Hasta La Gadget!

Microsoft will challenge Apple in every aspect of software and hardware innovation, CEO Steve Ballmer has warned his Cupertino rivals, promising that “we are not going to leave any space uncovered to Apple.” The rambunctious chief exec insisted Microsoft would not sit back on its enterprise range and cede the consumer segment to Apple, telling CRN that “we are not going to let any piece of this [go uncontested] … not the consumer cloud. Not hardware software innovation.”

“We are trying to make absolutely clear we are not going to leave any space uncovered to Apple,” Ballmer explained, speaking after the Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto where he confirmed Windows 8 would hit the market in late October. “We are not leaving any of that to Apple by itself. Not going to happen. Not on our watch.”

The most obvious phase of that challenge has been Surface, Microsoft’s own-brand Windows 8 and Windows RT tablets which have already put the cat among the proverbial pigeons with the company’s own OEM partners. However, Ballmer sees the next steps as definitely including those OEMs.

“We do feel empowered to innovate everywhere and bring our partners with us,” the CEO said. “We’re not going to leave any stone unturned, so to speak, as we pursue that.”

As for what that next step might be, despite previous denials, there’s a possibility that it could include a Microsoft-brand Windows Phone. Questioned as to the chances of that happening, Ballmer proved surprisingly coy.

“Right now we are working real hard on the Surface. That’s the focus. That’s our core” he pointed out. “Look, we’ll see what happens. We have good partners with Nokia, [HTC] in the phone space. I love what we’ve got going on with the Surface. We are going to focus on Surface and our other Windows 8 Tablet partners and see if we can go make something happen.”

Surface is expected to hit shelves in Q4 2012, along with other Windows RT hardware, though Microsoft has already seen one high-profile manufacturer, HP, ditch its RT tablet plans.

Ballmer: Microsoft will leave “no space uncovered that is Apple’s” is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 8 will hit RTM (“release to manufacturing”) in the first week of August, with the next-gen OS expected to launch in late October. The news was announced at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference 2012 in Toronto this morning by CFO Tami Reller, the first time the company has officially detailed the OS’ release.

“Release To Manufacturing” means that Microsoft’s hardware partners will get their hands on the final version of the software, ready to load onto their new devices. Any subsequent software changes will be released as feature packs or patches, with RTM basically presenting a deadline for Microsoft’s software engineers to stop development work on the market-ready version.

Microsoft had aways said to expect Windows 8 in the second half of the year, but had been reluctant to pin the platform down any more than that. This summer, meanwhile, Apple will release its own next-gen OS in the shape of OS X Lion.

Sales estimates for Windows 8 machines are in the region of 375m new PCs in the space of the next year, according to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. He described the OS launch as “the biggest deal” from Microsoft in the past 17 years.

Windows 8 RTM in early August and on shelves in late October is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Samsung’s first Windows RT tablet will drop in October, sources have claimed, running Microsoft’s slate-version of Windows 8 on ARM processors from Qualcomm. The tablet’s release is expected to be alongside initial availability of Windows RT models, Bloomberg‘s insiders say, despite high-profile drop outs such as HP deciding not to follow the RT path.

Talk of Samsung partnering with Qualcomm to use Snapdragon in Windows RT hardware first surfaced back in December, with Microsoft supposedly playing matchmaker between device manufacturers and chipset companies. At the time, Qualcomm supposedly selected Samsung because of its comprehensive manufacturing capabilities, in addition to the fact that Samsung already had its Galaxy Tab series of Android slates in the marketplace.

Exact specifications for the Samsung Windows RT model have not been confirmed, though as it stands the company looks likely to use a Snapdragon S4 processor. Such chips have been found in recent high-end phones  like the Samsung Galaxy S III variants in the US, and indeed Qualcomm provided developers with Windows RT prototypes using the processors earlier this year.

Microsoft threw the tablet cat among the pigeons in recent weeks, revealing its own Surface tablet running Windows RT. Though HP subsequently insisted that its decision to bypass the RT slate segment (in favor of full-fat Windows 8 tablets running x86 processors from Intel and AMD) was settled prior to Surface being revealed, rumors indicate many of Microsoft’s high-profile OEM partners were frustrated by the own-brand tablets.

