The past few months have been a bit rough for Apple. Samsung attacked the company in a series of amusing ads that portrayed a line of people waiting to buy iPhone as losers. While the ads never specifically mentioned Apple, the implications were certainly clear enough. Combine those attacks with declining stock prices and other nagging battles, such as those in court, and you have a recipe for tough times.

While Samsung largely lets its rival be in the latest ads, Amazon picks up the slack -- and, unlike Samsung, is quite clear. The 30-second second clip compares the new Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch against Apple iPad with Retina Display and lets the viewer know that, while both devices show "stunning HD", there is a major difference. Then it proceeds to place the devices side-by-side and let you know that, while you may not be able to tell the difference in the screens, "your wallet definitely can".

Fifteenth in a series. Several important applications received updates in the past seven days. Adobe updated its Reader application for Windows 8 and even changed the name of the application to Adobe Reader Touch. Microosft, too, released updates for several of its applications, including the Bing, which now includes video search results.

In another interesting turn of events, WinZip decided to remove the price tag from the company's Windows 8 app of the same name. The application, previously available for $7.99 is now available free.

WinZip Computing has announced that its WinZip for Windows 8 app is now available for free.

This represents a fairly swift change of direction, as it’s not even three months since the app first appeared in the Windows Store with a price tag of $7.99.

Microsoft announced the new Office 2013 / Office 365 release on January 29th and the new suite, no matter which version of it you choose, comes with tight integration with the company's cloud storage service, SkyDrive. You do not have to use it -- you can still store your files locally, but it makes for easier work when a document can easily be accessed from everywhere and shared with co-workers.

However, apparently a lot of people are taking advantage of the feature, because today Microsoft's Sarah Filman, lead program manager for SkyDrive, announces that the service now stores a lot of files -- "Recently we reached a big milestone; our customers are now storing over a billion Office documents on SkyDrive".

Browser password manager LastPass 2.0.20 has been released for all major web browsers. The new release, also available for 64-bit versions of Windows is accompanied by the LastPass for Windows 8 app, which gives users access to their LastPass account directly from the Modern UI interface in Windows 8.

Version 2.0.20 now automatically calculates the user’s security score and displays it next to the Security Challenge link in the user’s vault. It also extends support -- albeit in beta -- to the Maxthon web browser.

Sony's Android 4.1 Jelly Bean upgrade for 2012 Xperia smartphones is a long time coming. The Japanese manufacturer announced its plans in mid-October last year, and followed it up with a brief update two months later. Finally, as planned, deployment is set to kick off "this week".

The first smartphones to receive the coveted upgrade to the original Jelly Bean iteration are the Xperia T and Xperia, with Xperia TX owners having to wait until next month for the same software treatment. In an attempt to appease impatient users and to drum up some interest, Sony has decided to spill the beans on what Android 4.1 Jelly Bean entails for Xperia users by providing a list of significant changes included in the upgrade.

Windows 8 fans didn't take Microsoft's decision to dump the familiar Aero Glass interface lightly. Even though the software corporation has very good reasons for doing so, there are users who are willing to put up with the apparent disadvantages and want to bring the transparency back.

Microsoft is known for its stance on the matter and it is unlikely that the software giant will be persuaded to bring Aero Glass back in Windows 8 and, therefore, eat its own words about the advantages of the new interface. For this reason, and likely others as well, a developer decided to take matters into his own hands and release a hack that brings back Aero Glass into the Windows 8 Desktop Window Manager.

After I left school I went into sales. And one of the first things I was taught was this: never disparage the competition. Never say bad things about them -- even if what you’re saying is true, or you believe it to be at least -- because it makes the firm you’re representing seem petty and small.

Clearly this is a lesson Microsoft needs to learn. The firm’s marketing department, in particular whoever came up with the Scroogled campaign, is doing its best to turn the Redmond, Wash.-based technology giant into a petty, whining child, complaining about a rival rather than championing its own products. Instead of shouting triumphantly, "Use Outlook.com because it’s great and has all these benefits", Microsoft is reduced to grumbling, "Don’t use Gmail because it reads your emails". It’s not an aggressive information campaign as some people have described it. It’s a sad and frankly pathetic strategy.

When you need to use a dictionary then the quickest solution is usually to head off online. There are plenty of excellent free services available, and if you’re just looking for a quick definition then they’ll probably do a very good job.

If you need more, though – more frequent lookups, better searching features, more options and control -- then there’s still a case for installing a dictionary application. And TheSage is the perfect example.

The Chinese smartphone market is dominated by five top manufacturers, none of them Apple, Canalys reveals. As I've warned a couple times recently, despite CEO Tim Cook's prognostications about China's importance or his company boasting 2 million first-weekend iPhone 5 sales, competitors rapidly close out the market for costly fruit-logos.

China is the biggest market for mobiles, largely dominated by smartphones -- 73 percent of the total in fourth quarter, up from 40 percent a year earlier. Shipments soared 113 percent to 64.7 million units, or 30 percent of all smartphones globally. Samsung captured the top spot, followed by Lenovo, Yulong, Huawei and ZTE.

Bitdefender Labs has released Bitdefender Rootkit Remover, a free stand-alone tool for dealing with known rootkits.

The company report that Rootkit Remover can remove infections from a wide range of threats, including Mebroot, all TDL families (TDL/SST/Pihar), Mayachok, Mybios, Plite, XPaj, Whistler, Alipop, Cpd, Fengd, Fips, Guntior, MBR Locker, Mebratix, Niwa, Ponreb, Ramnit, Stoned, Yoddos, Yurn, Zegost and Necurs, amongst others.

Third in a series. Editor: In parts 1 and 2 of this serialization, Robert X. Cringely presents an updated intro to his landmark rise-of-Silicon Valley book Accidental Empires. Here he presents the original preface from the first edition.

The woman of my dreams once landed a job as the girls’ English teacher at the Hebrew Institute of Santa Clara. Despite the fact that it was a very small operation, her students (about eight of them) decided to produce a school newspaper, which they generally filled with gossipy stories about each other. The premiere issue was printed on good stock with lots of extra copies for grandparents and for interested bystanders like me.

That's not on the social network but away from it. Bad for Facebook: The youngest, and presumably most active users, are the most likely to step away this year for prolonged breaks, according to Pew Internet.

"Sixty-one percent of current Facebook users say that at one time or another in the past they have voluntarily taken a break from using Facebook for a period of several weeks or more", according to report "Coming and Going on Facebook", which published this week.

Perhaps it is just me, but Microsoft's decision to take Live Mesh off of life-support has hit especially hard. We knew this was coming of course, but still, I like having my files synced between multiple computers and, while I love SkyDrive, I do not need the cloud as an intermediary within my own home -- that is ridiculous overkill and would cost me money as well.

Today the company dispatched email reminders that began "Dear Mesh customer, Recently we released the latest version of SkyDrive, which you can use to..." Yes, thanks a lot. I know what I can use it for, but syncing between computers in my home is not something I should be compelled to use it for.

What a difference three years make. In April 2010 I asked "Will iPad cannibalize Mac sales?" and a month later PC sales. Fast-forward 12 months, NPD answered a definitive "No". I disagreed: "Call me cynical and skeptical, but I'm convinced that changing behavior will cause many smartphone buyers, and many more tablet adopters, to delay PC upgrades".

Today, NPD sees things a little differently, based on fresh survey data that puts context behind two years of declining PC sales -- that despite Windows 8's release little more than three months ago. The firm finds that 37 percent of US consumers now access content on smartphones or tablets they used to on PCs. Changing behavior like this affects computer sales, as consumers shift behavior and delay PC upgrades or don't buy ever.