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Apple and Microsoft must have missed sniping at each other, because this is petty.

It’s been a while since Apple and Microsoft took cheap shots at each other. I guess they got bored. One news outlet reports Apple is being difficult about approving the newest version of SkyDrive for iOS.

The Next Web reports that the two are at loggerheads over a new version of SkyDrive, which has a paid storage option because Microsoft doesn’t pay Apple a 30% cut of subscription revenue generated by paid storage services.

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A main sticking point is that Microsoft does not want to pay Apple the 30% cut, which runs in perpetuity regardless of whether users continue to use an iOS device or not, because the billing is done through their Apple account.

So if a user signed up for the enhanced-capacity drive on their iOS device and then moved to a non-iOS phone (say, a Windows Phone), Apple would still collect 30% of their fee for storage even though they aren’t using the iOS device any more. Microsoft is understandably not keen on this.

The problem is not limited to just SkyDrive. AllThingsD reports that this fee is also applied to Office 365 subscriptions sold through Microsoft Office for iOS, which Microsoft has all but acknowledged will be launched sometime next year.

A spokesperson for Microsoft responded to a query with this comment:

“Similar to the experiences of some other companies, we are experiencing a delay in approval of our updated SkyDrive for iOS. We are in contact with Apple regarding the matter and hope to come to a resolution. We will provide additional information as it becomes available.”

Apple, as usual, isn’t talking.

This problem could easily spread to other apps. Third-party developers that use SkyDrive would also be hit with the 30% fee, and they aren’t going to like that perpetual fee, either.

How this plays out will be very interesting. Microsoft could practice what it preaches and offer policies for the Windows Store similar to what it wants from Apple. This would be a key point of differentiation and potentially competitive.

If Apple continues to play hardball and extends the same courtesy to DropBox and other cloud storage apps, Apple could be the one shut out and shunned. Will it happen? Who knows? Tim Cook does not strike me as unreasonable, and now that this is out and in the media, the pressure may come down on Apple.

Now the real test for Microsoft will be how it behaves when the shoe is on the other foot.

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IPads are already making their way into businesses via bring-your-own-device efforts with Microsoft Surface RT tablets hoping to follow suit as employees lobby for their favorite devices. But which one makes more sense from an IT perspective?

Read Network World’s other tech arguments.

The two products are roughly similar in price ($500), run touch-centric operating systems, are highly portable and weigh about a pound and a half.

The two most significant differences are that Surface RT comes with both a keyboard and a version of Microsoft Office – Office 2013 Home & Student 2013 RT – which expand the potential corporate utility of the devices.

Third-party keyboards are available for iPads as are third-party versions of Office-compatible productivity suites but they represent more work for IT. A rumor says Microsoft is working on a client that will allow accessing Office from an iPad through Microsoft’s service Office 365.

Office on Surface RT has its limitations. It lacks Outlook but includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, and the Surface RT version requires a business license in order to be used for work. Still, having it installed out of the box is a leg up and gives workers the opportunity to tap into the productivity suite. The keyboard is a big plus.

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When it comes to numbers of applications iPad has far more than Surface RT, and neither one has the number of business applications that support traditional Windows operating systems. Surface RT is a Windows operating system that can’t run traditional Windows apps except for the Office suite specifically crafted for the platform.

Instead, Surface RT has its own class of applications called Windows Store apps, mainly because they can only be bought from the Window Store. They are tailored for touch tablets and must be vetted by Microsoft before they get into the store’s inventory.

They can be developed using XAML, with code-behind in C++, C#, or Visual Basic, and Microsoft has a provision for sideloading custom business apps to Surface RT without submitting them first to Microsoft. Even so, that’s a lot of work to get apps natively on the devices.

Both iPads and Surfaces support virtual desktops, which goes a long way toward making traditional apps available on them. Hosted virtual desktops (HVD) can be costly, Gartner says in a report called “Bring Your Own Device: New Opportunities, New Challenges”. Its research found that “shifting to an HVD model increases the onetime costs per device by more than $600.” Plus proper licensing of iPads for business use is complicated, the report says.

Managing Surface RT is possible via Windows cloud-based management Intune and Exchange ActiveSync for messaging. IPad also supports Exchange ActiveSync. Third-party mobile device management platforms can configure and update iPads as well as monitor compliance with corporate policies. They can also wipe or lock lost and stolen machines. OS X server can do all this as well.

Surface RT comes with security features iPad doesn’t. These include both hardware-based secure boot that checks that the system hasn’t been tampered with and also trusted boot that fires up anti-malware before anything else. That way malware can’t disable the anti-malware before it gets the chance to do its job. The same hardware security module can act as a smartcard for authentication, and Surface RT has full disk encryption.

The iPad has disk encryption but lacks the secure boot features of Surface RT. Its secure boot chain is based on read-only memory and its hardware security module doesn’t do double duty as a smartcard.

NOTE: There is another version of Surface that runs on x86 processors and supports any application that Windows 7 supports. It’s not available until next year, but is actually a tablet-sized full Windows laptop with all the touch capabilities of Surface RT.

That device would beat iPad hands-down if it cost the same, but it is likely to cost hundreds of dollars more than Surface RT.

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5 Things Microsoft Surface Must Do to Beat the iPad
The Windows ship is leaking in a dozen places, pierced beneath the waterline by very pointy iPads. Where the Mac never really made a dent in Microsoft’s PC hegemony, the iPad is doing so: it’s being handed to children as a first computer, appearing in schools, and running point-of-sale systems for small businesses. If you consider the iPad a PC, then Apple’s the No. 1 PC maker, according to research firm Canalys.

That makes the iPad public enemy number one for Microsoft if it intends to maintain its PC leadership, and the new Surface tablet is Microsoft’s primary weapon. Surface comes in two versions. The Windows RT version matches the iPad on price, but has relatively few apps; all the same, this will be the model at which most consumers look. The more-expensive Windows 8 “Surface Pro” version will run existing business software.

I hate calling things a “such-and-such killer,” but Microsoft needs to at least slow the iPad penetration of iPads in business and claim a part of the consumer market. How can the company do that? Here are five paths to take.

Developers, developers, developers. Windows RT has fewer than 3,000 apps. The iPad has 250,000. Microsoft needs to beg, borrow, or steal to pump up the app count for RT. Fortunately, the company has plenty of experience with this – it’s managed to nurture more than 100,000 apps for Windows Phone even with that platform stuck in single-digit market share. Bring that experience to bear with the Surface and apps should ramp up nicely.

Bring Xbox to Windows RT. XBox is Microsoft’s most beloved consumer brand. And unlike the PS Vita and Nintendo DS, the Surface has enough horsepower to run pretty good approximations of Xbox games. Microsoft needs to bring as much of the Xbox experience as possible to the Surface. Once again, the company has done a pretty good job of this with Windows Phone, and it can do an even better job with the more powerful hardware here.

Reclaim Ground With Small Businesses. Small businesses are increasingly moving to iPad-based point-of-sale, order-taking and management systems. This major disruption has been brought on by Square and its ilk, and it’s cannibalizing the stodgy old world of retail business systems. Square’s Jack Dorsey has hinted at a Windows Phone app coming, but Square isn’t the be-all and end-all of small business systems. Microsoft needs to seize the day with custom Surface packages with hardware and software priced competitively to iPad solutions for different small business categories such as retail, real estate, and transportation.

