Joe Wilcox

Hopefully, Gartner and other analyst firms will show as much sense.

Windows tablets have gotten the shaft from IDC and other analyst firms for far too long. They count the devices as PCs, not tablets. Last year, after Gartner's tablet forecast failed to include Windows, several prominent bloggers fanned the flames of misinformation, wrongly concluding Microsoft's OS would have no share by 2015. Today, IDC issued a new forecast that still ignores Windows tablets, but changes are promised.

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Say, it must be vacation time. The folks from Redmond, Wash. will trek to Los Angeles for a mysterious June 18 event. It's the right month to soak up Southern California sun. Timing surely isn't coincidental -- a week following Apple's swaggering MacBook Pro with Retina Display, iOS 6 and OS X Mountain Lion announcements and 9 days before Google's developer conference commences. Apple and Google chose San Francisco venues, while Microsoft will get its people out of the clouds into some blue skies (well, once the Marine layer blows off). I'm all for LA, since it's driving distance from San Diego. Not that I received an invitation.

But others who got one have shared the details, of which there are none. Microsoft is being uncharacteristically cagey, a corporate cultural quality that is in too short supply up North. Nothing builds buzz like mystery. With Apple's announcements behind, and Google I/O too far away, Microsoft has given bloggers, commenters, reporters and other pundits something to speculate about. Oh, what could it be?

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Surely we can blame Tim Cook for that. Wait. You're too young to remember Compaq? Well, Apple's CEO worked there in the 1990s, and his leadership brings some decidedly bad Compaq habits from Texas to California. So for those of you thinking Apple is different under Cook than Steve Jobs, most definitely.

See, my eyes buggered when reading in iFixit's terrific MacBook Pro with Retina Display tear-down: "Unlike previous generations of MacBook Pros, the MacBook Pro with Retina display is guarded by Apple's proprietary pentalobe screws". Proprietary screws? That sounds familiar. Oh yeah. Compaq!

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I ask because one of my colleagues already has ordered one (shipping time is a couple weeks), and I got into an interesting Google+ debate about display technologies earlier today.

Apple announced the new laptop yesterday during its Worldwide Developer conference. The new MBP is thinner and lighter, which are nice-to-have features but nothing remarkable. The 2880 x 1800-resolution, IPS screen is really what sets the portable apart from other notebooks, whether Macs or Windows PCs. Apple has raised the standard of art, but the technology isn't gamechanging, as some bloggers or reporters claim. Apple is a laggard with respect to high-res displays, which on Windows PCs have outclassed Macs for years.

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It's a big number and one still well ahead of Android. Just in early 2012, Apple has shipped at least 50 million iOS devices, with iPad adding force to iPhone. Apple calls them "post-PC devices". For all 2011, Apple sold 172 million iOS devices. But wait, haven't we heard this 365 million number before? Indeed, it's same as revealed in late April for the period through end of March. I'm quite surprised Apple didn't update the number, considering the big iOS 6 reveal during today's Worldwide Developer Conference keynote.

New iOS 6 features include FaceTime video over cellular, Facebook integration, Passbook for buying movie tickets and other passes, shared photo streams and new maps app, among others. The new capabilities aren't just for iPhone users but developers, as Apple provides them more built-in utilities to tap into. They received iOS 6 beta today. The software ships in autumn, presumably with iPhone 5.

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Today, at Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple laid a big challenge before Microsoft. While Windows 8 continues in testing, and won't come to new PCs until autumn, the next OS X version is ready for the masses sooner, as in next month. In the battle of oneupmanship, Apple is the clear winner. Today, Apple launches an OS war against Microsoft. The company also announced new MacBook Airs and Pros, which ship immediately, with free upgrades to Mountain Lion.

During the WWDC keynote, Apple revealed there are 66 million Mac user worldwide, which is three times the number five years ago. Apple has shipped 26 million copies of Lion to date, accounting for 40 percent of the install base. That's seems low considering it costs just $29.99.

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Where else would Apple tout App Store's success but its premier developer conference. Today the company disclosed 650,000 apps are now available -- that's up from 550,000 in March, when cumulative downloads reached 25 billion. That number is now 30 billion.

Additionally, CEO Tim Cook revealed that Apple now has 400 million App Store users -- that means with credit cards attached. Also, the number of available iPad apps is 225,000, which is up from 200,000 in March.

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As I compose this post, Microsoft's TechEd keynote is underway, while Apple will kick off Worldwide Developer Conference in just a few hours. Both events will put forth very different views of the cloud-connected device future, which Gartner says will start as soon as 2014, when the cloud replaces the PC as everyone's personal digital hub.

