30Aug 2017 by richard@baronsoftware.com

NYPD dropping Window Phone for iPhones

Microsoft Development, Software Events
NYPD dropping Window Phone for iPhone A New York Post report that one of Microsoft's more celebrated U.S. business customers for Windows Phone is dumping the platform raises some interesting questions about Redmond's future mobility plans. The Post reported on August 28 that the New York Police Department (NYPD) is going to scrap the 36,000 Nokia phonesrunning the Windows Phone OS that it has been rolling out for the past two years. Microsoft dropped support for Windows Mobile 8.1 in July 2017. But the two handset models the NYPD purchased, the Lumia 640XL and Lumia 830, both were among the Windows Phones that were upgradable to Windows 10 Mobile. (Of these two, only the newer 640XL will also be eligible for the coming Fall Windows 10 Mobile update, however.) As of October 2016,…
Read More
29Aug 2017 by richard@baronsoftware.com

IDERA, Inc. Acquires Sencha to Strengthen Developer Tools Business

Rad Studio Delphi Development, Software development Concepts
IDERA, Inc. Acquires Sencha to Strengthen Developer Tools Business IDERA, Inc., the leading provider of database, development, and test management tools, today announced an agreement to acquire Sencha, a leading web application development platform. Sencha will be integrated with Embarcadero, IDERA, Inc.’s developer tools division. The press release can be view at BusinessWire about this purchase in detail.  Now the question is what will happen with moving this product into the Embarcadero Developer product line ?   How does this affect the Rad Studio products that deal with the enterprise ? Sencha provides software tools to build web applications across desktops, tablets and smartphones.  How will this work with FireMonkey is the real question.  The pricing structure for Sencha is extremely high for up to 5 developers. Atanas Popov has been…
Read More
25Aug 2017 by richard@baronsoftware.com

Expert Delphi by Paweł Głowacki

Book Reviews, Rad Studio Delphi Development
Expert Delphi by Paweł Głowacki   After reading the latest book from Author Pawel Glowacki the feeling of fresh FireMonkey Delphi material left an excellent karma.  It should be part of anyone's Delphi Library since it has great reference material.  The book was written by Pawel Glowacki whom is Embarcadero's European Technical Lead for Developer Tools. The book begins with a basic primer on Delphi helping you get accustomed to the IDE and the Object Pascal language.  It quickly moves into advanced concepts dealing with FireMonkey.  You should be able to build server-side services, create new Internet of Things (IOT) and integrate your applet with web services to deploy them to market. As always the pricing from PackT is on the mark.  The writing is very clear at 506 pages and…
Read More
24Aug 2017 by richard@baronsoftware.com

Half of Windows 7 machines do not run AV software

Microsoft Development, Software Events
Half of Windows 7 machines do not run AV software It has been disclosed by Microsoft that Windows older desktop operating systems remains more vulnerable to malware as of today.  The majority of users are still running older versions of Windows, without necessarily using up to date security software which is Anti-Virus packages. In its latest Security Intelligence Report, the company revealed that among all Windows 7 and Windows Vista PCs reporting statuses other than “Protected” to Microsoft, more than half of them have no type of protected software installed at all, which is pretty massive. Starting with Windows 8, Microsoft decided to turn on Windows Defender by default when no other anti-malware software is present. The majority of unprotected Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 PCs have their anti-malware software turned…
Read More
24Aug 2017 by richard@baronsoftware.com

C# 8.0 Previewed

Software development Concepts, Software Events
C# 8.0 Previewed Originally written in www.infoq.com, some amazing stuff coming down the pipe for C#. Nullable Reference Types We’ve covered nullable reference types in the past, but briefly the idea is that reference types would no longer be nullable by default. Instead, you have to explicitly mark them as nullable using the same “Type?” syntax that you use for nullable value types. Assigning a null to a non-nullable reference type will be a compiler warning. Likewise, reading from a nullable type would be a compiler warning unless the variable in question was explicitly checked for null ahead of time. So theoretically the only change developers need to make is to sprinkle question marks where appropriate. Since our report, a new syntax was added to this feature. Consider a scenario where you know…
Read More