Be Enterprise’s Best Friend. IT managers love a good relationship, and Apple has been cozying up to formerly PC-only shops, explaining to them how they can replace virus-prone, heavy PCs with light, secure iPads. Microsoft still has the infrastructure to take this back. Make sure that Surface RT can be managed with the same tools as enterprise Windows 8 installations, and then promote it as something that has all of the advantages of the iPad with more familiarity for Windows-friendly IT departments. If Microsoft wants to lean on SkyDrive, it needs to be enterprise-ready and secure enough for financial and legal firms.
Make Other Tablets Look Like Toys. Microsoft Office is the Surface’s greatest strength. It must integrate perfectly with the Office used on desktops, both from a user perspective (with even complex formatting intact, and features like version-tracking working properly) and from an infrastructure perspective (working with secure servers, domains, and policies.) Microsoft Office is, for better or worse, the backbone of American commerce. If Microsoft can make the Surface look like the only truly serious tablet, then it has a solid chance.

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Learn how a few special secret buried in iOS 6, as well as a couple of the most important features of Apple’s new operating system.

Maybe you’ve installed Apple’s iOS 6, the newest operating system for iPhones, iPad, and iPod touch, but do you know about all the tricks that are inside and how to use them?

Apple’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 6, may have sparked a fury of Internet hate for the new Maps app, and I certainly won’t wag my finger at anyone who misses Google’s engine behind the Maps app, but plenty more goodies are tucked away in iOS 6 that you shouldn’t miss.

Here are ten of the best features and how to use them.
1. Swipe up to reply to incoming calls with a text message. Maybe you heard that when a call comes in, you can now reply with a text message instead of just declining the call. But these options don’t appear automatically. You have to swipe up from the bottom of the screen to reveal them.

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2. Customize your text replies to declined calls. The feature that lets you turn down phone calls but reply with text message allows you to use a canned message for added convenience. A few options appear when you swipe up, as mentioned in the first tip. To change what they pre-written texts say, go to

Settings > Phone > Reply with Message.

You can now customize your one-touch replies.

3. Learn how to work the Do Not Disturb option. A new feature called Do Not Disturb appears in the settings, but it’s nothing more than an on/off switch. Where can you set the hours for quiet time, or make it so that calls from emergency contacts come through? Oddly, these choices fall under the Notifications area. Go to

Settings > Notifications > Do Not Disturb.

The Scheduled button lets you define the hours when you don’t want to be disturbed. The Allow Calls From button just below it launches a new screen where you can exclude people from your do-not-disturb list.

4. Attach photos and videos to email in the Mail app. Formerly, using the mail app was occasionally a pain. You’d compose a message, remember that you wanted to send the recipient a photo, too, and realized you couldn’t actually attach anything to the draft. Now you can. In an email draft, press a hold anywhere in the body. In landscape mode (holding the phone horizontally), list of options will appear, including one to insert a photo or video. If you’re in portrait or vertical mode, just press the arrow button that appears until you see the right choice.

5. Read in full-screen mode. News articles, blogs, and other text-heavy pages, when viewed on an iPhone especially, cause squinting and more pinching, zooming, panning than most people feel comfortable doing. When Safari detects a text-heavy page in iOS 6, it supplies a button called Reader at the top right of the URL bar, which reformats the page in a full-screen and easier-to-read layout. You’ll also notice a “share out” or “send to” button (curved arrow) in Safari with a lot of great option beneath it also worth exploring. They’re mostly not new to iOS 6, but they do appear in a newly designed interface.

6. Pass your iPad or iPhone to friends without worrying they’ll get nosy. I admit that I’ve hesitated in the past before passing my mobile devices around to friends to let them look at photos or something that made me giggle on Facebook. The larger the group of friends, the more suspicious I am that someone might take liberties with my device when I’m not looking. The same is true, I’m sure, for parents who let their kids play with their iPhone or iPad. Guided Access, new to iOS 6, lets you lock down your device so that only the app you open can be used, and no other functionality works until you enter a unique four-digit passcode. It’s a little tricky to find and set up.

First, go to

Settings > General > Accessibility > Guided Access.

Toggle the switch to on and set a passcode. When you want to use Guided Access, just open the app of choice, and triple tap the home button. Be sure to hit the start button at the top right. But wait, there’s more (see the next tip).

7. Disable buttons in apps (in Guided Access). When you enable Guided Access in an app—which locks users from going into any other app or areas of the phone—you can also disable parts of the screen. For example, if you turn on Guided Access in the Photos app, you can also use your finger to circle parts of the screen you want to disable, such as the top row of buttons so that one can look through your other albums. Just be sure to hit the Start button in the top right corner before handing over your device!

8. Share Photo Stream. Apple’s syncing service, iCloud, handles images with speed and good responsiveness. But it was never easy to share your pictures until iOS 6 came along. To share your Photo Stream images, go to the Camera app and press Photo Stream. Then hit the plus button in the upper left, which will open a screen where you can fill information about how to share your Photo Stream, whether with a select few individuals, or by making it public on your iCloud account.

9. Learn what the new Privacy button means (and use it). A new Privacy button under Settings comes with little explanation. Tap it, and you might not know what information it’s even telling you because there are no instructions or explainers. Here’s what it does: Privacy shows you apps that can talk to other apps, and whether they are. For example, my Twitter app talks to my Flipboard app. I enabled that integration, and I’m okay with it. But if I didn’t remember allowing it, or wanted to shut it off, I can do so in the Privacy area with one quick motion. This feature gives you very good ability to quick ability to turn off any app-to-app sharing that you don’t want and you might have forgotten existed. So if you don’t want Facebook to know where you are, check the Location Services section of your Privacy buttons, and you can flip the switch off lickety-split.

10. Customize native Facebook alerts. A big new feature in iOS 6 was the direct folding in of Facebook functionality, meaning you can share to Facebook a picture from your Camera app or a link from Safari without ever opening the Facebook app itself. It works similar to the baked-in Twitter functionality that was new to iOS 5. What many users may overlook, however, is the ability to customize your Facebook chat and message alerts, separate from the Facebook app as well. They’re found under

Settings > Facebook > Settings.

Of course, you can also add Facebook alerts to your Notification Center, but that feature isn’t new (it’s under Settings > Notifications, and then scroll down until you find Facebook in your list of apps).

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In a recent interview, Kaspersky Lab founder and CEO Eugene Kaspersky claimed that Apple is “10 years” behind Microsoft on security, as evidenced by the recent malware attacks affecting Mac OS X

There’s been a lot of chatter lately that the recent Flashback and Flashfake malware infestations plaguing Apple’s Max OS X are a sign that the Mac is not nearly as secure as Apple and its devout fans would like you to believe.

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Eugene Kaspersky, however, founder and CEO of Kaspersky Lab—a leading producer of security software—claims things are much worse. He says that Apple is in a potentially dire position and must change its approach to patches and updates, much in the same way Microsoft did year ago to more quickly and efficiently address vulnerabilities in Windows.

In a recent interview with CBR Online, Kaspersky said,

“I think they are ten years behind Microsoft in terms of security. For many years I’ve been saying that from a security point of view there is no big difference between Mac and Windows. It’s always been possible to develop Mac malware, but this one was a bit different. For example it was asking questions about being installed on the system and, using vulnerabilities, it was able to get to the user mode without any alarms.”

