This sponsored post is produced by StackSocial.

We all know that iTunes can become a real mess. That said, it’s a pretty smart program in that it can “occasionally” know what Track 1 is based on the album it comes from. But what if you’re importing a mixed CD? What about album cover art? That doesn’t always register. But what if you could make it register?

TuneUp hooks up with iTunes to organize and categorize your music from top to bottom. It transforms your music collection…automagically™.And for a very limited time, VentureBeat has it for just $30!

TuneUp boasts the following features:

• Clean: Accurately fixes mislabeled or missing song information (like “Track 01” or “Unknown Artist”) using cutting-edge waveform recognition.
• Cover Art: Scans your entire music collection in seconds and automagically™ fills in missing album artwork.
• DeDuper: Intelligently finds and removes duplicate music files from your music library using waveform recognition.
• Lyrics: View lyrics to your favorite songs as they’re played in iTunes and Windows Media Player!
• Tuniverse: Delivers music videos, artist bios, concert alerts, social network integration and more.

TuneUp works with both Mac OS X (10.5+) and the Windows (XP SP2 +) operating systems. That means both Mac and Windows users can get the benefit of a cleaner, leaner and meaner iTunes Library. (For more details on all aspects of this deal, visit the VB Store page)

This latest VB Store offer is only around for a limited time. So pick up TuneUp today – and get the most out of iTunes right away!

This sponsored post is produced by StackSocial.

There’s technology out there that won’t only help you track down your lost or stolen devices – but will give you the ability to provide the police with the exact location of your device (along with pictures of the thief in the case of theft). So when your device gets lost or stolen it’s a major blow to your livelihood – and Prey is here to protect and restore it.

Prey is open source software that gives you a 24/7 tracking and recovering capabilities so you can recover your lost or stolen devices. It keeps track of your laptop, phone and tablet whenever stolen or missing — easily and all in one place. And the VentureBeat Store has it right now for just $49!

Here’s how Prey works…

You install a tiny agent in your PC, Mac, or phone, and that agent silently waits for a remote signal to wake up and work its magic.This signal is sent either from the Internet or through an SMS message, and allows you to gather information regarding the device’s location, hardware and network status, and optionally trigger specific actions on it.

Let’s take a look at Prey’s features…

• Sends incredibly accurate location updates.
• Snaps pictures of the thief with the devices built-in camera.
• Tracks which files have been accessed or changed on your system.
• Grab screenshots of what the thief is doing on your computer.
• Tracks which programs the thief has running.

This VentureBeat Store offer is for an annual home plan of Prey, which allows you to cover up to 10 devices. Prey works for Windows, Linux, OS X, iOS, and Android, so no matter what devices you’re using, Prey will have you – and your gear – covered.

But this deal won’t be around for long. Get Prey from the VB Store page for only $49 now – and give yourself peace of mind today!

This sponsored post is produced by StackSocial.

Let’s just say you got yourself an early Christmas present this Black Friday. Let’s just say it’s a brand-new Mac. Let’s just say it’s only a little wanting in the applications department.

Well then let’s just say that the VB Store has got a deal for you!

The iStack Mac Bundle has 10 apps that will give you all you really need to take your new Mac and make it more useful than you could imagine for a price this low. This deal is just $49.99 – but it’s only around for limited time.

Here’s what you’ll get in The Stack iMac Bundle (Note: The regular price of each application is in parentheses):

• Camtasia 2 for Mac: With Camtasia 2 you can easily create stunning screen captures and video recordings, with easy capture capabilities and allowing you to focus your videos on what matters. ($99)
• Circus Ponies NoteBook: Take rich notes using powerful outlining, diagramming, and sketching tools with Circus Ponies NoteBook. ($50)
• CrossOver XI: CrossOver XI enables you to run Windows applications and PC games on your Mac without rebooting, without a Windows license, and at native speeds. ($60)
• FX Photo Studio Pro: This app sports one of the best variety of photo effects among photo applications, and has 172 high quality effects and filters at your disposal. ($40)
• LittleSnapper: Capture picture-perfect screenshots with LittleSnapper, which can also do things like automatically categorize and easily add annotations to all of your snapshots. ($40)
• Printopia: Printopia brings wireless printing from your iOS devices to your Mac’s printers easily and instantly. ($20)
• xTeam: An incredibly useful tool to manage the working schedule of people in your team, group, or organization that lets you create daily working schedules, manage days off for each person and track holidays. ($99)
• MoneyBag: This top-notch finance app allows you to interpret and monitor your spending and saving patterns with unprecedented ease and simplicity. ($60)
• Habits: Stay motivated and accountable with this life-changing app that helps you create good habits…and break bad ones. ($20)
• SyncMate Expert: Sync up your calendar, to do/reminders, contacts, mail, stickies, bookmarks, music, and more! ($40)
• Build iPhone & iPad Games without Programming: Featuring over 222 lectures and 10 hours of content, this eCourse will teach you how to build iPhone & iPad games without programming a single line of code. ($250)

