Bing Apps Being Rebranded As MSN Apps; Coming To IOS Android

Although the new apps have been rebranded, the new MSN apps are powered by Bing search technology to provide content relevant to you. Moreover, the new updated apps and the recently new MSN portal homepage works together with the new apps. Meaning that the experience will follow you on every device, in the apps or website, as long you logged in to your Microsoft account.

Bing apps being rebranded as MSN apps; coming to iOS Android

Microsoft officials said to expect the handful of Bing consumer apps -- which Microsoft is rebranding as MSN apps -- to come to iOS and Android "in the coming months." These touch-first apps, which include News, Weather, Travel, Finance, Sports, Health & Fitness, and Food & Drink, are currently available for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.

Microsoft already offers a few consumer apps for iOS and Android, including the Bing search app, OneDrive cloud-storage app and OneNote note-taking app. These apps weren't built by the Bing AppEx team and won't be rebranded as MSN apps.

The portal is intended, above all, to be mobile friendly, and Microsoft will release a suite of MSN apps (previously Bing Apps on Windows 8 and Windows Phone) across Windows Phone, iOS and Android over the coming months.

Push notifications. To let you know of incoming calls, chats, and other messages, Skype apps use the notification service on your device. For many devices, these services are provided by another company. To tell you who is calling, for example, or to give you the first few words of the new chat, Skype has to tell the notification service so that they can provide the notification to you. The company providing the notification service on your device will use this information in accordance with their own terms and privacy policy. Microsoft is not responsible for the data collected by the company providing the notification service. If you do not want to use the notification services for incoming Skype calls and messages, turn it off in the settings found in the Skype application or your device.

Practically, and on the consumer-facing side of things, the announcement is simply a rebrand of the company's existing iOS and Android MSN News apps to Microsoft News. As for MSN.com, the company has chosen to retain its existing branding, though the site will be shown as being 'powered by Microsoft News'.

Typical smartphones home screens revolved around a row of icons, iOS, Android, WebOS and BlackBerry OS7. In this way, Windows Phone was a massive departure from the norm. Featuring a 4 x 2 layout of solid coloured live tiles, the OS was visually different and starkly polarizing. Hence while some reviewers praised the live tiles and start screen, others viewed it as confusing and disorienting. Another pain point was the usefulness of tiles on the start screen. The Windows Phone start screen was intended as a dashboard of sorts, meant to lay emphasis on a glance and go philosophy where a user could scan the tiles and then plunge directly into the apps that were most important to them. In practice, this was a little complex with only the native app tiles having only full live tile functionality and third party applications being handicapped in that area.