Of course it’s possible to develop malware for OSX. Malware could be developed for any OS. As far as malware exploiting vulnerabilities, is that what’s been happening on Windows systems for ages?

Before we go on, we should point out what we believe to be a serious flaw in that statement. When Kaspersky says “there is no big difference between Mac and Windows,” that may be true on some level because they are both consumer operating systems, but the underlying technologies in OS X and Windows are fundamentally different. OS X is based on UNIX, which is decades more mature than Windows. And with that maturity also comes strong security.

Kaspersky goes on to say, “They will understand very soon that they have the same problems Microsoft had ten or 12 years ago. They will have to make changes in terms of the cycle of updates and so on and will be forced to invest more into their security audits for the software.”

This may or may not be the case. Kaspersky asserts that the success of Flashback / Flashfake will result in more malware being released for OS X. We’re not so sure. Most malware producers are in it to make a quick buck, not for notoriety. And the success of one piece of malware, doesn’t guarantee more will follow. Flashback / Flashfake may be getting some attention now, but targeting the Mac just doesn’t make as much financial sense as targeting Windows.

The fact of the matter is, even with relatively strong Mac sales, Windows-based systems far outsell the Mac and malware producers are always going to more aggressively target the largest install base. At least that’s our opinion. What say you?

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On August 9, 2011, Apple’s market capitalization briefly rose to $341.5 billion, edging it just ahead of Exxon, until that morning the highest-valued company in the world. The company Steve Jobs had co-created putting together computers, the one that Michael Dell had suggested shutting down 14 years earlier because it had no future, was now worth more than any other. The stock fell back by the end of the day, but it had made its mark; the transformation of Apple from financial basket case to ruler was complete. At the end of the day it was worth $346.7 billion; Microsoft was worth $214.3 billion and Google $185.1 billion.

Compared to the end of 1998 (Apple $5.54 billion, Microsoft $344.6 billion, Google $10 million), the aggregate wealth of the companies had more than doubled. Microsoft, though, had shrunk by 40%, after being outdistanced first in search, then in digital music and then in smartphones — in the latter category by both companies.

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The companies had changed enormously. Google was soon to celebrate its 13th birthday, having roared from a three-person garage start-up to web giant; it was struggling too with having nearly 29,000 staff worldwide. Larry Page, once more the chief executive, was forcing the divisions to justify themselves, getting divisional heads to explain their projects in soundbite-length memos. His greatest concern was that Google was getting too big and slow to act: “Large companies are their own worst enemy,” he said in September. “There are basically no companies that have good slow decisions. There are only companies that have good fast decisions.”

Where Apple hadn’t heard of Google 13 years before, now it had gone from having a common cause against Microsoft to being just a business acquaintance, and sometimes opponent; Apple and Microsoft bid together against Google for patents covering the mobile business. Apple was seeking to disintermediate Google from search with the cloud-based voice search of its upcoming iPhone. And they were constantly niggling each other in smartphones and tablets. Even so, by September 2011 the majority of mobile search still came from iPhones, according to Google testimony at the US Senate.

Apple had changed. From just under 10,000 full- and part-time staff in September 1998, it had grown to being 50,000 strong, though around 30,000 were in its retail store chain; the core of the company in Cupertino remained small and relatively tight-knit. The old enmity with Microsoft still flickered occasionally, but strategically they almost ignored each other. Apple’s position in PCs was set at 5% of the market. It had won in music. It didn’t do search. Its position in phones and tablets had pushed Microsoft to playing catch-up; yet the Redmond company could rely on the sheer heft of 1.5 billion PC installations to ensure a stream of replacements and of new sales for Office. Apple’s value, revenues and profits had all passed those of its old rival. Its reputation had been transformed from put-upon also-ran PC maker to world-spanning design brand. Tim Cook’s influence was visible in its inventory, whose value was equivalent to three days’ hardware sales.

Microsoft, by contrast, had gone from world-beater to catch-up. The staff at Microsoft (90,000 worldwide, compared to 27,000 in summer 1998) were a little battle-weary too. As Steve Ballmer, still the chief executive, spoke at the September 2011 all-hands company meeting in front of 20,000 employees, some simply got up and left, unhappy at the ‘cloud computing’ strategy, the stock’s lack of movement, and the lack of excitement at their employer. The version of Windows that would truly work on tablets was still a year away. Microsoft seemed mired in its fabulously profitable past – not a leader or innovator in search or on mobiles or tablets or anything. People began whispering that Steven Sinofsky, who had conquered internal politics and got the Windows team to grapple successfully with the future of tablets and chip architectures, might be chief executive material.

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Stock price surges briefly to $649 per share

Apple stock price surged over the $600 mark today, about a month after shooting past $500. For a time, the company’s total market capitalization was more than $600 billion.

The stock price rose to $644 in the morning, and then fell back to $629 by midday. Only one other company has reached the $600 billion value: Microsoft on Dec. 30, 1999, was valued at $619 billion. Today, its value is $260 billion, according to an Associated Press story.

It’s all the more noticeable because stocks on the main exchanges fell yet again in response to poor U.S. job numbers last week, and continued concerns over the European debt crisis.

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BACKGROUND: Apple to issue dividends, repurchase shares from $98B cash balance

SCUTTLEBUTT: iPhone 5 rumor rollup for the week ending April 6

Apple’s stock price has climbed 59% this year. A range of analysts have said the stock has been under-valued by the market, despite the company’s high revenues and huge profits created by the introduction of its iOS-based mobile products.

The question is how high will the stock price, and the company’s value, go? Last week, a stock analyst with Topeka Capital Markets, Brian White, attracted headlines by setting a target price of over $800 per share, and a goal of $1,001, which would bring Apple close to being a $1 trillion company. White argued that the start of iPhone sales on China’s biggest mobile carrier, China Mobile, and the launch of an Apple TV set, would expand Apple’s revenues and profits.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster also raised his price target for Apple’s stock, but not as high as White: Munster’s target lifted to $718 from $670, and others expect the price to at least top $700. Munster was quoted as saying his previous forecast underestimated Apple’s “expected growth rates for the smartphone and tablet markets.”

Some have speculated that the stock price surge was triggered by Apple’s recent announcement that it will use some of its nearly $100 billion in cash to pay a dividend and buy back some shares. But Dirk Schmidt, writing at the Asymco blog, cites data that show the price began ticking upward faster in late 2011, and then even faster starting in February 2012, well before the mid-March dividend news.

According to one account, today’s first intra-day trade over $600 came 22 trading days after the first $500 trade. That pace is faster than the 32 trading days needed to rise from $400 to $500.

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As third-gen tablet debut nears, Apple outsources offers for used iPads and iPad 2s

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Computerworld – With the retail debut of the new iPad just a day away, Apple has joined a slew of other companies eager to buy used iPads.

On Wednesday, Apple added iPad 2 trade-ins to its Reuse and Recycling program, which exchanges used hardware for Apple gift cards.

The move pits Apple against the likes of eBay’s Instant Sale buy-back service, and firms such as Gazelle and NextWorth that specialize in buying smartphones and tablets.

Reuse and Recycling is only available to U.S. customers. Apple outsources its electronics recycling and buy-back programs to PowerON, a Roseville, Calif. company.
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Full coverage: iPad

On Thursday, Apple offered $205 for a used 16GB Wi-Fi iPad 2.

