Nicholas Kolakowski

Apple CEO Steve Jobs made an unexpected appearance during his company’s Oct. 18 earnings call, determined to sink his teeth into both archrivals Google and Research In Motion. At the same time, Jobs’ comments-at times biting and ironic, at others more philosophical-provided a bit of insight into the thinking behind the iPad, whose blockbuster sales […]

Microsoft is taking its next step into the cloud with the beta launch of Office 365, which combines Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online into a unified cloud platform. The limited beta launch will take place among a few thousand companies in 13 countries and regions, with general availability expected in 2011. […]

Apple CEO Steve Jobs may have appeared unexpectedly on his company’s Oct. 18 earnings call to trumpet a $20 billion quarter, but Wall Street analysts seemed somewhat disappointed by sales and margins for the iPad. For the fiscal 2010 fourth quarter, Apple reported sales of 4.19 million iPads-a significant increase from the 3.27 million sold […]

ORLANDO, FL.-Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff used an Oct. 19 keynote talk at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2010 to reiterate his belief that the cloud is evolving into a more mobile-centric, social-networking-driven form-a phenomenon that he refers to as “Cloud 2.” Salesforce.com offers SAAS (software as a service) to companies via a subscription model, focusing in particular […]

Microsoft launched Windows Phone 7 with a New York City event Oct. 11 and hopes that the smartphone platform will attract customers who would otherwise gravitate toward the Apple iPhone or a Google Android device. As opposed to those platforms, which offer grid-like screens of individual apps, Windows Phone 7 aggregates Web content and applications […]

Apple CEO Steve Jobs made an uncharacteristic appearance on his company’s quarterly earnings call Oct. 18, offering attacks on both Google and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion. “As most of you know, I usually don’t participate in the earnings calls,” Jobs told analysts and media on the call, “but I couldn’t help dropping by for […]

Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie is resigning from the company. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the resignation in a companywide e-mail Oct. 18. He also noted that the position of chief software architect-one previously held by Bill Gates-will not be reassigned. “The CSA role was unique and I won’t refill the role after Ray’s […]

Apple could use its Oct. 20 event to unveil a new version of its MacBook Air, a superthin notebook praised for its design-and occasionally damned for what some consider an exorbitant price and missing hardware features. According to AppleInsider, unnamed “independent sources” confirm that Apple will debut a redesigned, 11.6-inch MacBook Air with an SSD […]

Worldwide media tablet sales will reach 19.4 million units in 2010, according to a new research note from Gartner. That’s good news for manufacturers such as Apple, maker of the iPad, which is driving much of that growth. However, Gartner also said tablet sales are having a negative impact on sales of other mobile devices […]

Apple iPad Could Add Video Chat, Smaller Sizes, Retina Display by Nicholas Kolakowski Dual Cameras Apples competitors have seized on dual embedded cameras as a key hard-ware differentiator for their own tablet offerings. That raises the chances that Ap-ple will equip the next iPad with front- and rear-facing cameras for videoconferencing. Thinner Apple likes thin—take […]

Microsoft executives have talked for months about their company’s “all in” cloud strategy, which will gradually shift its product focus from the desktop to the Web. Social networking is an integral component of that strategy-and some announcements this week suggest that Microsoft sees Facebook, with its installed base of 500 million users, as a key […]

Microsoft focused this week on launching Windows Phone 7, the company’s newest smartphone platform and its next best chance at reversing its market-slide. “I’ve been looking forward to this day for some time,” Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told media and analysts gathered for the company’s New York City launch event Oct. 11. “We set out […]