A tweet from one of Microsoft’s Twitter accounts says, “[g]reat respect for The Daily but regrettably someone is giving them bad info, and that’ll be clear in the ‘coming weeks.’” So now we have The Daily saying it’s coming, Microsoft saying they have been misinformed and that the software in the image is not theirs, so I guess that’s that, right?

Well, not so fast. Shortly thereafter Mary Jo Foley, of the All About Microsoft Blog, received a tweet from Peter Ha (the one who posted the Office for iPad article on The Daily) saying that not only is the image not fabricated, but someone from Microsoft demoed Office for the iPad to him. Plus, according to a further tweet by Peter Ha, Microsoft isn’t going to be very happy with their next follow up, whatever that means.

You can read the article Bad day at the Office on The Daily for more information.

Source: The Daily

The Daily had a short hands-on with the app, and it appears to support Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, along with a Metro-style like layout of the application. These supported documents can be edited both locally and online (SkyDrive and SharePoint, presumably). The app has, once again — reportedly, just been finished and not yet submitted to the iTunes App Store, but should soon and then it is just a matter of waiting for the app to be approved.

Currently Microsoft has a OneNote app available for both the iPhone and iPad, but The Daily’s sources claim that there is an upcoming update to the app which would give it a more Metro feel to it, like the ones shown off for Windows on ARM (WOA). There is also the possibility that the OneNote app could be merged with this Office suite app, though the image from The Daily only shows Word, Excel and PowerPoint icons.

There is no word on how much this app would cost, if at all, and Microsoft is not working on an Android version of Office.

According to Ian Hamilton, a program manager of the Windows International Team, it is currently quite confusing when it comes to installing language packs on Windows — some are offered through Windows Update and others through the Microsoft Download Center. Not only that, but most versions of Windows only have a single language option — when you install Windows, sometimes there is the chance to choose which language to use, but as soon as the install is done, the other languages are removed.

With Windows 8, Microsoft is introducing a new language preferences section within the Control Panel where users can find, install, and then use many different languages. Right now Windows 7 supports 95 languages, but Windows 8 will add support for 14 more, bringing the total to 109.

The new section of the Control Panel will allow users to add new display languages, which is an integrated experience — so you don’t leave the Control Panel, remove them, and then set a different language as their primary one. When a new primary display language  is selected, the user must log out and then back in for the changes to take effect.

It is not clear as to whether this feature will be available to all users of Windows 8 regardless of version, but it does sound like it: “ we’ve changed how we think about languages from a ‘local-market feature’ to a ‘feature for everyone everywhere,’ and have made it a priority for you to be able to work in any language you want, from any Windows 8 PC.” But since Microsoft has been hush-hush over the SKUs for Windows 8, an answer may be unlikely at this point.

Also, the premise of the blog post was about having a family which speaks two different languages (such as parents speaking Spanish and their children speaking English, in the United States, for example), each different user would then want to use the operating system in a different display language, but there was no mention as to whether this new option was system wide or user specific.

Not only will there be a Metro-style app available with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview (which is expected to be released in a week or so), but there will also be a replacement for the current Windows Live Mesh application for the desktop. This new application will be “very simple” and “highly efficient, according to the blog post, as the installer will be less than 5MB and install under 10 seconds. But more on that later.

As of today, SkyDrive (there is no mention of “Windows Live” in this blog post) has over 17 million active users, storing more than 10PB of data. Microsoft is expecting to have that figure grow beyond some of the largest services that provide similar features, which is a pretty big undertaking. However Mike Torres and Omar Shahine, group program managers for SkyDrive, point out that Microsoft has a lot of experience with handling such large amounts of data as Hotmail stores over 100PB of data. It now appears that it is Microsoft’s goal “to be the world’s hard drive.”

