Of course it's not "JUST" the land.

But that's what's at the core. Cheaper real estate leads to cheaper rents, & cheaper housing. And with those costs being cheaper, guess what else is cheaper? WAGES.

As for that "exodus", Fine with me. Occasionally, an illegal immigration law is enforced... Every so often. When that actually does happen, the offending perpetrators go elsewhere. Must to the detriment of our Arizona brethren, and eventually Texas too. Have fun with that.

The answer is simple:

Because the land in Texas is not as valuable, and could be accrued cheaply. Real Estate is California is much more valuable & so it would be much more expensive to acquire the raw acreage.

Hope that was explained simple enough for you to understand.


"Why did Samsung choose to build a $9 billion, 2400-employee plant in Texas and not California? "

Former San Francisco Mayor: Protesters Should ‘Occupy’ Apple
Written By Zach Epstein Published December 19, 2011

Protesters who are part of the Occupy Movement in San Francisco are misplacing their efforts, according to former city mayor Willie Brown.

In a column published over the weekend in the San Francisco Chronicle, Brown wrote that protesters who had assembled in Oakland were disrupting the work of the 99% rather than taking a stand against the 1%. Instead of hampering operations at the docks in Oakland, the former mayor suggested they head to Silicon Valley and target Apple, which exports jobs to the Far East and then has “the nerve” to seek federal tax breaks.

“If the Occupy people really want to make a point about the 1 percent, then lay off Oakland and go for the real money down in Silicon Valley,” Brown wrote in his column. “The folks who work on the docks in Oakland or drive the trucks in and out of the port are all part of the 99 percent. They take our goods from all over the state and export them. The only thing those cats down at Apple are exporting are our jobs. Then they have the nerve to ask for tax breaks, and Washington obliges.”

Members of the Occupy Movement in San Francisco recently held a protest at docks along Oakland’s coast, where they succeeded in shutting down overnight operations of the businesses that utilize the Port of Oakland. Port spokesman Issac Kos-Read confirmed that the protestors ”disrupted workers trying to get to work and impaired the port’s ability to operate,” and several arrests were made. Kos-Read said the protesters cost many laborers their wages. ”What has this accomplished?” he asked while speaking to reporters. “This is disrupting the 99%.”

Former mayor Brown shares Kos-Read’s opinion. ”If Occupy wants to make a real statement, it ought to pick on a real target,” Brown suggested in his column. “But then, it might prove a bit embarrassing. From what I’ve seen, half those Occu-cats have iPhones and iPads.”

Read more: www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2011/12/19/former-san-francisco-mayor-protesters-should-occupy-apple/#ixzz1h0qRPSfn

Jurors deadlock in $1B lawsuit against Microsoft

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A federal jury on Friday failed to reach a verdict in a Utah company's $1 billion antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. in a case so important to the computer giant that it put Bill Gates on the stand for two days last month.

Novell Inc. sued the software giant in 2004, claiming Microsoft duped it into developing the once-popular WordPerfect writing program for Windows 95 only to pull the plug so Microsoft could gain market share with its own product.

Novell says it was later forced to sell WordPerfect for a $1.2 billion loss.

The trial began two months ago with jurors getting the case on Wednesday. After much confusion, and some perplexing questions from the panel, they told U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz they were deadlocked by early Friday evening.

He repeatedly asked them if they could keep trying.

"This has been a very long and expensive case," Motz told the panel.

Novell attorneys pleaded with Motz to give the panel just one more day. In the end, however, the 12 jurors told the judge they were "hopelessly" deadlocked, and they later told lawyers a single holdout refused to vote in Novell's favor.

"He had strongly held views about the technical evidence and refused to budge," Novell attorney Jeffrey Johnson said. Jurors offered no comment after the trial.

Novell was left with little to show for a decade of effort, but the company said it will seek to retry the case with a new jury.

"Although it's a technically complicated case, we're hoping to convince another jury that our claims have merit," Novell's corporate counsel Jim Lundberg said.

Microsoft said it would file a motion asking the judge to dismiss Novell's complaint for good and avoid a second trial.

"We remain confident that Novell's claims don't have any merit and look forward to the next steps in the process," said Steven Aeschbacher, Microsoft's associate general counsel.

Novell waited until 10 years after Microsoft left WordPerfect behind to file the lawsuit. The company said it was waiting for the U.S. government's antitrust enforcement against Microsoft to wrap up. At first Novell's case was dismissed, but it was later reinstated on appeal.

Microsoft lawyers have argued that Novell's loss of market share was its own doing because the company didn't develop a compatible WordPerfect program until long after the rollout of Windows 95. WordPerfect once had nearly 50 percent of the market for word processing, but its share quickly plummeted to less than 10 percent as Microsoft's own Office programs took hold.

Gates testified last month that he had no idea his decision to drop a tool for outside developers would sidetrack Novell. Gates said he was acting to protect Windows 95 and future versions from crashing.

He said that the company's preferred Word software was superior to WordPerfect, which was a "bulky, slow, buggy product" that did not integrate well with Windows 95.

Novell could have worked around the problem but failed to react quickly, he said.

Novell has argued that Gates ordered Microsoft engineers to reject WordPerfect as a Windows 95 word processing application because he feared it was too good.

Novell's lawsuit is the last major private antitrust case to follow the settlement of a federal antitrust enforcement action against Microsoft more than eight years ago.

Novell is now a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group, the result of a merger that was completed earlier this year.
--------

Novell's product simply sucked by comparison. Microsoft's Office suite stands head & shoulders far above the competition. The better product simply won out. I actually once used both. I started with Letter Perfect, moved up to Word Perfect, & then moved on to Microsoft's Word & the Office suite. Microsoft's product blew WordPerfect away. Novell's problems were it's slow to adapt R&D department. That is NOT Microsoft's fault.

WIRED:With TVs,Microsoft Is Right and Apple Is Wrong

By Tim Carmody

“The problem with innovation in the television market is the go-to-market strategy,” Steve Jobs told Hillcrest Labs’ Dan Simpkins at D8 in 2010. “It’s not a problem of technology; it’s not a problem of vision; it’s a fundamental go-to-market problem.”

I don’t think Jobs was trying to throw Apple-watchers off the track with a coy answer. I don’t think we’ve taken this problem seriously enough when it comes to the future of television and living-room entertainment. And I don’t think either Apple’s current set-top box approach or the endlessly renewable speculations about a fully integrated big-screen Apple television set solve this problem.

The best approach we’ve seen to this problem, and the best approach we’re likely to see for some time, has been Microsoft’s efforts with Xbox 360. I want to explain why I think Microsoft is beating and will continue to beat Apple in this space. Then I want to outline what Apple would need to do differently in order to beat back Microsoft, Sony, Google and all other contenders if it wants to conquer the living room.

Xbox Is Winning Because of Content, Not Kinect

For me, a light bulb went off when I saw Microsoft’s Black Friday sales numbers for Xbox 360 and Kinect. In the U.S., Microsoft sold 960,000 Xbox consoles and 750,000 Kinect sensors, including both standalone units and bundled with Xboxes.

It was Xbox’s biggest week ever; mighty impressive for a six-year-old game console likely to be displaced by a next-generation model in a year or so. But the total numbers are less interesting to me than the spread between them. It means there are at least 200,000 people, and quite possibly hundreds of thousands more, who are buying brand-new Xbox consoles without Kinect.

As ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley writes, “who is buying all these Xboxes?” Are they gamers disaffected with the PS3 and Wii? Xbox superfans who want a second unit for the bedroom or basement? Media center shoppers who see the Xbox as an upgrade over the Apple TV or Roku boxes? Or Black Friday crazies who don’t know any better?

The mix doubtlessly includes all of these. But it suggests to me that Xbox’s growing popularity has less to do with Kinect than we might think. The emerging market isn’t being driven by the attraction of new user interfaces. It’s extremely price-sensitive, and it’s fundamentally driven by the availability of content. And that includes content of all kinds, from movies to gaming.

Xbox is selling more units because the available content has gotten drastically better. On Twitter, Joystiq’s Chris Grant writes that “six years after the launch of Xbox 360, we’re seeing games really push the thing: Gears [of War] 3, Rage, Crysis 2. They all look incredible.” And now, software updates bring live and on-demand TV content from both cable programmers like HBO and cable companies like Comcast and Verizon, plus a slew of other features that integrate all this content.

The Fundamental Mistake of Apple-Watchers (and Almost Everybody Else)

The major mistake made by most gadget reporters and future of technology speculators is drawing too close an analogy between smartphones and smart televisions. We’ve assumed that the next generation of televisions would have a silver-bullet user interface, as gesture-enabled touchscreens were for smartphones. And every time a new user interface comes along, whether it’s Microsoft’s Kinect or Apple’s Siri, we argue that it’s the future of television.

As a consequence, we’ve misunderstood television’s user interface problem. It’s not really about too many cables and too many remotes, as annoying as that can be. It’s really about having the right kind of user interface for the task at hand.

That means pluralism, not minimalism. It means that remote controls and game controllers, with all their ugly buttons, aren’t going away, because they’re actually quite good at what they do.

Instead, they’ll be connected to and complemented by specialized interface devices like cameras, microphones, and touchscreen smartphones and tablets. These will take over some functions, introduce new ones, or even duplicate functionality.

It’s not one ring to rule them all. It’s e pluribus unum.
What Will Apple Do?

Let’s be clear; we don’t know what Apple is going to do. So when I say “Apple is wrong,” I really mean that the conventional wisdom about what Apple will do is wrong. If true, it’s the wrong strategy to bring a product to the market. I also have my doubts that this is what Apple will actually do.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who’s been beating the drum like mad for an integrated Apple TV since at least early 2009, thinks he knows exactly what Apple will do, telling audience members at the Ignition conference that they should wait to buy a new TV set until Apple releases its own in 2012. (Note: On Wednesday, I called and emailed Piper Jaffray to ask for a copy of Munster’s full analyst report and an interview, but they haven’t responded; I’m unfortunately stuck with relying on secondhand accounts.)

In 2009, Munster thought the Apple TV set would be a large HDTV and would sport a built-in Cable Card and DVR, and replace both the cable box and TiVo; now, he thinks it will come in many different sizes, will still require a cable box, and will be controlled by Apple’s new Siri voice/AI technology.

Munster also thinks that Apple TVs will be priced at roughly twice what comparable “dumb” TVs would cost; i.e., if a 40? LCD TV costs around $1000, a 40? Apple TV will cost $2000. In this way, Apple will be able to both pack serious tech into the guts of the TV set and turn the high-volume, low-margin business of selling TVs into something closer to the high-margin, high-end computing product market that has propelled it into the most profitable tech company in the world.

I think Munster’s argument has become more or less the conventional wisdom for what Apple will do next with television. This was reinforced by Jobs’ statements about his vision for television to his biographer Walter Isaacson. (If anyone else has articulated a better or radically different vision or interpretation of what Jobs meant, please let me know.)

Now, I think this conventional wisdom is wrong for a handful of reasons.

It’s the wrong price for the market. The bulk of television buyers are extremely price-sensitive. I know, I know; mobile phone buyers were (and are) price-sensitive, too. But 1) people replace their phones a lot more often than they replace their television sets, and 2) the iPhone didn’t take off when it cost $700, but when it cost $200. Likewise, the MacBook Air didn’t take off when it cost $1800-$3100, but when it dropped below $1000. If an Apple TV costs double its equivalent, it’s like the Mac Pro, or the first Apple TV; a specialty product, a marker, a hobby. I think Apple is through with hobbies.
It doesn’t match Apple’s strategic trajectory. Now, a premium television set could be a strong, profitable product. And Apple could start at a high price and gradually work to lower the cost and bring it to more customers, like they did with the iPod, iPhone or MacBook Air. But this seems more like a move Apple would have made ten years ago, or even four, when its products didn’t have great market share, and its customers were overwhelmingly concentrated in the U.S., where it sold premium computers to a dedicated base.

Everything Apple’s done in the last three years has been moving in the opposite direction. So has the market for HDTVs. I don’t think either of those will backtrack easily. And if they do, it’s actually a step backwards, not forwards. If Apple’s going to succeed in television, I think it will be by surprising everyone like they did with the first iPad: by bringing in a product right away that’s both inherently compelling and priced much lower than everyone expects. That will also keep copycat products from Google, Sony, Samsung or whomever at arm’s length.

It’s the ecosystem, stupid. The iPad was a success because it stood on the shoulders of the iPhone, the iPod Touch, the rejuvenated Mac lineup and the iOS App Store. At this point, Microsoft is trying to go in the other direction, borrowing elements from Xbox to drive interest in Windows Phone and Windows 8. In order to succeed, an Apple television set will have to employ the same kind of leverage. Only part of this can be the networked interaction between Mac and iOS devices or even apps common to all of them.We’ve written before about the role Apple’s iPods still play as a gateway device to the iPhone, iPad and Mac.

It’s been easier for Microsoft to drive content agreements for Xbox because it can point to its fifty million units. Apple needs to do something similar for TV. iPads are part of that, but so is that little Apple TV box. If Apple introduced a new television set, don’t be surprised if they also overhaul that little box, but with much greater capabilities. It’s the iPod; it’s the Mac Mini; it’s their best chance to quickly turn an ecosystem of millions into tens or hundreds of millions.

A cool interface will not save you. Siri is remarkable, and over time, I can see both its voice interface and AI elements playing a huge role in search and commands on the television. But just like Kinect, Siri alone won’t get it done. Munster argues, and I agree, that the UI will have to incorporate and accommodate a mix of remotes, voice and touch control. The problem is that still doesn’t get you applications like group chat or any serious gaming. You can wave around an iPhone or iPod like it’s a Wiimote, or play Angry Birds on a big screen. But if you’re otherwise still stuck plugging in your Xbox or Wii to the new Apple TV, aren’t we just back to the cords-and-remotes problem again?

Xbox solves this problem with some elegance; Kinect gives you motion and voice, remotes give you familiar interfaces that work for 80% of you want to do, paired smartphones give you added versatility, and wired or wireless controllers give you complete control for serious gaming. It’s easy to forget how huge the gaming industry is, and how closely it’s become tied to television, the broader world of entertainment, and global markets. But Apple hasn’t forgotten. They know how exactly how many games they sell for iThings. They have to deliver something that takes advantage of that opportunity.