The quote was competitive with other buy-back vendors.

Gazelle, for example, quoted $180 for the same iPad 2 in “good” condition, or $200 for a “flawless” tablet. (Gazelle has said that most incoming iPads meet the requirements for the latter label.)

Meanwhile, NextWorth offered $200 for a 16GB Wi-Fi iPad 2 in “good” shape, or $210.50 for one in “like new” condition.

eBay’s Instant Sale site, which generates quotes for used iPads and other electronic devices, also offered $200 for the iPad 2.

Some of the dealers’ prices have slipped since last week when Computerworld last covered tablet trade-in trends. On March 9, for example, NextWorth was offering $215 for a 16GB Wi-Fi iPad 2 in good condition, while eBay, then running a deal that expired Saturday, said it would pay $290 for the same device.

In return for a used iPad, Apple sends sellers an Apple gift card valid only for purchases made at an Apple retail store or orders placed through its online store.

Other buy-back vendors are more flexible: Gazelle will send sellers an Amazon gift card — it automatically adds another 5% of the quoted price — or a check, or deposits the money in the seller’s PayPal account.

NextWorth offers checks, a Target gift card or PayPal deposits. And it shouldn’t be a surprise that eBay only does transfers to PayPal, the electronic payment service it owns.

Trade-in volume continues to climb. Yesterday, Gazelle said it had seen an eight-fold increase in trade-ins since Apple unveiled the new iPad last week.

Although supplies are already tight — the current wait time between ordering and shipping is two to three weeks — Apple will sell the new tablet in its own retail stores starting at 8 a.m. Friday.

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Ten years ago Microsoft released its Tablet PC, with Bill Gate saying “within five years I predict it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America.” Things didn’t work out that way — the

Tablet PC died, and the iPad eventually took the world by storm. What went wrong?

Gates showed off a prototype of Microsoft’s Tablet PC at the COMDEX Fall 2001 computer show in Los Vegas. Manufacturers including Acer, Compaq, Fujitsu, and Toshiba said they would release Tablet PCs in the second half of 2002.

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Here’s how a Microsoft press release described the Tablet PC:

The size of a legal notepad and half the weight of most of today’s laptop PCs, the Tablet PC is a full-powered, full-featured PC that runs Windows XP and combines the power of desktop computing with the flexibility and portability of a pen and paper notepad.

It was touted to run Autodesk’s CAD software, versions of Microsoft Office, and Groove, collaboration software which Microsoft bought from Ray Ozzie, the creator of Lotus Notes. The press release also noted that in his presentation, Gates:

emphasized that because it runs Windows XP, the Tablet PC is a fully-fledged, secure Microsoft .NET client machine that natively supports the .NET Framework.

All that tells you all you need to know about why the Tablet PC died. Rather than envision what people would really want to do with a tablet and then design the hardware for that, Microsoft instead force-fit Windows XP onto it. Windows XP was a great desktop operating system, but it was bloated overkill for a tablet.

Microsoft also decided that people would want to do the exact same things with a Tablet PC as they would with a desktop or a laptop. Here’s what Gates said at the announcement:

“The Tablet takes cutting-edge PC technology and makes it available wherever you want it, which is why I’m already using a Tablet as my everyday computer. It’s a PC that is virtually without limits — and within five years I predict it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America.”

Because Microsoft envisioned it as a full-fledged PC and equipped it accordingly, it was expensive — typically $2,000 or more. Despite that price tag, it couldn’t really replace a desktop or laptop. It only found use in niche markets.

There were other problems as well. As TabTimes notes, the heavy use of a stylus was also a mistake.

Steve Jobs recognized that the tablet should be a consumer device and not a replacement for a desktop or laptop PC. He saw that it would require a different operating system, one designed for tablets, not traditional computers.

Will Microsoft learn from its mistakes when it releases tablets based on Windows 8? It’s not quite clear yet. The Windows 8 metro interface is well-suited for tablets, although the Windows 8 Desktop isn’t. If Windows 8 tablets are essentially hybrid tablet-PCs, it’s unlikely they’ll succeed.

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Of all of the companies, Apple has the most difficult path. This is because it recently lost the one person in the world who had the proper skills to run that company. This is because Steve Jobs redesigned Apple around his unique skill set. To continue at its current level, it can’t just be good — it has to be outstanding, and the firms that did this consistently last decade can be counted on one hand with four fingers left over.

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I ran into a new forward-looking video from Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) last week that showcases a number of Microsoft technologies as they might be used a decade from now. Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) produced a video a few years ago, equally compelling, showcasing a future based on its technology; unfortunately, it hasn’t been able to demonstrate a single design win yet that indicates it is on that path. This got me thinking of a Philips (NYSE: PHG) video (unfortunately I don’t have a link) in the 1990s that basically predicted the iPhone — a device it never actually made.

Over the years, it has often seemed like the companies in power have people inside who can accurately see the future but are often cursed by people running the business who can’t or won’t execute against that vision. They are able to see the future but in some terrible parody of the cursed Greek prophetess Cassandra, who could see but not change the future, they are unable to benefit from it.

I’ll look at four companies that are at various stages and consider their future chances: Microsoft appears to be in decline; Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) is in transition; Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) appears to be the next Microsoft — in a bad way; and Facebook is the current heir-apparent.

I’ll close with my product of the week: a notebook from Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) that looks like it was carved out of a block of aluminum and blends practicality with design elegance.
Microsoft on the Cusp

This is now Steve Ballmer’s Microsoft, and in many ways the firm bears little resemblance to the user-focused company that Paul Allen and Bill Gates launched in the 1980s. It is financially successful but clearly struggling in a market defined by Apple gadgets and user focus — which is somewhat ironic, given Microsoft’s initial success was largely because it was more user-focused than IBM (NYSE: IBM). The video I started out with accurately showcases a possible future for the company, but its historic problem is that it is too unfocused as a company, and the result is too many efforts that are massively under-resourced.

For instance, with Mango, the latest iteration of the Windows Phone platform, Microsoft has a product that is actually competitive and arguably better than Android — yet it is still losing market share, largely because it is massively underfunding it. It is spending billions on Bing, but the lack of progress there indicates it is under-resourced as well.

The test is not how much you spend, but whether you are making progress — and this new Microsoft focuses too much on containing costs and not enough on funding at levels that ensure success. That, to a large extent, is why it fails.

Channeling Yoda for a moment, it tries but it needs to do — and the end result continues to fall short of expectations. If Microsoft could accurately assess the cost of success, it would likely choose different battles to fight rather than underfunding the battles it is fighting. Seems like a simple thing, but if it made this one change, it would be far better for it.
Google: Death by Envy and Advertising

In 2007, this video foretold a future in which Google wins. It predicts that Google buys Microsoft in 2015 and pretty much takes over the world by 2050. Is really is rather interesting to watch. I do think it accurately showcases Google’s potential, but I don’t think Google is on this path either.

As was revealed in Steve Jobs’ biography, Jobs himself, effectively speaking from the grave, argued that Google was becoming Microsoft — too unfocused and too willing to toss crap out to the market. In short, Google needed to focus and grow up.

Children tend to obsess over showing up their elders. Mature adults focus on goals tied to success — well we should, anyway. Steve Jobs accurately described Google’s childlike excessive focus on Microsoft as its biggest problem and the reason that it has become a poor parody of that company.

