Microsoft Archive

It's late here, but we're having election night, and the two leading parties are currently tied seat-wise, with a 10000-vote difference. Anyway, it gives me some time to cover a major problem: Microsoft is at it again. The company has pushed an update through Windows Update which silently, without user consent, installs two browser extensions - one for Internet Explorer, and one for Firefox.

While WWDC is underway, Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit has announced that Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 will be available in 32bit only. Microsoft has not yet completed the transition to from Carbon to Cocoa since it has focussed on increasing compatibility between Office for Windows and Office for Mac, and since Carbon is only available in 32bit, Redmond doesn't really have a choice. While it won't affect users in any meaningful way (unless you use gigantic spreadsheets or something), it has some Mac users riled up.

Well, this was pretty inevitable, wasn't it? We had Google employees detailing that their company has pretty much given up on Windows, forcing employees to use either Mac OS X or Linux. In what surely comes as a total surprise, Microsoft has responded to this report. Regarding the security claims, "the facts don't support the assertion", Microsoft states.

While Microsoft is indeed incredibly profitable, it's not going as well as it seems. The company is still riding high upon its Windows and Office offerings, but when it comes to new markets, Microsoft hasn't been as successful. Jean-Louis Gassee provides some very interesting insights into the company's past ten years.

"It's game time for Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive. Microsoft disclosed a series of management changes on Tuesday that will alter the shape of its business unit responsible for products like the Zune music player, Xbox gaming console and phones. Most notably, Robbie Bach, the current head of the entertainment and devices group, will retire from Microsoft after 22 years at the company. As a result, Mr. Ballmer will take a more hands-on role in Microsoft's gadgets and games by having various division heads report directly to him." Maybe we'll finally see an Xbox that doesn't sound like a tornado. I recently finally got the opportunity to fiddle around with a PlayStation 3 (the big one), and by god, the Xbox is a joke, construction-wise, compared to Sony's beast.

"Back in February, Microsoft released public specifications for PST files, the databases used by Outlook for storing and archiving e-mail. To these specifications, Microsoft has now added a pair of developer-oriented open source projects: the PST Data Structure View Tool for cracking open PSTs to browse inside them, and the PST File Format SDK, a cross-platform C++ library for working with PST files programmatically."

The Microsoft empire is built upon two pillars: the Windows operating system, and Microsoft Office. Windows 7 made its way unto the scene last year, and now it's time to work on the other pillar. Today, Microsoft officially launched Microsoft Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010. Regular customers will be able to purchase the new versions next month, starting at 119 USD.

"Beginning in June 2010, Microsoft will begin closing newsgroups and migrating users to Microsoft forums that include Microsoft Answers, TechNet and MSDN. This move will centralize content, make it easier for contributors to retain their influence, reduce redundancies and make content easier to find. Overall, forums offer a better spam management platform that will improve customer satisfaction by encouraging a healthy discussion space."

Now this sucks. We've encountered several 'leaks'over the past few months regarding a 'secret' project within Microsoft called Courier. The demonstrations showed a highly innovative dual-touchscreen tablet thingamabob that combined multitouch and pen input to create a completely new user interface. Today, Microsoft confirmed the project's existence (yay!)... By cancelling it (boo!).

"With much easier comparisons from a devastating period last year and an upswing in PC sales, Microsoft posted solid third-quarter earnings today after the markets closed. The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant said it had revenue of $14.5 billion in the quarter ended March 31, a six percent rise from a year ago. Net income was $4.01 billion, or 45 cents a share. That's despite forking over $78 million to Yahoo in the quarter, as part of its online search and advertising partnership with Yahoo. That handily beat Wall Street expectations of $14.4 billion and 42 cents a share."

Today, at a press event in San Francisco, Microsoft launched two mobile phones which run a specialised, social media-oriented version of Windows Phone. The devices are aimed at the social generation of teens and twentysomethings (I shall burn in hell for writing that), and while they do not appeal to me (and you, I take it) in any way, shape, or form, they do sport an immensely interesting user interface.

"While Adobe has been getting most of the press recently for their Flash 10.1 RC, Microsoft has quietly announced their plans to release the final version of Silverlight 4.0 as early as next week. This major update will provide more fundamental changes than prior iterations, including Google Chrome support, better performance (up to 200% over Silverlight 3), improved security with digital signing and sandboxing, and greater control for developers."

Microsoft has more or less confirmed the existence of its Courier tablet. In a job posting, it mentioned the device, only to quickly remove the Courier name from the job posting as soon as the news got out. "Do you already know everything about Project Natal and the Cloud? Is Blaise Aguera y Arcas' jaw-dropping TED talk on augmented-reality Bing Maps and Photosynth last month's news? Then check out some of the online chatter surrounding new releases of Window Phone 7 series handsets, Internet Explorer 9 and the upcoming Courier digital journal."

"Microsoft is putting some meat on the bones of its plan to make information that's stuck in databases reachable with the same standards used to retrieve Web pages. At its Mix conference this week, Microsoft touted an interface called the Open Data Protocol, or OData. Specifically, the company announced an OData software developer kit to let programmers more easily use it and said it wants to standardize OData. What fortuitous timing. Microsoft listed the Internet Engineering Task Force and World Wide Web Constortium as groups where it would like to see this standardization, and the latter of these two has new management eager to tackle new projects."