Review of Microsoft's 2014: from starting with almost no CEO to ending with Windows 10 on track (I)

In a matter of hours we will say goodbye to the year 2014. The 39th year in the history of Microsoft One that will go down in history of the company as one of the most significant for all the changes that have taken place in it. So much so that we couldn't let it go without going over it completely.

With 2014 twelve months go by in which Microsoft has seen the arrival of its third CEO and in which the company has redirected their efforts towards a new strategy whose fruits are yet to be demonstrated.Months in which we have seen a Microsoft capable of buying both historical companies such as Nokia and newcomers such as Minecraft. Months of opening and changes in key sectors of the company. Months that we review here to begin to close the year as well.

January

2014 could not have started more dubious for Microsoft. Its board of directors seemed unable to find a CEO and doubts were beginning to hover over the future of some of the company's main businesses. Even Windows seemed affected, with a version 8.1 that hadn't quite taken off either and a CES in Las Vegas with few new features and full of bets that insisted on combining Windows with other systems on the same device.

The halo of hope was represented by the rumors about a version 8.1 of Windows Phone that would bring a necessary renovation to the mobile system and innovations such as Cortana. The future on the desktop was also beginning to look better with rumors about the future Update 1 of Windows 8.1 and speculation about the future of the system hidden under the name of Windows Threshold.

All of this drew changes on the horizon of the Windows universe, such as SkyDrive that changed its name to OneDrive that same month of January, but deep down the base remained the same, like Windows XP who refused to die despite approaching his final end. Or like the numbers of the company, which started the year with record revenues with which Steve Ballmer put the final finishing touch to his time at the helm of MicrosoftAnd the thing is that good old Ballmer had days left as CEO.

In Xataka Windows | Archives for January 2014

February

February was the key month of the year for those from Redmond. The board of directors finally came out of its torpor and decided that Satya Nadella was the right person to lead Microsoft. Nadella thus became the third CEO in the history of Microsoft Only Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer had been before. Precisely the first was the other leading name in the election, returning to the company to increase his dedication to it in the form of technological advisor.

Although the new CEO soon began to change things at Microsoft, the developments that took place during the month of February owe more to Ballmer's legacy than to Nadella's decisions. And this is important because some of the main products and services have been cleverly updated. Office Web Apps was renamed Office Online, better focusing its proposal; and the Xbox team started a rhythm of monthly Xbox One updates that we still haven't appreciated enough to this day.

But, apart from the presence of a new CEO, the key news in February was reserved for Windows Phone. The Redmond mobile system was still waiting for its necessary update and we were learning more and more details about issues such as its notification center. In addition, the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona was held around those dates, in which Joe Belfiore gave the good news of the arrival of more manufacturers to Windows Phone, and Stephen Elop put the discordant note when presenting the new Nokia X with Android.

In Xataka Windows | Archives February 2014

March

Soda experiments aside, Microsoft was about to close its acquisition of Nokia and it was clear that the Finns weren't going to abandon Windows Phone.There were new Lumia in preparation and the news was confirmed by the announcement of an event for Build 2014 from a still independent Nokia. And it is that if something was noticeable in the environment in the month of March it was the proximity of the 2014 edition of the developer conference for Microsoft, which made us be aware of each new rumor about the expected Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 8.1 Update 1

In addition to preparing for Build, the month of March 2014 was a month of transition for Microsoft. The company raised the level of pressure to force the abandonment of Windows XP at the same time that a new tone began to be noticed in the company's decisions. Substitutions began to take place in the governing bodies and something must have changed at that time for Redmond to begin to think that it would be a good thing to release part of their work, even if initially it was only the source code for MS-DOS and Word for Windows 1.1.

Most significant for today's times was Nadella's gesture of personally participating in the Office for iPad unveiling. Microsoft seems to be starting to understand that porting your applications to other platforms benefits you more than it hurts. But that does not mean abandoning their own systems, with a Windows Store that reached 150,000 applications that same month, adding, among others, the VLC player; and new efforts to attract developers.

In Xataka Windows | March 2014 Archives

April

The first days of April were dominated by the celebration of Build 2014 As usual, the Microsoft developer event was the moment chosen by the company for the presentation of Windows 8.1 Update 1 and Windows Phone 8.1. The first was one more update to the operating system to try to get mouse and keyboard users back. The second, on the other hand, was much more. Windows Phone 8.1 meant a new rebirth for the mobile system.

For half the month of April we waited for version Preview for Developers of Windows Phone 8.1 The one that we could already test in our terminals waiting for Microsoft to publish the final version. The one that finally put the notification center, personalized home screens and Cortana on our smartphones, if we dared to put the system in English. The Preview for Developers was for a time our access to the future of Windows Phone while we waited for the official update or for new terminals that already brought it as standard, such as the Lumia 930 or the Lumis 630/635 presented by Nokia also in Build 2014.

And the ramifications of this edition of Build extended far beyond the usual three days of conferences.The announcement of free Windows for phones and small tablets, its extension to the Internet of Things, the presentation of Internet Explorer 11, etc. During the following weeks the change in Microsoft only became evident and the best representation of this was the definitive closing of the purchase of Nokia

In Xataka Windows | April 2014 Archives

May

With updated systems, the desire to see new devices increased. Nokia complied just before being definitively acquired by a Microsoft around which rumors began to abound about a new model of Surface tablet and even about a possible smartwatch . HTC was also once again present in the rumors given the possibility of its return to Windows Phone.

While we waited for all this, May was bringing us news on other fronts.With Phil Spencer already at the controls of Xbox, in Redmond they decided that it would be a good idea to put their Xbox One console on sale in a cheaper package without Kinect The Thing It was going to adjust prices and for this reason they also launched Windows 8.1 with Bing, a version of the system designed to lower the cost of its license and pave the way for the arrival of new equipment at an increasingly reduced cost.

Satya Nadella's hand was beginning to be seen in all those decisions. The fear that Bill Gates would get in the way seemed to have cleared up, and, as he had predicted years ago, the founder himself ceased to be the company's largest shareholder that same month of May. Nadella was in charge and it seems to have been him who decided to cancel the Surface Mini and promote the alternative Surface Pro 3 that would be presented before the end of the month. One month he had an additional surprise with the introduction to the world of Skype Translator for the first time.

In Xataka Windows | May 2014 Archives

June

Since his appointment as CEO, Nadella has not stopped repeating the importance of Bing and its technology for Microsoft The search engine turned five in June and began to further infiltrate the company's other products and services. The news in June 2014 was the World Cup in Brazil, and the search engine took advantage of the occasion to demonstrate its predictive ability, hitting 15 of the 16 games in the final phase of the championship.

June is also an outstanding month for the video game industry. The E3 conference in Los Angeles is held annually in that month, and on this occasion Phil Spencer and the Xbox team took the opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to gaming with a keynote focused entirely on them. While early summer also brought the announcement of new apps for Xbox One and Xbox 360, we at Redmond were determined to remind us that Xbox One and Xbox 360 are video game consoles before anything else.

Increasingly converted into a hardware company, especially with the acquisition of a mobile manufacturer like Nokia, Microsoft began to expect more and more devices. Doubts began to surface around the company's future smartphones, and while we speculated about the abandonment of the Nokia name and the future of the Lumia brand, we heard talk about 3D Touch technology. But, to everyone's surprise, far from seeing a new Windows Phone with which to use the more than 250,000 applications, what we saw was a last Nokia X2 with Android.

In Xataka Windows | June 2014 Archives

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