You have to deliver compelling content. Google tried to make a software-driven TV with a snappy interface that hooked into a cable box. Content makers and intermediaries balked. Google TV was stillborn, and the company’s now mulling getting into the cable business itself. Apple is and always has been much better at dealing with the entertainment industry than Google. But its content strategy isn’t as clear as Microsoft’s, which has been willing to partner with anybody and everybody to bring movies, televisions, games and applications to Xbox.Does Apple continue on with iTunes a la carte model? Does it switch to a subscription model? Does it partner with the cable companies or try to route around them? Either way, you’re stuck with the two problems Jobs identified back in 2010. If you partner with cable providers, you’re stuck with the fact that there are no truly national providers in the way that there are national cellular carriers. If you try to disrupt cable providers, you have to overcome the inertia that comes with a subsidized cable box, and that tangled mess of cords and remotes once again. There are no good moves here; Microsoft’s strategy so far has been the best. But Apple could always pull a rabbit out of its hat.

Microsoft has been more successful at partnering with telecom operators like Comcast and Verizon because it already has a large installed hardware base and because it has software developers who can work with content companies to create compelling Xbox-native experiences. It’s also not limited to the domestic market, but can roll out content partnerships globally. That’s where Apple needs to get in order to bring a comparable product to market.

I fully believe that Steve Jobs did have a vision for how he wanted television to work. I believe Apple has the technology to bring that vision to fruition. But remember where we started: It’s not a problem of technology. it’s not a problem of vision. It’s a problem with the market.

There are two ways to read Jobs’ now-famous line about television, “I finally cracked it.” The first is exuberant, a promise of an achieved future en route to delivery. The second is wry, ironic, wistful: the pronouncement of the consummate salesman who knows exactly what he wants to do, but also that he doesn’t have enough time to bring it all the way home."

Except...

Most Androids are already moving on from "slide to unlock".
Android is already worlds ahead of that, with some not even requiring you to touch it, but merely wave your hand over it.

Buffett-Beating Gains Cue Jobs Heirs to Sell Apple

By Ronald Grover and Peter Burrows - Nov 21, 2011 9:01 PM PT

Steve Jobs’s widow may never find a better moment to sell her late husband’s $6.78 billion of Apple Inc. and Walt Disney Co. stock.

Under U.S. law, Jobs’s heirs may sell Apple and Disney and avoid $867 million in capital gains taxes. If Apple’s late co- founder left his estate to his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, the family won’t be liable for the 35 percent estate tax until she dies or gives money to others, according to estate planners.

“I can’t see any reason not to sell all of it,” said Kacy Gott, chief planning officer at the wealth-management firm Aspiriant, whose clients have assets of as much as $100 million. “They should have been looking to diversify years ago.”

Jobs’s heirs should sell some stock to reduce the estate’s risks, said Joyce Franklin, a San Francisco financial planner who works with high-tech executives. Making sales more attractive: the capital gains tax is set to rise to 20 percent in 2013 from 15 percent now, and high-income Americans will also be subject to a 3.8 percent levy on unearned gains.

Jobs owned 138 million Disney shares, valued yesterday at $4.74 billion, and 5.55 million Apple shares worth $2.05 billion, according to filings. Proxy statements show Jobs moved his holdings into trusts as his health worsened. Trusts let people distribute wealth over time and avoid probate fees.

If Jobs had sold all of his Disney and Apple on Oct. 4, the day before he died, he would have registered a gain of about $5.78 billion and a tax bill of $867 million. That’s based on his investment of $55 million in Pixar Studios, now part of Disney, and Apple shares granted in March 2003. They vested three years later at $64.66 each, filings show.

Disney Stake

Candace Pugatch, a spokeswoman for Laurene Powell Jobs, declined to comment on her tax situation or whether she plans to buy or sell any Apple or Disney shares.

Of the two holdings, Disney would be more complicated to sell. The stock represents almost 12 times the average number of Disney shares traded each day over the past year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Disney, based in Burbank, California, could buy some or all of the shares, said Michael Morris, an analyst with Davenport & Co. in Richmond, Virginia, who rates the stock “neutral.”

“They have not used leverage as effectively as other media companies and have the capacity to take on the added debt,” Morris said. The company bought back $5 billion in shares in fiscal 2011, according to a Nov. 10 statement.

The Apple holdings represent less than a third of the 17.6 million shares traded on a daily basis, making an open market sale much simpler.

Legacy Investor

“She may want to maintain the link because of what the companies meant to her husband, but legacy is the only reason to hold any of it,” Gott said. “You wouldn’t go out and buy $5 billion in Disney stock, so why should you keep it?”

Jobs died on Oct. 5 at age 56 from complications of pancreatic cancer. His will hasn’t been made public. Jobs is survived by his wife and four children, Lisa, Eve, Erin and Reed.

Under U.S. law, the trust can sell the shares and incur taxes only on the appreciation since Jobs’s death -- a gain of about $338 million. If Jobs had died in 2010, when there was no estate tax, his heirs would have faced the capital gains tax on his entire investment profit if they had sold. That provision lapsed in 2011 when the estate tax was reinstated.

The largest holding is Jobs’s 7.4 percent Disney stake, shares received in 2006 when the media and theme-park company acquired Pixar for $7.01 billion in stock.

Animation Gamble

Jobs bought Pixar from “Star Wars” producer George Lucas for $5 million in 1986 and invested $50 million more in the computer animation company over a decade, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who wouldn’t speak publicly. When Jobs died, the Disney stake was worth $4.35 billion.

Excluding dividends, that marks an 18.5 percent annual return through Oct. 5, based on $55 million invested at the end of 1986. In that span, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. produced a 15.4 percent average yearly gain, using historical prices from Global Financial Data and returns compiled by Bloomberg.

Jobs’s cost is likely what he spent to create Pixar, said Janet Brewer, a Palo Alto, California, lawyer who has worked with estates of as much as $300 million. She has no knowledge of the family’s actual holdings.
‘Perfect Time’

“From a tax point of view, this is the perfect time to diversify,” Brewer said.

Shares of Cupertino, California-based Apple have appreciated about 33 percent annually since the stock grant vested in 2006. Jobs’s holdings include 120,000 shares acquired in August 2007 from options exercised at $5.75 each. Berkshire Hathaway Class A has gained 4.3 percent a year since March 2006.

Three people who know Powell Jobs, who has a master’s degree in business administration from Stanford University, don’t think she is interested in taking her husband’s seats on the Apple or Disney board. Disney CEO Robert Iger joined Apple’s board this month.

Powell Jobs’s intentions may not matter if a bank is managing the investments, said John Barcal, an estate lawyer and associate professor at USC’s Leventhal School of Accounting who has worked with a trust that exceeds Jobs’s public holdings.

“I don’t know if his wife is a co-trustee or if it’s a bank, but a bank would be duty-bound to diversify the holdings,” Barcal said.


Oh the irony, Steve's heirs, selling Steve's shares, may be the catalyst drilling a hole in the bottom of Apple's share price. In the end, the shareholders become bagholders & "get Steve'd".

iPhone 4s sucks
power quicker than expected. Apple engineers don't know why,and won't comment.

Apple reportedly investigating iPhone 4S battery drain


Apple engineers are looking into faster-than-expected battery drain on the company's newest iPhone, according to a report.

The Guardian reports that some iPhone 4S owners are being contacted by Apple after complaining about lower-than-expected battery performance on the company's support Web site. Numerous users there are saying their phones are lasting just a few hours, even with minimal use, and with power-draining features disabled.

At least one owner told The Guardian that an Apple engineer contacted him and provided instructions for installing a diagnostic file that would be sent back to the company for analysis. This was after telling him the quick draining was a known issue.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the matter.

