction with the Trackpad Settings app for Japanese customers

Surface users can proactively grab the new updates using this process.

Microsoft didn't deliver as part of today's Surface updates support for the new Wacom drivers needed to use Surface Pro with pressure-sensitive pens. Microsoft officials said last week that they are beta testing these drivers, but it appeared as though Wacom made them available for download by anyone on May 9.

I asked both Microsoft and Wacom officials if the drivers were beta or final and received no word back. I have seen tweets and blog posts from a number of Surface Pro users who have downloaded them and found them to work just fine, however.

Microsoft officials said last week that the company has delivered more than 700 fixes and updates for Windows 8 and Windows RT since Microsoft made the operating systems generally available in late October 2012. Surface RT was made generally available in late October 2012; Surface Pro in February 2013.

Microsoft looks likely to be making Surface Pro available in Hong Kong on May 17. There's still no word as to when the Pro model will be available in the handful of countries where Microsoft officials said they'd be before the end of May.

On May 14, company officials shared a couple of the expected GDR (General Distribution Release) 2 features in a blog post that was primarily about the new Lumia 925 phone that Nokia unveiled today. That phone, codenamed "Catwalk," is due out in June on Vodafone and some time after that on T-Mobile. It is Nokia's first lighter-weight, aluminum-body Lumia.

Microsoft's supposed plan, according to my tipsters, is to release three GDR updates to the Windows Phone 8 operating system before delivering what we've been calling Windows Phone Blue.

The "Portico" update -- OS build number 8.0.10211.204 -- which began rolling out last year was considered GDR1. The GDR2 update -- which Microsoft officials never actually call GDR2 in today's blog post -- is coming "this summer." GDR3 sounds like it may be timed to arrive this fall. And Windows Phone Blue is sounding from tipsters more and more like a 2014 release.

In today's blog post, this summer's Windows Phone 8 OS update is described as including "a small number of improvements and upgrades." The post said it will be similar in size to the last update, a k a Portico, which included Wi-Fi and messaging improvements, among other new features.

The new update will include support for CalDAV and CardDAV, so that it will continue to work with Google contact and calendar syncing services, officials said. This CalDAV/CardDAV support previously was rumored for GDR2.

The update will reintroduce support for FM radio (as a feature carriers can opt to support or not) -- a feature which was part of the Windows Phone 7 operating system platform, but which was cut for Windows Phone 8. The update also will make the Data Sense monitoring feature of Windows Phone 8 available for more carriers to support if they decide to do so.

The coming update also will improve the ability to select, download and pin tunes in Xbox Music and improve the accuracy of song information and "other metadata."

"The update includes hundreds of other small quality improvements," according to Microsoft's blog post. There may be some other major features not yet disclosed by Microsoft officials coming, as well, but right now that's all the Softies are saying.

The GDR2 update will be rolling out to existing Windows Phone 8 users starting "later this summer," officials said today.

Microsoft's Windows Chief Financial Officer Tami Reller, during an appearance at the May 14 JP Morgan Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, shared the pricing news. 

Reller also acknowledged what those who've downloaded leaked builds of Blue have known for a while: Windows Blue is Windows 8.1.

Windows 8 is currently available via a handful of SKUs -- Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, Windows 8 Enterprise and Windows RT (not exactly Windows 8, but part of the family).  She didn't provide more information about plans for the coming Blue SKUs.

Reller also said today that Microsoft now has more than 70,000 Metro-Style/Windows Store apps in the Windows Store. She also noted that the final version of Windows Blue (both the Windows 8 and the RT flavors)  will be made available to customers through the Windows Store once they are available.

Last week, Reller acknowleged that Microsoft plans to have Windows Blue available by holiday 2013. (I continue to hear the release to manufacturing will be around August 2013.) Julie Larson-Green, the head of Windows engineering, also confirmed last week that Microsoft plans to make a public preview of Blue available by the end of June, 2013, around the time of the Microsoft Build 2013 conference. Reller reconfirmed the preview date today, noting the Blue preview will be out at Build, which kicks off on June 26. (I've asked Microsoft if Windows RT/Surface RT users will get the preview, too. The answer is yes, as a new Microsoft blog post mentions in its last line.)

Last week, Reller wouldn't talk about Windows Blue's price. She said Microsoft planned to disclose more about pricing and the SKU line-up for Blue before the end of May -- which set off a chain of angry reactions among some Windows 8 users who thought the word "pricing" meant Microsoft definitely planned to charge for Blue. But a mention of Blue being a free upgrade by All Things D's Walt Mossberg in an article from late April made me believe free was the plan. 

Reller emphasized that Microsoft's strategy in using the Windows Store to deliver Blue is focused around giving users choice about when they deploy the coming update. 

"Windows 8.1 will be a packaged set of updates which customers can say when they are ready (to deploy)," she said. 

Reller also was asked during a Q&A session about what's behind her own and Larson-Green's recent emphasis on Microsoft being "principled but not stubborn" about expected coming interface changes with Blue. Among those rumored changes are inclusion of an optional Start Button and boot-to-desktop capability.

Reller said that even though the Windows ecosystem needs to know where Microsoft is going so it can go with the company, the Windows team still needs to listen to its customers and partners about what they want.

The Google Talk integration will be implemented similarly to the way Microsoft already integrates Facebook and Skype messaging from inside Outlook.com, according to a new post on the Microsoft Outlook blog.

Microsoft said users should expect to be able to send an instant message to Google contacts with a single click "over the next couple of days." Microsoft built the support using Google's application programming interfaces (APIs.)

As Neowin noted, "Google's chat integration is widely used among Gmail users and Microsoft knew this would be one of the reasons users might hold-out on switching to Outlook.com."

The Google Talk support is currently limited to text messaging, as The Verge said. (Video/audio messaging support may come at some point if there's considerable users demand.)

In addition to making Google Talk messaging available inside the Outlook.com inbox, Microsoft also is integrating support for Google contacts across calendar, its People contact list and with SkyDrive.com. The SkyDrive integration will allow users to collaborate on documents with Google friends with whom users are chatting, Microsoft's blog post said.

