Apple, Microsoft, Palm

We skipped a week with the Week in Review due to a lack of time, but we’re back now – and yes, it was a really interesting week. It really focussed on two major themes: Microsoft’s code contribution to the Linux kernel, and various stories around Apple – both positive as well as negative.

The very positive bit about Apple this week was that despite the sorry state of the world economy in general, and thecomputer industry in particular, the Cupertino company managed to produce some very good results this past quarter. Sales, revenue, margins – all were up compared to this quarter last year.

We were also saddened by the news that an employee at Chinese manufacturer Foxconn had committed suicide after rather rigorous questioning sessions by the company’s internal security division. As it turns out, the employee handled a shipment of sixteen iPhone prototypes, and one of them got lost or was stolen under his watch, and Foxconn didn’t like it. Sad news, of course, and it once again shows that while we’re enjoying ridiculously low prices on all of our stuff, someone somewhere is paying the price.

Then there’s the whole saga around the Palm Pre and iTunes syncing, something Kroc, Tess, and I will be covering in detail during the podcast as well. Since we’ve already discussed all this in a lot of detail, and we all already stated our opinions (and again, and again), let’s just keep it short and simple: the Pre could sync with iTunes, then Apple pushed an update blocking the Pre, and then Palm released webOS 1.1, which, among other things, restored iTunes syncing. More will follow, I’m sure.

The last Apple story we covered was about Apple trying to cover up the a report detailing an ongoing investigation into iPod fire hazards.

Moving on to the other big story this week: Microsoft announced a code drop of some 20000 lines to the Linux kernel, obviously licensed under the GPL. It was driver code intended to make Linux perform better as a Hyper-V guest. Lots of discussion around this one, including about whether or not it was brought on by a GPL violation. The most feather were ruffled when Linus Torvalds himself made his views on this clear.

We also had the big news that Microsoft has proposed to comply with the European Commission’s proposal about including a browser selection popup in Windows. This supposedly should undo the damage Microsoft’s monopolistic practices have caused with Internet Explorer.

We also discussed Nautilus, Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 hit RTM, and the direction of OpenSolaris.