Microsoft: Get Technical Preview of Windows 10, FREE*

As promised, Microsoft has released the Windows 10 Technical Preview .
The OS, which is designed to give you a small flavor of what will be included in the final release of Windows 10, is still an early build. The build number for this release of the OS is 9841 and we know for a fact that

E-Tech: How to download and install Windows 8.1 Update 1 for free (right now)

E-Tech: How to download and install Windows 8.1 Update 1 for free (right now)

How to download and install iOS 7 on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch

The wait is over. The next version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 7, is now available.  In Apple’s words this is “the most significant iOS update since the original iPhone.” Not only does the next iteration of the OS bring a completely overhauled user interface design, it also adds many missing features that were being

Apple Debuts Swift Programming Language at WWDC

In a surprise announcement during today’s WWDC keynote, Apple senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, unveiled Swift, a new programming language for coding Mac OS X and iOS applications in Cocoa and Cocoa Touch.
Swift works on its own or side by side with the object-oriented language
Objective-C, which dates back to the 1980s and first debuted on NeXT hardware. For the past few decades, developers have programmed Mac OS X and iOS apps in Objective-C, so this could herald the beginning of a new era of app development.
Federighi said that Swift is fast, modern, and like “Objective-C without the

iOS 8: All the New Features For Your iPhone and iPad

 

The new Apple iOS 8 presented at WWDC 2014 is a lot more than Healthkit—Apple’s new vital statistics monitoring system—and a few adjustments to the interface introduced last year. Here you will find the complete catalog of new features along with live commentary on all of them.

Healthkit

Apple has created a new API called Healthkit. Developers will be able to link applications to a central database of your personal health data.

This will be available not only for apps you can buy in the app store, but also professional medical applications and platforms. So if you get your blood pressure or your sugar blood data from your hospital, your iPhone will receive a secure notification with this data. You will be able to store it privately and—even better—share this information easily with other doctors and hospitals. Apple listed a lot of institutions that are jumping right in, including the Mayo Clinic

Camera new features

Apple seems to be beefing up the camera software quite a bit. For users, iOS 8 will add Time Lapse photography, which is

Don’t wait for Windows 9: How to get a Start Menu, windowed Metro apps today

THE ALL NEW BUNCH OF CHANGES YOU ARE GOING TO LOVE

Between the release of the PC-friendly spring update for Windows 8.1 and the newfound introduction of universal “buy once, play anywhere” Windows apps, Microsoft is doing all it can to spur the One Microsoft vision while, well, letting a PC be a PC and a tablet be a tablet. But, sadly, the most anticipated improvements have yet to arrive.
At Build 2014, Microsoft operating system head Terry Myerson teased bringing the Start Menu to Windows 8, along with the ability to run universal Metro apps in desktop windows rather than the full screens they consume today. (See screenshot above.) Myerson didn’t say when the features were going live, however—only that they’d eventually appear in a later update for Windows 8.1 users. Does that mean later this year? The Windows “Threshold” update rumored for April 2015? Windows 9? No one knows.
But you don’t
have to wait to get those killer features. With the first universal apps hitting the various Windows Stores this week, here’s how to bring a Start menu and windowed Metro apps to Windows 8.1 today.

The return of the Start Menu

A slew of Start menu replacements hit the web the second the Start Menu-less Windows 8 hit the streets, but when it comes time to put your cash on the line, the decision boils down to just two programs: Stardock’s Start8 and Classic Shell.

THE START MENU

Those reviews have all the nitty-gritty details, but you’ll probably want to start with Classic Shell
since it’s donationware. Classic Shell includes options for both Windows XP- and Windows 7-style
Start menus, along with numerous customization options. You can tinker with what’s listed in the
Classic Shell Start Menu, or even change the look of its Start button to an icon of your choice. Cool
stuff, indeed.
Start8, meanwhile, offers either a Windows 7 Start Menu or a Modern UI-tinged Windows 8 Start
Menu that’s more in line with what Microsoft itself is cooking up. The $5 Start8 app is more polished
and easier to use than the open-source Classic Shell, which is chock full of ugly buttons. Start8 still
offers plenty of options and features, though, and you can’t go wrong with either program.

Windowed desktop Metro apps

Sure, the recent update to Windows 8.1 adds plenty of mouse-friendly features, but it still doesn’t let you use Modern apps in desktop windows. If you want that capability today, you only have one place to turn: The utterly superb ModernMix software.