The Google integration will happen across all these services internationally over the next few days. From today's blog post:

"Google chat integration will be available to everyone worldwide in the next few days. While it's rolling out, you might notice a few quirks if you're jumping around between SkyDrive and Outlook.com, but that will be resolved as soon as the rollout is complete. If you're like most people, you'll see it appear first in SkyDrive and then in your inbox and People page. If you don't see it in your inbox quite yet, it's on the way!"

Microsoft announced a couple of weeks ago it was integrating Skype messaging into Outlook.com, starting with "a select set" of UK users. I've heard this integration may not be working yet, as the required Skype plug-in still may not be available. Any readers gotten it to work yet?

Microsoft's Google messaging announcement comes just ahead of the start of Google's I/O developer conference, which kicks off this week. Google is said to be working on Babel, which will integrate Google Talk and its other chat/messaging properties, into a single service. There's no word if Babel will be featured as part of this week's I/O announcements.

Skype 2.6 for Windows Phone 8, which the team calls a "minor" update, is available for download from the Windows Phone Store. The 2.6 update includes improvements around the reliability of chat and call notifications, of calls to phone numbers, and resolution to "occasional missing message preview in the recent conversations list," according to the Skype site.

The Skype team also provided information about some upcoming fixes and updates for still-unresolved problems with Skype on Windows Phone 8. The team is working to fix an issue where calls keep ringing when answered on a different device or ended by the caller. The team also said it would provide in an unspecified future release the ability to sign in with a Microsoft account that itsn't joined to a Skype account.

Other coming improvements for some unspecified future releases: A fix to problems some are having with video stopping when a call is in the background; marking as read on other devices a message that the user reads on Windows Phone; and a bug resulting in all calls received when the Skype app is closed appearing as audio calls.

Skype 6.3 for Windows, which works on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, is available here. (This new version is not an update for the Skype for Windows 8 application.) There's not much information as to specific new features in 6.3, but improvements to "the quality and stability of the application" are listed on Skype's site as what's new.

In other Microsoft service updates, the SkyDrive cloud storage team also announced a few new enhancements to SkyDrive on May 13 that will be rolling out over the next 48 hours. Among them: 

• Ability to scroll through all photos stored on SkyDrive in one seamless timeline experience
• Faster photo upload
• Easier readability of thumbnails, as well as new thumbnails for PowerPoint and Word files

Rather than simply sit back and wait for devs to (hopefully) embrace its growing set of new technologies, the Redmondians have decided to go proactive. On May 13 -- just over a month ahead of Microsoft's Build 2013 developer conference -- Microsoft is launching a new "deep tech" team inside its Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) unit. The new team is charged with working with top developers outside the company to build next-generation applications on top of the Microsoft platform.

When Microsoft initially launched DPE in 2001, the team was charged with coordinating and evangelizing the "Microsoft platform." At that time, the platform meant, primarily, Windows, the .Net Framework and associated tools.

These days, as Microsoft works to morph from a software vendor to a devices and services one, what constitutes the "Microsoft platform" is something much broader.

"'The platform' is now a collection of capabilities across all of our products," said John Shewchuk, the head of the recently formed technical evangelism and dev team. Our job is "helping devs stitch together solutions with these technologies."

"Devs" also is a much broader target audience for Microsoft than it once was. Back in the early DPE days, devs meant professional, full-time programmers. The target audience for Microsoft's new deep-tech team includes anyone who writes a consumer, business or hybrid application. That means startups, enterprise customers and top consumer and business independent software vendors (ISVs).

The Microsoft toolbox from which devs can choose to mix and match includes many technologies that didn't exist a decade, or even just a few years, ago. They include everything from Windows Azure technologies, to Bing programming interfaces and datasets, to the WinRT framework underlying Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. Microsoft's next Xbox, Kinect, Windows Phones, Surfaces, Perceptive Pixel multitouch displays are among the targets for these technologies.

"This is a playground. We get to work with stuff from all the different Microsoft business groups," said Shewchuk. "It's like geek heaven."

Meet the deep-tech geeks

The idea of creating this kind of deep-tech team has been percolating since October 2012, when Microsoft veteran Steve Guggenheimer returned to Microsoft to head up DPE, according to Microsoft execs. Guggenheimer, in conjunction with Server and Tools Business chief Satya Nadella and with the blessing of CEO Steve Ballmer, set out to recruit some deeply technical evangelists with far-flung specializations.

Shewchuk, a 20-year Microsoft veteran and one of the company's Technical Fellows, agreed to spearhead the team. (Microsoft isn't saying how large the new team is, but I've heard it could be over 100 people in size and growing.) Shewchuk, who is now the Chief Technology Officer for the Microsoft Developer Platform, was working for the last several years on Windows Azure, where he helped the company build Windows Azure Active Directory, Service Bus and SQL services. Shewchuk also was a key contributor to a number of other Microsoft dev technologies, including .Net, Visual Studio, Windows Communication Foundation and the WIndows Identity Foundation.

"The idea is to bridge our inside developers to outside developers," Shewchuk said. "We want to get the top developers to adopt our platform."

Shewchuk described the new deep-tech team as a place where Microsoft pulls together its own "world-class" developers to exchange ideas among themselves and with the outside world. Because Microsoft's new stack of technologies are all at different places, in terms of their maturity cycle, the Microsoft tech team will do everything from build new frameworks; develop code to tie together disparate products; and make available code and templates for external use using services like GitHub or CodePlex. In some cases, the "developers" who take advantage of these pieces may be Microsoft's own product teams who may want to incorporate code (and even the developers who wrote it) directly into their units.

Shewchuck's not the only heavy hitter on the new deep-tech team.