The iPhone 4S launched two weeks ago in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and several other countries, and is expanding to 22 additional countries this weekend. It boasts an extra hour of 3G talk time compared with the iPhone 4, while coming in at 100 hours less of standby time, based on Apple's own testing. CNET's own iPhone 4S battery testing with a model on Sprint's network yielded 9.2 hours of talk time on the carrier's 3G EV-DO Rev. A network, coming in as the strongest iPhone battery test to date.

The phone continues the trend set by previous iterations, sealing the battery inside to allow for better use of space. As a side effect, users can't swap it out with another battery, as most other phones allow.

A teardown of the iPhone 4S earlier this month by iFixit revealed that the battery in the 4S is slightly more powerful than the one in the iPhone 4, but not by much. Users get an extra .05 WHrs of juice compared with the battery that was in the iPhone 4. The big difference, of course, is that the iPhone 4S sports a dual-core A5 processor.

The usual cheerleaders wouldn't dare post about it. In fact, this will probably disappear. Non-Happy talk ist verboten! Heil!

And yet, MSFT still has over 90% of theOS market.

A number that hasn't changed significantly in the last quarter century. "Oh, Woe is me", says absolutely no one at Microsoft.

That must be like a cancer that just eats away inside you, huh, Bootz? MSFT still doing just fine. Boom.

You're avoiding the question.

Typical. Yes or No?

iPhone 4, 3gs,3,& the models previous cannot run the latest complete version of iOS, which includes Siri. Right?

That makes the chart you posted false, and all those phones listed at least one major iOS version behind.

Go ahead, you can say it.

Except that chart isn't exactly truthful.

iPhone 4, 3Gs, 3G, & the one before, NONE of them can run the latest version that features the current HYPE-point, Siri.

Now can they, Bootzie?

That puts 'em all at least one major version behind.

Xbox 360 sales nearly double that of Wii's, analyst says

by Don Reisinger October 10, 2011 8:52 AM PDT

September was another strong month for the Xbox 360, Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter wrote in a note to investors today.

According to Pachter's estimates, Microsoft sold 360,000 Xbox 360 units in the U.S. last month, easily besting all other hardware competitors. In second place, according to Pachter, was the PlayStation 3 with 260,000 units sold. Nintendo sold 190,000 Wii units in September, Pachter estimated.

On the portable side, Pachter said he believes Nintendo sold 225,000 3DS units and 185,000 DS units in September.

If Pachter is right and Microsoft did sell the most hardware units in September, it would mark yet another successful month for the console maker. Last month, Microsoft reported that with its sales victory in August, it had sold more console units in the U.S. than any other company for 14 of the past 15 months.

However, it's Nintendo's decline that perhaps has become one of the most significant stories to come out of the console space. For years, Nintendo's Wii was atop the market, easily outstripping sales of other devices. But it appears the Wii's market appeal is starting to wane, and at least in the U.S., the Xbox 360 has firmly taken hold.

Nintendo appears to realize that. Rather than wait a few more years to release a new console, like its competitors reportedly are, the company is planning to launch new hardware next year. That console, called the Wii U, will offer improved graphics and HD support. In addition, it will come with a controller that boasts a 6.2-inch touch screen to enhance gameplay.

But until that launch occurs, Nintendo is hoping that its 3DS portable will be able to bolster earnings. The only issue is that device has proven to be a disappointment, selling only 110,000 units in the U.S. in the second quarter. After Nintendo dropped the price of the device to $169.99 from its initial price of $249.99 in August, sales jumped a bit, but they're still off the pace set by its predecessor, the DS, at the same point in that device's lifecycle.

A look at software
In addition to hardware unit sales, Pachter also looked at software sales on each console during the month. He estimated that Xbox 360 software sales hit $306 million last month, easily outstripping the PlayStation 3's $165 million in sales. Nintendo Wii sales were a paltry $85 million during the month, the analyst estimated.

On the portable side, Pachter estimated that September sales hit $15 million on the 3DS and $56 million for the DS.

All in all, this has been a pretty great week news-wise.

So, Who's up for the vacant spot on Disney's BOD?

Will there be a special election?

So what does this mean for our current Zune users? Absolutely nothing.

Your device will continue to work with Zune services just as it does today. And we will continue to honor the warranties of all devices for both current owners and those who buy our very last devices.”

Cool. My Zune HD rules. I'll buy a backup! And at discount prices!

Apple getting KILLED during dog & pony show: Down $11.50 share.

Not even a catchup to current Android phones.

Live stream ,blog & chatrooms all calling this a major disappointment.

http://www.livestream.com/cnetlive?utm_source=lsplayer&utm_medium=embed&utm_campaign=footerlinks

Widespread MobileMe Outage Knocks Apple Services Offline

Published September 30, 2011

Widespread outages affected Apple's MobileMe services Thursday evening and Friday morning -- including the company's Mail service, me.com web apps, and the "find my phone" feature -- knocking features offline and leaving users scrambling to stay in touch on the web.

The outage lasted only an hour and occurred overnight, according to Apple's status history page. Service has been completely restored, the company claims.

Some users reported continuing outages and troubles well into Friday morning, however.

The popular Apple rumor blog MacRumors reported the issue Thursday night, noting that the MobileMe status page warned that as many as 75 percent of users were unable to access email using the service.

The outage comes ahead of reports that Apple will officially launch its iCloud services at an iPhone event on Tuesday, Oct. 4, where the gadget company is expected to announce the latest version of the popular iPhone. The iCloud services will replace the MobileMe services, which will no longer be available as a paid sync service, Apple has said.

The MobileMe service will be turned off on June 30, 2012.

The event next week follows what analysts say has been a blowout quarter for Apple's iPhone 4.

The device, which was released in June of last year, has been a hit with consumers despite initial customer complaints that the device's antenna was prone to malfunctioning when held a certain way.


Nice goin' there.

California Man Claims Home Was Searched for Prototype iPhone by People Impersonating Officers

Published September 02, 2011

The Apple logo is displayed outside one of the company's stores.

This Apple may be getting rotten.

The deja-vu details of a story from the strange-but-true department: Another highly-prized iPhone prototype reportedly disappeared at an upscale San Francisco bar, just like last year.

The story got stranger Friday as reports suggest Apple investigators searching for the missing iPhone may have masqueraded as cops.

According to a report at SF Weekly, Sergio Calderon, who lives in the city's Bernal Heights neighborhood, said six people who searched his house for the missing gadget claimed to be San Francisco police officers.


Yet the SFPD has repeatedly denied that any of its detectives visited the man's house. So, did Apple's agents impersonate police officers? It would be illegal and immoral -- but within the bounds of possible, explained Ira Victor, director of the digital forensics practice with Data Clone Labs and a member of the High Technology Crime Investigation Association.

"It would be illegal and unethical both, but it would be easy for me to carry myself as a member of law enforcement. To walk the walk. To talk the talk," Victor told FoxNews.com. "We call that in my field social engineering."

A spokesman for the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) underscored the seriousness of the allegations.

"This is something that's going to need to be investigated now," SFPD spokesman Lt. Troy Dangerfield told SF Weekly reporters. "If this guy is saying that the people said they were SFPD, that's a big deal."

{It certainly is. Punishable by a year in jail & a hefty fine.}


One of Apple's investigators left his contact information with Calderon -- Anthony Colon, a 26-year veteran of the San Jose Police Department who told SF Weekly he works as a "senior investigator" at Apple.

An Apple spokesman declined to answer FoxNews.com questions about the missing iPhone.