You can improve every facet of your Mac’s Applications folder with this offer – and at 93% off the regular price, you’ll never find a better price for such a versatile set of applications. So head over to the VB Store now and grab The iStack Mac Bundle while you can and add more power to your Mac today!

This sponsored post is produced by StackSocial.

Stocking your Mac app up with apps that add value to your experience is something many of us – ot not all of us – do. But how many of us stock up on apps that maintain that level of experience? I’d wager to guess that the number is far, far lower.

The VB Store is giving those who are part of the few to become part of the many, as we unveil The Mac Utility Bundle, which will supercharge your Mac with 5 stellar Mac apps – including Parallels Desktop 8. And you’ll get it for 75% off the regular price…just $59.99!

Here’s what you’ll get in this power-packed bundle:

• Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac: This is the #1 rated utility to run Windows on your Mac, and with Parellels Desktop 8 you can run Windows on your Mac without rebooting. The easy-to-use interface allows for a seamless experience on both the Mac and Windows side of things, and this version sports over 90 new features. (You can even run Linux side-by-side with Mac OS X.) If you’ve wanted to run another OS on your Mac, then this application is the one for you.
• Snagit for Mac: With Snagit’s easy-to-use tools, you can quickly create images and videos to give feedback, solve a problem, or simply show off something cool. There are so many features built-in to Snagit, such as the ability to enhance images with stamps, text, and effects, the ability to organize your screen captures with easy auto-storing and tagging features, and much more. It really is the ultimate screen capture app!
• VirusBarrier X6: Want protection from viruses, Trojan Horses, and all other known Mac malware? ViruxBarrier X6 has got you covered. It’s also the only antivirus for Mac that provides solid protection against network threats, with a two-way firewall, network protection, anti-phishing, anti-spyware features, and more.
• MacOptimizer: MacOptimizer does a whole lot of optimizing. It gets your Mac back in shape by cleaning your system caches, optimizing your Mac’s speed, speeding up Mail client, freeing up inactive memory, and so much more!

But htere’s more to this VB Store offer. The first 3000 buyers will get a copy of Rubbernet, an app that keeps an eye on all network-enabled apps running on your Mac so you can take the necessary actions to resolve the problem. Rubbernet provides real-time monitoring so you can keep an eye on the exact state of your live network connections. It’s a $36 value…and if you get in on this deal early then you’ll get it for absolutely free.

But we’re not done yet…

Even if you decide to take ap ass on this bundle – although we have no idea why you’d do that – you can score yourself another free app: MacX iPad Video Converter. Thanks to our friends over at Digiarty we’re able to hook you up with a killer Mac app that allows you to convert all of your videos to play on your iPad at no cost to you. That’s a price anyone can get behind.

The Mac Utility Bundle is a rock-solid deal that won’t last for long. Save 75% off for a limited time and get this VB Store offer while you can!

Who knew the Department of Defense took operational security so seriously?

Multiple outlets are reporting that the government agency charged with protecting our nation’s secrets – the DoD – is punishing seven active-duty Navy SEALs who consulted on EA’s Medal of Honor: Warfighter. Four more are under investigation.

The DoD docked the SEALs’ pay for two months and placed letters of reprimand in their file. For all intents and purposes, this could end their careers.

Last month, GamesBeat reported that EA consulted with two dozen active-duty and retired SEALs and other Spec Ops personnel – including Matt Bissonnette, who was part of the Seal Team 6 team that killed Osama Bin Laden – for Medal of Honor: Warfighter.