A brand-new-to-Microsoft member is Patrick Chanezon, who joined Microsoft from VMware just over a week ago. His new job is to lead the enterprise evangelism efforts in Microsoft’s DPE unit from San Francisco. At VMware, from 2011 to 2012, Chanezon helped build out the developer relations team for Spring and Cloud Foundry. Before that, he worked at Google from 2005 to 2011, where he managed the Cloud Developer Relations team. He helped with efforts around HTML5, OpenSocial, Google Checkout and the AdWords API. And before that, Chanezon spent five years at Sun Microsystems as a software architect working on Sun Portal Server, blogs and syndication feeds.

"We're at a deep architectural inflection point right now in the enterprise," said Chanezon. "Devs need new ways of working, new apps and new frameworks. There's the whole dev-ops movement, plus the move to become more agile."

Chanezon said he joined Microsoft because he felt the company's new devices plus services strategy really embraces these changes. He said while Google had devices and services, too, it didn't have the private/hybrid cloud component which Microsoft also brings to the enterprise-dev table. As a big believer in the power and potential contribution of open source, he said he was encouraged to see that Azure has become a very open-source-friendly platform.

Another member of the deep-tech team is James Whittaker -- who is known by many because of a much-publicized blog post he wrote in 2012 about why he left Google and rejoined Microsoft. At Google, which he joined in 2009, he was an engineering director, leading teams working on Chrome, Maps and Google+. During his first stint at Microsoft, he worked on the Trustworthy Computing and Visual Studio teams.

Whittaker's most recent gig at Microsoft was development manager for the Microsoft knowledge platform as part of the Bing team. 

"When Microsoft talks about devices and services, that's a two-legged stool," said Whittaker. The third leg is knowledge. We're embedding knowledge into everything from Xbox, to Office, to third-party products."

Whittaker said "dev platform" is no longer simply the operating system and related application programming interfaces (APIs). It's the whole ecosystem, he said, including information that Bing extracts from the Web, like catalogs, weather, and maps. The goal is to make this available inside applications built by both Microsoft and third-party developers. 

"Actions can be performed on these entities. We have hundreds of millions of things we can provide that go beyond the blue links (in search engines)," Whittaker said.

Bringing yet another skill set to the deep-tech team is Eric Schmidt. (No, not that Eric Schmidt.)

Schmidt, a 15-year Microsoft veteran, is a Senior Director on a team focused on adoption of Microsoft's devices and services in "consumer lifestyle" applications. He has worked with Microsoft customers and partners, including NBC Sports, the NCAA, Victoria's Secret Fashion Show and Major League soccer, as well as with Hulu, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Comcast, around building apps and services that leverage the cloud. He also was lead architect of Microsoft's open-source media software development kits, including the Microsoft Media Player Framework and Audience Insight.

Schmidt joined DPE six years ago, bringing his media specialization to the media and entertainment, social and gaming verticals. These are "where people are thinking about attaching devices to a lifestyle," he said. 

A big target for Schmidt is mobile developers, specifically those writing for iOS and Android who may not know how their skills can be transferred to Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. "We're showing them how what they already know is correlated," he said, while playing up the message that the iOS and Android gold mines are drying up.

As the walls break down as to what constitutes a dev, vs. a partner, vs. a customer, DPE's new deep-tech team has an interesting charter ahead of it.

There've been reports claiming everything from Microsoft is doing a 180-degree reversal with Windows Blue, to others advising the Redmondians to dig in their heels and stay the current UI course with its coming Blue update.

Windows Blue, from all leaks and tips I've received, is not a do-over. (If it were, it would take Microsoft a lot longer than nine or ten months to deliver it.) And ignoring customer confusion isn't a virtue; it's stupidity.

This armchair pundit finds it refreshing to hear Windows honchos admit that Windows 8 isn't selling as well as they hoped and that they want to make its successor more comfortable, familiar and usable for the Windows installed base.

In addition to the optional Start Button and boot-to-desktop options, there may be other interface adjustments in the works, according to one of my Blue tipsters. I hear the Windows team may also be tweaking the Charms to make them a bit easier to use with a mouse. There might be new built-in tutorials and in-context help coming to Blue. And word is there may be adjustments to the Start Screen designed to make Blue easier to use for Desktop users. One of my sources said some of these tweaks may not be in the Windows Blue preview release coming at the end of June, but that they still could make it into the final product.

If any or all of these tweaks make it into the final version of Blue, it's nothing but goodness. If you're a user who likes Windows 8 already, great. Just ignore new options and keep on keepin' on. If you're someone like me -- who is still running Windows 7 on two of my three Windows devices (with Windows RT running on my Surface RT) -- maybe Blue will make you reconsider whether you might find the new Metro-centric Windows a little more palatable because of these changes.

Last summer, before Windows 8 launched, I said I thought the operating system would face a rough road. My reasoning at the time was there were few PCs or tablets that made Windows 8 usable. And for those of us who might be interested in putting Windows 8 on existing non-touch hardware, the usability was questionable. Now that Windows 8's been out for about six months, I feel like my early inklings were true. I wouldn't call Windows 8 a disaster (with 100 million licenses sold), but I also wouldn't call it a barn-burner success.

My biggest criticism for Microsoft in all this isn't that the company is trying to make some adjustments to improve usability with Blue. Instead, I can't but help wonder why Microsoft -- with all its telemetry information, customer satisfaction data, and beta-testing input -- still went ahead with what its Windows execs must have known full well would be a confusing and less-than-optimal experience for many Windows users.

It's possible to project a bit by reading one of the recent blog posts of former Windows President Steven Sinofsky, who spearheaded Windows 8's development, for some insights into that question. In a May 8 post (a day after Microsoft's latest Blue disclosures), Sinofsky blogged about the damned-if-they-do/damned-if-they-don't choice that companies face when launching a disruptive technology:

"If you listen to customers (and vector back to the previous path in some way: undo, product modes, multiple products/SKUs, etc.) you will probably cede the market to the new entrants or at least give them more precious time. If technology product history is any guide, pundits will declare you will be roadkill in fairly short order as you lack a strategic response. There’s a good chance your influential customers will rejoice as they can go back and do what they always did. You will then be left without an answer for what comes next for your declining usage patterns.