The story first brewed up earlier this week, when an unnamed source told CNET that the iPhone was lost at Cava 22, a self-described tequila lounge, in late July. An electronic trace for the phone led to a two-floor, single-family home in the city’s Bernal Heights neighborhood, CNET reported.

Police and investigators from Apple then showed up at the house and spoke to a man who claimed he was at Cava 22 the night the phone was lost, but said he didn’t have it. He further denied possession of the device when Apple offered money for it.

He allowed authorities search the home, but they did not find the device.

Victor, a nationally certified forensic examiner, suggested someone might go to great lengths to guard a secretive device -- even knowing it was wrong.

"Let me play devil's advocate for a minute," he suggested.

"Apple is very protective of their devices and software. They will go to extraordinary lengths to protect it," he told FoxNews.com. "If I were evil, and I wanted to keep in the good graces of certain people at Apple, I would do certain things that Apple wouldn't know about to retrieve that device."

"That's if I were Evil Ira of course."

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/09/02/apple-agents-posed-as-police-in-quest-for-prototype-iphone-report-says/#ixzz1XF0y7bZo


California Penal Code Section 538d

(a) Any person other than one who by law is given the
authority of a peace officer, who willfully wears, exhibits, or uses the authorized uniform, insignia, emblem, device, label, certificate, card, or writing, of a peace officer, with the intent of fraudulently impersonating a peace officer, or of fraudulently inducing the belief that he or she is a peace officer, is guilty of a misdemeanor.

(b) (1) Any person, other than the one who by law is given the
authority of a peace officer, who willfully wears, exhibits, or uses the badge of a peace officer with the intent of fraudulently
impersonating a peace officer, or of fraudulently inducing the belief that he or she is a peace officer, is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment in a county jail not to exceed one year,by a fine not to exceed two thousand dollars ($2,000), or by both that imprisonment and fine.

(2) Any person who willfully wears or uses any badge that falsely purports to be authorized for the use of one who by law is given the authority of a peace officer, or which so resembles the authorized badge of a peace officer as would deceive any ordinary reasonable person into believing that it is authorized for the use of one who by law is given the authority of a peace officer, for the purpose of fraudulently impersonating a peace officer, or of fraudulently inducing the belief that he or she is a peace officer, is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment in a county jail not to exceed one year, by a fine not to exceed two thousand dollars($2,000), or by both that imprisonment and fine."

"Suppose if instead of making the iPod, Apple just made a near-exact copy of the Creative Zen, and tried to flood the market with that? Not only would it not be expected to be good for Apple, it wouldn't be tolerated by the Creative people."

And that's exactly why Apple got sued by Creative, & Apple LOST.
They outright stole from Creative, who own & hold the "Zen Patent".

Creative won that lawsuit & it cost Apple 100 million dollars.
They should have been able to yank iPod off the market.

Microsoft 'Kinects' with a 30% profit jump

By David Goldman @CNNMoneyTech July 21, 2011: 6:16 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Even when Windows is sputtering, Microsoft still has plenty of gas left in the tank.

Microsoft on Thursday reported that sales of Xbox 360 and Kinect soared 30% in the past quarter, as the video game system maintained its position as the top console for the twelfth month in a row.

The software giant's business products, leveraged by strong demand for Office 2010 and a piqued interest in the cloud-based Office 365, rose 7%. And sales in its server and tools unit jumped 12%.

All that helped Microsoft grow its overall sales by 8% over the past three months to $17.4 billion -- despite a sales slump in its Windows division.

Windows revenue fell 1%, marking the second straight quarter of declines. Consumer personal computer sales continue to weigh on sales of the operating system, even as businesses continue to buy up PCs in quantities that far exceeded the company's forecast. Overall, Microsoft said PC sales fell 2% in the quarter.

The company continued to say that tablets like the iPad are eating into consumers PC purchases. That was evident when tech bellwether Intel reported revenue on Wednesday that rose to a record high, even as its Atom netbook processor sales slipped 15%.
0:00 / 3:24 Office will move to the cloud

But Microsoft is hardly giving up on its Windows division. Just 25% of businesses are running Windows 7, signaling that businesses have "quite a ways to go in their refresh cycle," said Todd Setcavage, Microsoft's director of investor relations.

Consumer PC sales also continue to grow strong in the emerging markets like East Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, even as they slump in the United States and Europe.

Bing continues to be a weak spot for the company. Microsoft's online services division, which includes Bing, lost $728 million in the quarter and $2.6 billion in the past twelve months. Microsoft still hasn't turned a profit in that unit.

Still, Microsoft had plenty to smile about over the past three months. The company continued to sign on long-term contracts with business customers in its Office and server units, building up $17.1 billion in promised, but yet-to-be-earned revenue.

The company also in May put in a bid to buy Skype, the Internet phone and video chatting service, which the company hopes to leverage to compete with Cisco's WebEx online meeting client. And last month, it launched its Office 365 service in an attempt to build up its Office base and to stop Google Apps in its tracks.

By the numbers

The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant said net income in its fiscal fourth-quarter, which ended June 30, rose 30% to $5.9 billion, or 69 cents per share. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters forecast earnings of 58 cents per share.

But much of the reason Microsoft beat on profit was due to a huge change in the company's tax rate. Microsoft's effective tax rate was just 7% in the quarter, compared to 25% a year ago, which the company said was "due to a higher mix of earnings taxed at lower rates in foreign jurisdictions."

The company said it produced and distributed a greater number of products and services in regional operations centers in Ireland, Singapore and Puerto Rico, which are all subject to lower tax rates.

Sales rose 8% to $17.4 billion, topping analysts' forecasts of $17.2 billion.

After initially rising, shares of Microsoft fell very slightly after hours.

Microsoft's chief rivals Apple and Google also impressed with earnings during the past three months. Apple said Tuesday that it sold a record 9.25 million iPads, and Google said it is activating 550,000 Android phones each day -- both threats to Microsoft's Windows and Windows Phone 7 businesses..

The company's search partner Yahoo, however, didn't fare quite so well. Yahoo reported a 5% decline over the year on Wednesday, which the company attributed to its search revenue sharing deal with Microsoft. Yahoo hands over 12% of its search advertising revenue to Microsoft, which, in turn, provides the technology underpinning Yahoo's search site.

Conan O'Brien rips Apple's Final Cut Pro X on show
by Josh Lowensohn

U.S. talkshow host Conan O'Brien took time out of his show last night to take a crack at Apple's latest video editing software, which the company released on Tuesday.

"Apple just released a new version of their famous editing software Final Cut Pro, but apparently it's so different from the last version of the last version of Final Cut, video and film editors all over Hollywood are having a hard time adjusting to it," O'Brien said. "Well our editors here are some of the best in the business. They actually like the new software, in fact they prepared this video statement announcing their support for the new Final Cut Pro."

What follows is a video O'Brien's staff jokes was made with Final Cut Pro X. It contains numerous hiccups, from ill-timed cuts, to problems with audio and video synchronization, color matching, and media showing up as offline.

While the joke may be inside baseball to most viewers, it comes at a time when Apple is receiving considerable criticism about the software from longtime Final Cut Pro users due to some of the drastic changes made. Final Cut Pro X represents a complete re-write, and re-think of the platform used by what Apple says is about 2 million customers. As a result, many features available in legacy versions of the software have not made the transition, keeping some professional outfits from making the jump.

Final Cut Pro X currently sits as the second most popular paid application on Apple's Mac App Store, just behind the company's 99-cent FaceTime application. So far it's amassed more than 900 customer reviews, 421 of which are one star out of five. On Wednesday--the day after the software's release--some reviews briefly disappeared, returning a day later, prompting speculation that Apple was trying to shape perceptions.

