Latest Technology News

It's the question I'm asking myself, so I'll ask it of you. Will you buy one of Apple's two thin-and-light laptops, either the 11.6-inch or 13.3-inch MacBook Air? Apple announced the new computers yesterday. As usual, please respond in comments, or e-mail joewilcox at gmail dot com. Please don't just answer yes or no, but offer reasons why or why not you would buy either of Apple's sleek, thin-and-light laptops.

(For those readers wondering about answers to the question "Which Windows Phone 7 smartphone will you buy?" I'll post today or tomorrow. I waited for international sales to start and for the first reviews to come out (both yesterday). I'm on Microsoft's "frak you" short list, so there are no review units here.)

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Early in 2010, Google announced it was looking to build and test a 1Gbps fiber-to-the-home network in a couple of U.S. cities. Hundreds of interested cities made attempts to convince Google they would be ideal candidates for the new fiber optic network.

Today, Google Product Manager James Kelly announced the first field trials of the fiber technology Google might use in its community deployments
will be built at Stanford University's residential subdivision in early 2011.

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It's been one year since Windows 7 launched to the world, and to celebrate the passing of the year, Microsoft has released some information about the milestones Windows 7 has passed.

Most importantly among them, Microsoft announced that 240 million Windows 7 licenses have been sold worldwide, which gives it a 17% global OS market share. Microsoft communications manager Brandon LeBlanc today said Windows 7 is "the fastest selling operating system in history."

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As expected, Apple on Wednesday launched a new version of its two-year old ultraportable Macbook Air, and revealed a new, smaller version that could be described as the first Mac netbook.

The 13.3" Macbook Air has been bumped up to a 1440 x 900 display, an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, Nvidia GeForce 320m graphics processor, and a total unibody aluminum design. Unlike previous versions of the Macbook Air, it has no hard drive; and has shifted over to 100% flash-based memory like the iPhone and iPad. With the shift to Flash memory, the battery life has stretched to 7 hours from the previous 5, has a 30-day standby time, and features instant-on booting.

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Inside the new MacBook Air

Today in San Francisco, Apple unveiled a new MacBook Air, updated iLife digital media suite and beta of FaceTime for the Mac. The company also previewed Mac OS X 10.7, aka "Lion," which will bring features found in iOS "Back to the Mac," playing off the title to today's media event. Apple CEO Steve Jobs shared the stage with other executives to demo the new products. Not since October 2008 has Jobs spent so little time on stage during a major Apple event. But in sharing the stage, he strongly delivered the big announcements: 11.6-inch MacBook Air, Lion and a shocker -- Apple will launch an applications store for Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) within 90 days.

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There's a saying that the more you have, the more you fear losing it.

Apple's CEO made a surprise appearance during yesterday's fiscal 2010 fourth quarter earnings call. Jobs said he couldn't resist participating, given Apple's record $20.34 billion revenue. But he leveled most of his comments at competitors, and in quite defensive posture. Now why is that? Apple's iPhone blew past Wall Street estimates by as many as 3 million units. The iPad outsold Macs and, according to Gartner and IDC analysts, sucked sales away from Windows netbooks and low-cost notebooks. Apple controls the largest and most successful applications store on the planet. The company sits on a cash horde of more than $51 billion. Then there are the quarterly results, which topped consensus estimates by nearly $2 billion.

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Software company Mozilla on Tuesday unveiled its plans for Open Web App stores for distributing, selling, and managing rich Internet applications built in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Mozilla's concept is similar to the Chrome app store Google discussed when it first unveiled Chrome OS one year ago, but it is meant to use only browser-native functions that can be accessed just as easily on a PC as on a mobile device.

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LightSquared, the hybrid satellite/4G LTE network currently in development across the United States has shipped its mobile communications satellite off for its November 14 launch in Kazakhstan.

The satellite was constructed by Boeing and is named SkyTerra 1, after the satellite company that designed the network which Harbinger Capital acquired in its formation of LightSquared. It pairs with four gateway base stations on Earth and its related network of beamforming equipment.

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In a rare appearance in Apple's quarterly results call with financial analysts, CEO Steve Jobs briefly took over the call to take the offense in the cell phone debate which increasingly looks to be turning against the company. Some of his most pointed comments came over Google's claims that it is more open than iOS.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently referred to iOS as a closed platform, Jobs turned around and pointed out that no matter how open the code is itself, manufacturers and carriers still can choose to add their own proprietary code -- and even restrict certain features.

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Monday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced one of Redmond's major cloud supporters Ray Ozzie would be moving to a role focused on the entertainment sector before he ultimately retires. Tuesday, Microsoft followed it up with the introduction of a new cloud-based productivity suite called Office 365, which launches in limited beta today.

Office 365 combines Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Lync Online in a single cloud-based package scalable to the needs of small businesses or huge enterprises with a per-user license cost depending upon the volume of users.

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Since HP acquired Palm Inc. last April, the future of the Palm brand, and the webOS mobile operating system, have been uncertain in the eyes of the public: Would webOS make its way onto HP Slates? Would it merge with the iPaq brand?

Now, we get to see the results of HP's rescue of the formerly unprofitable, but conceptually brilliant Palm with today's debut of HP webOS 2.0 and the new Palm Pre 2.

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Patent holding company NTP has struck again, filing yet another patent infringement suit against a big tech company. This time, rather than a broad claim that encompasses multiple companies (like its suit three months ago against LG, HTC, Microsoft, Motorola, Google, and Apple; or its suit in 2007 which targeted wireless network operators) this claim is aimed squarely at Yahoo.

The complaint, filed on October 15 in the Eastern District Court of Virginia, focuses on five patents for wireless e-mail transmission that NTP used in its suit against Research in Motion (RIM) in 2001.

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I've never been too good with names
The cellar door was open, I could never stay away
I know it's probably not my place
It's either or, I'm hoping for a simple way to say
It's a shame about Ray
In the stone, under the dust
His name is still engraved
Some things need to go away
It's a shame about Ray

-- From Lemonheads song "It's a Shame About Ray"

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Ray Ozzie will be stepping down from his position as chief software architect at Microsoft, a note from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Monday afternoon.

Ozzie has been in an executive role at Microsoft since the Redmond company acquired Ozzie's Groove Networks in 2005. He assumed the role of Chief Technical Officer almost immediately, and then graduated to the position of Chief Software Architect approximately a year later. According to Ballmer, Ozzie will be shifting his area of focus to "the broader area of entertainment where Microsoft has many ongoing investments."

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The problem with the developers of any product releasing just a single public beta, without periodic updates, several months before its anticipated final release, is that it creates a fixed target for its competition. Microsoft spokespersons have indicated to me that scheduled updates for the Internet Explorer 9 public beta have not been planned, and even characterized intermediate updates for purposes other than vulnerability patching, to be unorthodox. (Last week, Microsoft issued another big security rollup for stable versions of IE, but not IE9 which didn't need the patch.)

So IE9 has a big target painted on itself, and it doesn't help that its scores are going nowhere during the beta period. Meanwhile, there's a new element of Firefox 4 that could make it one of the fastest, if not the fastest and most efficient, graphics rendering browser in the pack. I say "could" because, even in the latest betas, the superb performance scores posted in HTML 5 Canvas rendering tests, which are supposed to be accelerated using Microsoft's Direct2D library in Windows, are only intermittent. Scores flip between "good" and "incredible," and just when it appears to be time to declare Firefox 4 the latest phoenix to rise from the ashes, those Canvas scores flip back to just "good," even on a pristine and unencumbered test platform.

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