The quality of mobile gaming is definitely improving, but some of us are old enough to remember the excitement that Nintendo's original Entertainment System (NES) and Game Boy brought into our lives. We've seen emulators galore being released over the last few weeks that bring the pleasure of the old school Nintendo experience to our iOS and Android devices, meaning that it shouldn't really come as a shock that a new Game Boy emulator from Ben Midi has appeared for iOS, Android and Windows users.
We're all firmly in mobile mode with Mobile World Congress kicking off over in Barcelona, but that hasn't stopped Microsoft from letting everyone know what the current state of play is when it comes to an update to Windows 8.1, and the new Windows Phone 8.1.
It may have its detractors in both the PC and Mac world, but Windows 8 certainly has its good points. It seems that we're not the only ones to think that either, with the news coming out of Microsoft today that the controversial Windows 8 can now boast 200 million licenses sold.
According to sources of The Verge, Microsoft could be toying with the idea of bringing Android app support to both Windows and Windows Phone, in a move that could, in theory, help breathe new life into a mobile platform that is patently bereft of apps. Of course, such a drastic move would cause controversy, no less because it could spell the beginning of the end of Windows Phone as a mobile platform, but as the Redmond continually struggles to entice developers into creating apps for the Windows Phone Store, options are becoming increasingly limited.
Dell is one of the foremost manufacturers of desktop computers, notebooks, monitors, and other such peripherals based around computing. In recent years, it has tried with a notable amount of gusto to tap into the hybrid market, with some success. But in an ad for its latest laptop-plus-tablet, it makes the cardinal sin of showing both Windows 8 and OS X at the very same time. With a simple sideways gesture, the user seems to move from the Start Screen to a Mac app, and although there are ways of running both of these operating systems on one machine, Dell certainly didn't intend to market this fact to the world.
It's frequently the case that unreleased software leaks to the Internet quite a long time before it has been commissioned for prime time, but when said software happens to entail Microsoft's much-anticipated Windows 8.1 Update 1, it tends to make the headlines. Scheduled for release next month, Update 1 has found its way onto various file sharing sites already, and although the fact that it's a build from three weeks ago means that Microsoft will have definitely made some alterations before the final release, it offers enough of an insight as to what's in the offing. Details after the fold!
The guys over at VideoLAN, developers of the iconic VLC media player, have once again teased the Windows 8 / RT version of the app, providing eager video enthusiasts with a glimpse of the Snap View. VLC for Windows 8 has certainly been a long time in coming, but if these new screenshots are anything to go by, then the wait will have been worth it. Check it out after the fold!
In a world where we can manage our iPhones and iPads from the cloud and need never plug them into a computer thanks to iCloud, it's easy to forget that actually iTunes exists for the very same purpose. We know that we don't all use it here at Redmond Pie, and at least one writer doesn't even have an iTunes library to call his own. Music streaming services like Spotify and Rdio make iTunes even more redundant, so when Apple released iTunes 11.1.4 today it took some work to get excited about it.
Windows 8, it's fair to say, did not make the kind of impression on users that Microsoft had hoped, and although the Windows 8.1 follow-up has been generally well received, it goes without mention that the preceding Windows 7 is considered by most to be the strongest release to date. It should come as very little surprise, then, that Windows 9 - or Windows 8.2 as we like to call it here - looks set to arrive next year in 2015, and according to a report by Paul Thurrott, we'll be getting an official word on it at April's BUILD 2014 dev conference.
The Windows Experience Index that was initially introduced in Windows Vista is probably the most basic form of benchmarking that you can get for a Windows based PC. Although Microsoft didn’t really introduce it for benchmarking, but rather, as a measure to determine whether your PC will be able to handle a certain application software or not. However, in modern day computers, Windows Experience Index (WEI) was an easy means of tracking which component was bottlenecking the performance of your machine. With Windows 8.1, however, that was no longer the case.
