If I was to choose between Macworld and CES I would probably go to CES. I’d have plenty more to see there, not that Macworld is a bad place to be. But next year even Apple is not going to go to Macworld. Instead it looks like the Cupertino-based company will join CES 2010. Is Apple going to challenge Microsoft’s supremacy right at CES? I am sure that’s what they want. And they will have lots of other big names in this business to fight against.

CES 2010 should be even hotter than this year’s exposition. At least if the economy doesn’t completely crush by that time. In the mean time we have a whole year to watch Apple and Microsoft compete.

The video above is too long but it’s Microsoft opening keynote at CES. In case you were dreaming about a Zune Phone or a Windows Mobile 7 then let me just say these aren’t happening just yet. There was no Zune Phone announced and as for Windows, Microsoft insisted on Windows 7 and the beta that has just become official. Window Mobile 7 is nowhere near ready yet and the only worthy announcement regarding Microsoft Mobile’s OS was the integration of Netflix. You will be able to manage your Netflix queue from your Windows Mobile phone in the near future.

While we don’t really want a Zune Phone (or do we?) we are interested in the future of Windows Mobile. Every other OS out there is going through significant changes which Windows Mobile is bound to loose some of that market share it still holds.

via Microsoft

MobileFiles Pro has just been announced by Quickoffice. The application was especially developed for the iPhone and the iPod touch. MobileFiles Pro won’t let you play with all those Microsoft Office docs but it will at least let you manage Excel documents. You can edit and save your spreadsheets in .xls format which is a good start. We should be expecting documents and presentations to be edited in the near future.

MobileFiles Pro will let you transfer files via WiFi from your iPhone or iPod touch to your computer. It will also let you access your MobileMe account and sync files with it.

Paul Moreton, vice president of product management at Quickoffice said:

This launch reinforces our commitment to deliver our award-winning software across leading smartphone platforms to allow more users to stay connected to all of their content and to improve productivity when on the go. We look forward to providing more upgrades to our iPhone application in 2009.

Want it already? It’s only $9.99 after the free trial.

via Press

The Windows 7 beta is out in the open despite Microsoft’s wishes? Or are we to assume that build 7000 has been leaked on purpose by Microsoft itself? You know, just to have us test it and possibly say nice things about it?

Until now it looks like Windows 7 beta is doing just fine. The OS has managed to come in first in various tests against its older brothers, Vista and XP. By tests we mean common stuff like booting up, shutting down, installations and file maneuvering. The systems used were powered by the AMD Phenom 9700 and by the Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2200 and in both cases Windows 7 was better. Are we to understand that the final version will do even better in tests?

This isn’t the most popular question on our minds today but we do wonder if Microsoft is going to announce its Zune Phone at this year’s CES. That’s why we have gone ahead and looked long and hard for a leak pointing us in the right direction. First of all we did find out that Ballmer is the guy that’s going to take Bill Gates’ place when it comes to Microsoft’s keynote presentation. But that was probably a given for most of us.

What will Ballmer do besides sweat us out in Las Vegas? He will announce the Windows 7 public beta. He will tell us that Windows Mobile will get Flash by March. He will announce two Xbox 360 games for 2009. And he will be talking about less terrible home networking. What do you think? Is it enough? Where’s the Zune Phone?

via Tech Crunch

With all the New Year’s Eve parties and fireworks we didn’t miss Zune’s misfortune. The Zune 30GB died a couple of days ago but luckily there is a solution for you. I’d ask for my money back and go get an MP3 player from the competition. Microsoft however has a fix which will bring your Zune back to life.

Here’s what you’d have to do”

1. Disconnect your Zune from USB and AC power sources.
2. Because the player is frozen, its battery will drain—this is good. Wait until the battery is empty and the screen goes black. If the battery was fully charged, this might take a couple of hours.
3. Wait until after noon GMT on January 1, 2009 (that’s 7 a.m. Eastern or 4 a.m. Pacific time).
4. Connect your Zune to either a USB port on the back or your computer or to AC power using the Zune AC Adapter and let it charge.

Once the battery has sufficient power, the player should start normally. No other action is required—you can go back to using your Zune!

Better go get you receipts in order and go get you money back. If you don’t then you might expect similar surprises in the near future.

