The biggest tech companies hold annual developer conferences, and Microsoft’s is around the corner. Every year Microsoft spends a few days trying to bring
The biggest tech companies hold annual developer conferences, and Microsoft’s is around the corner.
Every year Microsoft spends a few days trying to bring developers and software engineers into its fold with a developer conference called Build. While at the conference, the company typically also announces updates for its services and platforms – whether that be Windows 10, Office 365, or the Azure cloud computing platform. Here all the major updates Microsoft announced at Build 2018.
Build is Microsoft’s developer conference. This year’s conference – Build 2018 – is from 7 May to 9 May, which is the same week Google plans to hold its own developer conference. Anyway, last year’s show started off a little different, as Microsoft used its Day One main keynote to focus on developers. Normally, it’d be all about updates to consumer products like Windows 10 and Surface devices.
But Microsoft got all that out of the way. The keynote primarily ranged from Microsoft’s artificial intelligence efforts to talk about its growing Windows 10 user base. Thrilling stuff, right? Yeah. Well, thankfully, Microsoft wrapped up its Day Two keynote with news that’s more exciting to consumers. It revealed new details concerning Windows 10, its mixed reality efforts, and more.
So, expect a similar agenda for this year’s conference. If you want to attend in the flesh, Microsoft’s Build 2018 registration will open 15 February. Once it opens, developers will be able to go to the Build developer site to register. The full conference pass is going for $2,495.
Yes. Microsoft will live-stream its Build 2018 keynote speeches. However, those videos are not yet available for us to embed here. So, in the meantime, you can watch last year’s main keynotes from “Day One” and “Day Two” at the annual developer conference.
Here’s last year’s Day One keynote:
Here’s last year’s Day Two keynote:
To stream videos from the entire conference, go to this Microsoft site .
Microsoft already revealed it will update Windows 10 twice a year – in the spring and in the autumn – with new features and noteworthy upgrades. The last major update, which arrived in April, is called the April 2018 Update. You can read all about the update from here. Since it just rolled out, we expect to hear more about it, and maybe even next update due in autumn, at Build 2018.
Also, last year, Microsoft announced that Windows 10 was officially running on 500 million “monthly active devices.” That metric includes not only Windows 10 installed on PCs, tablets, and phones, but also on Xbox One consoles, HoloLens, and Surface Hub devices. Remember, though: at the Build 2015, Microsoft claimed Windows 10 would be installed on one billion devices by summer 2018.
ZDNet said, this year, we might hear more stats, as well as details about Microsoft’s Progressive Web and perhaps its Andromeda device .
Microsoft revealed last year that commercial Office 365 is running on 100 million monthly active devices, whereas as of October 2016, there were 85 million commercial users, meaning 15 million joined in a year. While talking about Office 365, Microsoft also mentioned it added new functionality to Microsoft Graph, an API that gives developers access to tools and data from Office 365 services.
Microsoft Graph is the basis of many applications built on top of Office’s services. It helps those apps understand more about the data we have in our systems. Previously, Graph could only provide user and activity data, but, currently, developers can leverage device data as well. Microsoft has also added a series of new core capabilities into Graph, including Delta queries and custom data.
We expect to hear more about both these efforts at Build 2018. Lastly, Microsoft has already announced the next release of its Office productivity suite. Called Office 2019, it’ll consist of all the usual apps, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Microsoft is planning to release Office 2019 this year (businesses can sign up to try it here), and it’s begun to preview the new features.
So, Microsoft will likely update us on the Office 2019 preview and its rollout plans while at Build 2018.
In an effort to trump rivals, Microsoft may announce it has signed new partnerships. Last year, it had signed with HP and Intel to bring more Cortana-powered devices to market. Microsoft said HP was planning to integrate Cortana into devices, while Intel would focus on reference platforms. Microsoft also launched a Cortana Skills Kit. ZDNet thinks we’ll hear more about Cortana this year.
Since the company has given developers the ability to create skills – or even port existing Amazon Alexa skills – over to Microsoft’s platform, many expected Cortana would drastically improve. Although it’s supposedly being used across 141 million monthly active devices, it appears to be lagging far behind Amazon’s Alexa platform and Google’s Assistant platform. Nevertheless, expect to hear more soon.
After rebranding its augmented reality system to Windows 10 Mixed Reality, Microsoft has expanding the ecosystem with motion controllers to interact with experiences. Different manufacturers, including Acer and HP, have made their own Mixed Reality headsets that run Microsoft’s software. these similar to devices available for other VR headsets, but they don’t require room configuration.
You can read more about them from here . Last year, Microsoft opened preorders for the first Windows Mixed Reality development kits from HP and Acer. Maybe this year it will announce even more kits as well as updates to the platform altogether. Microsoft has already expressed interest in building more social features into Windows Mixed Reality, like the ability to invite friends into your own spaces.
At its Build 2017 conference, Microsoft revealed Apple was planning to bring its iTunes desktop app to the Microsoft Store. It might not sound like a major addition, but it’s one of the most searched for apps in the store. Now, all Windows 10 users can finally grab the app from there – a welcomed change for those of you running Windows 10 S. Since the app just released, Microsoft may touch on it at Build 2018.
Nope. Microsoft might also briefly discuss the following products:
Last year, Microsoft haunched its Visual Studio coding platform for the Mac. It allows developers to code apps using Microsoft’s development environment on Apple’s MacOS platform. They can sync across both Windows and Mac devices and build native mobile apps for iOS, macOS, Android, and the web. We may learn more about Visual Studio at Build 2018, but you never know.
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