For Apple, iOS 6 will be center stage, whetting consumers' appetites and giving them another weapon in their bring-your-own-device assault on workplace IT. Meanwhile, Microsoft pitches new wares for the enterprise -- Office, Windows 8, RT and Server, for starters. Where the two companies meet is the tablet, and there's no room between them for Android.

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Andy Rubin revealed the number late day, on the eve of Apple's developer conference. Google's Android chief disclosed the activations while dispelling rumors circulated by Robert Scoble about leaving for startup CloudCar. Rubin isn't going anywhere.

He last disclosed activations per day -- 850,000 -- on February 27. The new number means 27 million a month or 81 million every 90 days. That number is consistent with actual smartphone sales. Gartner, which tracks sales to end users rather than the analyst firm standard of shipments into the channel, reports 81.067 million Androids sold during first quarter -- again, that's smartphones and doesn't include tablets. By comparison, Apple sold 33.1 million iPhones, but the number doesn't include iPad or iPod touch.

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Three years ago, my Sunday mornings started with the New York Times. Now it's Feedly, which appealingly presents my RSS feeds synced from Google Reader. I mainly use the app on a tablet, and I highly recommend it. This morning, as Apple's developer conference approaches tomorrow, there are loads of punditry -- and much of it pointless.

Four posts caught my attention enough to write about them and all published over the weekend. Interestingly, the majority are guest posts rather than regular staff pieces.

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Patent bullying and ongoing competition by litigation and intimidation are reasons why. For me the last straw came earlier this week when Apple sought to ban importation of Samsung Galaxy S III (the request for preliminary injunction is before a judge and a ruling could come as early as next week). The phone launched in 28 countries on May 29 and goes on sale from five US carriers within the next 30 days. Many tech reviewers and pundits have called Galaxy S III an iPhone 4S killer. Apple doesn't have a competitive product in market so instead seeks to block Samsung's -- all under the guise of protecting innovations.

Apple is an amazing marketer that manages perceptions very well. One of these regards innovation and the idea that other companies imitate Apple, often badly, and its trendy ideas must be protected. Perception is one thing. Reality is another. Apple isn't as innovative as its corporate "reality distortion field" would have everyone believe. But the company has gotten quite good at something: Unleashing a torrent of suits to secure patents and to defend them -- and many cover processes that should never have been awarded patents in the first place. Apple has gotten quite good at gaming the patent system. I want no part of it.

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For as long as Microsoft has offered a search engine, CEO Steve Ballmer or one of his minions has talked about the goal of providing answers to real questions rather than forcing people to use keywords. The success of social search service Quora or Yahoo Answers shows how much people simply want to ask. Bing and Google handle questions much better today than ever, but often the answers come unqualified and without the depth or authority of, say, a peer-reviewed encyclopedia. Apple tries with Siri on iPhone, with Wolfram Alpha behind it. But we all know that, for now, Siri sucks.

Today, Microsoft seized the answer search initiative, by incorporating Encyclopedia Britannica into Bing results. Sure Google places Wikipedia front and center, but Britannica is an undisputed, reliable authority -- well for anyone old enough to have owned a set of the books. Ask a question. "The answer provides a quick overview of the subject, a thumbnail image, and useful facts and figures making it easier than ever to get trusted content in search", Franco Salvetti, Bing principal development lead, explains. "We also pull in direct links to other trusted sources".

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Today's LinkedIn hack, exposing more than 6 million encrypted passwords, is more serious than it might appear and reveals one of the biggest security shortcomings social networks pose: Linked or shared data. Literally linked-in accounts expose information from others -- then there is the sheer amount of personal data hackers can siphon.

LinkedIn hasn't confirmed the hack, but is investigating. Meanwhile the stolen data already is available on the Internet. Cyber-security expert Robert David Graham says he has confirmed "this hack is real". The stolen data was published as password hashes. He created a SHA-1 hash of his password and found it in the dumped data. "The password I use for LinkedIn is in that list", he explains. "I use that password nowhere else. Furthermore, it's long/complex enough that I'm confident nobody else uses the same password.

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In March of last year, I boasted: "If Windows phone is No. 2 by 2015, I'll kiss Steve Ballmer's feet". Looks like Microsoft's CEO and I get a year's reprieve. Once again, IDC makes ridiculous, bold claims about how Windows Phone will ascend to second place in market share, now in 2016. Oh, pleeease forgive my skepticism considering how Windows Phone share has done nothing but fall like a rock -- 1.9 percent sales share in Q1, according to Gartner.

It's a year later in the forecast, so I'm making a new pledge. Since my prediction and ego would be in the toilet, I'll clean Ballmer's if Windows Phone rises like IDC predicts. It's a pledge I never expect to fulfill, so it's easy to make. Besides, in this newer forecast, IDC places an escape clause, suggesting waning confidence Nokia can lift Windows Phone so high.

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