Microsoft Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Daily Update for May 9, 2012

by Steven Sande (May 9th, 2012)

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player ...

Office for Mac 14.2.2 rollup patch now available (Updated)

by Steven Sande (May 9th, 2012)

Update: A reader tells us "After installing the updates from Microsoft, each of the programs wanted me to re-enter a product key as though I never entered one many months ago." He confirmed this as an issue according to a Microsoft support call, although we don't know how many people it might ...

Daily Update for May 8, 2012

by Steven Sande (May 8th, 2012)

Microsoft wants Mac SkyDrive users

by Kelly Hodgkins (May 8th, 2012)

The competition between Microsoft and Apple is moving gradually from the desktop to the cloud. As noted by The Next Web, a recent marketing push by Microsoft tries to woo Mac users away from iCloud and into Microsoft's cloud-based SkyDrive service. The webpage and video highlights the ...

Apple, Microsoft asked to explain pricing to Australian government

by Mike Schramm (Apr 30th, 2012)

Apple and Microsoft are among a few tech companies going before the Australian Parliament this week, asked to explain what many are seeing as price gouging in the Australian market. Here in the US, for example, Apple's Mac OS X Server 10.6 sells for $499, but in Australia, the same software ...

Potter Voice Technologies sues Apple, Google over voice patent

by Steven Sande (Apr 26th, 2012)

The latest in a string of patent lawsuits has just been announced: a relatively unknown Colorado company named Potter Voice Technologies claims that all major smartphone vendors, including Apple, are infringing on a patent on natural-language voice control of a computer. Apple's in good company ...

Microsoft Office for Mac Service Pack 2 now live

by Mel Martin (Apr 12th, 2012)

If you are using Office for Mac 2011 listen up, because Microsoft has an update for you, taking the suite of tools to version 14.2. Microsoft says the update provides the "latest fixes to Office for Mac 2011. Additionally, this update contains stability and reliability improvements." More ...

OnLive Desktop changes from Windows 7 to Windows Server 2008

by Kelly Hodgkins (Apr 10th, 2012)

When OnLive launched its virtual desktop service for the iPad, it was rapidly rebuked by Microsoft over licensing issues with the Windows 7-based service. The company has switched from Windows 7 to Windows Server 2008 R2 and is now in compliance, says a report in Ars Technica and a post from ...

EU launches antitrust probes against Motorola after complaints from Apple, Microsoft

by Kelly Hodgkins (Apr 3rd, 2012)

Apple and Microsoft filed separate complaints with the EU that accuse Motorola of using its essential, standards-based patents as weapons to curb competitor's products and advance their own, says a report in The New York Times. Under EU law, companies with patents essential to an industry ...

Amazon data center guru questions logic of Apple's solar farm

by Kelly Hodgkins (Mar 23rd, 2012)

James Hamilton is a former datacenter architect for Microsoft and the current datacenter guy for Amazon. In a recent blog post, he examines solar-powered data centers which he says are "really somewhere between a bad idea and pure marketing, where the environmental impact is purely optical." As ...

Microsoft on iPad and Mac ban: No comment

by Steven Sande (Mar 21st, 2012)

Quite a few Apple sites were running a story this morning noting that Microsoft's Sales, Marketing and Services Group (AKA SMSG) had allegedly sent out a memo forbidding employees from spending company funds to purchase iPads and Macs. The memo, supposedly from SMSG CFO Alain Crozier, was sent ...

Microsoft confronts OnLive over Windows desktop-on-iPad licensing

by Steven Sande (Mar 8th, 2012)

In January we had a first look at Onlive Desktop. The free iPad app provides a connection to a hosted desktop Windows environment, complete with Windows 7 and Microsoft Office. Well, according to a ZDNet post today, Microsoft believes that OnLive is in violation of licensing terms. Microsoft's VP ...

Apple Stores and Microsoft Stores by the numbers

by Steven Sande (Mar 2nd, 2012)

TUAW readers know from a series of posts we've run over the years that Microsoft has been opening self-branded stores throughout the U.S., usually just a stone's throw away from well-trafficked Apple Stores. Fortune's JP Mangalindan took a metaphorical bullet for the sake of a story and visited ...

Microsoft joins Apple in FRAND patent fight with Motorola Mobility

by Steven Sande (Feb 22nd, 2012)

Legal battles can sometimes make strange bedfellows. Microsoft announced today that they've filed an antitrust suit against Motorola Mobility in the European Union charging that the company (which is being purchased by Google) is abusing the standard-essential patents that it owns. Apple also ...

US Dept. of Justice approves Apple's purchases of Nortel, Novell patents

by Steven Sande (Feb 14th, 2012)

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division closed its investigations into three major acquisitions that were pending, opening the door to completion of these acquisitions by the companies involved. For Apple, the acquisition of patents from Nortel Networks Corporation and Novell ...