SkyDrive goes Metro

There isn’t much more to say here that I haven’t said already, but according to the post this Metro-style SkyDrive app is built using WinRT with JavaScript, CSS and HTML5, and because of this the app actually uses many of the JSON APIs currently provided by SkyDrive.com. As both the app and SkyDrive.com get updated, soon both will appear as the same thing — however that will occur, we’re not sure.

As stated, any other Metro-style app that take advantage of the charms and contracts within the WinRT API, SkyDrive will be available as a file picker. This means users will be able to open and save files to their SkyDrive with virtually any app, and the app will not have to explicitly support such functionality.

So Long, Windows Live Mesh!

Currently in order to sync files from your desktop to your SkyDrive the computer must be running Windows Live Mesh, which is provided by Windows Live Essentials. While users must still install an application to access SkyDrive on their desktop, it will be a much simpler process, and it will be much more powerful.

When this application is installed, the user will be allowed to choose which folder will be the SkyDrive folder (which will default to %UserProfile%\SkyDrive\), and the folder from there on out will be synced to SkyDrive, and any updates will be automatically synced to the computer.

This may not sound much different, but the current syncing application is completely separate from Windows Explorer, and there are no indications that the folder is out-of-date or that it is even being synced, but this new application will be integrated into Windows Explorer. Windows Explorer will show overlay icons on the files and folders within the synced SkyDrive folder and show when items are up-to-date or being synced.

Finally, many users of Windows Live Mesh complain that they do not get access to the full 25GB of space provided by the SkyDrive service, and also the lack of uploading huge files. This will also change, as the entire 25GB of space will be available when syncing files, and files of up to 2GB may be synced.

Did I mention that this application will be available not only on Windows 8, but also Windows 7 and Vista? Sorry XP users, you’re out of luck!

SkyDrive.com

Soon users of SkyDrive will be able to access any file on their computer through SkyDrive.com — even if the files are not synced from the computer. The users will be able to browse their files remotely, even download them, or stream videos and browse photo albums. There will also be the ability to copy an item to the SkyDrive synced folder, allowing you to have complete access to items the user may have forgotten to sync.

As Mike and Omar point out, this can be dangerous, after all, the user is then allowing anyone with their account password complete access to the files on their computer (though I would argue one should have a password no one else knows, and a good password at that), but don’t worry — they thought of that too. If the computer you are using to access the remote files is not already a Trusted PC, then the user must enter a security code they receive on their mobile phone or an alternate email address.

More to Come

The blog post finishes off by saying that Microsoft will continue to increase the number of platforms that SkyDrive is available on, including Windows Phone “and others.” These features will become available “over the next several months,” so users will just have to sit tight.

In this post they also hinted at the ability to increase the amount of storage space available, and if the rumors from The Verge are correct, Microsoft will allow the purchasing of 20, 50 and 100GB of extra space for $10, $25 or $50 a year, respectively. These amounts will also include the 25GB of free space already provided. If these prices are correct, then Dropbox will have some serious competition, as their offer for 100GB of space comes in at $19.99 a month, or roughly $240 a year.

Windows 8

I said that we wouldn’t know much about Windows 8 until the summer time of last year, but I was wrong on that count. It wasn’t until BUILD in September that Sinofsky got on stage and gave a very detailed presentation of Windows 8. Even now, there are a lot of questions to be answered about Windows 8 — such as its launch date, or even a time frame for the launch.

I also said that there would be a beta release, that would only be available for desktops. Microsoft released a Developer Preview, with the Windows 8 Beta release coming sometime early this year — so I was wrong there. I guess I was somewhat right, as the ARM version of Windows 8 was not available and that version is primarily targeted at tablets, but then again the x86/x64 version is just as capable of running on tablets as well (so long as Intel gets their act together).

No surprise: Windows 8 did not RTM this year, as some predicted.

My final prediction was the further compartmentalization of the Windows operating system, and that the tablet version would remove the GUI and legacy support. This is indeed the case for the ARM version (it is still unclear as to whether the desktop would be disabled on x86/x64 versions if they were put on tablets), but that’s because the applications would have to be modified in order to run on the ARM architecture. Microsoft has said they have absolutely no plans to allow older applications to run on ARM, so in a way, they are removing legacy support.