At the time, EA spokesman Pete Nguyen told GamesBeat, “We are not aware of any rules that oblige EA to vet the game with the Department of Defense, and we don’t know if veterans who consulted on the game have been in contact with the Department of Defense.”

The latter has now been definitively settled. Apparently, the SEALs didn’t follow the normal vetting process, and they’re paying the price.

While civilians aren’t obligated to safeguard classified information – think of it as freedom of the press – military personnel are entrusted with security clearances, which entail very specific guidelines and restrictions.

And the military is very clear about interacting with the media: Service members must obtain permission before speaking to journalists. Typically, the DoD will refer the military personnel or media to Public Affairs Officers (PAOs).

I have no doubt that EA’s intentions were pure. The Medal of Honor reboot (2010) – based in part on Afghanistan’s Operation Anaconda – took great pains to honor the heroic sacrifice of our men and women in uniform. See this quote, taken from the game’s ending.

But EA forgot to bone up on OPSEC procedures.

In the interests of full disclosure, I was in the Army Reserves for three years and can attest to the fact that the military takes OPSEC (and idle chit-chat with the media) very seriously – especially after General Stanley McChrystal – formerly the Commander, International Security Assistance Force and Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan – got a little too chummy with a Rolling Stone reporter, thereby forfeiting his career.

The military routinely lends technical assistance to Hollywood productions (provided the script passes DoD muster).

See: Top Gun, Transformers, Battleship, Black Hawk Down, etc.

But the DoD is especially sensitive about OPSEC concerns (the ‘ol “loose lips sink ships”), and Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty – a fictionalized account of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden – caused a recent stir.

In response to the alleged disclosure of sensitive intel, Rep. Peter T. King (R-NY), Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, said that “I am concerned about the possible exposure of classified information to these filmmakers, who as far as I know, do not possess security clearances.”

King has called for an investigation.

Given this turn of events – and the DoD’s ruffled feathers – it’s no surprise that the SEALs who consulted on Medal of Honor: Warfighter face disciplinary action.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

The new Windows 8 operating system shows a design sensibility and a clarity of purpose not often seen in a Microsoft product.

I’ve spent about a week with the “consumer preview” of Windows 8, which is available to the public today (you can download the Windows 8 consumer preview for free here). I’ve been testing it on a Samsung tablet, with a separate wireless keyboard and mouse, lent to me by Microsoft. What follows is based on my week-long review.

Here’s what you need to know about the next Windows before you download the consumer preview.

Windows 8 is trying to do everything for everyone

The operating system’s coherence and attractiveness are especially surprising given the enormous number of constituents it has to serve: Windows users in all their maddening variety, computer manufacturers, chip makers, software developers. Even people who live “in the cloud” and couldn’t care less which operating system their device is running still need an OS; they just don’t want it to get in the way.

Of course, all these competing demands are exactly what produced monstrosities like the vast numbers of toolbars in earlier versions of Microsoft Word, or the self-defeating complexity of Windows Vista’s security notifications. Microsoft has a lot of customers, and it’s provably good at capturing and holding on to those customers, but in the process, its products have a tendency to get fugly.

Given those challenges, it’s amazing to see how gracefully Windows 8 pulls off the complicated acrobatic feats expected of it. It doesn’t quite stick the landing, Mary Lou Retton-style, but it delivers a solid performance that suggests even better things to come.

In short, Windows 8 is a promising multi-touch tablet OS, an improved mouse-driven desktop and notebook OS, a cloud client, and a new application development and delivery architecture, all in one.

It’s far from ready for production use, but it is an ambitious step towards a Windows that might not even be called Windows any more.

It’s got a radical new interface

The past few versions of Windows have made interface changes that seem relatively subtle: More animations, more transparency, and so forth. Windows 8 is a striking departure.

Microsoft is doubling down on the “Metro” design language first seen in Windows Phone 7. That means big, bold, multicolored tiles. Many of those tiles update themselves with current information, and not just digits (like the number of unread messages), but actual data (like what your next appointment is, and when it is).

The Start screen display is speedy and pleasingly animated, and I like it.

More significantly, Metro-optimized apps run full-screen. There’s no ability to stack up windows and only very limited tiling options (if you want, you can put one app in a narrow panel on the left and a second app on the remaining 2/3 of the screen).