Recently it even got its own version of the old Microsoft consent decree (which ironically mirrored IBM’s decades before). As I was writing, this info graphic was released showcasing that Android, Google’s premier operating system, pretty much screws the people who use it.

This brings up a second clear problem for Google, and that is quality. By separating the revenue from the product (it funds everything indirectly through advertising), it does what any product company knows is death: It makes its developers a cost center. Cost centers are naturally starved for funding and generally underperform as a result. So, for Google to reach its potential, it needs to stop focusing on showing Microsoft up, find a way to adequately resource its efforts, and focus instead on what it wants to be when it grows up — or it will fail, as Netscape did, for being the perennial child.

I also doubt Google wants to be remembered as the company that stole from Steve Jobs while being mentored and while Jobs was dying of cancer.
Facebook: Nibbled to Death

Facebook is clearly its own company. It doesn’t seem to be focusing excessively on any predecessor, and it is shifting its revenue sources from pure advertising into things more closely connected to products, like gaming. Interestingly, the video that showcases Facebook is being created, and it is being crowdsourced. This approach also showcases both the promise and problem for Facebook in the future. The video isn’t done, and the teaser is a collection of disjointed views from observers on the company’s future — kind of the video equivalent of a group of monkeys trying to type Shakespeare.

Because Facebook’s long-term success is most tied to how people interact, the core skills needed are more closely tied to skills like ethnography than they are to the engineering skills that typically define companies like this and currently define Facebook. In fact, coverage of Mark Zuckerberg (the CEO and vision behind Facebook) suggests that he is about as far from a people expert as we are likely to get in this business.

Already we are seeing services like Tagged, a social service designed to create deeper relationships, and Nextdoor, a Facebook-like secure offering focused on neighborhoods nibbling around Facebook’s edges. Services like this showcase Facebook’s core weakness — the very real problem that humans currently can’t scale to the relationship numbers that Facebook provides, and general services like Facebook have trouble focusing on the needs of small demographics or distinct geographies.

In short, Facebook’s future will likely be dependent on its ability to develop and apply leading expertise on human behavior and remain good enough for the majority of people looking for a social service. If it doesn’t, it isn’t Google it has to worry about — it is being nibbled to death by a ton of better-focused competing services, as barriers to entry remain very low in this segment.
Wrapping Up: Apple – The Next RIM or Reborn Again?

Of all of the companies, Apple has the most difficult path. This is because it recently lost the one person in the world who had the proper skills to run that company. This is because Steve Jobs redesigned Apple around his unique skill set. To continue at its current level, it can’t just be good — it has to be outstanding, and the firms that did this consistently last decade can be counted on one hand with four fingers left over.

Atari, Commodore, Netscape, Palm, Motorola and now Research in Motion (RIM) have all demonstrated that today’s champion can easily be tomorrow’s bozo. It doesn’t feel like Apple’s board or executive team has yet fully grasped that Apple can’t be sustained as it is without Jobs. It will have to change or find someone who can actually replace him.

Right now, this video showcases Apple’s future, and it desperately needs to change this outlook to something far more positive. In 1996, commenting on Apple, Steve Jobs appears in this video to have provided direction. But in the end, the company will have to maintain product passion at the top to continue to dominate — and right now, that is broken at Apple. Interestingly, this video by Corning may represent the best future for Apple, particularly if the new Apple TV rumor is true.

In the end, each of these companies must find in itself the vision, the focus, and the willingness to take the needed risks to define the future. Each could, but odds are that none of them will. Something to think about this week.
Product of the Week: Dell XPS 14z

Product of the Week

The XPS line has always been one of my favorites, and for most of this year, I carried the 17-inch older version of this product. The XPS 14z, initially released in China, represents the current state of the art in Windows 7 notebook computers. Pretty to look at and elegant in use, this laptop computer, at 14 inches, hits the proper balance between portability and usability in terms of size.

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Dell XPS 14z
Dell XPS 14z
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Twelve inches is far more portable, but the screen and keyboard tradeoffs make them hard to use for heavy writers. Seventeen inches is an amazing desktop replacement, but portable it isn’t, and the weight and inability to use it in many planes — even in business class — makes it problematic.

While the 13.3-inch screen size is typically the better form factor, the unique LG Shuriken display this laptop uses is a 14-inch panel in a 13.3-inch mount, giving you the benefits of more screen size in a smaller laptop.

Dell went to a great deal of trouble to make sure this laptop balanced properly and unlike other premium laptops in its class (read MacBook Pros) it won’t try to iron your legs and dissipates heat properly.

With the passing of Steve Jobs, Dell is the only large PC company still run by its founder, and the XPS line is that company’s premier line. As a result, this is the product that is likely most closely designed for its founder.

Balance is important in any product, and whether you are buying from Apple or Dell, paying a little more for something you’ll depend upon is always worth the price — at least, it is to me. Since the XPS 14z is the quintessential Dell product and the most balanced Windows 7 consumer notebook I’ve yet seen, it is my product of the week.

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commentary Apple’s silence on a problem that appears to be affecting a number of iPhone 4S users is bringing back memories of last year’s “antennagate,” something that could give hope to those expecting a fix.

As noted last week, users have flocked to Apple’s support site to complain about lower than advertised battery life on the new phone, which went on sale in mid-October.

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On paper, the new phone beats out its predecessor by one hour of 3G talk time, yet falls 100 hours shorter when it comes to standby–the time a phone will continue to run when not being used for phone calls or other functions. But affected users say Apple’s numbers are far too generous, with fully charged devices running out of juice during the course of a workday, even with minimal use.

Despite what’s now a 170-page support forum thread (among several others like it 1, 2, 3), and a number of media stories on the matter, Apple has refrained from weighing in to users or to press.

Why is that? Look no further than what happened when users took aim at the iPhone 4′s antenna design last year. Owners posted videos holding the phone tightly, showing that it would eventually lose some reception, something that was criticized as being a hardware flaw. Apple did not weigh in on the matter for three weeks, deciding instead to hold a press conference to address what had been dubbed “antennagate” with a sea of data to show that other phones had similar issues.

Is it too soon to classify Apple’s lack of reaction this time around to what happened last year around the iPhone 4 antenna? Not necessarily.

First off, this is affecting some users with the iPhone 4 as well as those with Apple’s newer iPhone 4S. In those cases it can be assumed that the culprit is iOS 5, a major software release Apple put out just ahead of the iPhone 4S hitting shelves that adds on a number of new features to the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 hardware.

So does that mean the software is half-baked? The run up to its release would suggest otherwise. Apple spent a considerable amount of time in near-public testing before delivering it to users (seven beta versions for developers, in fact), all inside a four-month span. That said, it’s not without some bugs.

Looking at the iPhone 4S specifically, it’s easy to wonder if it’s the hardware that’s slurping the battery life away. New to the 4S is a dual-core processor, a first for an iPhone, though not a first for an Apple device, with the iPad 2 jumping to Apple’s A5 processor earlier this year. A teardown by iFixit shortly after the iPhone 4S’ release showed it to be the very same processor that’s in the iPad 2, though running at a lower speed to save energy.

