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All About Microsoft

Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley's blog covers the products, people and strategies that make Microsoft tick.

Mary Jo Foley

Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 30 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNET, eWeek, and Baseline. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008). She also is the co-host of the "Windows Weekly" podcast on the TWiT network. Got a tip? Send her an email with your rants, rumors, tips, and tattles. Confidentiality guaranteed.

Latest Posts

Microsoft continues its push to get more of its own services hosted on Azure. And Kubernetes is key

Microsoft provides a rare glimpse into its more than 10-year effort to move its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 services to Azure.

August 25, 2022 by Mary Jo Foley in Productivity

Google is exiting the IoT services business. Microsoft is doing the opposite

Microsoft is integrating its IoT and edge-computing teams and services more tightly with Azure. Here's why it's doing the opposite of what Google is.

August 23, 2022 by Mary Jo Foley in Internet of Things

Microsoft starts pushing Windows 11 widget notifications on the taskbar

In the latest example of Windows 11 features arriving whenever Microsoft decides, the company is turning on live notifications for widgets starting this week.

August 17, 2022 by Mary Jo Foley in Windows 11

Microsoft is shutting down its 'Olympia Corp.' Windows Insider enterprise test bed

Microsoft is shutting down next month one of its programs that looked to help seed Windows in the enterprise.

August 16, 2022 by Mary Jo Foley in Windows 11

Microsoft makes Dev Box virtual workstation available to testers

Microsoft's Dev Box service, which lets developers use pre-configured developer workstations in the cloud, is now available to all interested testers.

August 15, 2022 by Mary Jo Foley in Cloud Storage

Microsoft adjusts its consumer-strategy priorities (yet again)

Microsoft is still not throwing in the towel on the consumer space. But it is cutting jobs and phasing out some products.

August 10, 2022 by Mary Jo Foley in Home & Office

Microsoft makes its 3D emoji library available on GitHub and Figma

Microsoft is making available more than 1,500 of its 3D emoji to creators via GitHub and Figma. But sorry, Clippy fans: no paperclip for you.

August 10, 2022 by Mary Jo Foley in Creativity Software

Office 2016 and 2019 users won't be cut off from Microsoft 365 back-end services next year

Microsoft is warning Office 2016 and 2019 users that they might encounter issues when connecting to Microsoft 365 back-end services starting in October 2023. But they won't be blocked from doing so.

August 8, 2022 by Mary Jo Foley in Productivity

Microsoft's still-unannounced 'Designer' tool: New details emerge

Microsoft is seemingly readying a new Designer tool that looks like a Canva competitor, as well as a Create app/site for templates.

August 4, 2022 by Mary Jo Foley in Productivity

Microsoft to roll out native Teams app optimized for Apple silicon in the coming months

Microsoft's new universal-binary version of Teams for Mac will run natively on whichever underlying architecture powers users' devices.

August 3, 2022 by Mary Jo Foley in Collaboration

Microsoft starts rolling out 'Outlook Lite,' optimized for low-end Android devices

The app for Android is meant to work on devices with less RAM. The app will be available as of this week in a handful of countries as a free download.

August 2, 2022 by Mary Jo Foley in Productivity

Microsoft enters the final test phase for Windows 10 22H2 before it's ready to rollout

Testers in the Release Preview channel can finally kick the tires of Windows 10 22H2 after little public information. But as of now, it is rolling out to testers in the near-final Release Preview channel.

July 28, 2022 by Mary Jo Foley in Windows 10

Microsoft serves up lots of Teams numbers to demonstrate growth (except the latest number of users)

Microsoft's cloud businesses are continuing to grow during a challenging macro environment, but exactly how much is a bit tricky to determine.

July 26, 2022 by Mary Jo Foley in Collaboration

Microsoft adds 'Cloud for Sovereignty' to its line-up

Microsoft is looking to expand the Microsoft Cloud footprint to worldwide government customers.

July 19, 2022 by Mary Jo Foley in Cloud

Microsoft fills in more details on its Digital Contact Center Platform featuring Nuance AI

Microsoft's Digital Contact Center combines Teams, Dynamics 365, Power Platform and Nuance AI technologies into a bundle which will be available starting this week.

July 19, 2022 by Mary Jo Foley in Productivity

Review: Microsoft's Intel-based Surface Laptop 3: Third time's the charm

Windows 10