"If you don’t listen to customers (and stick to your guns) you are going to 'alienate' folks and cede the market to someone who listens. If technology product history is any guide, pundits will declare that your new product is not resonating with the core audience. Pundits will also declare that you are stubborn and not listening to customers."

The Windows organization that Sinofsky left behind in November is facing this very choice right now, and seems to be heading toward Option A (after already trying Option B under Sinofsky).

Given Microsoft's installed base of 1.4 billion and the reticence of some of its key partners to back Microsoft's claim that the whole device world is going touch (something else I have to say I'm relieved to hear), I am liking Microsoft's new direction here. 

I believe Microsoft can stay its Metro-centric, touch-centric course with Windows Blue, while still making some changes that will make the OS more usable and comfortable fora bigger pool of users. While it would have been great if Windows 8 debuted this way last October, I say better late than never.

"Update" is becoming an increasingly loaded -- and important -- word at Microsoft.

VS 2012.3, is almost done and hit the release candidate milestone earlier this week.

A number of Microsoft users have questioned whether these updates are simply new names for service packs. I've pointed out that service packs in Windows were supposed to be "just" bug fixes and not new features. But Technical Fellow and Team Foundation Server Product Unit Manager, Brian Harry, made this point more eloquently in a blog post from earlier this week.

Harry posted a very candid response to a tester's question about Microsoft's thinking around the new Visual Studio update process. The questioner asked whether these updates were simply Service Pack (SP) 1 delivered in pieces. Here's what Harry said:

"I also don’t think it’s 'SP1 in chunks.' The kinds of changes we’ve put into the (VS 2012) updates go FAR beyond what we would have historically included in a Service Pack. Service Packs had an 'aura' that they only contain bug fixes and while that was never strictly true – any time someone proposed a Service Pack change that didn’t smell like a bug fix, there was a lot of justification that had to be done. One of the fundamental mindset changes with the move from 'Service Packs' to 'Updates' has been that the primary value of Updates is new value – and sure we’ll fix a lot of bugs too, but that’s not the focus. Read my posts on the updates and you’ll that generally the bug fixes are a footnote. They are all about the cool new capabilities we are enabling."

While no one from Windows or Office has been anywhere near this upfront about what constitutes and update, I'd bet the thinking is similar, if not identical on those teams.

Not so long ago, Microsoft execs would talk about a major/minor product delivery strategy. Windows, especially, was all about delivering a big-bang release, followed by a more minor one three years or so later. A greater emphasis on services and devices meant that thinking no longer made sense, as many users now expect more regular, frequent updates.

Does Update = Free?

Pricing is the one piece of the new Microsoft "update" puzzle that is still unknown -- at least on the Windows and Office fronts.

With products like Dynamics CRM and Visual Studio 2012, Microsoft has been making updates available for free to users who purchased or subscribed to the latest versions of a particular software/service deliverable.

Microsoft's Windows Chief Financial Officer Tami Reller's pronouncement this week that Microsoft will be revealing Windows Blue SKUs and pricing before the end of May had a number of Windows 8 users up in arms. They immediately assumed that any mention of "price" must mean Microsoft intends to charge for Windows Blue. And a number of these users feel like Blue -- at least the pieces of it that have leaked so far -- are more product refinements and/or features that should have been in Windows 8 when it launched in October 2012 than features for which they should be charged more money. 

I've heard rumors that Microsoft plans to make Blue free for existing Windows 8 users. I've also heard rumors that Microsoft intends to charge existing users a "nominal fee" for Blue (the same way that Apple has been charging for updates to Mac OS X). I'm more inclined to believe it will be free -- especially given a late April "All Things D" laptop guide by Walt Mossberg indicated that Microsoft and/or OEMs had said Windows Blue "will be available to current buyers as a free upgrade."

(I asked Microsoft officials this week about the All Things D post and was told the Windows team had no comment.)

One more tidbit from Harry's post this week: VS 2012.3 is the last of the updates coming for Visual Studio 2012. The next deliverable on the roadmap is VS V.Next, which some tipsters have said is Visual Studio 2013. This is probably what I've heard called "Visual Studio Blue."

I'd think Build 2013 is where we'll hear lots more about this new version of Visual Studio, as well as about the evolving app-dev model designed to bring Windows Blue, Windows Phone and maybe even the new Xbox more into alignment.

Since Microsoft launched the Surface Pro in early February 2013, a number of users have been unpleasantly surprised to find pressure sensitivity for supported Wacom digitizing pens to be lacking.

Finger-pointing ensued. Some said Microsoft's decision to use its own digitizer driver based on its InkAPI as the default was problematic. Some claimed Adobe -- which was backing the alternative WinTab API -- was going to have to modify its applications for pressure sensitivity to work correctly on the Surface Pro. Others noted that Wacom's own drivers provided necessary WinTab support, but these drivers wouldn't install on the Pro.

I asked Microsoft officials a couple of times over the past few months for an update on the required drivers and was told the company had no comment. But in mid-February, one of the key contributors to Microsoft's Surface work tweeted that Microsoft was actively working with Wacom and the situation should be resolved "soon."

A May 9 tweet by Panos Panay, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft Surface, indicated that the updated Wacom drivers for Surface Pro were in beta and would be released soon.

I asked Microsoft again today what "soon" meant and was told there was no further information as to when the needed drivers would be out.

Update: Wacom has what appears to be a new Windows 8 Wacom driver -- which may or may not be the one Panay referenced -- posted for download on its site. (Thanks for the link @dan_tower.) Just choose "Windows 8" as the operating system in the drop down and you'll see "TABLET PC – Enhanced Tablet Driver 7.1.1-12," dated May 9. I've asked Microsoft officials if this is the Wacom driver for Surface Pro. No word back so far.

Microsoft officials said last month that Microsoft would begin expanding international distribution of its Surface Pro tablet/PC hybrid starting this month. The Intel-based Surface Pro will launch before the end of May in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. It will launch in Korea, Malaysia, Russia, Singapore, and Thailand before the end of June, according to an April 23 post on the Surface Blog.

