Windows 7 Will Never Hit the Ultrathin Notebook Sweetspot

Windows 7 Ultrathin notebooks not hitting the sweet spot, according to Mary-Jo Foley.

But of course. And nothing is going to hit the ultrathin notebook sweetspot, or the netbook sweetspot, until Apple comes out with there iPhone-based tablet that'll knock everybody's socks off. Which will happen, soon enough.

PC World says the Apple Tablet is real. Now, we'll finally get an actual netbook market. Sorta like we got an MP3 market when Apple released the iPod, and finally got a touch-screen Internet phone market when Apple released the iPhone.

That's the stone-cold truth. Later, my friends.

The Mophie Juice Pack Makes Your iPhone Drinkable

No, not really. The Mophie Juice Pack provides longer battery life for your iPhone. Which is handy, if you can't be bothered to remember to plug the thing in on a regular basis.

And somebody says you can win a Mophie Juice Pack or something. Cool.



In other Macintosh related news, here are 10 OS X Pranks that'll get you fired. Or at least physically assaulted.

In other news, this cartoon is just stupid.

Seriously, the fact that Google is launching some amorphous effort at creating a desktop operating system--maybe--is the equivalent of kicking Microsoft in the sensitive parts? No, no really. In fact, it's nothing like it. There is already Red Hat and Ubuntu and Mac OS X, and Microsoft has survived that all well. Just because Google is--well, Google--doesn't mean that simply announcing they are going to do some sort of operating system means they'll displace Microsoft in the enterprise, or on home PCs, and that's 99% of Microsoft's market. Might catch on in developing nations. Whenever they get regionalization done. And so on.

Sigh.

I Miss My TRS-80 Color Computer

I miss my first real computer. I miss reading my thick, bound Rainbow Magazines. Or Hot CoCo Magazine.

If I ever get too nostalgic, thanks to modern technology, I can go work on a Color Computer right now, by going to the JavaCoco Emulator, a TRS-80 Color Computer emulator that runs in Java. I can program it in Microsoft BASIC (the great-great-grandpappy of Microsoft's Visual Studio 6.0), just like I used to in the old days, and it works the same way. There were a number of editing functions that were related to the editing BASIC programs using the CTRL key, and they all seem to work with the Java Applet. Pretty cool. No way to really open or save programs, but there are plenty of real software emulators and CoCo ROMs out on the internets.

If you happen to go there (to the Java Applet), you'll happen to notice the "UNDER LICENSE FROM MICROSOFT" that happens to accompany the emulator. I looked at the screen almost every day for years, and if I had--during that time--invested, say, $500 in Microsoft, I wouldn't be worried about money right now. Because that Microsoft stock would be worth a million bucks, or nearly, depending on exactly when the investment happened. Which wouldn't be too shabby.

And, doomsayer predictions to the contrary, and Microsoft's stagnant stock price to the contrary, Microsoft ain't going anywhere. Could global business run without Microsoft Software. Critics aside, Windows Vista is not only a much better product that it is given credit for being, but it's selling well, and Microsoft is raking in the money. Also, it might be nice to point out that Microsoft's market cap is about 250 billion, which is about 100 billion higher than Google or Apple's, to name two.

Microsoft's Window Server products dominate the server landscape, and will continue to for the forseeable future. Microsoft SQL is becoming the dominant commercial SQL database, as Oracle treads water. Microsoft Office dominates the productivity software landscape, and does anybody think that Star Office is going to displace Microsoft Office software any time in the near future? No? I didn't think so.

Certain markets are weaker for Microsoft, sure. Windows Mobile is big in the mobile device market, but competing against the Apple iPhone and RIM's Crackberry--I mean, Blackberry and Google's upcoming Android platform, Microsoft isn't going to be to mobile what Microsoft has become to the enterprise. But that's okay. Sure, Microsoft has the Zune, but they also have the X-Box. Apple may be making inroads, but Microsoft still owns the enterprise. And Microsoft owns most of the global desktop and laptop operating system market. So, when it's all said and done, I still wish I have invested a few pennies in Microsoft, back in the day.