Nicholas Kolakowski

Microsoft is planning on releasing its first service pack for Office for Mac 2011 the week of April 11. According to an April 6 posting on Microsoft’s Office For Mac blog, Service Pack 1 (SP1) will offer “increased stability, security, and some new features to the suite,” including improved Outlook syncing support. Once Office for […]

Apple’s iPhone 5 will likely not launch in June. However, a posting on a Korean Website, ERNews.co.kr, sparked a brief flurry of rumor mongering when it reported that Apple’s next smartphone would launch in the fourth week of June. “Apple has confirmed that iPhone 5 will be released as planned and it will be released […]

Consumer Reports may have longstanding issues with the iPhone 4, but its editors have decided to give a big thumbs-up to the new iPad 2. The publication tested 10 tablets, including the Motorola Xoom and Samsung Galaxy Tab, before deciding that the 32GB iPad 2 with WiFi and 3G ranked highest across 17 criteria ranging […]

What’s next for Windows? That’s become a prime question following a series of leaks by bloggers Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott, who have spent the past few days merrily posting screen-captures from what they claim is an early build of the next version of Windows, often referred to, if only for brevity’s sake, as “Windows […]

Microsoft’s next version of Windows could include a version of the ribbon interface already present in later versions of Office, according to an early build of the operating system, which two prominent bloggers supposedly previewed. Their postings also include images from that build, including a lock screen whose elements suggest Microsoft is taking a page […]

The partnership between Nokia and Microsoft is apparently proceeding on schedule, according to public comments by one executive. In turn, that suggests Nokia smartphones running Windows Phone 7 could arrive by their scheduled release date sometime in 2012. “Negotiations have progressed very well,” Kai Oistamo, Nokia’s head of corporate development, told Reuters April 4. “They […]

Apple’s next iPhone could include an 8-megapixel camera manufactured by Sony. At least, that’s the conjecture flying around the Web, after Sony CEO Howard Stringer suggested his company is manufacturing components for its rival. “Why should I make Apple the best camera?” Stringer asked the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg during an April 1 talk […]

It was an irony so big that even Microsoft’s general counsel had to acknowledge it: After spending years wrestling with antitrust investigations by the European Commission, Microsoft was turning to that very same regulatory body with a formal complaint about arch-rival Google’s competitive practices. “We’re concerned by a broadening pattern of conduct aimed at stopping […]

When it first hit the marketplace, Google Android had a lot to offer smartphone manufacturers looking for an operating system capable of tackling Apple’s iPhone: it was open- source, license-free, and amenable to being “skinned,” or modified to suit the needs of a particular carrier or company. But Google itself, concerned about platform fragmentation and […]

Microsoft this week filed an antitrust complaint against arch-rival Google with the European Commission, a regulatory body that’s hit Redmond executives with monopoly investigations in the past. “There of course will be some who will point out the irony in today’s filing,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s senior vice president and general counsel, wrote in a March […]

Apple’s upcoming Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” includes a feature that allows multiple users to work on a machine concurrently, via individual graphical sessions. The blog Apple Insider, in a March 31 posting, suggested this multiuser screen-sharing is “similar” to Microsoft’s remote-desktop service, which allows user access to a remote PC over a network. The […]

Microsoft remains reluctant to share consumer-sales numbers for its Windows Phone 7 smartphones, but a new blog post nonetheless suggests a company determined to push the platform as beneficial for third-party developers. Microsoft’s MIX11 conference, due to kick off April 12 in Las Vegas, will assemble a broad range of developers and designers to discuss, […]