You can catch the whole segment from Conan's show below:

Microsoft business suite wins federal certification

Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Services-Federal product just won certification from the federal government under the Federal Information Security Management Act, a bit of news that would have meant nothing to more than a handful of folks who follow the arcana of such things just a few weeks ago.

But earlier this month, Microsoft called out rival Google for allegedly misleading customers about the FISMA certification of its competing Google Apps for Government service. Microsoft's corporate vice president and deputy general counsel, David Howard, said that Google's Web-based productivity suite for government clients didn't have FISMA certification, even though Google had said it did.

Google denied the charges, saying the technology platform of the product, Google Apps Premier Edition, is certified. According to Google, the government determined that the name change to Google Apps for Government, and increased security Google baked into that product, could be incorporated into the existing FISMA certification.

And Google went on to point out that, despite Microsoft's protestations, Business Productivity Online Services-Federal lacked its own FISMA certification. The backdrop for the battle is a lawsuit filed by Google over the Interior Department's decision to award Microsoft a contract to provide Web-based e-mail, business that Google would like for itself.

Microsoft's announcement that the Business Productivity Online Services-Federal received FISMA certification isn't likely to alter the landscape in the ongoing battle with Google. But the certification does open doors for Microsoft to win contracts with federal agencies, which make purchasing decisions, in part, based on the security accreditation.

The U.S. Department of Food & Agriculture issued the certification and intends to migrate 120,000 employees to the Microsoft technology.

Windows Phone 7 sales top 2 million

by Josh Lowensohn

Microsoft now says it's sold more than 2 million Windows Phone 7 devices since launch. That number represents handsets sold to mobile operators and retailers and not necessarily consumers.

The first initial report of Windows Phone 7 sales came from Microsoft in late December and topped 1.5 million units. Back then, Achim Berg, vice president of business and marketing for Windows Phone, said that number was "in line" with company expectations.

In a phone call with CNET, Greg Sullivan, senior product manager for Windows Phone 7, said while sales were certainly a measure of the platform's success, customer satisfaction and developer investment were more important leading indicators. And to that end, the company has been pleased.

"93 percent of Windows Phone customers are satisfied or very satisfied with Windows Phone 7, and 90 percent would recommend the phone to others," Sullivan said. Those numbers were based on a recent survey of Windows Phone 7 customers numbering in the hundreds.

Back at CES, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had articulated that people "fell in love" with Windows Phone 7 once they saw the device, and that getting it into the hands of consumers would be "job number one." To that end, Sullivan said Microsoft is planning more marketing outreach.

"We're absolutely doing things to turn people onto this great thing, that those who have experienced it, love," he said. "You will see us continue to do some very visible things in terms of getting that word out, that--boy--once people use this phone, they fall in love with it very quickly."

As for why Microsoft doesn't have a more precise number on the actual number of handsets that have been sold to users, Sullivan noted that mobile operators were not contractually obligated to provide Microsoft with the activation numbers and the sell-through data. "We have a high degree of confidence in the precision of the sell-in numbers, which is why that's what we're providing," he explained.

Sullivan said there are now more than 6,500 apps in Microsoft's Marketplace application and the company currently has more than 24,000 registered developers. That's compared to the 5,500 apps and 20,000 developers announced at CES earlier this month.

Microsoft plans to release the first of two announced software updates to Windows Phone 7 devices in what Sullivan said would be within "the next few months." This first one will bring copy and paste functionality, along with better application loading performance and some bug fixes. The second update, planned for release in "the first half" of this year, will bring support for CDMA networks like Sprint and Verizon, where Windows phones are currently unavailable."

*Keep in mind, it took 74 days to sell the first million iPhones. Microsoft has pretty much doubled that in the same amount of time.

MSFT "ran out" of XBoxes in December?

Microsoft's Xbox 360 sales are so steep that the company is having trouble keeping up with demand, claims Xbox Live's director of programming.

Larry Hryb, who is better known as "Major Nelson," tweeted yesterday: "I found out we ran out of consoles at end of the month (!) so don't expect to win Dec." The "win" is in reference to unit sales rankings for game consoles that market researcher NPD is set to release today. Basically, Microsoft is saying that if it isn't No. 1, the cause is actually its popularity, not lack thereof.

The situation apparently won't ease up for consumers still hoping to get their hands on the Xbox 360. Major Nelson reported in a follow-up tweet that "Jan/Feb supply is tight as well."

For now at least, Xbox 360 units seem to be readily available from several retailers. The online stores for Amazon.com, Best Buy, GameStop, and Wal-Mart all have Microsoft's console in stock. The companies promise to ship units within 24 hours.

But if Microsoft did indeed run out of consoles last month, recent sales estimates released this week by Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter could be off.

The analyst estimates that 2.5 million Xbox 360 units were sold in December, trailing only Nintendo's Wii with 2.6 million units sold. If Microsoft hit that mark, the company would have seen 91 percent growth year over year. However, Pachter's report to investors made no mention of any Xbox 360 shortages.

But we won't know for sure if Pachter's estimates were too high unless Microsoft reports actual sales figures. Last year, NPD stopped publicly sharing unit sales for hardware and software. Since then, the three main console makers have, at times, reported unit sales on their own.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20028385-17.html#ixzz1Ax7H9Cmv

Why You Need an Xbox 360 With Kinect This Holiday Season

Recommending a gaming console is about as healthy as walking into a minefield. For such a novel activity, gaming can be as polarizing as politics and religion. Nevertheless, I'm going to take the risk and make this recommendation, because what's a holiday gift guide that doesn't have a gaming representative?

The Xbox 360 first hit shelves in November of 2005. The oddity of recommending a five-year-old console isn't lost, but the reality is this: the Xbox 360 might be the same platform that it was back in 2005, but it is not in the least bit the same console.

In 2010, the 360 not only made a huge update to its core hardware, it also added a peripheral that has the potential to hugely revolutionize the console gaming industry. For a device that just celebrated its fifth birthday (basically the equivalent of about 50 in electronic years), the Xbox 360 is still clipping through the crowd like it's the new kid on the block.

Titles and Multiplayer

Both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 are hovering around 200 exclusive releases, and while the vast majority of these games aren't legacy titles, the 360 has Halo, Gears of War, Fable 3 and the entire Mass Effect franchise. (Yes, PlayStation 3 will be getting Mass Effect 2 in January 2011, but it doesn't have the first game in the series -- so unless you've played part one elsewhere, you'll only get the full experience on Xbox 360. The biggest titles going for Sony's console are arguably, the unquestionably amazing, Uncharted series and, the epically delayed, Gran Turismo.)

Another deciding factor is the multiplayer experience, and Xbox Live wins this category outright. In my almost sad amount of experience, multiplayer gaming on the PlayStation Network has never rivaled that of Xbox Live. Modern Warfare 2 is practically a different game on Xbox Live, and for any gaming experience focused so heavily on multiplayer, that matters a lot.

Motion Gaming Comes to Both

That brings us back to motion gaming. For the time being, PlayStation 3 might have the two best motion titles in The Shoot and The Fight, but, compelling as they may be, they showcase the entirety of the PlayStation Move experience -- i.e., connecting a wand to game movements. It's fun, but it exists as more of a technological progression from Duck Hunt, which was released for the NES in 1984, than a truly disruptive new gaming technology.