 Windows Phone 7

“Microsoft will continue to not get it,” that’s what I said last year in regards to Windows Phone 7. By that I meant Microsoft would not update the phone as quickly as they should in order to catch up with the competition.

In a way, they certainly didn’t get it… It wasn’t until late September that Windows Phone “Mango” was finally released, which was an entire year after the original product launch. Also, it took a couple of months before any phones designed for “Mango” came out, which is awfully slow — but some did appear to be Windows Phone-specific phones, not Android phones running Windows Phone 7.

Sales also remained dismal, and they will until Microsoft gets their act together (and rumors about Microsoft and Nokia’s plans seem to address the current sales issues), so I was definitely right that “Microsoft will continue to not get it.” But that’s not surprising, as it takes Microsoft awhile to get it.

Bing

Bing did pretty well this year (not financially), growing from 11.8% market share to 15%, and with Yahoo! included the duo went from 28.2% market share up to 30.1%. The growth of the two doesn’t seem so great, which is due to Yahoo losing a couple percentage points in their market share. I predicted that by now Bing alone would be at an 18% market share, but that didn’t turn out to be the case.

I also said that HTML5 Bing would have been out 6 months ago, with that cool video background and instant search along with other updates. That never happened (the video background has happened, though), but a few people (including me) did start to see the new Bing, which then disappeared not long after.

Steve Ballmer

Steve Ballmer remained at Microsoft, also not a surprise. A few months ago approval ratings of Microsoft executives were taken, and Steve Ballmer received a 92% approval rating. That doesn’t seem too bad, except for the fact that the previous year that number was at 95% (Bill Gates has a 99.1% approval rating).

PC Sales

We kept hearing news article after news article last year of the forecast of PC sales being “slashed,” it was the hot topic of the year, after all. But in reality, PC sales did not stop, and they did not stagnate — as some seemed to think was happening or was going to happen. Sure, the growth was only around 3% year-over-year, but when you sell some 350 million+ computers every single year, 3% of that number is 10.5 million.

iPhone

I was completely wrong in every regard here. The iPhone 5 didn’t come out, it was the iPhone 4S (but it didn’t have LTE, as I predicted), and it came out on multiple carriers in the U.S. as well.

Chromebooks

Google hasn’t given any details on Chromebook sales, but according to ZDNet they sold horribly (in the range of only tens of thousands, if that). But who would want to buy a $500 machine that can only surf the web and be valuable if connected to the Internet? Apparently very few.

So there you have it, a review of my predictions from last year. I didn’t miss all my predictions, but then again none of them were very extreme… Maybe I will make some more extreme predictions next time .

Windows 8 hasn’t even passed the public beta stage yet, but InformationWeek reports that 52% of the survey responders report that their organization already has definite plans to deploy the new operating system.

While all of those organizations don’t plan on doing it immediately, 10% said they would use Windows 8 on an as needed basis (putting Windows 8 on new computers when older ones are replaced), 24% said that eventually 100% of their organization would be using the new operating system, and 34% said at least three-fourths of their computers and laptops within the organization would be running Windows 8.

Why do so many organizations already have these plans in place? It’s mainly because Windows XP’s support will end in 2014, with 36% of the respondents giving that as the cause for these plans.

For some reason InformationWeek says this is “bad news” for Microsoft because companies already running Windows 7 have little plans to go through another lengthy and expensive upgrade process so soon.

That makes little sense, seeing as over half of the organizations already have definite plans to adopt the new operating system. Did they not read the results of their own survey?

You can read the entire survey at InformationWeek: Windows 8 Upgrade Plans: Exclusive Research.

Each of these release channels has something to offer, the stable channel offering stability and reliability (of course), while the beta channel offers new features for the upcoming release. There may be some bugs and stability issues, but it will certainly be more stable than the aurora channel.