This week, during an appearance at the Wired Business Conference, Windows Engineering chief Julie Larson-Green hinted that Microsoft may be ready to talk further about new members of its Surface hardware family within the next few weeks.

Update (May 9): The New York Times, citing an unnamed person "briefed on the matter," said the documents are real and only several weeks old. That person was said to add that any kind of possible acquisition is several weeks away.

Does a Microsoft Nook Media buy-out make any sense? Given I thought rumors of Microsoft buying Skype and Yammer (both of which Redmond ended up purchasing) were pretty ludicrous, I'd say I'm probably not the best one to judge.

Microsoft officials, as one might expect, are saying they have no comment on rumors or speculation involving Microsoft's reported interest in Nook Media.

I can contribute the little I do know about what I've seen/heard about Microsoft and Nook Media.

Nook Media is the venture that Barnes & Noble created last year. At that time, it was known as NewCo. Nook Media includes Barnes & Noble's Nook devices, online bokstore, e-content publishing and college business.

The Nook tablets are Android-based. Barnes & Noble recently added support for Google Store to these devices. Hopes by some for a Windows-based Nook and/or Microsoft Surface e-reader with Nook's catalog of digital content have not materialized.

For now, there's not a whole lot that Microsoft seemingly has gained from its Nook Media investment. There's a Windows 8 Nook app. There's still no official Nook app for Windows Phone (in spite of seeming plans to field one). Microsoft isn't offering access to the Barnes & Noble/Nook digital media catalog as a built-in part of its Surface, Windows or Windows Phone devices.

(I asked Tami Reller, the Chief Financial Officer of Windows client, about Nook this week. She said that Microsoft was supporting Nook Media "in all the right ways," and that it was working with Nook Media on the next iteration of the Windows 8 Nook app and support for the Nook Media catalog. She said that Brian MacDonald -- the head of Microsoft's AppEx team, which is building new first-party Microsoft apps for Windows 8 -- was working closely with the Nook team.)

As I noted in a blog post from earlier today, there could potentially be some kind of tie-in between Nook Media and Microsoft's Office division.

The Barnes & Noble college business -- digital and physical -- is part of Nook Media. B&N bought it in 2009. Pearson invested late last year in Nook Media largely because of this business.

Even though Nook unit sales are down, Nook Media grew its digital content sales. Barnes & Noble officials say the Nook digital bookstore service contains about a 25 percent share of the total e-book market and 35 percent share of the digital magazine subscription market in the U.S.

In late November 2012, as part of its second quarter 2013 earnings call, Barnes & Noble CEO William Lync said the company was seeing "an increase in the pipeline of RFPs (requests for proposals) from schools looking to outsource their physical and online campus book stores. These schools see the growth in textbook rentals and recognize the pending growth of digital content and are unable or unwilling to invest in managing the distribution of course materials in these formats themselves."

Lynch noted that the company was building out a Nook Study platform "for the management, merchandising and distribution of digital content."

"This gives Barnes & Noble College a one-stop suite of Retail and Digital services for schools and students which is a valuable competitive advantage," Lynch said during B&N's most recent earnings call.

What do you think? Could and should Microsoft pay for Nook Media and try to capitalize on its digital-content distribution offering and/or to jump start some kind of new Surface e-reader/tablet offering? Or would Microsoft be throwing money away by buying Nook Media -- for $1 billion or any price?

Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 update is available

On May 7, Microsoft made available for download an update for Office for Mac 2011. That update, 14.3.4, includes a number of important fixes. Among them: A fix for co-authoring when using Microsoft PowerPoint; a fix for saving files to SkyDrive and SharePoint from Word for Mac; a group mail fix for Outlook for Mac; and a couple of junk mail updates for Outlook for Mac. This update is for those running Mac OS X version 10.5.8 or a later version.

A Blue version of Windows Embedded: Think this fall

The Windows Embedded team mentioned in passing this week that it will be delivering a Blue update to the Windows Embedded operating system. In a May 7 blog post, the team noted: "With Windows Blue, we are furthering our platform alignment with Windows to address a growing category of devices on the edge of enterprise networks and will be bringing the update to market later this year."

Right now, the Embedded team isn't share specific SKU details or any other information. (There are several Windows Embedded 8 SKUs available currently.) But Embedded is "aligning with the Windows release schedule," a spokesperson confirmed to me.

Microsoft's official pronouncement on Windows Blue is that it will be out by holiday 2013. My sources say Windows Blue is on track to RTM by August 2013 or so. So I'd say expect Windows Embedded Blue some time this fall.

About that Windows Phone YouTube app...

Microsoft announced earlier this week its redesigned YouTube app for Windows Phone 8 is now available via the Windows Phone Store. In the blog post detailing the app's new features, there was no mention of how or whether Microsoft managed to gain Google's cooperation in building this app. One might think Microsoft would need this, given the Redmondians have said they couldn't advance YouTube on Windows Phone because of Google's decision to restrict Microsoft's access to required metadata. 

I asked Microsoft and Google officials if something had changed from a policy/API standpoint that allowed Microsoft to deliver this much more robust YouTube app. Google officials didn't respond to my request for comment. A Microsoft spokesperson sent the following statment:

"Windows Phone invested additional engineering resources against existing APIs to re-architect a Windows Phone app that delivers a great YouTube experience, including support for unique Windows Phone 8 features such Live Tiles and Kids Corner. Microsoft did not receive any additional technical support to create the Windows Phone YouTube app."

On May 8, Microsoft announced it will be opening four new 'specialty stores' in May and June. The four newest locales: Roseville, Calif.; Arlington, Texas; Novi, Mich.; and Seattle. In April, Microsoft opened five new specialty stores.

According to Microsoft's Store locator page, there are a total of 34 specialty stores in the U.S. and Canada that are open now and/or opening soon. That's out of a total of 75 U.S. and Canadian Microsoft stores listed on that page.