Kinect, on the other hand, is by no means perfect, but it has revolutionized the player-to-controller dynamic, connecting players to game movements, by turning their bodies into controllers. This alone could be the basis of my recommendation. It's not.

The promise of Kinect, along with the excellent franchise titles (including 2010's Alan Wake) and a superior multiplayer make the Xbox 360 the best gaming console out this holiday season. Don't forget that it's also a highly functional streaming device, with support for Netflix and Pandora now and Hulu Plus coming soon. Taken as a package, the Xbox 360 with Kinect becomes not just a gaming console, but a versatile addition to your home theater system.

Microsoft shifts a million Kinect units
Gamers gesture towards their wallets

DANCING GAMERS apparently have taken to Microsoft's Kinect as the firm has announced that it has managed to shift a million devices in just 10 days.

The impressive sales figures come despite Microsoft releasing Kinect in the US six days earlier than in Europe, on 4 November, with the device yet to go on sale in Asia. It has led to Microsoft doing something it hasn't done in some time, revising its sales predictions upwards to five million by the end of 2010.

Microsoft has every right to be bullish over the Kinect. The motion sensing controller represents a rare technological innovation. By Christmas, Microsoft hopes to have the device on sale in 38 countries and a library of 17 Kinect enabled games available.

Another success-story for Microsoft has been its Xbox Live service, with the firm claiming that 25 million members have clocked up more than a billion hours of game time on the service.

Microsoft is likely to hit its lofty sales prediction for the Kinect thanks to the busy Christmas buying season and Black Friday, traditionally the biggest sales day of the year in the US.

Microsoft fiscal 1Q net income rises 51 percent

SEATTLE – Microsoft Corp. said Thursday that its net income in the latest quarter rose 51 percent, boosted by higher sales of Windows and Office software to businesses.

In last year's quarter, Microsoft deferred some revenue from Windows sales. Had it not done so, net income would have been only 16 percent higher this year in comparison.

For the fiscal first quarter, which ended in September, net income rose to $5.4 billion, or 62 cents per share, from $3.6 million, or 40 cents per share, in the same period last year.

Revenue increased 25 percent to $16.2 billion, from $12.9 billion a year ago.

Microsoft beat Wall Street's expectations on both counts. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had forecast net income of 55 cents per share on $15.8 billion in revenue.

Microsoft said the increase in sales to businesses of the newest versions of its Windows operating system, Office programs and server software made up for softer-than-expected revenue from consumer PC buying in the quarter.

"We ended up in this great sweet spot in business spending that was re-emerging after the downturn," Microsoft's general manager of investor relations, Bill Koefoed, said in an interview. It "aligned just perfectly with our product launches."

The Windows division's revenue rose 66 percent to $4.8 billion. Office and other business software brought in $5.1 billion, a 14 percent jump. The group that makes server software reported a 12 percent increase in revenue to $4 billion.

Microsoft's online revenue, which comes primarily from search advertising, edged up 8 percent to $527 million. That segment widened its operating loss in the quarter to $560 million, however, as the company continued to spend money on chasing Google Inc., the No. 1 Web search provider.

Shares of Microsoft, which is based on Redmond, rose 41 cents, or 1.6 percent, to $26.69 in extended trading Thursday after the release of results. Earlier, the stock added 23 cents to close at $26.28.

Windows 7: 240 Million Sold in First Year

Paul Thurrott
Windows IT Pro

With the one-year anniversary of Windows 7 hitting tomorrow, Microsoft today announced that its latest client OS has sold more than 240 million units in the first year of availability. As always, the company also noted that Windows 7 is the fastest selling operating system in history.

According to Microsoft, Windows 7 is running on 93 percent of all new consumer PCs and has over 17 percent global OS market share; that's more than four times the current market share of its nearest competitor, Mac OS X, which accounts for just 4.2 percent.

Windows 7 has also resulted in huge customer-satisfaction numbers for Microsoft—a nice rebound from the Windows Vista dark ages. Microsoft now has a higher customer-satisfaction score than Apple, according to data gathered by YouGov Plc, and "Windows 7 has contributed more than twice as much to Microsoft's customer satisfaction than [the latest OS X release] has to Apple's. The annual American Customer Satisfaction Index report showed similar gains for Microsoft.

On the business side, about 90 percent of business customers have plans to deploy Windows 7, according to IDC. Business deployment, too, was a sticking point during the Vista era.

Microsoft notes that momentum for Windows 7 continues through side projects that enhance the OS's appeal. Windows Live Essentials 2011—which includes new email, calendar, photo, blogging, and messaging tools for Windows 7—shipped recently, and Microsoft has seen more than 6 million downloads of the Internet Explorer (IE) 9 Beta, which includes many deep Windows 7 integration features. The final version of IE 9 is expected sometime in the months ahead.

Closing in on a quarter of a billion sales of Windows 7. Nice!

MSFT: $200 MILLION in 24 hours - Thanks to HALO:Reach!

Microsoft has released a product that has been racking up truly impressive sales figures, with Halo: Reach taking in over $200 million within 24 hours of launch.

Arguably the most anticipated game of this year, Halo: Reach managed to become the highest grossing game Microsoft has ever released. While that might not sound all that impressive, given Microsoft's pedigree in gaming titles, when compared to other forms of entertainment it's easy to see that, amazingly, Microsoft really is onto a winner.

Microsoft confirmed that the $200 million mark took just 24 hours and easily eclipsed that of the most successful opening weekends of blockbuster movies. In fact Microsoft managed to get one over on Steve Jobs, in a manner of speaking.

The Apple cult leader owned a significant chunk of the animation outfit Pixar and now owns a big piece of Disney, having sold out to the Mickey Mouse firm. Even with Jobs promoting Toy Story 3 when he announced the Iphone OS 4, the cartoon managed to pull in only $109 million during its three-day opening weekend. Pfft, Noble Six won't even get out of bed for that.

Bungie's own statistics show well over 200,000 gamers online, playing over 8.5 million games in the past 24 hours alone. It is quite possible that Halo: Reach sales might in the coming months eclipse the $1 BILLION mark.

What these figures do go to show is that if content producers put out decent quality products, people will pay for them. The latest installment in the Halo franchise garnered universal praise and it is likely that through significant public beta testing and marketing, Microsoft has been able to develop a winner and rake in the cash.

Buying Nokia would be interesting, as MSFT would then control the Symbian OS as well. There's also be speculation of MSFT acquiring RIMM. It would be really interesting if they did both.

Happy 15th Birthday Windows 95

15 years ago, the OS that made Linux, Be, OS/2, & Macintrash all irrelevant was born.

It was 15 years ago that Microsoft had one of its most successful launches ever--introducing Windows 95. The company managed to get people to line up for hours to be among the first to get their hands on a copy.
Windows 95 turns 15 (images)

The company paid to treat people to free newspapers in London, lighted the Empire State Building in Windows' colors, and draped Toronto's CN Tower with a 300-foot banner--all part of a massive $300 million ad campaign that accompanied the product's arrival.

Windows 95, which was separate from the company's business-oriented Windows NT product, added a number of features over its predecessors including better network support, the ability to send faxes (yes, there was a time when that was a big deal) along with basic audio recording, audio playback, and video playback tools. Features now thought of as core parts of Windows, such as the start menu and taskbar, also made their debut with Windows 95. Plus, it just looked a whole lot better graphically and was far more stable than past consumer versions of Windows.

