Symbian PLC will outpace Microsoft Corp. in the market for cellular phone operating systems, reaching double the market share in 2007, a research firm said Friday. Symbian, a software consortium formed by handset makers, will have 5 percent of the market in five years, with Microsoft coming in second with 2.5 percent and Linux third with 2 percent, the Probe Group, Cedar Knolls, N.J., said. Get more mobile computing news on our sister site, NMC.

With the Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT), you can develop a stand-alone Java application that feels and operates like a native application. If you've spent any time developing Java client-side applications for Windows, you've probably wanted to integrate some native Windows components into your applications. This article shows you how to use Eclipse to easily leverage and integrate ActiveX controls within a stand-alone SWT application.

"Steve Jobs should take his own advice and sacrifice some profit margin in exchange for some market share. When Apple releases 970-based Macs, they may well be better than their PC counterparts, but Apple's current price structure will drive the masses off to the competition." Read the editorial at MacObserver. C|Net News.com says that Apple is preparing to introduce a new line of machines that are built around IBM's speedy new PowerPC 970 chip, analysts say, a move that won't erase the "gigahertz gap", but should at least narrow the chasm. Elsewhere, Shake 3 is out.

Microsoft has made the Office System Beta 2 Technical Refresh available to its 15,000 technical beta testers. The final product is still on track to be completed this summer and will be available to customers later this year.

This essay describes a visit to SCO, to discuss SCO's claim that Linux infringes on its intellectual property rights. Elsewhere, Eric Raymond says he has evidence that could undermine some of SCO's legal arguments. Raymond claims to have collected the names of 60 Unix users who are willing to sign affidavits that disprove SCO's contention that its Unix System V source code, which forms the basis of IBM's AIX Unix, contains trade secrets.

... strategy, saying, "IBM has been using Linus like a tool and exploiting the open-source community." Those fightin' words come from Jonathan Schwartz, executive vice president for Sun's software group. Read it at ComputerWorld.

FreeBSD turned 10 years old yesterday. Happy Birthday FreeBSD.

A number of web sites reported that the database that holds the Apple Store data has been accidentally updated (and later its webmaster took down the whole Store website). While the headline in the final rendered web page is still calling it a "G4", the specs are mentioning the following:

"How does a distribution that's a carbon copy of Red Hat 9 install and perform better than Red Hat 9 itself? By having the inside track on the platform being used, that's how. Brian Proffitt had the opportunity to use Red Hat 9 on an Intel notebook and Yellow Dog 3.0 on an iBook recently, and in terms of ease of installation and ease of use, Yellow Dog won by a big, wet nose" LinuxPlanet claims.

E/OS LX NT v 0.2 is available, a graphical desktop for MS-DOS that can run Windows programs, Linux programs and DOS aplications. It´s based on Linux 2.0.30, Xfree 4.1.0, Wine, Dosemu, and Libc. The system is based on the UMSDOS file system and can only run under DOS as Desktop.

LWN features an article on how SuSE is now a big force in Linux with new products every so often while MandrakeSoft is in deep lethargy media and PR-wise. Note that SuSE made it big also because of help from its own country, Germany (and the rest of Europe), while MandrakeSoft failed to captivate France in the government level and land big contracts that would keep the company in a healthy state.

PalmSource is working on a new operating system called Sahara (PalmOS 6) that the company hopes will make the Palm OS more useful in corporate settings, Chief Executive David Nagel said Wednesday. It is expected near the end of the year.

The Inquirer features a long article on AMD Opteron and its potential.

Forrester's Rob Enderle opines that, for all its advantages, the open source OS just isn't ready to power the systems on Starfleet Vessels. Just kidding. What he really says is that however much the geeks love Linux for the freedom it gives them, the customizability isn't always a boon to the average users and the managers who just want things to work with as little tinkering as possible. And the untested intellectual property issues surrounding the GPL and the open source development methods are a potential quagmire. He says large companies need to consider these issues, religious fanatacism aside. Do you agree? Update by ELQ: Counterpoint at NewsFactor.