Apple iOS 9.3 Has 2 Important Changes

Over the last 18 months I’ve held Apple (rightly) to task about several releases of iOS 8 and iOS 9 which broke as much as they fixed. But with Apple’s new iOS 9.3 release I want to applaud the company for making two commendable changes very quickly…  

Important Change #1

Earlier this month a serious yet ridiculous bug was discovered: setting the date of an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to January 1st, 1970 would brick the device the next time it was restarted. Why would anyone do that? Because a hoax spread across the Internet that it would unlock a secret retro iOS theme.

Apple iOS 9.3 is a major upgrade. Image credit: Apple

Well just nine days later iOS 9.3 has stamped on this. MacRumours spottedthat Apple has come up with a very simple solution: users now cannot set the date to earlier than January 1st, 2001. Though why anyone would need to do that when they aren’t being tricked by a hoax is beyond me.

As for those unlucky enough to have already bricked their iDevice in falling for the date hoax, you can now use iTunes to restore the device to iOS 9.3 and it will magically return to life. I’ve seen some fast Apple patches in the past, but nine days is pretty great going.

Important Change #2

There’s a similar sense of speed in Apple’s second major iOS 9.3 change. The first three betas of iOS 9.3 did something highly controversial: it stopped the Apple Pencil from being used as a navigation tool around iOS, limiting it purely to being a creative tool.

Since this loss of Apple Pencil functionality was not listed as a known bug in the iOS 9.3 beta release notes, concern rose and a plea on iMore to restore the lost functionality gained a lot of attention. Now 46 days into the testing of iOS 9.3 Apple has spoken out:

“We believe a finger will always be the primary way users navigate on an iPad, but we understand that some customers like to use Apple Pencil for this as well and we’ve been working on ways to better implement this while maintaining compatibility during this latest beta cycle. We will add this functionality back in the next beta of iOS 9.3.”

Apple Pencil navigation support is not going anywhere. Image credit: Apple

Cynics have understandably claimed Apple has been forced into a U-turn following the growing outcry and used it as a PR opportunity. Of course that is impossible to prove and I think it matters little. More interesting is that a company stereotyped for thinking it always knows has opted for what consumers want after a short spell of testing and headed off a potential mutiny from iPad Pro owners.

I wouldn’t see this as a sea change moment (the iPhone 7 is still going to lose the headphone jack, whether we like it or not), but it’s still something to be applauded.

Changes For All

So when will these fixes be available to everyone? iOS 9.3 has just entered beta 4 (for public testers and developers) and has already surpassed the development time of both iOS 9.1 and iOS 9.2 so it shouldn’t be long now. If I had to call it? The first week of March.

Given that iOS 9.3 contains the most significant changes I’ve seen in an iOS point release in a long time, that date cannot come soon enough. Meanwhile I’d suggest anyone affected by the date bug skip the queue and join the Apple Beta Program to grab it right now. It’s time to bring your devices back from the dead! 

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Microsoft kills Project Astoria, its tool for porting Android apps to Windows 10

Above: At the Build developer conference in San Francisco on April 30, 2015.

Image Credit: Jordan Novet/VentureBeat

Microsoft today announced that it has stopped working on Windows Bridge for Android, a tool for turning Android apps into universal Windows apps that can run on all types of Windows devices.

Microsoft announced at its Build developer conference last year that Android would be an app type for the Windows Store, and to help developers deliver such apps Microsoft came out with Windows Bridge for Android, also known as Project Astoria, in a limited developer preview. Microsoft said it would become available as a public beta last fall, but that never happened. Earlier this month, my colleague Emil Protalinski wrote that Project Astoria was “rumored to be all but discontinued.” Now we have the full story — a day after Microsoftannounced that it had acquired cross-platform application development company Xamarin.

“We received a lot of feedback that having two Bridge technologies to bring code from mobile operating systems to Windows was unnecessary, and the choice between them could be confusing,” Kevin Gallo, director of program management for the Windows Developer Platform team for Windows 10 at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post. “We have carefully considered this feedback and decided that we would focus our efforts on the Windows Bridge for iOS and make it the single Bridge option for bringing mobile code to all Windows 10 devices, including Xbox and PCs. For those developers who spent time investigating the Android Bridge, we strongly encourage you to take a look at the iOS Bridge and Xamarin as great solutions.”

