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Apple News: Microsoft confirms Windows 8 app store
Posted by Local IT Care on August 18th
Microsoft has revealed more details of Windows 8, confirming plans to include an app store.
Earlier this year, leaked screenshots suggested Microsoft was working on a Windows app store - and after the success that Apple has had with the format, it's no surprise.
The company confirmed that it has a team working on developing a store, but gave no other detail in a blog post about the new OS.
Windows 8 is Microsoft's effort to target the tablet market, so the OS will have a strong focus on apps, Sinofsky said.
"Today more than two out of three PCs are mobile (laptops, netbooks, notebooks, tablets, slates, convertibles, etc)," Sinofsky said in a post on the new Windows 8 blog.
"The appearance of touch-screen mobile phones with the rich capabilities they bring, have together changed the way we all view computing," he added. "Most of all, computing is much more focused on applications and on people than on the operating system itself or the data. These changes in the landscape motivate the most significant changes to Windows, from the chips to the experience."
Apple News: Apple Store outage related to larger 'net issues?
Posted by Local IT Care on August 18th
As tweeted by TUAW earlier this morning, the online Apple Store was down for hours and finally came back up a few minutes ago. Although we'd love to be able to announce a new Mac Pro, the iPhone 5, and an iPad 3, it appears that nothing has changed in the store, and the outage might have been due to a larger problem with the Interwebs.
Apple was not the only company getting hit with large issues today. VoIP carrier Ooma is reporting a nationwide outage although some California customers are reporting that things are beginning to get back to normal. John Gruber's Daring Fireball blog was down part of the morning, and readers and bloggers have been reporting that Twitter was visited by the Fail Whale, Facebook was temporarily faceless, and various ISPs are having issues.
We haven't heard what exactly is causing these issues and if they're related, but it seems odd that so many services would be experiencing issues at the same time. Keep an eye on TUAW and we'll update this post when we find out if what or who is causing the problems.