But after you’ve had your fun with the beta or aurora channel and wish to go back to back to the stable release or go from stable to a beta channel, how do you change it?

Previously you could change your channel by selecting the desired release channel in the About box, but Mozilla removed that ability recently for reasons I cannot find.

Change Your Firefox Release Channel

Alright, enough gibber-jabber, let’s get to it.

If you wish to change your release channel, all you need to do is download the proper release and install it, which will take you through an upgrade process instead of a full-on installation.

Change to Firefox stable – Download the stable release at www.getfirefox.com.

Change to Firefox beta – Download the beta release at http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html.

Change to Firefox aurora – Download the aurora release at http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all-aurora.html.

So there may no longer be a way to change your release channel within Firefox, it is still pretty easy to do without that capability.

Originally people had to create their own interface to the Kinect device, but it wasn’t long before Microsoft announced and then released their very own non-commercial SDK (software development kit) for the Kinect. Not long after, Microsoft “saw even more exciting and creative applications in the areas of healthcare, rehab, education and so much more,” says Frank Shaw, corporate vice president of corporate communications at Microsoft.

“Kinect Effect” stories began pouring in with personal accounts and YouTube videos from around the world showing how Kinect was helping transform and improve the way people work, create, and perform daily activities. We saw Kinect being used by therapists and physicians as part of a rehabilitation program for stroke victims, as a skill-building technique for children with autism, and as an application for hospitals in Spain enabling surgeons to scroll through medical images in the operating room with gestures so they could avoid the need to rescrub. Incredible stuff.

Microsoft created a video to demonstrate some of these possibilities, which is pretty amazing:

In just two months the Kinect sold over 8 million units, which set the Guinness World Record for the fastest-selling consumer electronics device in history — dethroning the iPad.

While the games available at launch were not all that exciting, slowly developers have been adopting the Kinect into their games, whether it be for full body control (such as dancing games) or doing things such as modifying a gun used within the game. Microsoft has also been working on integrating the Kinect into the Xbox 360 itself, with voice control and other gestures to navigate the consoles interface.

Announcing a commercial Kinect SDK

The first SDK Microsoft released to the public was only allowed for non-commercial use, so there was no way for companies to use the SDK to harness the device and then sell their software to go along with the Kinect. But that’s going to change, according to Shaw.

“To further fuel innovation and imagination, we will offer a Kinect for Windows commercial program early next year,” says Shaw. Shaw says Microsoft recognizes the interest coming from commercial companies to use the Kinect and it’s endless possibilities in the world.

Currently they are launching a pilot program for this SDK, and there have been more than 200 submitted applications from “top companies” in more than 20 countries around the world spanning over 25 industries.

Shaw did not mention any sort of release schedule for this commercial SDK, however.

Late last year Microsoft announced that Bing would be included as a search engine option in Firefox, allowing Firefox users to easily choose Bing as their default search engine. This also meant that Mozilla received money for each search a user made using Bing, just as they do with Google and other search engines.

Currently Mozilla receives most of their funding from their Google partnership, but that deal is set to expire at the end of this year. That deal started in 2008, and since then Google has entered the browser market themselves with Google Chrome.

It is now up in the air as to whether Google will renew their search deal with Mozilla, which could prove disastrous for Mozilla.

Introducing Firefox with Bing

Then comes the latest announcement made earlier this week, which introduced Firefox with Bing.

What’s so special about this version of Firefox? Not much, other than Bing being the default search engine right out of the box instead of the current Google.

There has been no word as to whether Microsoft is paying more money to Mozilla for this special version of Firefox or not, and it is unlikely we will ever know for sure. But I would think it is safe to assume that some sort of exchange occurred.

It now appears that Microsoft and Mozilla are becoming closer partners, especially as the expiration of their Google search deal nears.