Microsoft open-sourced the Windows Bridge for iOS became available on GitHub in August and has been updating it on a regular basis, Gallo wrote. Meanwhile the Web Bridge for web apps was included in the Windows 10 software development kit (SDK) last year, while Project Centennial, aimed at porting Win32 and .NET apps to Windows 10, is currently being tested, with “an early iteration of the tools” coming soon, Gallo wrote.

Microsoft started building the bridges because it wanted to minimize the complexity of delivering apps for the Windows. Ultimately keeping developers happy any launching apps on Windows translates into keeping end users happy and not abandoning Windows to go to other platforms. So this is important stuff for Microsoft. It’s just that Microsoft didn’t want to inadvertently fragment its Java and C++ developers across multiple tools.

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Facebook Reactions Are Not Wow

In addition to the classic like, Facebook users can now also signal love, haha, wow, sad, and angry in their reactions to a post.

Last year, Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, sent a document to a team of Facebook researchers called “Mapping the Hierarchy of Emotional Reactions.” Facebook was working on expanding its iconic like button to help users express a wider range of emotional responses, and it had enlisted Keltner—an emotions expert who also consulted on Pixar’s Inside Out—to help feel its way along. Keltner told Facebook that scientists recognize more than 20 basic emotions that are “communicated in the face or voice or both,” including shame, guilt, disgust, fear, relief, sympathy, and contempt, plus many more “subordinate” emotional states that describe “more specific” variations. Anger, for instance, can be expressed as irritability or rage. Pixar illustrator Matt Jones, who also worked on Inside Out, drew several dozen emotionally accurate emoticons to help bring each feeling to life. The “sulky” emoticon sticks out its bottom lip and turns its eyes to the ceiling. The one for “disagreement” narrows its eyes and turns the corner of its mouth down ever so slightly.

AMANDA HESS

Amanda Hess is a Slate staff writer. 

On Wednesday, Facebook rolled out its final set of emotional responses. It calls them “reactions.” In a piece published last month in Bloomberg Businessweek, Facebook emphasized the scientificunderpinnings of the new venture. As reporter Sarah Frier put it, the team “consulted with outside sociologists about the range of human emotion, just to be safe.” In addition to the classic like, users can now also signal love, haha, wow, sad, and angry in their reactions to a post. And that’s it—no sulking, no disagreement, no contempt, no shame.

“As a scientist, I’m always seeking a faithful representation of what people are really experiencing,” Keltner says. “I wish Facebook could include all of the emotions, so users could show their disgust or signal that they’re embarrassed. Fear would be really cool. I even lobbied for a ‘sympathy’ reaction that’s even more specific than ‘sadness.’ ” But Facebook isn’t in the business of scientific exploration. Says Keltner: “They’re constrained by the size of a smartphone.”

The new reactions aren’t designed to help users express how they really feel. They function more like patches for all those times when a like seems insufficient or inappropriate. “When I see that my friend got engaged to her college sweetheart, I can ‘like’ that, and that’s fine, but what I really want to do is say that I ‘love’ that that happened,” says Sammi Krug, the project manager for the reactions feature. “And on the opposite end of the spectrum, when I see that a friend from home’s family pet of 17 years has passed away, that’s a prototypical example of a case where ‘liking’ that post doesn’t feel right to people.”

It’s important to Facebook that its users know exactly what reaction “feels right” in every situation. A dislike button, Businessweek reported, was “rejected on the grounds that it would sow too much negativity.” (Does my friend dislike climate change, or dislike my post about climate change, or dislike me?) And though the platform originally mulled releasing an additional button it called yay—a smiling yellow face with contentedly closed eyes and flushed pink cheeks—it scrapped it before launch. Kruger says the reactions team was pushed to create “a global product” where “every single reaction is useful across all the users on Facebook” and “each and every reaction is universally understood.” Facebook began rolling out reactions to users in Spain, Ireland, Chile, Portugal, Japan, Colombia, and the Philippines this past fall before going global this week. Initial tests, Kruger says, determined that yay felt “too vague.”

That’s weird. It’s hard to imagine a more universal symbol of emotional expression than the smiley face. And after all, the like button—a thumbs-up rendered in Facebook white and blue—was not built on a universal symbol of positivity. As Brendan Koerner explained in Slate in 2003, a fist with an upturned thumb is “a crass Middle Eastern insult.” The gesture also registers as rude in Australia and Nigeria. In Germany, extending a thumb is how you count to the No. 1. The problem with yay isn’t that users don’t agree on what it means. It’s that there’s no specific reason to use it instead of the other happy-go-lucky reactions: love, haha, or the old-fashioned like.