Microsoft still has yet to open its first Microsoft Store outside the U.S. and Canada. There've been rumors about Microsoft opening a London store, but so far, nothing has materialized. There also still is not a permanent, full-sized Microsoft Store in Manhattan, NY.

When Microsoft announced plans to open its own stores in early 2009, it patterned itself after Apple, with large, standalone stores, complete with their own tech-support areas (Answer Desks, rather than Genuis Bars). The strategy at that time was to open these stores as close as possible to Apple Stores.

With the launch of Windows 8, just in time for the holiday 2012 selling season, Microsoft opted to open more than 30 holiday pop-up stores. A number of these have morphed into "specialty stores." These tend to be much smaller, often times occupying little more than a kiosk in a mall. They offer a much smaller selection of "curated" Microsoft products, with a heavy focus on Surface and Windows Phone.

Microsoft has been focusing on selling its own Surface RT and Pro PC/tablet hybrids in its own stores, though it gradually has been expanding distribution to other third-party retailers throughout the world.

Despite its continued specialty-store push, Microsoft isn't giving up on third-party retailers like Best Buy and Staples as a major conduit for Windows 8 and Windows RT. Tami Reller, the Chief Financial Officer of Windows, told me earlier this week that Microsoft has plans to work with these retailers to create specific sales experience areas for tablets, touch laptops, convertibles and all-in-ones.

Microsoft also will be changing its incentive programs for retail stores so that salespeople will be compensated for touch, 100 percent, when it comes to consumer sales, as of holiday 2013, Reller said.

This week, the Web Apps team (which also internally goes by WAC, or Web Applications Companion) blogged about some of the new features coming to Office Web Apps "over the next year and beyond." These include official support for Chrome on Android tablets and real-time co-authoring (instead of "same-time" authoring), starting with PowerPoint Web App.

Microsoft officials also previously have said that Yammer integration will be coming to Office Web Apps, too, starting this fall. Specifically, the Softies said to expect integration of the Office Web Apps' editing/coediting of Word, PowerPoint and Excel documents with Yammer.

From an internal Microsoft roadmap I saw -- which I believe to have been current as of early this year -- the first wave of Microsoft's next Office Web App updates will be available around October 2013, as part of the Gemini 1 wave. Another set of updates to Office Web Apps will hit a year later, around October 2014 (Gemini 2).

Gemini is the codename for the coming wave of Microsoft Office updates, the first of which will coincide roughly with Windows Blue. The Gemini 1 wave will include new Metro-Style/Windows Store versions of Word, Excel, OneNote and PowerPoint, according to my sources, in addition to some of the Office Web Apps. Microsoft officials are not commenting on anything having to do with Gemini.

Microsoft's Office Web Apps are the Webified versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote which Microsoft first introduced with Office 2010. Office Web Apps are usable in a variety of browsers -- including Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox and Safari -- on different operating systems and form factors (PCs, tablets, smartphones). Microsoft also built a version of Office Web Apps customized for Facebook which is called Office Docs. 

Office Web Apps include a subset of the functionality in the full Office versions of each of the apps. Microsoft released to the Web the most recent set of Office Web Apps updates in conjunction with Office 2013/Office 365 in October 2012.

Could there be an Office Web Apps-Nook connection?

Microsoft claimed last year to have 50 million active Office Web Apps users. But its goal, based on a job posting on the Microsoft Careers site, is to build out Office Web Apps to scale out to 100 million-plus users.

"The (Office) Web Apps organization is at the center of Office’s Software + Services transformation," the job posting noted. The job post also noted that the Office Web Apps team owns "vertical end-to-end scenarios related to collaboration and authoring in the Word Web App."

One of the vertical scenarios the Office honchos have said Microsoft's investment in the Nook Media subsidiary.

One of Nook Media's most profitable businesses involves its college business. And as Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch hinted last year, authoring/publishing scenarios are a place where there could be synergies between Microsoft Office and Nook. Last summer, Lynch told Fortune:

"(I)magine an integration where an information worker, student, author, consumer, creates something in Office and has it immediately published for sale through the Nook book store. It starts to open a lot of exciting possibilities."

For the time-being, however, neither Barnes & Noble or Nook Media offers Office-centric self-publishing tools. The recently introduced Nook Press tool doesn't support Office, as a Barnes & Noble spokesperson confirmed when I asked. 

The official statement: "At this time NOOK Press is a Barnes & Noble web based author publishing tool. At this time we do not have any immediate plans in integrating NOOK Press with Microsoft Office."

That's according to Julie Larson-Green, the head of Windows engineering, who made those remarks during the Wired Business Conference on May 7.

The timing isn't a surprise, given that Microsoft's Build 2013 developer conference is slated for the last week of June. Larson-Green said that Windows Blue will be available at the end of June to anyone with Windows 8 via the Windows Store.

Update: Does this also mean there will be a public consumer preview of Windows RT Blue at the same time? I asked and a Microsoft spokesperson told me the company had no comment. Tipsters have said previously that there will be a version of the Blue update for Windows RT later this year, however. 

According to previous tips and leaks, Microsoft is close to completing what's believed to be the second internal milestone build, known as the Milestone Preview, of Windows Blue. Shortly after that, Microsoft is expected to make its one-and-only Windows Blue public preview available to consumers.

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What Microsoft is now saying (and not) about Windows Blue

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Earlier this week, Microsoft officials said to expect the company to make Windows Blue available by holiday 2013. I am still continuing to hear Microsoft is on track to release to manufacturing (RTM) Windows Blue by August 2013 or so.

Larson-Green emphasized -- like her Chief Financial Officer counterpart Tami Reller -- that Microsoft plans to be "principled but not stubborn" with coming modifications to the Blue update. Neither Larson-Green nor Reller promised that Microsoft would add back the Start Button to Windows Blue, but neither of them ruled out this possibility.

There have been rumors that both the Start Button and boot straight to desktop options are coming back to Windows Blue.

