Microsoft

Microsoft’s $2.5bn question: what if it doesn’t release Office for the iPad?

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Tired of waiting for Office to be optimised for their mobile gadgets, a growing contingent of younger companies is turning to cheaper, simpler and touch-friendly apps that can perform word processing and other tasks in the “cloud” – on internet-based systems.

Take Artivest Holdings, a New York-based financial services startup that sells alternative investment products. The New York-based company uses an app called Quip, which combines word processing and messaging, to handle all but the most sensitive legal and financial files.

“There are no more Microsoft Word documents being circulated. If someone emails me a Word document, I’ll tell them to put it in Quip,” said Artivest’s chief investment officer David Levine.

I think this is dead on. My kids don’t use Office and they don’t own a watch. The world is definitely changing.

Mac market share breaks 8%, Windows falls below 90%

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It’s been a slow and steady fall for Windows, for as far back as NetMarketshare has been collecting this data. And for the Mac, the reverse is true. Mac market share was 4.58% back in February 2009 and has steadily climbed to its current share of 8.16%.

Top executives Bates and Reller to leave Microsoft

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Two direct reports to new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella — EVP of business development and evangelism Tony Bates and EVP of marketing Tami Reller — are leaving the company, according to numerous sources close to the situation.

The shakeup begins. Standard stuff when a new CEO takes over, more a question of who will stay and who will go. Bates came to Microsoft when it bought Skype. Reller worked for the Windows unit, as both CMO and CFO.

Why Nokia took on an Android phone project when they were about to join with Microsoft

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Terrific speculative piece from Seeking Alpha (free reg-wall).

To understand where Nokia is coming from with the Nokia X it’s important to keep in mind that developing a new phone platform, even one based on Android, takes time. Product development cycles can run into many months, even for a phone using an OS that the manufacturer is already experienced with, and using hardware based on existing products.

Really interesting. Sounds about right.

The indie operating systems place in the smart phone race

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Apple and Google and, to a lesser extent, Microsoft, have a huge lead in the smart phone mindshare race. Some might argue that the lead is unassailable. This article digs into the logic of what the indie OS providers are pursuing. Good read.

Apple issues new Boot Camp support software, Compressor fixes

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Now you can run 64-bit Windows on your Mac.

Apple issued two versions of its Boot Camp Support Software on Tuesday, both of which contain Windows Support Software (Windows Drivers) needed to run 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows 8 on Intel-based Macs.

Bill Gates does Reddit “Ask Me Anything”

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I love Reddit AMAs. To me, they give a chance to really get to know someone, to learn things you’d never learn otherwise. I would love the chance to share a meal with Bill Gates. This is as close as I’m ever going to come.

Microsoft moves to hide the Metro interface, going back to desktop interface

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When Microsoft first shipped the Metro interface, there was tremendous pushback from desktop users. Metro was designed for a touch screen, not for a keyboard and mouse environment. Windows 8 removed the Start button, arguably the anchor of the Windows desktop interface, but brought it back in Windows 8.1. Now it looks like the upcoming Update 1 to Windows 8.1 will bring the desktop interface back as the default for desktop users.

Bill Gates, the Gates Letter, and Jimmy Fallon’s MacBook Pro

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Bill Gates is on a PR tour to promote the latest edition of the Gates Letter, the annual missive from the Gates Foundation detailing the current focus of the foundation. This year’s letter is called “3 myths that block progress for the poor”. Take a few minutes to read it. No matter your opinion of Bill Gates and Microsoft, this stage of his life is being well spent, in service to others.

One of his recent appearances was on Jimmy Fallon’s show. He spoke about his foundation, about ridding the world of diseases like polio, then Bill started talking about his vision for the future of computing. At some point (about 1:30 in the video if you want to skip ahead), Bill got a little distracted by something on Jimmy’s desk. Something not made by Microsoft. Pretty funny.

Microsoft blogs progress of CEO search

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In a rare blog post, John W. Thompson, a member of Microsoft’s board of directors and chair of the board’s search committee, updated the world on the progress of Microsoft’s CEO search.

Microsoft takes on Google Chromebook in this tin-eared ad

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If you are going to create an attack ad, it better be either irrefutably in-the-right or incredibly clever. This ad makes the case that the Chromebook is not a real laptop, that when it is not connected to the internet, it is “pretty much a brick.” I don’t own a Chromebook, and I’m not necessarily a Chromebook fan, but fair is fair. A “brick”? It took me all of 2 minutes reading reviews to dispel this myth.

I get the fact that the Chromebook might not be as useful when you are not connected to the net, given that it was designed with Google’s online suite of apps in mind. But not one review I read implied that the Chromebook is useless when off-line.

The birth of Xbox Live

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This evening, massive numbers of Xbox One consoles will arrive on gamers’ doorsteps. At midnight, many more gamers will queue in stores to get their hands on one. Seems an appropriate time to post this story about how Xbox Live came to be.

I will warn you. This story contains graphic Microsoftness. And it takes place, apparently, in a world where Apple does not exist. All that aside, if you are an Xbox fan, you’ll enjoy this.

The things that make the Xbox One different

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Adam Najberg shares his initial thoughts on the Xbox One. If you are planning on buying an Xbox One or have one on preorder, this is well worth a read. More importantly, I think anyone involved in the gaming space, especially on the hardware side, might take a look as well. There are lessons to be learned.