Mozilla has always been an open-source foundation, and many view Google as open-source friendly, so the Mozilla and Google deal seemed like a match made in heaven. But then comes Microsoft, a company which makes billions from proprietary software, who seems to be getting rather close to this open-source foundation.

This has, unsurprisingly, caused upset to some people. After all, Mozilla’s goal is to bring openness and standards to the web, something that Microsoft destroyed with Internet Explorer, namely Internet Explorer 6. While Internet Explorer 6 was actually a decent browser when it came out — which may be surprising to some — it didn’t continue innovating. Rather Microsoft had declared they won the war of the browsers, running Netscape into the ground. Microsoft disbanded the Internet Explorer team, and that was that. It wasn’t until 5 years later that Microsoft would release Internet Explorer 7 in October 2006, but I digress.

But what is the problem if Microsoft sends Mozilla a bit of cash their way? So long as Microsoft does not interfere with the development of the browser, what is there to be upset about? Microsoft has their own browser to worry about anyways.

But this just goes to show that people who take issue with Microsoft partnering with Mozilla are living in the past. Yes, there is no doubt that Microsoft abused their dominance in the browser market and even the desktop market, but that is all in the past. Since then Microsoft has dealt with by the U.S. government and was watched very closely. In fact, it wasn’t until very recently that the U.S. government stopped watching Microsoft.

On top of that Microsoft has been very aggressive at progressing their browser, Internet Explorer 9 showing that. Internet Explorer may still have a little ways to go standards wise, they showed no sign of stopping. Not long after Internet Explorer RTW’d (released-to-web), there was already an Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview ready to go.

Let’s also not forget that Microsoft is a pretty big contributor to the Linux 3.0 kernel, submitting more than 361 changes. That’s quite a bit when you look at the fact that independent developers submitted 1,085 changes, Red Hat 1,000 and Intel 839 changes.

Ignorance Is Bliss — So They Say

So let’s get to what I originally wrote this article for: to show the ignorance surrounding this simple announcement.

Just take a look at some of the comments in this CNET article: Firefox and Bing–together at last?

Time to move to Chrome, just to pass the message. Today it’s just a tick to change default search engine, tomorrow you’ll need to be a rocket scientist to change it just like with IE.

– Permalink

This comment doesn’t need much of a rebuttal, but why not?

Let’s take a look at how hard it is to change the default search engine in Internet Explorer 9, shall we?

Pretty simple, and I am no rocket scientist. All you do is select the search engine as you type, there is even a link to click to find and add other search providers as well.

How about Google Chrome? Oh, that’s right: in order to change your default search engine you must go into Wrench > Options > Default search engine.

While this also isn’t complicated, it isn’t presented as upfront as Internet Explorer does it, so to say you need a “rocket scientist” to change the default search provider in Internet Explorer is beyond exaggeration.

For Mozilla to go the Bing direction, there’s something else going on behind the scene.

– Permalink

Pretty closed-minded, don’t you think? What do you think had to happen for Mozilla to choose Google as the default search engine for Firefox? Money.

The same thing happened here, Microsoft (we assume) gave Mozilla money to make this special edition of Firefox. Not only that, but the main version of Firefox still uses Google as the default search engine, it requires the user know about and navigate to this special website to download Firefox with Bing.

So there was just as much “something else going on behind the scene” to get Mozilla to have gone in Google’s direction.

I [am] sick of having Bing shoved down my throat.

It just plain sucks and even my Blackberry makes next to impossible to use Google with it being a pain in the butt.

Bing my butt–it should be called Thud!

– Permalink

So apparently no one can be sick of having Google shoved down their throat? Google has been the de facto of search engines for so long that “Googling” has become a verb. In reality Google is “shoved” down our throats on a daily basis, but how many people do you hear saying, “Bing it”?

That’s what I thought.

There was a comment that now appears to have been deleted from CNET, which claimed Bing simply copies Google, even going as so far as to claim Bing copied the Google Image search result layout. Funny, since Bing looked like that since it launched when Google Images had a simple table layout for such results.

