Microsoft Support & Discussions

Welcome to iOS Help feature. Every week I'll try and help you fix the problems you're having with your iPhones and iPads. If you have a question or issue you're having trouble with, I encourage you to email us at ioshelp@imore.com. This week's question comes to us from John: Hi, On my iPhone 5S — running iOS 8.1 — I get repeated requests to sign in to my iCloud account (3 times in the past hour). Please tell me how to fix this. Thank you, John John: I experience this annoying popup occasionally as well. While I can't tell you why it happens occasionally, I do think I have a solution that seems to work most of the time. How to stop iCloud from asking…

Sky has today announced plans to launch a new mobile service in 2016, partnering up with O2 for the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) venture. The deal will enable Sky to offer 2G, 3G and 4G services to its customer base, placing the company in a strengthened position against rivals. It's an interesting move, given that BT is purchasing EE for £12.5 billion, which provides services to Virgin Media, and Three owner Hutchison Whampoa is set to acquire Telefonica's O2. Sky has decided to act now with serious changes on the horizon for the UK mobile market, and will be teaming up with O2 (and potentially Three). The premium TV provider will offer voice and data p…

The Mac has plenty of games, but it'll always get short shrift compared to Windows. If you want to play the latest games on your Mac, you have no choice but to install Windows...or do you? There are actually a few ways you can play Windows games on your Mac without having to dedicate a partition to Boot Camp or giving away huge amounts of hard drive space to a virtual machine app like VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop. Here's how. Almost since the first Intel-based Macs appeared in 2006, we've been able to run Windows on our Macs. Apple provides the software to do so right built-in: Boot Camp, which enables you to partition off a segment of your hard drive and insta…

Microsoft has released a new Outlook app for iPhone and iPad, rounding out the Office experience on iOS. It's a fully featured email client, lets you connect not only to Office 365 but Gmail, iCloud and standard email accounts as well, and is worth downloading if you use the desktop version and enjoy Microsoft Office products. This new Outlook is based on Acompli, which Microsoft previously acquired. From the Microsoft Office blog: The new Outlook apps work great with Office 365, Exchange, Outlook.com, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail and other major email services. Find out more about the Outlook for iOS and Android apps here. For our Acompli users, Outlook will be a familiar…

A new survey of mobile gamers conducted by the NPD Group says that they are playing, on average, over two hours a day on their devices. The survey, conducted in late 2014, indicates a 57% increase in the average play time for mobile gamers, compared to just 80 minutes a day in 2012. NPD's report is based on an online survey of 5,566 individuals ages 2 and older. It states: Kids ages 2 to 12 are spending the greatest proportion of their device time on gaming versus other activities. This age group is also playing more games (average of 5 games), as well as more games that were paid for (average of 3 games). The average amount of money spent by this age group ove…

Sunrise Calendar isn't a replacement calendar app for me. That spot is currently occupied by Fantastical 2 on both my iPhone and my iPad. Sunrise Calendar is, however, a very important part of my workflow — it's my notification system for Trello. Yes, Sunrise Calendar is better at notifying me about Trello — the workflow management tool we use at iMore — that Trello itself. That alone makes Sunrise Calendar indispensable to me. I love Trello but if you're using it on a regular basis, you know that the notification system is less than stellar. Actually, if we're being honest, it sucks. I can't customize any kind of notification preferences through Trello for iPhon…

Wearables. We hear a lot about wearables, and Apple's staged to make a big entrance in 2015 with the release of the Apple Watch. In the interim, other companies are making plays in another segment of the wearables market: glasses. Google may have gone to ground for a bit to rework its Glass product, but Microsoft is charging full speed ahead with HoloLens and Facebook last year acquired Oculus VR, makers of the Rift headset. Where's Apple in all this? As Rene and I have both pointed out in the past, chances are if something consumer electronics-related can be prototyped, Apple has done it. I have no doubt that somewhere in a well-secured office in Cupertino rests App…