"The Start Button might be helpful," Larson-Green acknowledged during her remarks at the conference, and provide users with more of a "comfort level." She did note that the team has had "meaningful discussions" about bringing back the Start Button, but users shouldn't interpret that as meaning the old Start Menu would be coming back.

She noted that the Start Button today is basically hidden. "Some would like it showing up on the screen all the time," she said.

One Wired conference attendee asked Larson-Green at the end of her remarks if she'd consider following Steve Ballmer as CEO of Microsoft. Larson-Green said she wouldn't rule out such a possibility, but acknowledged she was new to her role in Windows. She said "ask me in another year."

Reuters noted that Yahoo disclosed the latest year-long extension of the guarantee, which had expired on March 31, on May 7. The guarantee took effect on April 1, according to Yahoo's latest 10-Q filing.

Search Engine Land recapped RPS this way:

"(W)hen Yahoo & Microsoft signed a search deal in 2009, Microsoft promised that Yahoo would earn a set amount of money for each search that happens, a 'revenue per search' or RPS. If this didn’t happen, Microsoft agreed to make up the difference, what’s called the RPS guarantee."

Microsoft hasn't hit the RPS targets since that time, resulting in Microsoft agreeing in late 2011 to extend the guarantee until this March.

Microsoft's AdCenter technology, the system for buying and delivering online ads, didn't end up providing the kind of revenues Yahoo anticipated when it forged its search deal with Microsoft. To make up for the shortfall, Microsoft has made quarterly payments to Yahoo.

Earlier this year, Yahoo's Marissa Mayer has said that the search partnership between the tech firm and Microsoft has not been as lucrative as expected, contributing to speculation that Yahoo might look to Google as a new search partner at some point.

But the informational floodgates are going to open in the next couple of weeks or so, said Tami Reller, Chief Financial Officer of the Windows client division at Microsoft.

During my interview with her at the Microsoft New York City headquarters on May 6, Reller outlined Microsoft's disclosure plans for the next version of Windows, codenamed Blue. Here's what Reller would -- and wouldn't -- say about Blue:

• Reller said the Windows team will share pricing, packaging and go-to-market details about Blue in the next couple of weeks. Yes -- that's ahead of the upcoming Computex Taipei, Microsoft TechEd and Microsoft Build 2013 shows, all happening in June. She would not comment as to whether Microsoft will go public with details about Windows Server Blue, Windows Phone Blue or Visual Studio Blue at the same time. My guess is no.
• Reller reiterated that Blue is just an internal codename and that Microsoft is describing and positioning Blue "an update" to Windows 8. Reller wouldn't say how many new features will be in Blue. She also wouldn't confirm the final name of the product will be "Windows 8.1," which is the nomenclature we've seen in the leaked Blue builds.
• She wouldn't comment on when and whether there will be a public customer preview of Blue (which is something tipsters have said will be coming in June or so). But she did say Blue will be out in time for holiday 2013. Tipsters have said the release to manufacturing of Blue looked to be on track for August or early fall -- another date on which Reller declined to comment.
• Reller repeated the same message shared by Microsoft's outgoing CFO Peter Klein during a recent earnings call -- that Blue will address customer feedback that Microsoft has been collecting about Windows 8 and Windows RT. She would not say whether the rumored return of the Start Button and a boot straight to desktop option will be among the ways that Microsoft does this. "We feel good that we've listened and looked at all of the customer feedback. We are being principled, not stubborn" about modifying Windows 8 based on that feedback, Reller said. She said Microsoft has paid attention to where people are getting stuck when using Windows 8, with the goal being to help people use the product more and more fully.
• She also reiterated that Blue, which will be available for both Intel and ARM-based PCs and tablets, will be tailored to work on smaller form-factor tablets and devices. She said it will support the various iterations of Intel's Haswell Core processor, and new Qualcomm and Nvidia chips on the ARM front. She also said that some of these new smaller form factor Windows 8 devices will arrive before Windows Blue does.
• Reller wouldn't say whether Blue is just the first of what will be an annual release cadence of new versions of Windows. "You shouldn't assume we won't be doing this yearly... or that we will," Reller said. (Tipsters have told us the current plan is a new Windows "update" is happening every year from now on.) She also wouldn't say when to expect the follow-on to Blue -- which some inside are calling Blue+1, from what I've heard.

 "Blue advances the Windows 8 vision," said Reller. "It's all about mobile, touch, apps, the new dev platform and a highly personalized personal experience."

Reller's compatriot, Julie Larson-Green, who heads up Windows engineering, is 7 slated to speak at the Wired Business conference onMay 7 at 1:45 pm ET. That's probably one reason Microsoft is talking a bit about Windows Blue this week. But Reller also said Microsoft officials had decided it would be sound to clear the decks so that Build 2013 will be all about the Windows developer story when the show kicks off at the end of June....

(Windows 8 and Windows RT went on sale on October 26, 2012. So the exact six-month mark was April 26, which was 10 days ago.)

"If there had been more touch devices in the market, it would have been even more," said Tami Reller, the Chief Financial Officer of Microsoft's Windows client team. That said, "our sell-through has been consistently going up," Reller added.

Reller said to expect the touch hardware situation to start to improve more in July, the kick-off of this year's back-to-school selling season. By holiday season 2013, Microsoft expects there to be a full assortment of screen sizes, form factors and differently priced Windows 8 and Windows RT devices in market, she said.

Microsoft officials said they sold more than 40 million copies of Windows 8 the first month it was commercially available. On January 8, 2013, Microsoft officials said the company had sold 60 million licenses of Windows 8 to date. The bulk of the additional 40 million Windows 8 licenses sold since January have been on new PCs (as opposed to upgrades), given that most of the Windows 8 upgrade deals expired in January, Reller said.

Microsoft's "licenses sold" numbers are "sell in" numbers. That means these figures include sales of licenses to OEMs, as well as Windows 8 upgrades. They don't include copies of Windows 8 sold via volume-licensing agreements. The "licenses sold" numbers may or may not also include Windows RT license numbers. (Microsoft officials won't say.)