Does that really hold up as something to point a finger at though? During Apple’s iPhone 4S unveiling, Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, suggested otherwise, saying the company had not only matched the battery life of the previous model but beaten it in some cases. “You would think if you put a processor that powerful inside a super thin phone, one of the things you’re going to trade off is battery life. But the hardware and software teams have worked really hard to get industry leading battery life as well,” he said.

Then again, if a report in the The Guardian last week is to believed, Apple engineers have been contacting some unhappy iPhone 4S users who had weighed in on the growing support thread about the issue, all in order to collect relevant phone usage logs. In a follow-up over the weekend, the outlet then suggested that the problem had to do with turning off an automatic time zone setting that was pinging for location data non-stop. Yet users who read CNET’s own coverage of that fix, and a number of users on Apple’s forums said that didn’t help.

What’s next?
Looking back at what Apple did to handle both the iPhone 4 antenna issue in 2010, as well as the location collection log that researchers highlighted earlier this year, one thing becomes clear: if it’s going to be addressed, there’s going to be data crunching on Apple’s end to either back it up or debunk it. As late Apple co-founder, then chief executive officer Steve Jobs said at the antenna press conference last year (emphasis mine):

“We heard about this not long after we started shipping just 22 days ago from today. It’s not like Apple’s had its head in the sand for 3 months on this guys, it’s been 22 days. Apple is an engineering-driven company. We’ve got some of the finest scientists and engineers here in the world in the areas were need to create our products. And the way we work is we want to find out what the real problem is before we start to come up with solutions. So we’ve been working our butts off for the last 22 days to understand what the real issues are here, so that we can come up with real solutions.”

That sentiment was echoed again in April this year, when all eyes turned on Apple to explain what it was doing with a collection of unencrypted location data that was being stored on iOS devices. In an interview with All Things D, Jobs said:

“We’re an engineering-driven company. When people accuse us of things, the first thing we want to do is find out the truth. That took a certain amount of time to track all of these things down. And the accusations were coming day by day. By the time we had figured this all out, it took a few days. Then writing it up and trying to make it intelligible when this is a very high-tech topic took a few days. And here we are less than a week later.”

In both cases Apple issued a software update to address the issue at hand shortly after acknowledging it publicly. Looking back on the release of the iPhone 4, it took Apple less than a month to release the first iOS software update for that device, which arrived as a patch of sorts to change the way the phone displayed carrier signal strength. For the location database it was two weeks for a fix that would remove the data store outright every time a user turned location services off.

So that brings us back to now. Will we get a similar software update for any battery issues? History would suggest that’s the case if it affects a big enough group of users. In those two aforementioned cases it was everyone with an Apple device, which does not seem to be the case with this latest issue. Could there still be a problem though? A 170-page thread on the matter, and reports of Apple contacting users about it for more data suggests so. Just don’t expect a press conference about it if there’s a fix in store.

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Apple says phones such as the HTC Amaze infringe on its patents. HTC has countersued with its own claims of patent violation by Apple.

Apple didn’t infringe on four of HTC’s patents, according to an initial ruling by the U.S. International Trade Commission’s administrative law judge.

The administrative law judge ruling, which is essentially a recommendation to the ITC’s judges, found “no violation” by Apple, Reuters reported. A final ruling by the ITC is expected in February.

The ruling is just one component of an increasingly complex set of complaints and lawsuits between Apple and HTC filed in multiple courts and employing several different patents. The four HTC patents in this case, for instance, don’t include an amended complaint that uses patents HTC acquired from Google. As a result, even a full rejection of these patents from HTC wouldn’t spell an end to the litigation.

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“This is only one step of many in these legal proceedings.,” HTC General Counsel Grace Lei said in a statement e-mailed to CNET today. “We are confident we have a strong case for the ITC appeals process and are fully prepared to protect our intellectual property.”

Apple wasn’t immediately available for comment.

HTC’s complaint was a response to Apple’s own volley of lawsuits alleging the Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer had violated several technologies already used in the iPhone. HTC filed the complaint last year in the ITC, seeking a ban on the importation of iPhones, iPods, and iPad tablets. The initial complaint, however, used a weak set of patents, according to some legal experts.

“I didn’t take it seriously from the day it was filed,” said Florian Mueller, a legal consultant on patents. “Even if they were successfully enforced, I doubt they would pose a serious threat to Apple.”

Apple has gone on the offensive against the various Android manufacturers, hitting even longtime partners such as Samsung Electronics with lawsuits and bans in an effort to halt the growing momentum of Google’s mobile platform. While the iPhone remains the top-selling smartphone–with the iPhone 4S selling 4 million units over this past weekend–the widespread nature of Android has fueled Google’s market share gains.

Technology companies have increasingly used the ITC to settle their differences over the past few years. The process is quicker than a traditional district court, and holds the threat of a ban on the importation of devices or products. No ban has even been enforced on a technology company in the U.S.; the companies have always settled beforehand.

HTC was the first company hit with a lawsuit by Apple. The company is seen as the Android supporter with the weakest patent position, requiring recent assistance from Google. The company also acquired S3 Graphics, which owns patents that Apple may have violated.

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You may not be looking to buy a separate netbook just for attaining the top notch security for your OS, but what you can always do is Install Chrome OS on your exisiting Macbook Air.

Previously,  we had shown you how you can install chrome OS on notebook, desktop PC using bootable USB and install Chrome OS on Virtualbox, vmware, this is the step further in that direction bringing full hadware support to MBA with nightly builds of Chromium OS.

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Warning: This method does a clean install, you would lose all your data, make backups before proceeding.

How to Install Chrome OS on Macbook Air [Chromium OS]

Step 1: Download Chromium OS from hexxeh’s site here and extract it.

Step 2: Using dd, burn the download image of Chromium on a USB (check this guide)

Step 3: Plugin the USB and boot your Macbook Air along with OS X install drive.

Step 4: Hold the “C” key on your keyboard and simultaneously press the power button, moment you see the apple logo, you can now leave the “C” key.

Step 5: You would now enter wizard that guides you through installation. When done with language selection, you would enter the wizard.

Step 6. Click “Utilities” from top menu and select Terminal.

Step 7: Type the commands:

dd if=/dev/rdisk1 of=/dev/rdisk0 bs=4m count=512

Step 8: When done, hold down the power button till it powers off.

Step 9: Unplug the USB drives and now power on your Air. Wait for few seconds and you’re done.

What’s broken:

* Boot times are not as good as REal chromebooks (22 seconds vs 8s)
* Bluetooth doesn’t work (Coming soon)

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Threat from Mac ‘backdoor’ just isn’t credible enough to mention, says Intego

Computerworld – A Mac security firm today criticized Microsoft for warning Mac users of new malware, saying that the threat simply wasn’t worth mentioning.

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Late Monday, the Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC), the group that researches malware and crafts signatures for the company’s antivirus products, alerted users of a new Mac “backdoor,” a program that, once installed, downloads additional attack code or lets hackers steal files from the compromised computer.

In a blog post, Microsoft malware engineer Meths Ferrer said that MMPC had found the backdoor, dubbed “Backdoor:MacOS X/Olyx.A,” in an archived file that also contained a Windows backdoor called “Wolyx.A.”

According to Ferrer, Olyx.A disguises itself as a Google application support file when run by the user, then establishes a remote connection to an IP address hosted in Seoul, South Korea.

But Intego, a French antivirus company that focuses exclusively on the Mac, took exception to Ferrer’s blog post.

