A Microsoft technical evangelist referred to independent software developers writing for Windows and the company's other software platforms as "pawns" and compared wooing them to convincing someone to have a one-night stand, according to testimony presented Friday against Microsoft in an ongoing antitrust case in Iowa.
Propelled by the release of its Version 2.0 in October, the free Firefox Web browser saw almost a 50% increase in use during 2006, according to one Web measurement firm.
Jessica Arnold is Microsoft's product manager for Outlook 2007, the e-mail component of Microsoft's Office 2007 suite. Microsoft has made several improvements in this latest version, such as faster search, RSS feed reading and user interface enhancements, such as a new to-do bar, that are getting buzz among beta testers and analysts. In a survey of IT users we released earlier this month, more respondents rated improvements in Outlook 2007 "very important" than those in Word 2007, Excel 2007 or any other part of the Office 2007 suite. Arnold spoke with Eric Lai on Wednesday. An edited transcript follows.
Outgoing Windows development chief James Allchin says he was being "purposefully dramatic" in a three-year-old e-mail to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer that surfaced late last week at an Iowa antitrust trial against Microsoft. In the e-mail, Allchin told his two colleagues that development on the Windows Vista operating system had gone astray and that he would buy a Macintosh from rival Apple Computer were he not a Microsoft employee.
Novell on Tuesday said it plans to seek out more deals similar to its recent marketing and licensing pact with Microsoft as it embraces partnerships and moves away from selling its open-source software directly to small and medium-size companies.
Microsoft plans to release its first suite of Web and graphic design software by mid-2007, putting it into head-to-head competition with graphics kingpin, Adobe Systems.
Microsoft on Tuesday released a revamped version of its Windows Genuine Advantage tool that it hopes will reduce complaints arising from paid-up users of Windows XP caught in the dragnet of the controversial anti-piracy program.
Vendors are scrambling to offer open-source application stacks as an alternative to integrated sets of proprietary applications that have long locked users into the technology of a single supplier.
Microsoft says its upcoming database development tool will help application developers and database administrators collaborate better.
Reiterating that it wants to play better with others, Microsoft has started a group to promote software interoperability. Twenty-five companies, including Sun Microsystems, BEA Systems, XenSource and Novell, have agreed to join the Interop Vendor Alliance announced Tuesday at Microsoft's IT Forum in Barcelona, Spain.
Following on the heels of its "Unfakeable Linux" rebuttal to last week's incursion by Oracle into its core Linux support business, Red Hat has called the new alliance between rivals Microsoft and Novell "unthinkable" -- but still spun it as a victory for all Linux vendors.
As Microsoft prepares to release Windows Vista to manufacturing next week and make it available to corporate users at the end of the month, the debate is ratcheting up over how much money -- if any -- companies could save by upgrading to the new operating system.
Microsoft has let the planned shipment date for its Service Pack 3 update to Windows XP slip again, this time to the first half of 2008.
FRAMINGAM: Microsoft Research, the software company's university-style pure research arm, celebrated its 15th birthday by showcasing some of its recent greatest hits.
Microsoft last week confirmed that it is overhauling its antipiracy technology for Windows Vista in an effort to plug a potential software license security hole among corporate users and avoid the problems associated with Windows XP's antipiracy tools.
