“Microsoft first acknowledged at Build last year that its new mobile strategy is to make iOS and Android devices work better with Windows 10 PCs. While the Windows-related news at this year’s Build developer conference has been light, Microsoft has revealed it’s working on a new ‘Your Phone’ app that further bridges the gap between PCs and phones,” Tom Warren reports for The Verge. “The app will bring text messages, notifications, and photos from a phone directly to a Windows 10 PC, and it’s designed to make it easier to transition between the two.”
“I sat down with Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore and Shilpa Ranganathan at Build this week to get a better understanding of the company’s cross-device efforts for Windows 10 and the future of Windows itself,” Warren reports. “Microsoft’s new Your Phone app isn’t ready for Windows 10 users to even try fully yet, as the company is still building the app, but it’s clear this will be the central way to connect phones to PCs.”
“Microsoft has shown off messages, notifications, and photo sharing at the moment, but not all of these features will necessarily work on both iOS and Android,” Warren reports. “‘We will actually have photos on iOS and notifications as well,’ explains Shilpa Ranganathan. ‘Apple does make it a tad harder for messages, but we’re very willing to work with Apple.’ That work with Apple has not started, and Microsoft has not yet approached the company to see if it’s willing to work with Microsoft. It seems very unlikely that it will be able to convince Apple to partner on such a project…”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Gee, ya think? If Apple not going to unleash Messages for Android, there’s no way they’d do so for Irrelevantsoft whose presence in mobile is reduced to begging others to help them make some desktop app useful.
Throw another funeral, Microsoft. For yourselves.
Microsoft’s irrelevancy is stark and will remain so.
For us, watching Microsoft flounder around like a dying fish on land brings immense schadenfreudian enjoyment to each and every day. 🙂 – MacDailyNews, April 22, 2016
SEE ALSO:
Microsoft’s Windows Phone failure was easily preventable, but the company’s culture made it unavoidable – July 26, 2017
Microsoft pulls plug on consumer smartphones, axes another 1,850 jobs – May 25, 2016
Cue the funeral for Microsoft’s Windows Phone – April 22, 2016
Microsoft holds iPhone funeral procession to celebrate upcoming Windows Phone 7 release (w/ video) – September 10, 2010
A totally laughable aspiration on behalf of Microsoft. No way Apple will ever contemplate such a ludicrous suggestion. End of…..
like most people, i use WattsApp
Depends what part of the world you’re in. Some places the dominant platform is SMS, some iMessage, some WhatsApp. I wonder if Telegram has reached majority use anywhere yet.
To quote Steve Jobs, it would be like offering a cool glass of water to someone in hell.
…. and the earth froze over!!!
Steve Balmer will be able text from his antiquated and irrelevant Windows phone “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item……”
So they ditched their phone…and then started working on phone integration with Windows..and left at the mercy of two huge players..one of which was pretty much made fun of by them since the beginning of time…
It’s like a bully asking the kid they used to bully for a job, lol.
On the other hand, why not? It’s clear that in the minds of Apple management the Mac is a side business. Apple is iPhone, iMessage for Windows would help sell iPhones. That’s why we have iTunes for Windows, after all. Why not?
Two reasons: security and experience. Security makes it complicated, technically, and would take the most work. I don’t see Apple changing the back end to make it work on windows, so windows would have to accommodate without compromising iMessage security (contact syncing, etc..don’t want a compromised PC sending spam through iMessages).
Experience..iTunes for windows didn’t offer a great experience. That’s apples fault though (preinstalling processes and QuickTime, for example).
Regarding “helping the enemy”..I don’t see that as an issue and actually think Apple and Microsoft should collaborate more as they are two great US companies that could do more if they worked together. We need both around. They keep each other motivated in competition.
Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple made Messages more Windows 10 friendly. Why not? Microsoft is no longer the enemy, just like IBM has long ceased being the enemy. It’s Google, Amazon and Facebook, now. So, as they say, the enemy of your enemy is my friend.
They are and so is Google, Facebook, Netflix, Samsung, and Amazon all are parasitic towards Apple.
Have people here used O365? It is vastly superior suite of productivity tool to that of Apple’s iWork or what ever that is now. Apple annd Google docs are similar …O365 is way ahead and has some very cool capabilities.
In addition, from a security side, they have done a LOT with the architecture to provide security and provide enterprise customers with capability around security.
To say otherwise is ignorant.
In addition, agree with previous comments, MSFT is no longer trying to be everything to everyone … i dont think they even care much if Windows 10 is highly adopted as many of their software is not cross platform …
You don’t need to subscribe to Office 365. That’s a poor value in my opinion.
Standalone Office 2016 for the Mac is as good as it gets on the Mac. Every other productivity suite has too many missing features, especially in spreadsheets. Best of all, it’s worldwide universally capable and accepted defacto standards that will read and write practically anything in an office setting. Apple screwed over me on that more than once.
If you’re too cheap to use Office 2016, then get somebody’s old Office 2011 keys. It’s no longer got official MS support but for standalone use, it’s still far better and more capable than Apples iOSified attempt at productivity apps. Cost to powerful software is not an obstacle. You don’t need to accept the pathetic freebieware that Apple now offers.
O365 may be good, better than iWork no! the OS around it still sucks, and putting up with Windows or anything else on it, on your own time is a waste of time.