And there are no toolbars, no menus, no floating palettes. When you’re looking at an app, the whole screen is nothing but content. If you’re browsing the web, you don’t see Internet Explorer: You just see the web page you’re looking at. If you’re reading email, the emails fill the screen. And so on.

If you need to control apps, you swipe in from the top or the bottom of the screen, or right-click on the app, and menus will appear. You can also access “charms,” which are icons to do basic things like adjust settings or share the current page, by swiping in from the right. And you can switch between apps by swiping in from the left, so each app becomes its own full-screen panel.

It’s simple, attractive, and clean-looking. It’s also a little baffling at first. The Microsoft guys who demonstrated the OS to me clearly want people to explore, play, and have fun discovering nifty new gestures as they go. But when you’re trying to find the settings applet that will let you connect to a Wi-Fi network or add an external keyboard, this interface can drive you up the wall.

But what about legacy Windows applications, the kind that you’re probably using right now and have been using for the past decade? Windows 8 supports those too, in “windowing” mode, which looks just like Windows 7. In practice, the “old Windows” view becomes just another app panel, and you can swipe to and from that view just like any other app.

Oh, and there’s no Start button, as we reported a few weeks ago.

You can control it with a touchscreen, mouse, or keyboard

Microsoft has taken pains to make Windows 8 accessible to almost every conceivable input method. The Samsung device I tested it on is a multitouch tablet, and I found the interface fast and responsive to all the gestures I expected: tap, swipe, pinch-to-zoom, and so on.

But Windows 8 is not just a tablet OS; it’s also a PC OS. Accordingly, all those colorful Metro-styled tiles have to work on computers that have mice instead of touchscreens. Microsoft has provided mouse gesture equivalents for every touchscreen gesture, though they’re not always identical: For instance, to bring up those “charms” or system commands, you swipe in from the right edge of the screen, or move the mouse pointer to the lower right-hand corner.

Windows 8 also contains a wealth of keyboard shortcuts, including the classic alt-tab for switching between apps (thank goodness, as that gesture is hardwired into my left hand by now). The company says you should be able to do anything in Windows with any one of these input methods, or a combination of the three.

The system breaks down a bit when you wind up on an old-school Windows screen and you’re using your fingers on the touchscreen. Many buttons and links designed for mouse-only use are way too small to hit accurately with your fingertips, and there’s no way to zoom in. Frustrating.

Add a Kinect, and you can add voice commands and whole-body gestures to the operating system’s vocabulary.

Microsoft has completely overhauled the underlying system

Windows 8 is more than a mere facelift. It’s clear that Microsoft has spent a lot of time rebuilding the underlying architecture of the operating system. I haven’t delved into the particulars of the underlying system, but here are a few indicators of how deep the changes are.

•  Microsoft has introduced a new kind of high-level application programming interface (API) that it calls “contracts,” which aim at simplifying communication between apps for common activities. For instance, there’s a “sharing” contract. Any app that wants to offer something to share (like a web page, a picture, or a document) only needs to code its app to be compatible with the sharing contract. On the other end, apps that can be shared with (like email programs, or a Twitter client) simply need to be compatible with the sharing contract on the receiving end. Neither app needs to know anything about the other app’s APIs, they only have to work with the contract in order to be compatible with any current or future apps that also work with that contract.

• Windows 8 uses your Windows Live ID to authenticate you, and provides many options for syncing data (like your desktop wallpaper or Internet Explorer favorites) so that these options can follow you whenever you log in to any Windows 8 machine. That integration points to a future where your desktop account lives partly in the cloud, partly on a variety of devices — and presupposes a deep level of architectural compatibility with cloud-based data.

• Windows 8 will run on ARM microprocessors — the kind currently found in many tablets and smartphones — as well as the Intel architecture chips that the current Windows uses.

• Apps in the background take up zero processing resources, with very limited exceptions for downloading data or playing music. To make that feasible, every Windows Metro-compatible app has to be ready to shut down completely in 5 seconds or less.

•  Windows 8 boots faster than any desktop OS I’ve used in the past 20 years. It takes about 10 seconds from cold start until the login screen appears. Once you log in, it’s only 2 or 3 seconds until you’re looking at a usable, fully responsive Start screen.