The minute that a PC rolls off the manufacturing line with a new version of Windows on it, it is counted as a "license sold," Reller explained.

Microsoft sold more than 100 million licenses of Windows 7 in its first six months, company officials said back in June 2010. At that time, they called Windows 7 "the fastest selling operating system in history."

It's worth repeating that Microsoft's "licenses sold" numbers are totally different from usage share data. Based on usage statistics from various firms, Windows 8 still lags substantially both Windows 7 and Windows XP, in terms of usage at the moment. Microsoft officials declined to provide usage share data for Windows 8.

More Microsoft milestones, commitments

Reller shared some additional Windows 8-related numbers during a meeting I had with her at Microsoft's New York City headquarters on Monday, May 6.

She said the Windows team has delivered 739 updates for Windows 8 and Windows RT in the six-plus months  since those operating systems were made generally available. These updates have included everything from battery-life improvements, to drivers, to security fixes.

There are more than 60,000 Windows Store/Metro Style apps for Windows 8 and Windows RT available now, Reller also said. The Softies believe they will have Windows Store/Metro Style versions of the "majority" of top Android and iPad apps available in the Windows Store by holiday 2013. And there have been more than 500 updates to the first-party (meaning Microsoft-developed) Windows 8 and Windows RT apps in the Store since Windows 8 and Windows RT launched in late October 2012.

Reller reiterated Microsoft's commitment to improving the retail experience for consumers looking to buy new PCs and tablets running Windows 8. She said that even though Microsoft invested more than ever on retail at the end of 2012 -- by both training salespeople about Windows 8 and creating a standardized Windows 8 demo -- all this "still wasn't even close to enough."

"We were smart, but not smart enough" about how users would approach the PC and tablet-buying experience at places like Best Buy, Staples and other retail outfits.

Reller said Microsoft will be doing more with its retail partners, first for the back-to-school buying season, but especially by the holidays. There will be more of a focus on creating specific sales experiences for tablets, touch laptops, convertibles and all-in-ones, she said.

Microsoft also will be changing its incentive programs for retail stores so that salespeople will be compensated for touch, 100 percent, when it comes to consumer sales. Microsoft also will continue to build out more of its own Microsoft brick-and-mortar stores, but will be focusing more on smaller, storefront style spaces, she said.

When Microsoft announced the beta of the Microsoft-developed Facebook app for Windows Phone 8, many wondered aloud why it didn't take advantage of the usual Metro-Style conventions, especially around navigation.

The same is happening today, May 2, with the rollout of the Untappd beer-enthusiast app for Windows Phone 8. The Windows Phone 8 Untappd app looks almost identical to the iOS and Android versions. Some Windows Phone and Windows developers are not happy about this and have been taking the Untappd developers to task on Twitter.

Full disclosure: I had the chance to beta test the Untappd Windows Phone 8 app for the past month-plus.I like the Untappd app. It lets users keep tabs (pun intended) on beers they drink, comment on and toast other friends' beer check-ins and even upload beer-enthusiast pics. (How many different pictures of a pint of beer can you upload? Endless, if my feed is any indication.) Untappd claims half a million registered users and 28 million beer check-ins to date.

Do I care that it doesn't use Metro conventions for navigation? I don't. What matters more to me is the Metro look and feel of the overall Windows Phone OS platform than a specific app adhering to some kind of Metro-Style guidelines -- a similar sentiment to what Windows SuperSite's Paul Thurrott described with the Facebook app for Windows Phone 8.

I talked to Untappd Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer Greg Avola today about how the two-man shop that is Untappd developed the Windows Phone app.

Avola said he used PhoneGap to take the existing Untappd code and port it to Windows Phone. He went this route because Untappd started out as a Website. The Untappd guys then rolled out local apps simultaneously for iOS and Android phones.

"We use PhoneGap for all our apps. It lets us be flexible in writing our own code. You build it like it's a mobile site and then you customize it," explained Avola.

While Untappd got quite a few requests for a Windows Phone version, Avola said they decided to wait until the Internet Explorer browser was more standards-adherent before moving ahead.

"A Windows Phone version of our app has always been in high demand, but the HTML5 support just wasn't there on Windows Phone 7," said Avola. "Our app was built mostly for WebKit, so we had to redesign our code to make it work with IE," he added.

The initial port to IE took only four hours after dropping it into PhoneGap, he said. But then a number of tweaks and fixes were needed to make it work correctly on Windows Phone around custom fonts, layout and touch events. Some last-minute bugs (found by Microsoft) and stringent rules around the distribution of alcohol-related apps delayed the planned Untappd app on Windows Phone 8 by about a month, Avola said. But all in all, developing for Windows Phone went more smoothly than many had led Untappd to believe, he said.

Is it a case of (Metro) style vs. substance?

In building Untappd for Windows Phone, "we tried to conform to enough of the UI standards but to still create a common experience across all the platforms," said Avola.

In other words, as Untappd's other employee, Co-Founder and Designer Tim Mather tweeted, Untappd designed for the app, not the device.

This common experience benefits Untappd when updating and refreshing its app with new features. A common look and feel makes it easier to push updates simultaneously across all phones, he said. That said, he did note that the feed design which debuted in the Windows Phone version of the app appeared first on Windows Phone; it will be coming soon to iOS and Android.

The bottom line is publishers and brands seem to own the right to deliver the UI experience of their choice for Windows Phone apps as long as they meet the basic Store certification requirements. On Windows Phone, this means apps need to adhere to certain rules around things like the Windows Design Language, live tiles, wallpapers and such. But it doesn't seem to mean Windows Phone versions of apps won't adhere to the developers' own design rules and principles.

Thoughts, Windows Phone developers? Is it better to have more apps, more frequently updated if that means they might not be as different/Metrofied on Windows Phone? Does it really matter if Windows Phone apps look and feel like Android and iOS ones, as long as the overall "Metroness" of Windows Phone itself remains?