Microsoft Garage rolled out the News Pro app earlier in the year. The service is a new aggregator that was exclusive to Apple’s iOS platform. Since then News Pro 2.0 has been launched with new features (such as a bot). Now, Microsoft has launched the app on the Android platform, expanding the reach of the service.
As well as bringing the service to Android, a new update has also been rolled out to iOS. The release on both platforms brings the app up to version 3.0. This is another major milestone. Microsoft used version 2.0 to introduce a bot called Rowe that helps curate news. Version 3.0 comes with the following changes and fixes:
- UX Refreshment throughout and we hope you like it.
- In-depth coverage on trending topics and topics for you are now available in Highlight page.
- Highlight page now supports infinite scroll with extensive contents so that you never need to go anywhere else for reading news.
- You can now explicitly personalize your highlight page by clicking like/dislike/mute site on any articles.
- News Pro bot can now understand human speech and he can talk too. Please feel free to ask him some questions.
- News Pro bot has facial expression now. His smile might mean he has something new for you.
- We understand sharing is always about expressing yourself. With Annotate and Share, we make it easy for you to annotate any part of the article and share it in your social networks.
Controversy
While it is good for Microsoft to expand its services across platforms, Windows users are angered by News Pro. Indeed, they are miffed about Microsoft Garage as a whole.
Microsoft Garage is a division of the company that lets teams collaborate on outside projects. These employees can cross divisions and work together in ways they otherwise couldn’t. The idea is to create services that are beyond what Microsoft would launch as a full product.
However, Windows users have noticed a worrying trend where the Garage projects are for iOS and Android. Disparaging remarks include Microsoft needing to change the division to be called iOS Garage.
