Friday, April 1, 2016

The Windows 10 Anniversary Update can mirror Android notifications

The Windows 10 Anniversary Update just keeps getting crazier. After teaming up with Ubuntu to build an entire Linux subsystem and Unix's Bash shell into Windows 10, Microsoft is now integrating Android-specific features into the OS. If you're an Android user, you'll be able to mirror your phone notifications on your Windows 10 computer, and if you dismiss a notification on one device, it will be dismissed on all your devices.

Microsoft actually gave cloud capabilities to the entire Action Center in Windows 10, allowing Windows 10 devices to sync notification centers with one another. Since Android 4.3, Android has provided a way to ship the entire notification panel off to other apps. With the Cortana app, Microsoft is connecting these capabilities, provided you sign in to both devices with your Microsoft account. You don't just see the notifications—you can interact with them, too. The demo (which starts at about 16:30 in this video) demonstrates replying in-line to an Android SMS notification from a Windows 10 device.

At Build 2016, the keynote barely mentioned Windows Mobile at all. Instead, iOS and Android were name dropped more than Microsoft's own platform. Microsoft seems less interested in using its ecosystem to prop up Windows Mobile and more interested in helping Windows users live a multi-OS life on whatever mobile platform they prefer. With the Action Center's cloud capabilities, Microsoft is making the world's most popular desktop operating system work with the world's most popular mobile operating system.

Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

No comments:

Post a Comment