More people than ever are switching to iPhone, or are seriously considering making the move, and one of the things you'll want to bring with you is any music or audio you've been listening to on your old Android phone. Apple has been providing the best audio frameworks in the industry for years, and as such you'll find tons of great apps that utilize it within the App Store — including Google's! — to make switching your music and audio to a new device incredibly easy. Here's what works best! 1. If your music is with Google If you've got your music from Google Play, whether you're using the standard service or All Access, all you have to do is download the Goog…

Apple's Photos for Mac was for shown off last summer at WWDC 2014 but isn't scheduled to ship until "early 2015". Apple hasn't said anything more specific about the schedule than that, but today some concern arose when people realized that, at some point, information about Photos for Mac had disappeared from Apple.com. So, what's going on? Apple included Photos for Mac in the original preview pages for OS X Yosemite that went live right after the WWDC keynote in June. Now Apple.com is showing the OS X Yosemite release pages. Since Photos for Mac hasn't been released yet, it isn't part of those pages. To the best of my understanding, it really is just that simple. Ap…

Apple has just announced record breaking results for Q1 2015 — 74.5 million iPhones, 21.4 million iPads, 5.5 million Macs sold, $74.6 billion in revenue — and now it's time to sit back, relax, and listen to their quarterly conference call. Apple's CEO, Tim Cook and CFO, Luca Maestri should be running the call. We'll update this post every few minutes with highlights, so refresh as the mood strikes you. You can listen along live via Apple.com. Classical music. Is that good? And we're off! Disclaimer time! Forward looking! Retail is now in region it's located. iPhone, iPad, Mac, Services, and other products Tim Cook (TC) is on. Historic quarter, incredibly proud. I…

AT&T has reported its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2014 today. Combining its wireless and wireline businesses the company brought in revenue of $132.4 billion on the year, with $34.4 billion in the fourth quarter alone — up 3.8 percent over the same quarter a year ago. Additionally, the company reported that, after compensating for a 77 cent per share loss because of various charges, earnings per share were up to 55 cents compared to 53 cents for the same quarter last year. On the wireless side of things, AT&T noted that it scored 1.9 million net added customers in the fourth quarter, for a total of 5.6 million over the course of 2014. Additionally, its…

Apple has announced their Q1 2015 earnings and the numbers include Apple announces Q1 2015 results: 74.5 million iPhones, 21.4 million iPads, 5.5 million Macs sold, $74.6 billion in revenue earned! Apple's CEO, Tim Cook: "We'd like to thank our customers for an incredible quarter, which saw demand for Apple products soar to an all-time high," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. "Our revenue grew 30 percent over last year to $74.6 billion, and the execution by our teams to achieve these results was simply phenomenal." Reaction is pretty much what you'd expect: iPhone ASP is $687 — Horace Dediu (@asymco) January 27, 2015 74.5 million iPhones in a quarter? tha…

With iCloud Drive, you can create files in one app on your iPhone and then open or edit them in a different app on your iPad or Mac. For privacy and security reasons, however, you can also control which apps can access your iCloud Drive files. How to revoke iOS app access to iCloud Drive Launch the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad. Tap on iCloud. Tap on iCloud Drive. Scroll down the list and turn Off any app you want to prevent accessing iCloud Drive. Turn Off access to any apps you don't want to use iCloud Drive with. How to revoke Mac app access to iCloud Drive Click on the  menu in the top left corner of your Mac. Click on System Preferen…

Mindsense, the developer of Mail Pilot, has announced that it will release Mail Pilot 2 for iPhone and iPad next Thursday, Feb. 5. Mail Pilot 2 will launch with a number of new features, including new gestures, better navigation, and feature parity with Mail Pilot for Mac. An update will also be issued for the Mac app that will allow Mail Pilot for Mac and iOS to sync accounts using iCloud Drive. The new gestures will help you do things like set reminders, archive messages, and more. Swipe a message to the left to mark it complete a message, and swipe to the right to set a customizable reminder. There's also a flick gesture that gives you more options. You can also n…

