Hasta La Gadget!

Microsoft has finally has over 50,000 apps in its Windows Store. According to MetroStore Scanner, there are currently 50,304 apps available from the Windows Store as of today. There have been an average of about 279 apps developed daily in March alone. March is the first month in a long time in which Microsoft saw an increase in app development. Since November, app development had been on a rapid decline.

App development for Windows 8 hit its peak in November, with an average of 468 new apps being developed daily. The number dropped down to 412 apps developed daily in December, plummeted to 174 apps in January, and fell even further to 142 apps in February. The new surge in app development is possibly due to Microsoft’s new cash incentive for developers to create apps for its ecosystem.

Microsoft is offering developers $100 per app they develop for Windows 8 or Windows Phone 8. They are allowed to develop up to 10 apps per OS for a grand total of $2000. The contest began on March 8th, and is set to end on June 30th. There will only be 10,000 apps accepted. While $100 per app may not be too enticing to developers, Microsoft is also offering developers a 80% split for revenue generated by their apps. That’s 10% more than what Apple and Android offers.

The statistics account for apps for both Windows 8 PCs as well as Windows RT tablets. So saying that Windows 8 has surpassed the Mac’s available 14,000 apps would be a lie. If you take into account the 370,000+ apps the iPad currently has, the Windows Store is still miles behind in development. Nonetheless, 50,000 apps in 4 months is an impressive milestone, and as more people adapt to Windows 8 and Windows tablets, we should see some great advancements for the OS in the future.

[via MetroStore Scanner]

Microsoft’s Windows Store reaches 50,000 apps milestone is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s not that the Microsoft Surface tablet isn’t selling as well as the Windows 8 company predicted, but according to three anonymous sources speaking up this week, they certainly aren’t selling all that well. Speaking this week with Bloomberg, these three sources claim to have sales numbers before they’re made official to the public. According to them, the company has sold a total of about 1.5 million Surface devices since launch.

With the Surface RT selling just over a million of that total number and the Surface PRO version of the tablet coming in at somewhere around 400,000 in the short time they’ve been on the market, Microsoft may not be reaching projected numbers. According to these sources, Microsoft had originally ordered about 3 million Surface RT tablets for sale by this time – not quite the same as less than half that amount they’re claiming have been sold thus far.

The Surface PRO appears to be doing a bit better in the much shorter time since they’ve been revealed, but compared to such titans as Apple’s iPad, the big M is nowhere close. According to Apple, 22.9 million iPads were sold in the fourth quarter of 2012 alone.

Have a peek at the timeline below which includes our review of both of the Surface devices and decide for yourself if you’ll be joining the party. Down there you’ll find more information on what Microsoft has been doing to push the Surface family through to the future, along with the full Windows 8 software universe.

Surface sales appear to fall short with first 1.5 million unit prediction is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s time for Microsoft to take a hard look at what it’s trying to accomplish with Windows RT and figure out how to salvage the troubled operating system before it has a real failure on its hands.

Tomorrow Microsoft will roll out an update to Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 8 and Windows RT that enables Flash content to run by default. Such a move will ensure websites “just work,” something Microsoft says it believes is a key part of improving the experience for customers. Some websites will still have Flash blocked by default, however, due to incompatibility.

According to Microsoft, it has been testing websites with Flash content for compatibility with touch-based use of Windows, as well as battery life and performance. This testing, which is said to have taken place over the last several months, has demonstrated to Microsoft that the majority of websites with Flash content are compatible with the Windows “experience.”

The update is being rolled out for both the desktop and immersive Internet Explorer varieties. For both Windows 8 and Windows RT, Flash content for immersive Internet Explorer will run by default unless it is on the Compatibility View list. Desktop Internet Explorer, however, will have Flash content enabled for all websites on Windows 8, but likewise enabled unless on the Compatibility View list in Windows RT.

With Windows 8, the included Flash is optimized for a host of criteria, including battery life, reliability, performance, security, and of course, touch. This was the result of “substantial changes” made by Adobe, and the use of Compatibility View allowed Microsoft to tailor its browser so that only compatible websites would run Flash content. As of now, according to the company, less than 4-percent of tested websites with Flash content are still incompatible.

[via MSDN]

Internet Explorer 10′s newest update will enable Flash content to run by default is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The Samsung ATIV Tab Windows RT tablet made its debut at IFA 2012 last year, but unfortunately according to Samsung, the device would not be seeing a release in the US. Apparently as far as demand for such products in the US were concerned, Samsung felt that there wasn’t enough demand to warrant them selling it there. Now it looks like Samsung might be having second thoughts in Europe as well and according to the folks at MobileGeeks, they claim to have spoken to a Samsung rep who confirmed to them that the ATIV Tab will stop selling in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy. It seems that Samsung thinks that there is no market for the Windows RT platform in Germany or other European countries which was what led to their decision.  It is a little unclear as to what Samsung meant exactly, but as it stands, the ATIV Tab is still available from Amazon.de so if you want to get your hands on it, you should probably move fast before it stops being available.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: ASUS Transformer AiO: Where Windows 8 Meets Android, Amplify Tablet Specially Constructed For Educational Purposes,