Nicholas Kolakowski

Microsoft’s next Windows version could let users customize their desktops in new ways. Bloggers Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott, in a series of April postings on Rivera’s Within Windows blog, have dissected various features of what they call an early build of Windows 8. Many of these features, should they appear in the operating system’s […]

Microsoft is unveiling yet another front in its intensive battle for the cloud, with the announcement at its Convergence 2011 conference that the next major releases of the company’s enterprise-resource planning applications will be running on the cloud-based Windows Azure platform. By positioning its Dynamics ERP offerings as a hosted service, Microsoft expands further beyond […]

Windows Phone 7 represents Microsoft’s next best hope for carving some smartphone market share away from the likes of not only Google Android and the Apple iPhone, but also Research In Motion’s BlackBerry franchise and the Palm devices resurrected under the Hewlett-Packard brand. By some analyst estimates, Microsoft has poured hundreds of millions of dollars […]

Windows 8: Now with a ribbon! That might as well have been the subtitle for Microsoft’s week, after two prominent bloggers posted screen-shots and a description of what they described as an early build of the next version of Windows, often referred to in the press as “Windows 8.” (Microsoft officials remains tight-lipped about any […]

Apple may not have blacklisted Best Buy from selling the iPad 2, contrary to some rumors swirling late this week. Those rumors originated with an April 7 report on the blog CrunchGear, which suggested that unspecified Best Buy stores were keeping stocks of the iPad 2 in reserve, while representatives told customers the blockbuster tablet […]

Place yourself, for a moment, in Microsoft’s position. You’re a multibillion-dollar international corporation that made its name (and dominating market share) in desktop operating systems and productivity software. Along the way, you developed a game console that’s managed to hold its own against Sony and Nintendo, along with a variety of other products to multitudinous […]

Research In Motion’s upcoming PlayBook tablet was delayed due to Apple swallowing up manufacturers’ touch-panel capacity, according to a new report in DigiTimes. The 7-inch PlayBook will hit store shelves April 19 in the United States and Canada, with a starting price of $499 for the 16GB model, $599 for the 32GB, and $699 for […]

Of all the tablets challenging iPad for market share, the Motorola Xoom was supposed to be the Ali to Cupertino’s Frazier, striking a blow against Apple’s dominance with a powerful combination of high-end hardware and the tablet-optimized Google Android 3.0 (“Honeycomb”). But fresh analyst reports hint that the Xoom, hit with early criticism over its […]

Stephen Elop made the right decision to abandon Symbian. The Nokia CEO generated some controversy in early February when he announced a new partnership with Microsoft that would see Windows Phone 7 ported onto the Finnish manufacturer’s smartphones. That followed the leak of a 1,200-word internal memo, ostensibly penned by Elop, suggesting Nokia needed to […]

For decades, Microsoft and Apple have engaged in the oddest of rivalries. Ostensibly at each other’s throats over operating systems and smartphones, the pair nonetheless offers a version of Office for Mac, and Microsoft once famously invested $150 million in Apple to keep it operating during the dark years. Microsoft knows a market when it […]

Apple’s iPad 2 is selling at a healthy clip, according to an April 6 report in DigiTimes. “Sales of iPad 2 are running at a rate faster than its predecessor, and Apple took delivery of 2.4 to 2.6 million units in March,” the publication stated, citing unnamed sources. “Based on a conservative estimate, Apple is […]

Apple can breathe a sigh of relief, now that a federal judge has overturned a $625.5 million judgment leveled against it in a Texas court for violating patents held by Mirror Worlds LLC. The original lawsuit accused Apple’s Mac OS X, mobile devices and personal computers of violating Mirror Worlds’ technology for organizing data, such […]