Then there is one other nice comment I found on InfoWorld I thought I would add:

There goes my last contribution to the Mozilla foundation.  Who ever decided to take MSFT’s Bing bling was and apparently still is unaware of how deeply the Open Source community distrusts MSFT.

– Permalink

It is quite clear that this person, as I previously mentioned, is living in the past and completely ignoring the contributions Microsoft has made to open source projects and how Microsoft has gotten much better about being open as a whole than it was in the past.

I hope this little article has shown how ignorant some people still are against just about anything involving Microsoft, even if it isn’t a big deal. You can download this special edition of Firefox and change the default search engine back to Google if you wanted to, its not as if it is hard-coded into the software — its simply a default.

Oh, and let’s not ignore that there are about 20 other customized versions of Firefox available, according to Mozilla, including Twitter, Yahoo! and Yandex.

Quite a few have said that these patent “wars” have shown how broken the United States patent system has become, but Horacio Gutierrez — deputy general counsel of Microsoft’s intellectual property group — says that these arguments completely ignore history, according to SFGate.

When Gutierrez was interviewed by The Chronicle, he said there have been many other patent wars following disruptive technologies. These included such things as the telegraph, and occurred to sort out which technology was built on top of previous inventions. “The smart phone, a veritable Swiss Army knife of digital tools, is no exception, ” says James Temple.

It’s an ugly process, but it’s normal and necessary, he said. Without patent protections, companies don’t have the incentive to spend years and millions developing new products. And without licensing agreements and the occasional lawsuit, their competitors wouldn’t respect the investments and inventions protected by those patents.

[...]

Google has said Microsoft is trying to “extort” profit from companies after failing to gain a substantial share of the smart-phone market itself.

Gutiérrez, who has been outspoken on patent issues in blog posts and press interviews, strongly disagrees. In our interview, he argued that Google is simply “standing on the shoulders” of companies like Microsoft and that licensing agreements are the healthy solution to these patent conflicts.

Gutierrez goes on to say that we are in a in a disruptive time, because, “[i]f you think of a mobile phone or a tablet computer today, they’re not your father’s or your grandfather’s cell phone.” According to Gutierrez licensing is not a nefarious as some try to make it out to be, and pretty much any device a consumer purchases is part of a web of licensing and cross-licensing deals to make the device possible — but consumers never see or hear about.

It’s just that it takes time during these disruptive periods for owners of technology to be established, and until they are established there will be plenty more lawsuits down the road.

“Standing on the[ir] Shoulders”

But what is it that Microsoft believes Google’s Android is infringing on? Gutierrez was asked this question and answered, “[f]or example, the ability to synchronize the content that you have in your phone with the information in the server of your company or in your computer at home.” This may sound like a pretty broad and far-reaching patent, but more on that later.

Other areas Microsoft believes Android is infringing on their patents lies deep with in the operating system, which are features that make the phone more efficient.

Microsoft has invested for decades into making operating systems more efficient, according to Horacio Gutierrez, and because of this phones have moved from being powered by basic operating systems into what we see now — smart phones.

This is why Microsoft believes Google’s Android is “standing on the[ir] shoulders,” because Google never invested into areas such as these like Microsoft has, and Google simply took that work without any licensing deal.

What Gutierrez Has to Say About These Patents

Let’s get back to that synchronizing data from a server or computer at home — which seems really broad and quite obvious.

Gutierrez says, “anyone can take a particular feature, particularly someone not versed on patent law and technology topics, and then belittle the significance of an invention.” The reason for this is because the patent is usually discussed at a very high level, but they do not discuss the entire implementation that makes the feature possible.

He also says that one should keep in mind that it isn’t the outcome that is patented, but the implementation. “Those patents (cover) individual features [web page loading progress, syncing, etc.] that have been created in a particularly inventive way by Microsoft,” and have since been granted patents by the USPTO. Microsoft believes such patents to be “solid,” but are currently waiting to be tested in court.