Internet Explorer debuted around the same time, but was sold separately as part of Microsoft's Plus Pack for Windows 95. It was eventually bundled in directly with the operating system in an update to Windows 95 released the following year.

By the time Windows 95 was finally ushered off the market in 2001, it had become a fixture on computer desktops around the world.

"If you look at Windows 95, it was a quantum leap in difference in technological capability and stability," Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald said at that time.

Except that didn't happen.

That whole "Apple money machine trounces Microsoft" B.S., that is. And MSFT made their revenue from their own software, Not pilfering 30% of some recording artist's music revenue, or an independent developers' application.

Microsoft beats Street with $16 billion in revenue

Microsoft ended the fiscal year on a strong note, reporting fourth-quarter profits of $4.52 billion, or 51 cents per share on Thursday.

The software maker beat Wall Street estimates, and also announced its best-ever quarterly revenue of $16.04 billion, an increase of 22 percent from the same quarter a year ago.

Wall Street analysts had been expecting Microsoft's revenue to fall somewhere between $14.85 billion and $15.74 billion.

"We saw strong sales execution across all of our businesses, particularly in the enterprise with Windows 7 and Office 2010," Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner said in a statement. "Our transition to cloud services is well under way with offerings like Windows Azure and our Business Productivity Online Services, and we look forward to continuing our product momentum this fall with the upcoming launches of Windows Phone 7 and Xbox Kinect."

Microsoft's bump in revenue was due to Windows 7 and Office 2010 selling well, the company said. It's been a good quarter overall for the tech industry, with Intel reporting its most profitable quarter in its history, and IDC data showing PC shipments up 22 percent.

Microsoft's own data shows the PC market up between 22 percent and 24 percent, and the company says emerging markets are "a significant driver of the PC market," increasing their growth by almost twice that of mature markets, Bill Koefoed, general manager of investor relations, said on the earnings call Thursday afternoon.

Windows revenue grew by $1 billion, and consumer and business licenses for the OS increased by 26 percent. "Clearly the Windows franchise is thriving," Koefoed said.

The company's gaming revenue grew 30 percent. However, as expected, Microsoft did incur some costs during the quarter when it decided to ax its Kin smartphone. The Entertainment and Devices Division's cost of revenue increased by $251 million, or 38 percent, during the June quarter as a result of discontinuing the Kin, as well as higher royalty costs associated with Xbox Live content sales.

For the whole year, Microsoft reported record numbers as well: fiscal year 2010 revenue was its best ever at $62.48 billion, a 7 percent rise over 2009, as well as a 29 percent growth in profits, which hit $18.76 billion.

After Apple passed Microsoft in market capitalization earlier this year, analysts had also been expecting Microsoft to fall behind Apple in quarterly revenue for the first time ever. The software maker was able to hold off its rival, besting Apple's $15.7 billion in revenue reported Tuesday.

When asked about the potential for tablets, CFO Peter Klein was upbeat, but vague. "We're very excited about the market. Obviously we're super happy with both the state of the PC market," he said. "Tablets are great because they enlarge the overall opportunity. It reminds us there are lots of interesting new scenarios we're interested to work on."

Looking ahead, Klein said the company expects the business refresh cycle to continue at current levels through 2011, and that Windows revenue should grow at the same rate as PC shipments. Revenue for the Entertainment Devices Division's revenue will grow "in the mid-teens," he said.

Well, if he did as you suggested, and sold Apple/bought Google,

He'd have done pretty well. GOOG Change? 13.32 (2.76%)

About TWICE as well as AAPL has done today.

"Well, if you really believe that's the case, the smart thing to do as an investor would be to sell your AAPL first thing in the morning and buy (more?) GOOG.Let us know how it goes."

New XBox 360 "Slim"

Attendees at Microsoft's annual E3 press conference are accustomed to flashy game announcements and big-budget trailers, but the company had a surprise in store at today's Los Angeles event. The Xbox 360 is getting a slimmer, angular new look, and an internal redesign that'll reduce noise and add much-wanted new features -- and it'll be in stores as soon as this week.

Packing a black-finished case with prominent cooling vents, the new machine -- nicknamed the Xbox "Slim" by fans -- will retail for $299, the same price as the current 120 GB Xbox 360 Elite system. It will be compatible with all Xbox 360 games and hardware, with the exception of old-style external hard drives and memory cards.

It's not any more powerful, but the redesigned 360 nevertheless addresses a number of recurring gripes with the existing design: aside from being smaller, it's quieter, includes built-in super-fast 802.11n wireless networking, and packs an internal, replaceable 250 GB hard drive.

It's also equipped with a smaller power supply, a dedicated connector for Microsoft's upcoming Kinect motion control system, and five USB ports. A matching black wireless controller will ship with the system.

Conflicting reports exist on whether the older models will remain on sale, but according to at least one specialist blog, the normally reliable Joystiq, Microsoft is indeed "no longer manufacturing the original Xbox 360 hardware in any form."

Alternatively, Microsoft is cutting prices of the existing Xbox range to $149 for the basic Arcade model, and $249 for the upgraded Elite. It's unclear whether that's a time-limited clearance offer, or if it'll be permanent -- but if you want to snag a cheap Xbox, and you're not too bothered about getting the brand-new Slim, this could be your chance.

New market research from The NDP Group confirms Android phones outsold the iPhone last quarter in the United States. RIM’s Blackberry OS remained at the top with 36%, while Android jumped to number two with 28%, followed by the iPhone OS at only 21%.

Now that all four major U.S. carriers (and several regional) are selling Android phones, we can’t say this comes as a surprise. A dozen smartphones across all the carriers should result in higher sales (just look at Blackberry).

The real question now, is how long will the iPhone remain an AT&T exclusive? Engadget is reporting that Apple and AT&T signed a five-year deal that reportedly does not end till May 21st, 2012. Can Apple afford to keep the iPhone locked to a single U.S. carrier while Android adoption continues to rise?

You weren't really expecting anything objective about MSFT to be posted by spit-snot, were you?

You, Duke, one the other hand, posted the pertinent info:
"Microsoft makes more money in a month from new Windows 7 than all the profit from software sales all the rest of the competitors make from mobile software sales in a year."

Quite right.

Windows7=Over 100 million installs in first 6 months.

According to Microsoft Windows marketing VP Tami Reller, Microsoft has sold more than 100 million licenses for Windows 7 and now estimates that one in 10 PCs worldwide is running the operating system.

"We feel really good about the results overall in the consumer side," Reller said. "The other thing we saw this past quarter is a signal that businesses are really heating up on Windows 7 deployment. We think that really has started and will aggressively ramp."

Heywood, you need a revisionist math class:


Evidently, you're willing to forgive AAPL for being a virtual flatline from 1985 to 2004. Be sure to get back to us when Apple catches up to Microsoft's performance. They're only 30,000% behind.
MSFT could take the next half a century off AAPL still won't have caught up.


http://www.finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=my&s=MSFT&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=aapl

"How was I to know that "to date" was not the date I read the post? :))"

My guess would be that little date marker up in the upper right hand corner of each post, but what do I know?

The cheerier assumption is that since that time, Microsoft has sold quite a few more MILLIONS of copies of Windows 7.

It's all good.

Duke, my math was just fine.
My post was dated Tuesday, March 02, 2010 5:30:30 PM

The 61st Day of 2010.

MSFT CFO Peter Klein says that Microsoft has sold 90 million licenses of Windows 7 to date. The company had previously said it had sold more than 60 million copies as of December.

NICE! An additional 30 million copies in 60 days!