Apart from a dearth of titles — the Xbox One is launching with 23 games — my main beef with the Xbox One is that games take longer than I want to download, because of their large size and my relatively slow 30 Mbps Internet connection.

Thankfully, games let you start playing well before they’re fully downloaded, and keep downloading in the background until they’re done. And there aren’t enough games that allow you to skip over cinematic scenes. I’m hoping developers and publishers get less self-impressed and let us get to the gameplay faster as fascination with the new consoles’ capabilities diminishes.

One quibble. I get that 30 Mbps is not the fastest connection available, but I would hardly qualify it as relatively slow. Not picking on the author, just making the point that if an experience is a problem at 30 Mbps, it’s a problem for a large slice of your audience.

After laying hands on both consoles, though, I can see where Microsoft and Sony have diverging views of the future and what role your living room will play in it.

Sony has coalesced around the gaming community, trying to grab gamers in an even tighter embrace than ever before.

Microsoft is looking to breed total dependence for games, social media, communications and entertainment through one device. The hope is that gamers who cut their teeth on the Xbox 360 will still gravitate toward the Xbox One and its enhanced multiplayer gaming. Now, though, there’s a whole new, younger and more-easily-distracted generation of gamers coming online, the kids with their smartphones or iPad Minis in their lap as they play, chatting, listening to music or watching a video. With Xbox One, Microsoft is hoping to move their second screen onto the first screen.

It’ll be interesting to watch all this play out. To me, this Microsoft and Sony, burning their powder trying to fine tune their console-based living room experience while Nintendo frets on the sidelines and Apple and Google plot their longer view. Such fun.

Hands on with the Xbox One, a living room of possibility

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If Apple is going to make inroads into the console gaming space, this is an experience they will have to exceed. The Kinect voice recognition has gotten better than on the 360 (as you’d expect), and more solidly integrates with the OS.

Voice controls are now a system-level process that runs in the background while you’re using an app or game. You can call out, “Xbox, snap friends” while playing a game to bring up your friends list on the side of the screen, without even pausing. Then there are the handy app-specific shortcuts activated by voice commands. “Xbox, watch Comedy Central” let me jump straight to watching the channel even from another app, for instance.

This is certainly a step towards the magical computer/living room holy grail of integration. Just a step, since this is not a desktop experience. You won’t be editing documents or creating emails on your Xbox One. But definitely a solid step forward.

Aside from voice, the most significant system-level feature enabled by the Kinect is the ability of the Xbox One to log a user in automatically based only on their visuals. The first time you set up the system, it takes you through a 30-second process where you log in to your Microsoft account. Kinect then builds a personal profile it will associate with that account based on facial recognition but also the camera’s basic skeletal model of your body. This process forms a unique biometric ID that the Kinect uses to automatically identify a user, logging them in to Xbox Live and bringing up a personalized menu that includes their recent apps and favorite items.

Another step forward. Touch ID works well on a phone and is a solid security solution. But it is still an active solution (meaning you need to take an action to achieve your goal). The ability to walk up to your Xbox One and have it automatically log you in is a passive solution. Remains to be seen how secure this form of biometric profiling is, but not so sure security is as big a requirement in the living room, where you have more control over physical access than you do with your laptop or phone.

The process of unlocking your device based on some form of biometric has lots of room for improvement and is a real opportunity for the company that gets it right. There are keyless deadbolts for your front door that allow you to unlock your front door remotely via a Bluetooth signal from your phone. There’s an app that lets you knock on your phone to unlock your computer, also accomplished via Bluetooth (read the comments before you buy).

Point is, this is a wide-open, wildly innovative field. Apple has a real opportunity here. The living room is like the Wild West. Still untamed, still full of possibility.

Apple consortium owned “Rockstar” goes after Google, others in patent war

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When Canadian telecom Nortel went bankrupt in 2009, there was a bidding war between Google and a consortium called Rockstar Bidco for more than 6,000 Nortel patents. Rockstar, which is owned by Microsoft, Apple, RIM, Ericsson, and Sony, won the auction for $4.5 billion.

This afternoon, Rockstar filed suit against Google for patent infringement. You can read the complaint here.

From the complaint:

On August 1, 2000, United States Patent No. 6,098,065 (the “‘065 patent”) was duly and legally issued for an invention entitled “Associative Search Engine.” Rockstar is the assignee of the ‘065 patent and has granted an exclusive license to NetStar, who holds all rights and interest in the ‘065 patent. A true and correct copy of the ‘065 patent is attached hereto as Exhibit A.

Google has infringed and continues to infringe the ‘065 patent by its manufacture, use, sale, importation, and/or offer for sale of systems, methods, products, and processes for matching search terms with relevant advertising and/or information based on those search terms and other user data, including but not limited to Google’s process of receiving search requests from a user, using its search engine to generate search results based at least in part on the search request, selecting—through Google’s AdWords and/or any other products, methods, systems, or services Google uses to store and choose relevant advertising—a relevant advertisement based on the search request and/or user data, and providing the search results together with the particular advertisement to the user; and additionally Google’s systems, methods, products, and processes of using other user data aside from the search request to help select the search result and/or advertisement; and additionally and alternatively its contributing to and inducement of others to manufacture, use, sell, import, and/or offer for sale infringing systems, methods, products, and processes in the manners described above. Google is liable for its infringement of the ‘065 patent pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 271.

This is going to get messy.