If you're interested in AAPL the stock as much as you are Apple the company, then this is your reminder that Q1 2015 earnings will be announced at 1:30pm PT, 4:30pm ET this afternoon with the usual conference call to follow at 2pm PT. iMore will be providing our usual color and commentary before, during, and after. Fortune has compiled the following average estimates from 20 pro and 15 amateur analysts, reminding us once again that only companies with oligopoly control over fossil fuel resources typically make more in a quarter, and even then, only a very few. Earnings of $2.68 per share (up nearly 30% year over year) on Revenues of $68.7 billion (up nearly 20%). …

Apple has just released iOS 8.1.3 for iPhone and iPad devices. The over-the-air update has a number of fixes and improvements, including one that should cut down on the amount of storage needed for future software updates. Here's the change log for iOS 8.1.3, the download for which should be around 240MB, depending on which device you're downloading it on. Reduces the amount of storage required to perform a software update Fixes an issue that prevented some users from entering their Apple ID password for Messages and Face Time Addresses an issue that caused Spotlight to stop displaying app results Fixes an issue which prevented multitasking gestures from worki…

Moment has launched the Kickstarter for their new iPhone case, the Moment Case for iPhone 6. The case was designed to help you take a better picture. The case is compatible with the Moment Lenses, which were funded on Kickstarter last year. The case has a number of built-in features to make help you take better photos. From the Kickstarter page: Located on top of the case, the Moment Shutter Button is a multi-state button that enables half press and full press features, just like a DSLR camera. You can half-press it to lock focus and exposure onto a subject like never before. Or hold it down to unlock burst mode. The shutter button, combined with updates t…

Apple Pay support is expanding yet again, this time to nearly 200,000 self-service machines (i.e. vending machines) across the United States. The machines, run by USA Technologies, have all been remotely updated to support the contactless payment system Apple introduced with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. But it's not just vending machines that are getting the Apple Pay treatment: This immediately adds approximately 200,000 Apple Pay acceptance points to the growing list of locations officially supporting Apple Pay, bringing the advanced mobile payments service to owners and operators of coffee brewers, vending machines, kiosks, laundry equipment, parking pay …

Working for iMore has gotten me to once again appreciate my good old Canon DSLR. For the last few years, my poor camera often ended up hidden in a corner, making an appearance only when my iPhone wouldn't do or for special vacations. With smartphone cameras so good these days, it's been hard to justify carrying around the extra weight for a non-internet-enabled device. But DSLRs — especially DSLRs with nice lenses — can take wonderful pictures if you're willing to work with them. For me, this meant figuring out a faster workflow than "taking a bunch of pictures, waiting until I got home to my computer to upload them, then slowly sorting through them via an app like Lig…

Today is an incredibly exciting day as we unveil the new Power BI – a service we believe will fundamentally transform the “business of business intelligence.” Power BI can help every company adopt a data culture with easy-to-use, accessible tools and innovative technology that lowers the barrier to entry, for all. For those not familiar with Power BI, it is a cloud-based business analytics service (software-as-a -service) for non-technical business users. With just a browser – any browser – or a Power BI mobile app, customers can keep a pulse on their business via live operational dashboards. They can deeply explore their business data, through interactive visual repor…

Update: Both Facebook and Instagram are back online. Facebook and Instagram, the popular social network and it's photo-centric sub-division, are currently offline. If you've been trying to check your feeds and you've been getting errors, don't worry — it's them, not you. Both Facebook and Instagram have solid infrastructures and seldom experience downtime. I'm still not able to access either but there's no doubt they're working to restore service as quickly as possible. And in the meantime, if your statuses and photos are piling up, you can still get your social fix on Twitter. Let me know if you can get to Instagram or Facebook and, if not, when it comes back on…

After collaborating with artist Wang Dongling to create a mural for its Hangzhou, China store opening last week, Apple has prepared another for its Chongqing store which will open on January 31. Apple says that this new mural is a collaboration between international artists and photographer Navid Baraty. From Apple (translated): To celebrate the opening of the new Apple Store retail outlets, we have invited international artists from Chongqing to Yangyang Pan, as well as award-winning international photographer Navid Baraty co-authoring a piece of art. This works not only convey the worth of Chongqing is a wonderful gathering of the city, also means that the ne…