My colleague Will Oremus wrote on Wednesday that the expansion of the like button can help Facebook “start to gather much more nuanced data on how users are reacting to any given post.” Include too many options, and that utility fades. If it’s not clear why users would choose a yay reaction over a love reaction, then the data is meaningless. Facebook’s business model relies on aggregating and interpreting data on a massive scale, so it makes sense to focus on developing behaviors that can be understood in the aggregate.

In doing so, Facebook is fighting against the tide of Internet culture. Online creators now make their marks by filming reaction videos, cutting and posting reaction GIFs, and roasting or remixing original works. The vast emoji keyboard allows us to create new meanings for obscure glyphs, a la the Japanese eggplant emoji that’s evolved into a symbiotic stand-in for a penis, or the newly released “thinking face” emoji that’s quickly been repurposed as a tool for casting shade. Last year, Twitter rolled out a new “quote tweet” feature that showcases replies as their own statements—it’s less about engaging in conversation and more about stepping on someone else’s tweet and repurposing it. And in contrast to Facebook’s slim pickings, the office chat product Slack allows users to access the complete emoji keyboard, and even make their own emoji. The endless options encourage puns, inside jokes, and emotional communication that feels more heartfelt because each emoji is individually, carefully selected.

Facebook’s limited set of responses feels strangely more constricting than the solitary like button. The Facebook like, the Instagram heart, and the Twitter fave (recently rebranded as a like, too) are all just sunny euphemisms for a gesture of generalized acknowledgement. The like button was a nod. It said: “I see you.” Maybe it was meant to mean “I like the content of this post,” but it often felt like “I like you.” But the additional responses complicate that reading. Now a simple like risks feeling like: “I like this, but I don’t love it.” Or: “I acknowledge you’ve made a joke, but I won’t pretend it made me laugh.” Or “I know I have the option to signal that I’m sad about your dog dying, but I’m inconsiderate or dastardly enough to just like it anyway.”

Researchers like Keltner are still puzzling out what it means to “react” emotionally online. One possibility is that Facebook users are “expressing a feeling they’re actually feeling” when they send a sad face or a laughing one to a friend. But it’s also possible that the symbol is just “a referential expression,” Keltner says. It says: “I recognize that what you’ve done could produce this feeling, but I don’t necessarily feel it.” So, “if someone posts that they haven’t turned in their taxes, I might respond with an expression of fear even if I don’t feel fear,” Keltner says. “It means that I recognize that it’s a fearful situation.”

Perhaps that means that reactions will end up meaning next to nothing. When you look at a recent post, you’ll see a count of the total number of Reactions and likes: the raw number of people who responded to your little joke or tortured confession. The sheer number of reactions is elevated above their emotional content. When you receive a crying symbol or a laughing one on a post, you may not even notice which of your friends has expressed sadness or delight. All that matters is how many people have recognized you.

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Facebook Officially Launches Canvas Ads That Load Full-Screen Rich Media Pages In-App

Instant Articles, meet Instant Ads. Facebook wants to give advertisers an immersive way to reach people without making them leave the social network. So today it officially launched its ad Canvas for all advertisers. When users click a Facebook News Feed ad connected to Canvas, it opens a full-screen, rich media page inside of Facebook rather than forcing users to wait for a mobile website to load.

Last year Facebook started testing Canvas, which I called Instant Articles for ads. The impetus was that mobile sites have tripled in size since 2011, leading to five to ten second load times users don’t want to sit through to see an ad. The types of rich media marketing experiences that people actually remember load far too slow on mobile. So Facebook built the endpoint of ads into its own app so it can pre-load and show them in about one second.

Canvas removes constraints that low-power mobile sites put on content. Facebook Canvas allows interactive elements like animations, carousels, product catalogs, tilt-to-view images, and videos. Canvases appear linked to from News Feed ads on iOS and Android, and Facebook is evaluating how to expand this to other versions and apps such as Instagram.

Brands can build Canvas ads with a self-serve tool. There’s no code required. Facebook’s design tool lets them just drag around images, GIFs, videos, and more, then set attributes and start showing their ad. Facebook ad exec Mark D’Arcy joked that “The only thing they can’t make, really, is excuses.”

