Microsoft will open stores close to those of Apple this fall, according to its chief operating officer, as it looks to win back the initiative in the battle for Main Street PC and gadget buyers.
"We're going to have some retail stores opened up right next door to Apple stores this fall," said Microsoft's Kevin Turner at a Webcast conference in New Orleans on Wednesday. "Stay tuned."
The world's largest software company announced in February that it would open its own chain of branded stores as it looks to counter Apple's successful foray into retailing, hiring a former Wal-Mart Stores executive to run them.
As part of the rollout of the Windows 7, Microsoft has launched a contest to spur on development and interest in the forthcoming operating system.
The Code7 Contest is a chance for Microsoft to get developers motivated about the new OS, due to ship on October 22, and for developers to "get a massive 'marketing bump' for your application," as Yochay Kiriaty, Windows 7 Technical Evangelist, put it in a blog post announcing the contest.
Developers are encouraged to write a Windows 7 application that utilizes the technology and features in Windows 7 and show off what the app does in a short video entry. Entries must be received by October 10, 2009. Up to three entries per person will be accepted, but each must be unique.
Microsoft COO Kevin Turner revealed just how much so during his keynote Wednesday at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. It's the annual conference for Microsoft's partner community and normally draws the company's top executives to help re-cement the bond with their reseller channels.
According to him, Apple had apparently gotten upset over Microsoft's so-called "Laptop Hunter" television ads in which consumers go shopping for a new laptop and -- surprise -- find that Windows-based PCs are a better, less expensive choice than a Mac.
That got Apple's legal department worked up enough to call Turner personally, he said.
Microsoft's decision to offer Windows 7 E in Europe makes loads of sense. The company made a tough call, but a good one. The European Commission and Opera can complain, but Microsoft is thinking business, which is the right priority.
Lots of European businesses, consumers and developers will be sorry to lose IE from Windows. Some will feel slighted, like they're being treated second rate compared to people in every other region in the world. Surely there will be backlash -- some pointed at Microsoft for making the decision, but perhaps more to European regulators for creating the situation.
Microsoft revealed pricing for the company's upcoming Azure cloud computing services on Tuesday, while its CEO worked to pump up partners in the face of a continuing down economy.
Bob Muglia, president of Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) server and tools division, described the pricing model during his keynote at the company's Worldwide Partner Conference 2009 in New Orleans.
Following Muglia onstage, CEO Steve Ballmer worked to try to assure the more than 6,000 partners in attendance that the economy will "reset" and grow, but with a difference.
The closer you are to Windows 7, the more you like it. That's what supporters of the new operating system say. To them, reports that 60 percent of IT admins aren't planning to deploy
Microsoft's newest simply don't make sense.
"I want Windows 7 -- it's a significant improvement and enables netbooks," wrote one user, responding to my post yesterday quoting a survey that found widespread antipathy toward the Windows XP and Vista replacement.
Microsoft held its tenth annual Research Faculty Summit on Monday, and the focus was on data en masse -- processing it quickly and helping scientists make sense of it once it's gathered. Three projects shared the spotlight in Redmond.
Two of the three, Dryad and DryadLINQ, are intimately related. Both support high-performance computing. Dryad itself is an engine for making it easier to implement distributed applications on Windows HPC Server 2008 clusters. As its information page explains, "A Dryad programmer can use thousands of machines, each of them with multiple processors or cores, without knowing anything about concurrent programming."
As Google positions itself for a future of web-based operating systems and applications, a new reality is about to intervene: Microsoft Office 2010, with both web and stand-alone versions, will kill Google Docs. Long live, Office Web!
Maybe Google will be able to rescue something from its Docs misadventure, but it better do something quick. Microsoft says it can solve big customers' big complaint about Google Docs and will do so at a price Google understands: Free.
Here's the gripe: Corporate IT doesn't think Google Docs are a secure place for important information. Microsoft will deal with this by offering something Google doesn't, the ability to host Office Web on the customer's own servers.
Microsoft late on Monday denied that it has finished Windows 7, quashing rumors that the company was about to declare "release to manufacturing," or RTM.
"We are close, but have not yet signed off on Windows 7," said company spokesman Brandon LeBlanc on the Windows blog Monday night. "As previously stated, we expect Windows 7 to RTM in the 2nd half of July."
TechNet and MSDN (Microsoft Developers Network) subscribers, who in the past have gotten RTM builds almost immediately, will be able to download Windows 7 from their respective services "a few weeks after we announce RTM," LeBlanc said.
Just more than a year after it launches, Windows 7 will account for nearly half of all the client operating systems Microsoft ships to corporate users, according to forecasts by IDC.
In 2010, Windows 7 will account for 49.5% of Windows operating systems bought by corporations, or nearly 58 million copies, says IDC. Those numbers dwarf Vista, which will account for 15% of the 2010 Windows operating systems Microsoft ships that year.
Windows 7 advance sales have been tearing up Amazon.com's best seller list since the OS hit its pre-sale stage more than a week ago.