I am actually surprised to say this but I’m quite interested in what Windows 7 has to offer. Especially since the first beta has been leaked on BitTorrent. The beta expires on July 1, 2009 but it’s supposed to be pretty stable to play with it for the first half of the year. You should install the beta to see what Microsoft has prepared for the next few years. Sure it wasn’t supposed to arrive in your hands but since it’s already out there, might as well grab it for a test drive. People say the beta is pretty dependable too, one more reason to have it tested right away.

via Gizmodo

We weren’t expecting this to happen, especially after Christmas but it looks like Microsoft, Apple and Google will be sued by a little company from Michigan called Cygnus Systems. Why? Cygnus Systems holds on to patent US 7,346,850 called “System and method for iconic software environment management.” The abstract of the patent describes “a method and system for storing, navigating, and accessing files within an operating system through the use of a graphical thumbnail representing the video display of the active document within the active application.”

This patent which happens to describes features which are similar to Windows Explorer or Apple Finder was awarded to Cygnus in March 2008 despite being filed in 2001.

In other words, Cygnus’ patent describes features similar to those of Windows Explorer and Apple’s Finder. Will Microsoft, Google and Apple pay the price for their icons system? Probably they will. I don’t want to imagine the alternative.

via ArsTechnica

Ever wondered which OS was powering the Terminators? Was it Apple-based, Windows-inspired or something else? With the well known Apple and Microsoft rivalry we’re not surprised to see the video above. A Mac and a PC go Transformers style and start their battle in an office setting. The PC got the first punch in but then Mac went for desktop help. Come to think of it that’s a little odd right there. First of all they were not iMacs were they? Secondly it took more Apple Transformers to bring down a single PC.

The video is a fun way to preview 2009. A new year of competition between Apple and Microsoft will start in just a few days. And the mobile world is where the battle will also be unleashed.

via intomobile

We have no idea what Microsoft is doing with its Zune universe. Is the Zune Phone ready? Are there more MP3 Players in the works? What we do have is a rumor saying that some of the Zune UI team have moved to the Windows Mobile team and others are being hired to complete the ranks. A job posting from December 2nd says:

Zune Services is building an entertainment store for a wide range of Zune clients or ‘tuners.’ Today these tuners include the Windows PC client, the Zune web site and the Zune device; in the future there will be more. Each of these tuners access a set of rich web services implemented by Zune and soon by Musiwave as well.

What’s a Musiwave you ask? Well Musiwave is a French mobile music store which Microsoft bought last year. Is Zune thinking about 3rd party content? Is Musiwave going to be involved in that? Here’s what the job add sais:

The Zune organization is making a strategic change from a 3rd party content provider to in-house. We need to rebuild, re-architect, and revitalize a content ingestion pipeline that powers the entire Zune business. And we have a very short time to do it.

We’re waiting for Steve Ballmer to do his thing now.

The unimaginable has happened yet again. Surprisingly enough Microsoft has added an iPhone application in the App Store. That’s the first Microsoft app to be added in the App Store.

SeaDragon Mobile is a photo displaying application which is the mobile version of Microsoft Live Labs’ photo display platform. It will let you zoom in on photos with big enough resolution. It does that by storing different resolution and showing only the part you want to look at.

Alex Daley, group manager for Microsoft Live Labs said:

The iPhone is the most widely distributed phone with a (graphics processing unit). Most phones out today don’t have accelerated graphics in them. The iPhone does and so it enabled us to do something that has been previously difficult to do. I couldn’t just pick up a BlackBerry or a Nokia off the shelf and build Seadragon for it without GPU support.

Wait a second, is Microsoft saying the iPhone is a good device? I thought the official position was a totally different one.

We’ve talked before about the Zunephone and Microsoft there wasn’t going to be any Zune phone. Then we heard how Microsoft is getting ready for a phone next year and that was confirmed. And now we hear that Microsoft is going to announce the new handset, whatever its name, will be announced at the CES 2009.

Just a rumor or the real thing? We’re yet to find out. In the mean time Trip Chowdhry from Equities Research says that Microsoft can “unveil a new device combining the features of the company’s Zune music player and its Danger Sidekick handhelds” which will have “some motion enhancement features”. You know, a similar to iPhone kind of phone?

We’ll just have to keep you update on this predicament right?

via Tech Trader

In case you are thinking about getting Windows XP PC from Dell, you will have to pay more for it starting today. An older model Windows XP PC will sell for $150 more than it used to sell for. Does this mean you have to give Vista a try? Well why pay $150 more as Vista 2 is around the corner. Might as well get used to Vista and adapt your budget for the future Windows 7.
(more…)

We heard Microsoft is entering the phone business with an actual device next year. While we’re still waiting for more details we get another Microsoft rumor. The bad Windows maker has a Pink product which will get a weird technology combo from the Zune and from the Danger Inc.