Advertisers can sign up to use Canvas here. There’s no additional cost to build a canvas ad. Businesses just pay for the same News Feed ads as always, but get to build a better destination where they lead. Different versions of a Canvas can be targeted to different demographics just like normal Facebook ads.

Facebook says Canvas won’t lead to more ads on Facebook. Users can identify Canvas ads by a little upwards arrow that denotes that the full-screen experience will unfold.

Facebook says the early tests of Canvas have shown users actually want to stick around and experience the ads. 53% of users that open a Canvas view at least half of it, and the average view time is a stunning 31 seconds. The top Canvas ads can see more than 70 seconds of view time per user.

In this Canvas campaign where Wendy’s deconstructed a cheeseburger and let people scroll, swipe, and see GIFs of different ingredients received 65 seconds of average view time. 2.9% of viewers even got all the way to the bottom and used the Wendy’s restaurant locator.

Storytelling through ads has been a big push for Facebook recently as it tries to squeeze out more revenue per user, especially developing world markets. Last year it launched the Creative Accelerator to teach brands how to build ads for slow mobile networks and feature phones, and launched a special Slideshow ad format that mimics video but loads quickly. But Canvas is the other end of the spectrum — high-bandwidth ads for the first world.

By giving advertisers a richer format to market through, it can make sure viewers remember them. While lots of platforms are competing for ad dollars, none have innovated in the destination those ads lead to. And since Canvas doesn’t frustrate users with long load times or tempt them to leave Facebook through the browser, the social network can keep them rattling around and seeing more of its News Feed ads while they connect with friends.

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Android phones are easier for police to crack than iPhones

The FBI, currently engaged in a privacy battle with Apple over a terrorist's iPhone, would have an easier time breaking into the average Android smartphone.

That's according to Android and Apple security manuals, cybersecurity professionals, mobile software developers and one investigator who helps police crack smartphones.

The whole reason the FBI is having a hard time entering San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook's locked iPhone 5C is because Apple's smartphones are encrypted by default.

But only a fraction of Android devices are encrypted.

Without encryption, police would be able to extract data from a phone -- even if it were locked with a passcode.

Google introduced encryption on Android in 2011, but it was buried deep within a phone's settings. Not until late 2014 did Google begin asking customers if they wanted to encrypt their phones during the setup process.

Although 97% of Android phones have encryption as an option, less than 35% of them actually got prompted to turn it on when they first activated the phone. Even then, not everybody chooses that extra layer of security.

A Google spokesman said that encryption is now required for all "high-performing devices" -- like theGalaxy S7 -- running the latest version of Android, Marshmallow. But only 1.2% of Android phones even have that version, according to Google.

By comparison, most Apple products are uniformly secure: 94% of iPhones run iOS 8 or 9, which encrypt all data. Apple (AAPL, Tech30) makes its devices, designs the software, and retains full control of the phone's operating system.

"If a person walks into a Best Buy and walks out with an iPhone, it's encrypted by default. If they walk out with an Android phone, it's largely vulnerable to to surveillance," said Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union.

New York City's top prosecutor, Cyrus Vance, has noted that Android phones have been easier to crack in the past, especially because Google can reset passcodes on older models.

Android is running on 105 million Americans' smartphones -- slightly more than the number of iPhones in the United States, according to industry trackers at comScore.

But there are ways in which an Android phone could actually be made more secure than an iPhone.

Android software can be tweaked to add all sorts of security features, like a password for a particular messaging app.

Google's operating system also starts up only after the phone's owner enters a passcode. That's not true for the iPhone, which starts up as soon as you hit the power button.

That's an important detail: When confronted with a locked iPhone, police can take it to a trusted Wi-Fi connection and potentially copy the phone's contents to iCloud on Apple's computer servers, where investigators can then comb through the data.

Android phones won't back up to the cloud until they're unlocked.

However, law enforcement can pressure device manufacturers to develop a weakness they can use to break into the phone.

Like Apple, Android devices have self-destruct passcode lock systems. On iPhone, try the wrong passcode 10 times, and the device remains encrypted forever. The latest Android system limits it to 30 attempts.

To prevent that from happening in the San Bernardino case, a federal magistrate-judge has ordered Apple to redesign its proprietary computer code and kill off the very defenses it designed.

If it's an Android phone, the FBI can approach each manufacturer -- Huawei, Lenovo (LNVGF), LG,Samsung (SSNLF) -- and demand the company key to alter the code that first boots up the phone.