There will be a market for apps

I can’t say much about the actual market or the apps in it, because the Windows Store wasn’t available until today. The only apps on the tablet I tested were the ones pre-installed by Microsoft, and those aren’t necessarily the same ones that will be on the shipping version of Windows 8.

What Microsoft has said is that it will be easy to create Windows 8 apps using current Windows development tools, XAML and C#. But it will also be easy to build apps using HTML5 and JavaScript, the company promises; indeed, several of the demonstration apps, like the maps application, are basically simple wrappers around existing web sites or web applications. One developer even found that he could re-use 90 percent of the code from a Windows Phone game when porting it to Windows 8.

Lots of developers appear to be interested in the possibilities. Microsoft says that 3.5 million people downloaded the Windows 8 developer preview (the version before this one), which came out in September.

Security and management will make Windows 8 attractive to businesses

Built-in security features such as a trusted boot architecture that should prevent a huge number of malware attacks will help reduce Windows’ exposure to viruses and Trojan horse software.

There are other nice touches that will simplify IT management. For instance, remote access is built-in to Windows 8, as it has been in previous versions. No big deal, right? Except that Windows 8 will run on any device, which means you could use your Windows 8 tablet to log in remotely to a Windows 7 machine across the country and diagnose problems without even getting up from the comfy couch in your IT dungeon.

The Windows Live-based login scheme means that it will be even easier to separate user accounts from physical hardware; you can log in to any computer with your ID and all your preferences and apps will follow you. Add Skydrive or another network storage source, and your data will follow you too.

Microsoft also promises that there will be a version called Windows 8 to Go, which will put the entire operating system on a bootable USB stick. Plug it into any compatible machine (even a Windows 7 machine), boot from the thumb drive, and you’ve got your entire computing environment right there. When you log off and remove the drive, it leaves none of your data behind.

It’s not quite there yet

This is a “consumer preview” release, which would have been called a beta in previous days. It’s free to download, because Microsoft is using you as a guinea pig, and they hope you’ll give them feedback. But basically, you’re getting what you pay for.

The Metro interface is confusing unless you’ve been shown some key gestures, like how to swipe in from the edges of the screen and which corners to send the mouse pointer to. My guess is that Microsoft will need to add some kind of hinting, or maybe pop-up videos or interactive help dialogs: “We notice you’ve spent the past five minutes jabbing aimlessly at the screen. Can we help you find something?”

There are missing pieces: For instance, Flash support is incomplete, and that means you can’t play every video on YouTube, for instance.

Not all the apps, even some by Microsoft, got the memo about leaving the controls off the screen. For instance, the maps app has a persistent toolbar at the bottom and a search bar at the top. Neither one ever disappears. If the Bing Maps team can get away with this, you can bet other developers will be pushing the limits too, and then it’ll be toolbars all the way down again.

Some of the gestures aren’t consistently implemented: For instance, you can swipe in from the left of the screen to see every running app plus an icon that will take you back to the Start screen — unless you only have one running app, in which case nothing happens.

It’s way too hard to find your way to the system settings. There needs to be a Metro-styled settings app, complete with a prominent tile, right on the Start screen.

Also, it’s a bit buggy. Sometimes the system just stops responding. Weird things happen sometimes with beta software.

You can pretend all the new stuff doesn’t exist

Switching between Metro and classic Windows is still awkward, and probably always will be, to a certain extent. It’s kind of how running DOS applications in a window used to be: Microsoft wants to provide support for legacy applications, but they coexist uneasily with the new paradigm. This difference is especially pronounced this time around, because Windows applications are legion.

But suppose you just really hate all those colorful, animated tiles, and want nothing to do with Metro at all? Apart from the Start screen, you can probably avoid Metro entirely — for now. Just open up a desktop window and carry on using Windows the same way you did before, with all your old apps. Of course, the Start button is gone, but that’s no big deal, just push your mouse pointer into the lower left corner where it used to be.

My prediction is that people will spend most of their time in the Windows environment, not Metro, until a few years have gone by. However, Metro will become more ubiquitous slowly, as Windows spreads to tablets, if Microsoft is able to increase its market share among smartphones, and if app developers jump on the Windows Store bandwagon.

Eventually, Windows users will be living in a majority-Metro world, with more tiles than windows.

And who knows? Maybe, eventually, Microsoft will drop the name “Windows” altogether.