The Pink, whatever it is, might arrive at CES 2009. By then we should figure out if this Pink rumor has anything to do with Microsoft’s phone.

via ubergizmo

Lots of people, including Apple, made fun of Microsoft’s $300 million advertising budget for Vista. Little do we know that Apple actually spends a whole lot more than Microsoft on advertising and product promotion. But unlike Microsoft, Apple’s ideas actually work and they get plenty of visibility.

It looks like Apple’s advertising budget for the 2008 fiscal year that ended in September was no less than $486 million. A year ago Apple spent $467 and in 2006 it spent $338. Microsoft spent $1.2 billion, $1.3 billion, and $1.2 billion for the same period but these sums covered advertising costs for all of Microsoft’s business which includes Windows, Office and Xbox. But since the Vista campaign costs $300 million it would seem that Apple spends more on its MacBook advertising. So why make fun of Microsoft then?

via TechCrunch

The USB 3.0 might be closer than it appears. The USB Promoter Group finalized the “SuperSpeed” USB 3.0 specification today and we are to expect more details to emerge soon.

Flash drives and hard drives are expected to be the first devices to take advantage of the new technology but we’re at least 8 months away from an USB 3.0 product release. The second half of 2009 or even later will bring us the new USB 3.0 ready drives.

How fast is USB 3.0 you ask? Well imagine a 25GB HD movie. With USB 1.0 you would copy it in 9.3 hours. With current USB 2.0 you would do it in 13.9 minutes while with USB 3.0 the job is reduced to 70 seconds. We’re looking forward to a hands-on experience, whenever that will happen! Let’s see what Intel, Microsoft, NEC and Texas Instruments are going to do with the whole USB 3.0 thing!

Not that we necessarily care to worry about Windows 7 right now, but we might as well peak into the inevitable future. The video above is quite old but still funny. It’s a banned commercial which showed us yet again the fatality that awaits any Windows user, the blue screen of death.

Getting back to Windows 7 here, and hoping that it won’t bring us any future blue screens of death, we found out that the new Microsoft OS is faster than Vista or XP.

Tested on an Intel Core 2 Duo processor running at 3.16GHz, with 4GB of RAM the three Windows versions pulled of the following numbers:

• Test Set 1: From Boot Choice to Fully-loaded User Desktop
  • Windows 7 Ultimate (Preview, PDC edition, 32-bit): 32 seconds
  • Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit, SP1): 33 seconds
  • Windows XP Professional (SP3):40 seconds
• Test Set 2: From Boot Choice to User Login Screen
  • Windows 7 Ultimate (Preview, PDC edition, 32-bit): 23 seconds
  • Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit, SP1): 24 seconds
  • Windows XP Professional (SP3): 29 seconds

So it looks like Windows 7 is faster than Vista and XP. Oddly enough, I am looking forward to checking Windows 7 myself.

via lifehacker

Is Steve Ballmer ready to admit that some Apple ideas are actually good? Apparently Apple’s App Store is inspiring enough for Stevie to create a Microsoft App Store in the future.

Here’s what Steve Ballmer said about a potential Microsoft App Store:

I actually will agree that there’s some good work, particularly at Facebook and also with the iPhone, where both of those companies have made it easier for developers to distribute their applications.

Well there’s nothing there to suggest that Microsoft will set up an app store soon but such a move will revive their mobile business. Lately Microsoft lost quite some market share to Apple and RIM.

via computerworld

Whether we’re talking about a simple color or about Microsoft’s Zune Originals for the Zune 120, the truth is that this new Zune is just another Zune. There are 46 new designs to choose from. In case you don’t like any of then, you might just get in touch with some other company for a new generation better MP3 player!

But enough about me! What do you think? Are the new Zunes going to make it?

via Zunerama

Remember how you’re used to work on your smartphone while on the bus or on whatever device you’re using to get to your daily job? Well in China that whole work-while-you-commute experience has been upgraded.

In a move to increase productivity, Microsoft China executives are being taken to work in special buses which come equipped with computers. The computers will clock you when you log and then they’ll help you start your day. Hopefully those buses come equipped with some sort of WiFi or 3G support. You will need that for a couple of quality minutes of instant messaging with your friends.
(more…)