It's unclear if those companies would comply. CNNMoney asked Samsung, which supplies the vast majority of Android phones, if it has provided this kind of help to law enforcement in the past. The company did not respond.

In the end, it really comes down to the phone's owner.

"If the user chooses a good password, Android is as safe as iPhone. If not, then Apple is only better if they win the legal fight against the FBI," said Rolf Weber, a network engineer.

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Google Fiber to launch in San Francisco

Google announced in a blog post Wednesday that it will be expanding its Google Fiber service to San Francisco.

The tech giant said that unlike its usual attempts to build fiber-optic networks from the ground up, it will be using a different tack in San Francisco. According to Google Fiber Director of Business Operations Michael Slinger, the company will make use of existing fiber to “bring service to some apartments, condos, and affordable housing 

apartments, condos, and affordable housing properties.”

Prior to this announcement, and a similar one promising Fiber support in Huntsville, Alabama, Google had tested the use of existing fiber in suburban Atlanta, bringing gigabit Internet service to apartment buildings. The Huntsville move, on the other hand, will see Google teaming up with a city-owned network, instead of financing the entire network.

“We have a lot of work to do before we can offer details on service and timing, or identify the specific condos, apartments, and affordable housing properties that will be connected,” Slinger continued in the Google blog post. “San Francisco offers tremendous potential for gigabit Internet, and we hope Google Fiber will provide more fuel for this city’s pioneering residents and entrepreneurs.”

Consumers, particularly home residents and property owners, can currently sign up on Google’s official Fiber page for updates on availability.

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Facebook’s ‘like’ button gets ‘angry’ and ‘sad’ as friends

NEW YORK — Facebook’s ‘‘like’’ button isn’t going away, but it’s about to get some company.

Facebook has been testing alternatives to ‘‘like’’ in about a half-dozen countries, including Ireland, Spain, and Japan. On Wednesday, Facebook started making ‘‘haha,’’ “angry,’’ and three other responses available in the United States and the rest of the world.

The seven-year-old ‘‘like’’ button has become synonymous with Facebook. In changing a core part of the social network, the company said it tried to keep things familiar.

The thumbs-up ‘‘like’’ button will look just as it long has, without the other choices cluttering the screen or confusing people. You have to hold that button or mouse over the ‘‘like’’ link for a second or two for the alternatives to pop up.

The company decided that it needed alternative reactions for situations when “like’’ was not appropriate.

When a friend posts that his father has died, or a cousin gets frustrated with her morning commute, hitting ‘‘like’’ might seem insensitive. Users have long requested a ‘‘dislike’’ button, but that was deemed too negative and problematic. Are you disliking the death or the call for sympathy?

Facebook chose to offer more nuanced reactions — ‘‘love,’’ “haha,’’ “wow,’’ “sad.’’ and ‘‘angry’’ — alongside ‘‘like’’ — to give users ‘‘greater control over their expressivity,’’ says Julie Zhuo, Facebook’s product design director.

In determining the options, Facebook went through comments on friends’ posts, as well as emoji-like stickers that people were using. It chose the most common ones and tested those.

Facebook considered dozens of reactions, but offering them all would have been confusing. Think of having to flip through pages and pages of emojis: Do you want one wink, a tear, a full frown, or a half frown?

Facebook chose these six reactions for their universal appeal — something that could be understood around the world. Even a generic happy face ‘‘was a little bit ambiguous and harder for people to understand,’’ Zhuo says.

Each reaction comes with an animated emoji, such as the thumbs up for ‘‘like’’ and a heart for ‘‘love.’’ These emojis will look the same around the world, but phrases such as ‘‘love’’ will be translated.

Zhuo said people click on ‘‘like’’ more than a billion times a day, so ‘‘we didn’t want to make that any harder.’’ It’s still the go-to reaction for most posts. But Zhuo says in the countries tested, people used the alternatives more frequently over time.

The rollout is expected to take a few days to complete. You’ll get the feature automatically on Web browsers, but you’ll need to update your app on iPhones and Android devices (no word yet on Windows and BlackBerry).

Facebook already shows how many people like a post and lets you tap or click on the count for a list of people.

The company decided that it needed alternative reactions for situations when ‘like’ was not appropriate.

With Reactions, you see how many people have reacted in some way, along with the top three reactions, such as ‘‘love’’ followed by ‘‘haha’’ and ‘‘wow.’’ You can get breakdowns for each reaction — the total and specific people. If you don’t update your app, you’ll just see the number of likes.