Samsung Windows RT tablet tipped for October with Qualcomm chip is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Earlier today it was leaked that the end of the legal war between Facebook and Yahoo was at hand – this afternoon it’s been announced that Yahoo and Facebook will officially be tying the knot, so to speak, with portfolio cross-licensing, event cross-branding, and more. This update certainly takes the cake as far as businesses finding ways out of legal damages – and what better way to do it, after all, than with a good ol’ cup of tea and a dash of patent sharing?

The battle going on between these two beasts of companies has been going on since earlier this year when one sued the other with the other responding with a suit of their own. Patents were tossed, punches were thrown, and here we are now with sharp words forgotten and both Yahoo and Facebook seeming to come out just as much ahead as the other. The official statement reads as follows, in part:

“Under the agreements, which include a patent portfolio cross-license, the parties will work together to bring consumers and advertisers premium media experiences promoted and distributed across both Yahoo! and Facebook. Yahoo! and Facebook will also work together to bring Yahoo!’s large media event coverage to Facebook users by collaborating on social integrations on the Yahoo! site.”

After Ross Levinsohn, interim CEO of Yahoo and Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer at Facebook share some kind words in writing, the statement goes on to explain that this deal is an extension of a partnership the two companies worked in previously. This new deal will have the two entering into “definitive agreements” as well as a new advertising partnership.

“Since the launch of the original multi-year partnership between Yahoo! and Facebook that allows users to discover and connect news and information on Yahoo! sites and share them with their Facebook friends, Yahoo! has integrated the feature called “Social Bar” on more than 100 of its properties globally, and more than 90 million users have implemented it. As a result, Yahoo! has the largest active user base among all news sites that have integrated with Facebook’s Open Graph platform, making Social Bar the world’s leading social news application.”

Facebook and Yahoo have decided together to work on a series of collaborative tent-pole and anchor activities that will be annual, each of them set to provide “unparalleled experiences for consumers and world-class sponsorship opportunities for advertisers.”

Advertising incoming!

Facebook partners with Yahoo in surprise exit from patent battle is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Apple’s iPad Mini plans are, if the leaks are anything to go by, shaping up for a launch later in 2012, but hardware is only half the story: Apple needs a solid context with which to frame its smaller slate. One of the company’s most significant strengths is not only launching new devices, but telling us why we should want them and how they’re “perfect” for our lives. However, with Steve Jobs’ scathing comments about “tweener” tablets still ringing strong, how will Apple sell us that this is a sensible inevitability not a blushing backtrack?

Jobs’ argument was that a 7-inch tablet was simply too small for adult hands to use the UI properly. “While one could increase the resolution of the display to make up for some of the difference,” he justified, “it is meaningless unless your tablet also includes sandpaper so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one quarter of their present size.”

Now, it wouldn’t be the first time that Apple has said it insists on doing one thing, and then promptly does something else. Nonetheless, holding back from the 7-inch tablet market and then diving in with a new iPad Mini would be one of the biggest turnarounds to-date. It’ll take more than the famed “reality distortion field” to give a smaller tablet some believable justification.

Perhaps that context will be what Apple has learned from a few generations of iPad. When Steve Jobs made his sweeping dismissal of 7-inchers, it was back in October 2010; the original iPad had only been on sale since April that year, and stock was seriously constrained for several months. In some ways, Jobs was commenting blind; or, at least, based on Apple’s own opinions around tablet use rather than what the market was telling them.

In the intervening period, we’ve seen tablets overshadow ereaders in many ways, while smartphones have grown in scale to the 5.3-inch monsters from Samsung and others. Apple has launched iBooks Textbooks, too, pushing the iPad further into eduction settings. We’ve also seen Retina Display technology arrive, refining the resolution of the interface. As we speculated yesterday, Apple might see Retina as an essential addition to the iPad Mini if it’s to fit into the overall strategy of the firm.

So, could Tim Cook take the stage and push ebook and digital textbook consumption as a primary goal of the iPad Mini? “Since we launched the iPad, we’ve seen it enter markets we hardly dreamed of back in 2010″ the Apple CEO might say. “Readers, both at home and at school, have seized on the iPad as a magical way of exploring new literary worlds and expanding their horizons; now, we’re lowering the cost of entry to all that, and we’re making it even easier to take knowledge with you.”

Apple is stubborn when it feels it needs to be – it waited out the Flash argument until Adobe conceded defeat and adopted HTML5, for instance – but it’s also not afraid to do an about-turn if it smells a new market it can cash in on. The time may be right for a “tweener”; the big question is how Apple might convince us that time is now.

[Image credit: Ciccaresedesign]

iPad Mini still missing the killer context is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.