Rumors Archive

Microsoft Netherlands published a news story on their website on Friday to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the release of Windows 7. Nothing surprising there one would think, except for the fact that the last paragraph of the article gave an outlook at the future, revealing the Windows 8 release date.

Steve Jobs' rant against Android, RIM, and 7" tablets couldn't go by unnoticed, of course. We already had the rather dry response from Google's Andy Rubin, but Mountain View isn't the only one who responded. TweetDeck's CEO wasn't particularly pleased by Jobs distorting TweetDeck's story on developing for Android, and now we have RIM's co-CEO Jim Balsillie who slammed Cupertino pretty hard.

Well, this is interesting. The New York Times caught wind of a special and secret meeting between Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer and Adobe's frontman Shantanu Narayen. They claim the entire talk was dedicated to the fight against Apple, and one of the options discussed was... Microsoft acquiring Adobe.

"I am truly shocked that so many people are being duped by BlackBerry's recent announcement of their tablet, the PlayBook. I have read endless comments from people who are saying they can't wait to get this tablet computer. Well, I think I have some bad news for you folks. There is no evidence that the PlayBook exist as advertised. Why do I say this? I will make it brief..."

Dell has this "highly sophisticated website" telling us "WHICH OPERATING SYSTEM SHOULD I CHOOSE ?" Ubuntu or Windows? Read the site and understand why it is a "highly sophisticated website"

Hewlett-Packard knocked IBM from the top spot in worldwide server revenue during the first quarter, as the market for x86 systems picked up but sales of Unix and mainframe systems continued to decline, Gartner said on Tuesday.

When computers--evolutive machines which may be reprogrammed at will--became widely available, it generated a well-deserved buzz. Some (scientists, banks, insurance companies) felt like they were dreaming, others (like some SF writers) rather thought of it as a nightmare. Today, like it or not, they're everywhere However, part of the individual-oriented computers are going rather far from the original programmable machine model. They rather look like usual tools, with a fixed use. Their customizable internals are only accessible to the people who engineered them. Is there no market anymore for general-purpose personal programmable machines, able to do about anything? I'll try to answer this question, taking into account two major trends in the personal computing market : touchscreen-powered devices and cloud computing.

Recently, Apple changed its iPhone OS developer agreement to prohibit the use of programming language other than Objective-C, C, C++, and JavaScript running in WebKit. This has the effect of pretty much pre-emptively killing Adobe's CS5 iPhone developer tools, as well as several other, similar tools. Adobe has now said it will cease development of the iPhone development tools. To make matters really interesting, Apple has actually replied directly to this news.

There's no right way to do it, only ideas that are better than others in certain situations. But if you had the opportunity to head up the design of a new OS, one to Put Things Right, one that could be radical enough to varnish out those UI/X bumps that have clung on for years, but practical enough to be used every day, what would you design? How would you handle application management? What about file types and compatibility? Where would you cherry pick the best bits from other OSes and where would you throw away tradition? I've tackled this challenge for myself and present (an unfinished idea): KrocOS (warning: HTML5 site, will display without CSS in IE/older browsers). OSnews Asks: What would make your perfect OS?

On October 22, Microsoft will unleash the much-anticipated Windows 7. After the commercial disaster that is Windows Vista, it is believed the new release will turn the tide for the world's biggest software maker. A lot of people also believe it will put a halt to Mac OS X's growth, but I personally think we need to remember the timeless quote form Steve Jobs: "We have to let go of the notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose."

As it turns out, the relationship between Apple and Palm is even less amicable than we already thought it to be. Bloomberg got their hands on communications between Ed Colligan, then-CEO of Palm, and Steve Jobs in which Jobs made a proposal in which the two companies would promise to refrain from hiring each other's employees. Colligan, however, rejected the proposal, calling it wrong and "likely illegal".

During the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, Richard M. Stallman of the Free Software Foundation (and the Superfluous Introduction Award goes to...) gave a keynote speech. Said keynote speech raised a few eyebrows in the Free software community because of a number of questionable remarks regarding women in technology. David "Lefty" Schlesinger, member of the GNOME Advisory Board and active in the mobile open source community, took issue with RMS' remarks and decided to call him out on it. The response he got was... Less than satisfying.

Any discussion about GNOME vs. KDE is sure to end in tears. It's basically impossible to discuss which of these two Free desktop environments is better than the other, mostly because they cater to different types of people, with different needs and expectatotions. As such, Bruce Byfield decided to look at the two platforms from a different perspective: if we consider their developmental processes, which of the two is most likely to be more successful in the coming years?

Steve Jobs' health has been an important topic of rumours ever since he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in mid-2004. He was treated successfully, and recovered from his ordeal. Ever since then, rumours of possible health problems popped up regularly, which were only ignited further by Apple's recent announcement to drop out of MacWorld San Fransisco, with Steve Jobs not delivering the famous keynote speech coming January. Gizomodo threw a whole lot of oil on the fire today by publishing information which they claim comes from a source which has always been 100% accurate.