“They’re making it out like this is something serious, but it’s not in the wild at all and not being installed,” said Peter James, a spokesman for Intego. “This is no big deal.”

A backdoor must either be manually installed by a user — perhaps after being tricked into running the file — or packaged with other malware that exploits a vulnerability or uses social engineering tricks to get the victim to run the program, said James.

There’s no evidence that Olyx is in wide circulation or being used by other malware, such as Mac-specific “scareware,” the phony antivirus software that fools people into installing it after faking security alerts.

“It could so stuff if it was in the wild, but it’s not,” argued James.

It’s rare to see one antivirus firm bash another for issuing a warning or alerting customers to a possible threat. But that didn’t stop Intego, which saw Ferrer’s blog as counterproductive.

“We get criticized every time we issue a security alert,” said James, adding that people accuse it of crying wolf about threats to the Mac, which has historically been relatively immune to attacks because of its small market share.

Cyber criminals with profit in mind are much more likely to target Windows simply because Microsoft’s operating system powers nearly 90% of the world’s personal computers.

“When something is a real threat, we’ll say something,” said James. “If it’s not, we don’t publicize [the malware] by issuing an alert. We’ve got other things to do.”

Intego created an Olyx definition for its VirusBarrier product on June 30.

“It’s kind of interesting that Microsoft took a month [to mention Olyx] after it started circulating,” James said, taking another swipe at the Redmond, Wash developer. “Maybe this is a sign that they’re going to be analyzing more Mac malware in the future.”

Other security companies have also made mention of Olyx, including Kaspersky Lab, which highlighted the backdoor in a malware report for June 2011.

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For these companies, employee volunteerism means improved collaboration and productivity on the job

Computerworld – You might think Steve Kranson, who works at Comerica Bank in Auburn Hills, Mich., is your average IT manager. But he’s also been known to log hours dressed up like the Easter Bunny, to the delight of local kids.

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Amy Crow, who spends most of her working hours as an IT project manager at Texas Health Resources, has been spotted stepping away from her computer to work on gardening and landscaping projects at nursing homes, organize donated linens and other household items for local disaster relief agencies and sing holiday songs at elementary schools in the neighborhood.

And Paychex Inc. employees Dan Canzano, vice president of IT operations and support, and Tammy Hall, director of enterprise service management, have spent some of their worktime polishing their poker-playing skills and raking in some big bucks for charity.

In all three cases, these IT professionals performed these activities with the blessing of their employers, who often allow workers to take paid time off to donate their skills, talents and time to charities and other nonprofit organizations.
I just interviewed two people under 30. They both asked about personal days for volunteering. Younger folks are asking about community involvement.
Marcia Riley, vice president of talent management and human resources, ESI International

Employers also benefit from these arrangements. In fact, they are increasingly more than happy to subsidize employees’ volunteer efforts outside the workplace, because they’ve noticed an undeniable link between employee volunteerism and improved collaboration and productivity on the job.

“Outside volunteer activities afford workers an opportunity to view their co-workers through a different lens,” says David Ballai, CIO at Reed Technology in Horsham, Pa.

“You see them assisting in the community and interacting in a different environment. When they come back to work, they have a more holistic view of their peers and can appreciate how they view the world,” he says. “It’s great for team-building.”

Moreover, volunteerism can enhance a company’s image in the communities where its employees and customers live. And offering time off — either paid for unpaid — for charity work can also help organizations attract younger, more community-minded and tech-savvy employees, experts say.

“I just interviewed two people under 30. They both asked about personal days for volunteering. Younger folks are asking about community involvement,” says Marcia Riley, vice president of talent management and human resources at ESI International, an Arlington, Va.-based training and consulting firm. “I was not asked that question 20 years ago. Younger folks are demanding this benefit, and good employers are responding.”

Anecdotal evidence indicates that an increasing number of companies are offering paid time off to employees who want to volunteer, either on company-sponsored initiatives or at a charity or agency of their own choosing. Comerica, for example, has donated more than 100,000 hours of its employees’ time in the past two years, which translates to more than $2 million worth of volunteer activities in the communities it serves.

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Apple goes all in on multi-touch gestures in its new OS

Computerworld – Apple has finally unleashed OS X 10.7 Lion, the revamped operating system for the company’s desktops and laptops. Lion is the latest in a string of major OS revisions released over the past 11 years, and this newest cat borrows some tricks from Apple’s mobile lineup.

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Once Lion has been downloaded, you’ll be presented with a license agreement, a disk selection screen so you can tell the installer where Lion should be installed, and the standard OS X authentication password request. Type in the user password for your account, and OS X moves into autopilot mode. It copies some files and configures itself, and restarts your computer; the installer does the rest.

Once the installation is finished, your computer boots again and you’re ready to use Lion. The whole process should take 30 to 40 minutes or so after you’ve downloaded the OS and begun the actual installation.

Although Apple touts some 250 new features in Lion, many are minor tweaks to things already in Snow Leopard. But there are some important changes that you’ll notice pretty quickly. That’s what I’m focusing on here.
The Finder

At first glance, Lion looks a lot like its predecessor. But it feels subtly different as you start navigating around. Seasoned Mac users will note that the sidebar icons in Finder windows are decidedly grayer, perhaps to further separate the shortcuts they represent from the actual, live file system icons.

More significant is the way hard drive contents are organized. In the Finder window sidebar, you’ll see a new shortcut called “All My Files.” When selected, it displays every file in a Finder window, arranged by type in lists that can be scrolled horizontally. It’s a neat tweak, especially if you’re not very organized and always hunting for bits of your digital life. Since I know where my files are, it’s not a feature I’ll need. But I can see the usefulness of quick access to every document, photo, song, PDF and what-have-you in a single Finder window.

Also in the Finder sidebar is another new shortcut, called AirDrop. It’s designed to make wireless sharing of files between computers easy to do. Until now, if you wanted to do that, you had to open a Finder window, click on the Mac name in the sidebar, and then choose “Connect As…” so you could log in to the other computer to move files around. (Both Macs had to be on the same network, and both had to have file sharing enabled.)
All My Files shortcut
A new Finder window shortcut, “All My Files,” shows all of your files in one place. Files can be sorted by different criteria. (See full visual tour.)

In Lion, that cumbersome process is no more. By clicking on the AirDrop icon, a radar-screen view is displayed, with your account picture front and center. When another user clicks on AirDrop on their own Mac, their account picture shows up in your AirDrop screen — and yours in theirs — so the two of you can securely transfer files using simple drag-and-drop.

When you drag a file to the AirDrop window to begin a transfer, a chat dialog appears over the recipient’s picture — it looks like a comic book speech bubble — so they can authorize the file transfer. After a couple of clicks, the file is moved securely over a TSL-encrypted, firewalled peer-to-peer connection. It all happens automatically. And you don’t have to be on a Wi-Fi network; AirDrop can find other Lion users within about 30 feet of you, using the built-in Wi-Fi hardware in each computer. Sharing files has never been easier and this feature should be a boon in collaborative workplaces where people share files a lot. (Be forewarned, AirDrop doesn’t work on older hardware, even if it will run Lion; I couldn’t use it on a 2006 MacBook. More information from Apple is available here.)
AirDrop
AirDrop allows you to wirelessly share files with other Lion users nearby. All you do is drag and drop the file to the other person’s icon in the AirDrop window; that user has to OK the transfer. (See full visual tour.)

