My iPhone and my iPad are almost always running the latest version of iOS. When the App Store icon lights up with app updates, I click it like a Pavlovian parlor trick. Sometimes to regret, but not always… My wife on the other hand? Her iPhone is running iOS 5 – she’s terrified of the new maps app. Her App Store icon read “48” last night when I went in to try and unwind the me.com/Mac.com/iCloud.com bedlam she has accidentally…
Looking through my old email – it was apparently 13 years ago this week that I first exchanged email with Bill Hill. We had been working on making all of our content on Slate into a neutral format so we could output it into multiple types of content (Word, Word two-column, text-to-speech) – and when I first read Bill Hill’s writing on reading, he captured my imagination about it – when few around him really believed that eBooks could happen,…
For two days last week, I was at the annual Chicago installment of our Microsoft Licensing Boot Camp. I’ve been to several of our camps to help present a couple of the topics. I’ve also noticed something unusual (and somewhat frightening) occurring. What I’ve seen is the growth of – or at least growth of the interest of – Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). In VDI, the desktop operating system that a user interacts with is virtualized (and often remotely located)…
I’ve had a few people ask me why I started counting the number of apps. Why should I care? Do I have some sort of vendetta against Microsoft or something? No. I don’t. The Windows Store count is what it is. I’m not here to say it’ll trounce iOS. I’m not here to say it’ll be a failure. That doesn’t matter, and little I can or do say will change how Windows 8 does with consumers and corporate customers. My goal…
This morning I awoke to the news that Marissa Mayer, the new CEO of Yahoo, was awarding Yahoo employees with a free smartphone, and, from what I can derive, some coverage for service plans as well. On the heels of Microsoft’s news last week leaked during their company meeting of free personal/work Windows Phone 8 devices, Windows RT devices, and accelerated replacement of work systems with Windows 8-capable PCs, this is interesting news to consider. Perhaps some may call this…
No. This isn’t going to be one of those posts. It’s not going to be derisive about Apple at all. So if you came here for a good old fashioned “Steve Jobs wouldn’t have done that” beating, you might want to just click back or close this tab. Even at the age of 39, I still enjoy visiting Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Why? Because, if you let your mind go, and your imagination wander, they’re amazing places. For a…
When you get a piece of spam, there are a couple of key components to it. There’s a subject line – intended to make the reader excited to “make money fast” or “make cheap international phone calls”. There’s an assortment of flattering text, sometimes pictures, and other components to the message, designed to both delude and confuse the reader into thinking this is a legitimate offer. Finally, there’s a call to action. A hook. In most spam, this is a…
Recently, I’ve seen a lot of excitement around Windows to Go, a new feature available in Windows 8. Windows to Go (WTG) enables Windows 8 (Enterprise) to boot from a USB Flash Drive (UFD). Fundamentally, WTG includes three technical features: Windows support for USB boot (including USB 3.0) Support for installing and running Windows from a removable USB hard drive (yes, this is a different line item than 1) Support for handling “surprise removal” of Windows without hanging or crashing….
The other day, a friend on Twitter noted the difficulty he was having in sharing a mobile URL. You know the type – http://mobile.foo.com/. For many years, people have ranted about the lack of utility of the “www” prefix on Websites – yet here we are, with a generation of sites getting obnoxious “mobile” prefixes instead. Hit a mobile site from your iPad – even when you’re not mobile, share it with a friend, and they’re not guaranteed to see…
If you have been following the development of Windows 8 – in particular as Windows RT – the variant of Windows destined for ARM-based processors, there’s a good chance you heard the collective weeping earlier this year about Windows RT, and what it meant to the manageability (or unmanageability, as the case may be) of Windows RT devices. The fact that Windows RT devices cannot be joined to a Windows Active Directory domain may at first glance seem like a…