Once you have this, you can start marking older posts as ‘‘wow’’ or ‘‘sad,’’ too.

Facebook has a complex formula for deciding which of your friends’ posts are more prominent. Ones that get a lot of likes, for instance, will tend to show up higher. Now, posts marked ‘‘angry’’ or ‘‘wow’’ will bump up, too.

But Facebook wants to show what it thinks you’re most interested in — and that might ultimately mean mostly happy posts, rather than ones that evoke sadness or anger.

The alternative reactions are for all posts, including those from groups and brands. A company won’t be able to block the ability to mark its posts with anger.

The new system took a year to develop. Besides deciding on how many and which specific reactions to offer, Facebook needed to figure out the right way for people to discover and use it.

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Microsoft’s Xamarin acquisition opens door to truly universal Windows apps

Xamarin’s cross-platform .Net development tooling could extend Windows Universal Platform development to iOS, Android, and beyond

After years of “will they, won’t they” speculation, Microsoft has finally announced it will purchase Xamarin, the company that brought native Android and iOS development into Visual Studio. The acquisition makes perfect sense, but why now? Although the move should have been made a year ago, it’s not too late for Microsoft’s wider development ambitions.

By building on .Net and C#, Xamarin has provided Windows developers with an easy route to building applications outside the Windows ecosystem, without alienating users. Microsoft has struggled to deliver cross-platform development tooling on its own, relying on hybrid HTML5 applications for Android and iOS, making it hard to deliver the user experiences that Android and iOS users demand. Xamarin fills this gap.

Bringing the two organizations together adds cross-platform UI tooling to Microsoft’s developer platform, along with the compilers needed to deliver native code to mobile devices. By incorporating Xamarin into the official .Net toolchain, Microsoft could make Windows 10’s Universal Windows Platform truly universal.

Microsoft’s original Windows 10 bridge strategy was about bringing non-Windows applications to Windows, an approach that left many Windows developers feeling abandoned. Adding Xamarin’s tools to its developer platform gives Microsoft the missing piece in its cross-platform story, helping Windows developers build cross-platform apps that deliver native user experiences on Mac OS X, iOS, and Android, as well as various versions of Windows 10. These apps might even extend to Google’s and Apple’s smartwatch platforms.

Xamarin recently retooled to take advantage of the latest .Net compiler technologies, and it’s currently working on a new version of its development tools. According to CTO Miguel de Icaza, the new tools will include scratchpad features similar to Xcode’s Swift Playgrounds -- replacing much of what was delivered using Mono with Microsoft’s Roslyn. Bringing features like this to Visual Studio should help Microsoft bring non-Windows developers to the Windows platform. It should also speed up the process of delivering Universal Windows Platform apps to other OSes. Developers will need only a single code base, with separate UI modules for each device class they want to target.

Recent Xamarin developments have also included Xamarin Forms, a single set of UI controls that map to native functionality. Using Xamarin Forms, a developer can quickly lay out an application GUI and have it render appropriately on target devices, using iOS features on iPhone and iPad and Android features on Android phones and tablets.

While developer tools are a key component of Xamarin, Microsoft is likely to have found the company’s Test Cloud an attractive part of the deal. Automating cross-device testing, Test Cloud fills another gap in Microsoft’s devops strategy, giving it more of the tools needed for an automated cross-platform build chain. Other devops tooling from Xamarin should help add user acceptance testing and cross-platform application analytics to Microsoft’s tool chest.

Xamarin has gradually shifted its focus from independent developers to enterprise development teams, and it will now be able to leverage Microsoft’s existing enterprise relationships and sales processes. Similarly, Microsoft now can approach enterprises with a complete native cross-platform development model, rather than its previous mix of Universal Windows Platform and Apache Cordova hybrid applications. Through the free Visual Studio Community edition, Microsoft will be able to deliver Xamarin’s development tooling to a wider selection of student, open source, and independent developers than the current MSDN subscription that included Xamarin was able to reach. Integrating Xamarin subscriptions into the new Visual Studio subscriptions shouldn’t be hard, as both have comparable tiers.

Adding cross-platform tools to its development platform makes a lot of sense for Microsoft, opening up the Android and iOS worlds to .Net and helping deliver the endpoints that Satya Nadella’s cloud-first, mobile-first world needs. The acquisition should close before Microsoft’s 2016 Build developer event at the end of March.

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