Other welcome changes in the Finder:

* A new Arrange button at the top of Finder windows allows you to easily sort items by criteria such as name, date modified, size, kind, etc.
* It’s now possible to resize any window by grabbing any edge or corner (a feature Windows has had for years).
* Scrolling is reversed to better align with the “direct manipulation of content” theme started on the iPhone and expanded upon in the iPad. More about that in a minute.

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If Apple is to be believed, when it comes to the iPad, Microsoft has more to worry about than not fielding a strong tablet competitor. Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook claims that the iPad is stealing sales from Windows PCs.

Apple reported its earning for the fiscal third quarter today, and the iPad was a big contributor to profit and revenue. The company sold 9.25 million iPads in the quarter, which was an increase of 183% over the third quarter last year.

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Cook said the iPad cannibalized some Mac sales, but the effect on PC sales was more serious. According to a live Forbes blog of the earnings call, here’s what he had to say:

“First as I said before I think there was some cannibalization of new Macs by iPads…it’s clear that some customers chose to purchase an iPad instead of a new Mac, but what really excites us is more customers chose to buy an iPad than a Windows PC.”

Cook didn’t provide any numbers to back that up, but he’s likely right. Few people would buy an iPad rather than a primary Windows PC, but plenty would consider buying an iPad instead of a secondary PC, such as an inexpensive laptop or a netbook.

That’s all the more reason that Microsoft needs to get a tablet competitor on the market, and fast. Microsoft has decided that Windows 8 will be its primary tablet operating system, but by the time that ships, Android tablets and the iPad will likely have the market sewn up. Microsoft would do well to consider allowing tablets to be based on Windows Phone 7. That way, they’ll get out the door faster.

That’s not likely to happen. And so the iPad, and Android tablets, will continue to eat into Windows’ market share.

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iPads and other ‘consumer’ tablets are becoming standard tools in the battlefield — and may migrate to other high-stress work

Accelerating “consumer” technology adoption in “hardened” environments
The consumerization of IT affects the military just as much as it does other businesses. Certainly, PCs made the transition into the military, but iPad adoption — a year after its release, it’s a key part of ongoing warfare systems — is remarkably fast. And there’s no reason other tablets couldn’t be used in the way the iPad is, Delay notes; it had a year’s head start on its competitors, so companies like Harris took advantage of its existence. In fact, the U.S. Army is looking to adapt Android smartphones for soldiers’ use.

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One reason I believe the iPad found itself so quickly in tatical battlefield use is that Apple intentionally designed the tablet to work in a wide range of environments, short-circuiting the usual slower transition of consumer-grade technology into “hardened” environments like hospitals, police cars, factory floors, and battlefields. And the FAA recently certified iPads for use in airliner cockpits to replace paper manuals. Although Apple’s public face is about the consumer, its army of engineers and designers have visited most large companies to get feedback on the iPad’s design (hardware and software), and Apple has a unit dedicated to aiding government — including military — use of its products in Virginia.

Uncle Sam is looking at using app stores — maybe businesses should, too
Beyond the iPad, the military is looking at another Apple-inspired trend that many businesses are hoping won’t happen: the app store. Delay says that all branches of the armed services are looking at how to deploy app stores for use by their civilian and military personnel for iPads, Androids, and more.

My suspicion: The military sees a benefit to having a central, network-accessible location for application distribution to people anywhere there’s an Internet connection. Perhaps businesses should start thinking about this benefit as well and reassess the model of the centralized system image.

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Seeing as the Apple iPad is a ‘tablet,’ do it some justice and put it to use as a true writing surface with these five great note-taking apps.

As any efficient, organized, and focused person knows, finding the right note-taking app is crucial to getting the most out of your iPad. It is a “tablet” after all. Our favorite iPad note-taking apps are the ones that make use of Apple’s spacious screen to let you write, draw, or scribble with nothing more than a finger or stylus. We put five of the best iPad note-taking to the test to help you sort out which one offers what you need.

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Note-taking apps are a dime a dozen, but they don’t all support the same features or offer equal functionality. Some let you sketch and draw directly, while others force you to stick to typing. Most let you record and save voice memos, photos, and Web clips, but not all of them let you draw on top of images to further annotate them. The best note-taking apps focus on not only making notes, but on finding and sorting them later as well.

The price range for note-taking apps on the iPad is huge, and the most expensive ones are not necessarily the best. We’ve found a free app that works just fine. And two iPad note-taking apps that we selected as our Editors’ Choices both cost less than $5. On the higher end, one $10 app that we tested is more of a project management app than a straight note-taking tool, although what project manager doesn’t need to reference her meeting notes, comments, and reminders, too?

For more note-taking app recommendations, see our round up of Note-Taking Apps for the iPhone.

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Yahoo said it only had to make one minor adjustment to its website for traffic optimization as a result of World IPv6 Day.

“Yahoo is very excited about how smoothly World IPv6 Day went for everybody. It’s a great testament to the preparation that went into this event,” said Jason Fesler, an IPv6 architect at Yahoo. “The early data says there is minimal risk to pushing forward.”

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BACKGROUND: World IPv6 Day: Tech industry’s most-watched event since Y2K

Akamai and Limelight also said they were stepping up their efforts toward full, commercial-grade support of IPv6 due to the success of World IPv6 Day.

“We’re going to look at the data for IPv6 usage and use that to improve our services,” said Andy Champagne, director of engineering at Akamai, which had 30 customers participate in World IPv6 Day using its beta IPv6 service. “Then we are going to work with our customers to roll out IPv6.”

Tom Coffeen, director of global network architecture for Limelight, said it had IPv6-enabled every server on its network for World IPv6 Day and that it had encountered only minor issues that involved some routing policy changes.

“We were surprised and pleased to see no bugs. The few issues we did encounter were quickly resolved,” Coffeen said. “We had many customers choosing to stay IPv6-enabled going forward. We’re ready to move to an opt-out model for our customers, where they have to request no IPv6 availability.”

Despite these successes, World IPv6 Day participants conceded that IPv6 still has a long way to go before it approaches the ubiquity of IPv4.

Colitti said Google estimates that only 0.3% of its users have adopted IPv6. He said it was too early to determine how many of its users suffered from broken IPv6 connections; estimates prior to World IPv6 Day put IPv6 brokenness at 0.03% to 0.05% of Internet users.

Similarly, Lee said that Facebook estimates that about 0.2% of its users were able to reach the website via IPv6.

“Once the world gets to about 1% adoption [of IPv6], then this will be for real,” Lee said. “That’s the initial mass that you need to have for global adoption.”

MORE: What if IPv6 simply fails to catch on?

Content providers are migrating to IPv6 because the Internet is running out of addresses using IPv4. The free pool of unassigned IPv4 addresses expired in February, and in April the Asia Pacific region ran out of all but a few IPv4 addresses being held in reserve for startups. The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), which doles out IP addresses to network operators in North America, says it will deplete its supply of IPv4 addresses this fall.

IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses and can support 4.3 billion devices connected directly to the Internet, but IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses and can connect up a virtually unlimited number of devices: 2 to the 128th power. IPv6 offers the promise of faster, less-costly Internet services than the alternative, which is to extend the life of IPv4 using network address translation (NAT) devices.

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