On Monday, Microsoft essentially killed all or most third-party opportunities for Windows tablets by introducing a portable tablet version of Surface for the ARM and Intel platforms. After a procession of peculiar Windows 8 tablets were announced by various and sundry PC makers, Microsoft staged a media event Monday, where they attempted to make all […]

Consider that Microsoft has billions and billions of dollars in the bank, ready to fight to the death to gain ascendancy in the digital music player arena. As a practical matter, you have to expect that Apple ought to fear that sort of clout. Also consider how Microsoft has been able to dominate the operating […]

When Apple’s iPod and iTunes ecosystem was first established, some analysts decreed that Apple was making a huge mistake, the same one it made when it originally decided not to license the Mac operating system. On the surface, having a unified standard might seem like a pretty good idea. This way, you can mix and […]

Maybe you haven’t noticed, but rather quietly, I thought, Microsoft has taken the wraps, such as they were, off its latest “iPod Killer,” the Zune player. You would think, after all these years of struggling to gain some traction in the music download and player marketplace, Microsoft would make a big deal of this event, […]