NOW YOU CAN PIN YOU WIN8.1 APPS TO YOUR TASKBAR

Again offered by Stardock—do you get the feeling that the folks at Stardock weren’t impressed by Windows 8?—ModernMix exists solely to let you run Windows Store apps in desktop Windows. It’s wonderful if you use Windows 8’s native apps, such as email, calendar, and Music, all of which stick to the Modern UI.
ModernMix runs like a charm even with the updates recently introduced to Windows 8.1. It’s well worth the $5 admission price.

Bringing it all together

There you have it: For less than the cost of a pizza, you can have Windows 9’s most-anticipated improvements right now. And once you’ve welcomed a Start Menu replacement and ModernMix into your workflow—especially paired with the Windows 8.1 spring Update’s tremendous tweaks —you might just be surprised how well those newfangled Modern apps translate to the familiar desktop experience.

All Users Must Install Windows 8.1 Update Now;

If you have Windows 8.1, you have a little less than a month to install Windows 8.1 Update, or you will miss out on future security updates.
Microsoft announced a fairly large update for the most recent version of its Windows operating system, with the unoriginal moniker “Windows 8.1 Update” (Win8.1U), as part of its April Patch Tuesday release last week. Users who download and install the update (or have updates installed automatically), don’t have anything to worry about. They will continue to receive security updates going forward. Users who don’t install Win8.1U will
not be able to install future patches from Microsoft. If they attempt to install the patch anyway, they will receive a message stating the update is “not applicable.”
Failure to install Win8.1U will prevent Windows Update from patching your system starting in May, Microsoft warned. After businesses protested, Microsoft has extended the deadline for enterprise customers to August, but the deadline for consumers remains May 13.
The new update “reflects Microsoft’s commitment to providing a more rapid cadence of feature improvements for our customers,” Brandon LeBlanc, a senior marketing manager at Microsoft, wrote on a TechNet blog Wednesday.
Who Has to Update by Next Month
In case you were wondering, this doesn’t apply to Windows 8 users who have not yet upgraded to Windows 8.1. They have until January 12, 2016 to upgrade to Windows 8.1—and then will need Win8.1U (or whatever the latest version would be) to continue receiving patches. Windows 8 users, along with Windows 7 and Vista users, will continue receiving security updates. Windows XP users won’t get any security updates, ever, since Microsoft finally, officially, yanked support for the OS last week.
“You cannot afford to miss out on receiving your Windows security updates, so you’ll just have to adjust to the new world order—and hopefully find Microsoft’s changes to the way Windows 8.1 works a positive step,” Graham Cluley, an independent security consultant, wrote on the Lumension blog.
Many of Microsoft’s business customers criticized the move, noting that in the past, Microsoft gave businesses 24 months to install a service pack update. They also said five weeks was not enough time to accommodate the time necessary to test and deploy patches. The problem was compounded by the fact that many users were also having trouble installing the update when originally announced last week.
Microsoft released the fixed update this week, and said enterprises have until August 12 to comply. The same August deadline also applies to Windows Server 2012 R2 Update, also announced last week.
The May 13 deadline is still in place for consumers. “For our consumer customers, Windows 8.1 Update is a required update and needs to be installed to receive new updates from Windows Update starting on May 13th,” said LeBlanc. “The vast majority of these customers already have Automatic Update turned on, so they don’t need to be concerned since the update will simply install in the background prior to May 13th.”
It’s worth taking the time to manual check, since some users report having to manually start the update despite having Automatic Update enabled.
What is Win8.1U?
Windows 8.1 Update offers a slew of user interface changes, such as more friendly support for users who prefer to use the keyboard and mouse over a touch interface, an improved version of Internet Explorer 11, and the ability to boot directly to a traditional desktop rather than the Windows 8 Start Screen. Many of these changes “will probably be warmly welcomed by users,” Cluley said.
Microsoft wants to ensure that customers are running the latest versions of the operating system. The new update for Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 8.1 RT and Windows 8.1, “will be considered a new servicing/support baseline,” wrote Steve Thomas, a senior consultant at Microsoft, on a TechNet blog last week.
Even so, it will be difficult for small businesses—the ones who don’t have the expensive enterprise support contracts—to test and install a major update, 707 MB in size, with less than a month to go. The clock is ticking, again, for Windows administrators