Chris Paget, chief hacker at security consulting firm Recursion Ventures, is a well-known figure at the twin Black Hat and Defcon conferences in Las Vegas, having demonstrated a live interception of a cell phone call last year. In her talk this year, she said she hated the limitations of Microsoft’s operating systems and had only two Windows machines in her home. But five years ago, she was enlisted as a penetration tester (pen tester) by Microsoft to screen Windows Vista before it launched. She was paid as an external contractor for Microsoft and signed a non-disclosure agreement that  only expired a day before her talk.

Vista was roundly criticized by critics for being slow and ill-conceived in many ways. But Paget said that she was impressed with Microsoft’s thoroughness in testing it for security problems.

“Microsoft’s security process is spectacular,” Paget said. “Security is a process, not a product. It evolves. The question is, ‘Was Vista secure?’ Microsoft has a very bad reputation for security and it is very much undeserved.”

Yes, you could argue that Paget was paid by Microsoft and isn’t truly independent. Microsoft is also a sponsor of Black Hat and it threw a big party there on Thursday night, as it does every year. But this year’s round of talks had to pass muster with an independent review board. Jeff Moss, founder of the conference and a well-known security guru, said there were absolutely “no vendor pitches allowed” on stage. Paget is not currently working for Microsoft.

Paget concluded that Microsoft was serious about making Vista more secure than Windows XP, which was also heavily criticized and exploited. Over three months, she and a team of other external penetration testers were allowed to investigate all of the new features introduced in Windows Vista from a security point of view. They were allowed to review source code, document bugs, interview sometimes squirming programmers, and report on their results in what was dubbed a “final security review.”

“There was a huge list of things Microsoft did right,” Paget said, who went on to say Microsoft was “world leading” in security.

The work resulted in the discovery of a lot of serious bugs that had to be fixed, which caused a delay in the shipment of Vista. But Microsoft concluded that the $250,000 it spent on dealing with every major bug had a good return on investment. Its programmers attacked the highest-risk bugs and went down as far as they could on the list in the time they had. The team decided not to review the oldest part of the code, the legacy code behind earlier versions of Windows. If bugs were serious enough, the security consultants could threaten the teams responsible for them that their components would not ship if the bugs weren’t fixed. Features that had no documentation were removed.

“We were described by one insider as a ‘rape gang,’” Paget said, since the security consultants were so merciless.

Paget said that there was, however, one point where she felt so passionate about a risky feature that she revealed it publicly as a “zero-day” bug — in other words, releasing information about the bug at a time when there was no known fix for it. She was terrified that Microsoft would sue her, and she discovered that the author of the buggy feature was also terrified of getting fired. But the feature was eventually fixed.

“You can see why it was a huge gamble by Microsoft to bring us in,” Paget said. “Nothing is ever secure, but Vista was a huge leap in the right direction.”

Paget’s information is out of date, since it is five years old and Vista has been succeeded by Windows 7. At the time, hacking was a growing problem and, Paget joked, “I was a different gender.” Paget did not have a final count of how many bugs were fixed, but she was impressed with the overall qualitative experience.

But Microsoft has steadily invested more and more money in security measures, said Mike Reavey, director of the Microsoft Security Response Center, in an interview. Reavey, who attended Paget’s talk, said, “It was great to see that story told.” Reavey said that Vista was the beginning of across-the-board security improvements at Microsoft.

Microsoft says its Security Development Lifecycle process is now a part of every single product it ships. In new reports, Microsoft says that the bugs reported in its software are measurably less exploitable than they were before.

In a report issued earlier this year, Microsoft’s own assessment of security issues showed real quantitative improvement in terms of how exploitable its bugs were. Of the 256 Exploitability Index ratings published from July 2010 through May 2011, 97 issues were less serious or nonexistent on the latest version of the affected application than on earlier versions. That means that the bugs that got through were less harmful, with respect to security.

Microsoft was also praised in a talk by representatives of security consulting firm iSec Partners, who said that Microsoft’s current network security compared favorably to Apple’s. To cap it off, Microsoft announced it would give a $250,000 reward to security researchers who came up with the best defensive security improvements for Microsoft’s software. This so-called Blue Hat prize “gamifies” the process for hackers so they’re motivated to creation protections for software, rather than just find its weaknesses.