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Microsoft Build 2019 Day 1: Everything announced and how to replay

Microsoft's annual developer conference gave us a peek at Edge for Mac, new virtual assistant technology and HoloLens 2.

Ian Sherr Contributor and Former Editor at Large / News
Ian Sherr (he/him/his) grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, so he's always had a connection to the tech world. As an editor at large at CNET, he wrote about Apple, Microsoft, VR, video games and internet troubles. Aside from writing, he tinkers with tech at home, is a longtime fencer -- the kind with swords -- and began woodworking during the pandemic.
Ian Sherr
3 min read
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Microsoft's biggest developer event of the year kicked off Monday.

James Martin/CNET

Every year, Microsoft devotees trek to Seattle for the company's Build conference. During the two-day event, which overlaps with Google's own developer conference (held 840 miles south in Mountain View, California, and starting Tuesday), Microsoft typically give updates about projects like its Cortana voice assistant, its Azure "cloud" internet server rental business and, of course, its Windows software.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella spent a majority of his speech this year talking about how his company's technology works with pretty much everything. 

Microsoft's already been doing that, making its Office suite of popular productivity apps like Word, Excel and PowerPoint available on iPhones and other devices powered by Google's Android software. Now, Microsoft plans to bring its new Edge browser, based on similar code that powers Google's Chrome, to the Mac too.

"Computing is getting embedded in the world," Nadella said during his keynote speech. "Every place -- whether it's our homes, our offices, factories, stadiums; every industry, from oil and gas to retail to agriculture, to financial services; everything from connected cars to connected refrigerators to smart surgical tools to smart copy machines -- are all being driven by software."

And increasingly, Microsoft wants to make sure that software is powered by its technology.

That's been Nadella's goal since becoming CEO in 2014. In effect, he's tried to turn Microsoft from a hated competitor into a trusted partner

So far, that approach is paying off big time. It's helped make Microsoft one of the few companies ever to be valued at more than $1 trillion. "You join here not to be cool, but to make others cool," he told CNET in an interview last year. "You want to be cool by doing that empowerment. It's the result that matters."

Read on ZDNet: Microsoft Build 2019: Azure is the star, and Windows is a bit player

While Nadella spent his 90-minute address talking up Microsoft's tech, he didn't speak much about larger political issues, like privacy and diversity. 

Like last year, he touched on his belief that privacy is a "human right," but he didn't talk much about Microsoft's work culture. That's despite how the company's come under scrutiny for what some women say is a "boys club" culture within the company. (He told Wired in an interview published Monday that he saw the problem as a cultural one: "In this industry we've had for far too long, I would say, role models of the talented jerk. That's done.")

Here's everything that happened at the company's Build developer conference Monday:

Videos

Watch this: Highlights from Microsoft's Build 2019 conference
Watch this: Humans will be transparent in your next whiteboard meeting
Watch this: HoloLens 2: Avatars reach out and touch
Watch this: Collections make it easier to share content on Microsoft Edge
Watch this: Microsoft Build 2019 opens with awkward demo fail

Originally published May 3, 2:12 p.m. PT.
Update, May 6, 11:40 a.m. PT: Adds details from conference.