iPhone 4 pricing, bring-your-own laptops and the end of ID cards
Stories of the month - June 2010
With another new Apple gadget hitting the shelves in June, Steve Job and co were once again dominating the headlines last month.
As the iPhone 4 prepared to go on sale, silicon.com readers were clamouring to find out just how much they'd have to pay to get hold of the device as operators announced their upcoming tariffs.
Following the launch however, it was signal issues dogging the new iPhone that was generating the headlines, as users reported that holding the iPhone in a certain way could cause the phone's reception to drop.
More iPhone bashing was seen in June, this time coming out of the corridors of power in Westminster when health minister Simon Burns revealed the device cannot be used by MPs for official business, as it hasn't got the right security clearances.
Other popular Apple-themed stories included a piece by senior reporter Natasha Lomas, who endeavoured to use an iPad as her work PC instead of her traditional corporate laptop - you can see how she fared here.
Others looking to ditch their antiquated work machine in favour of the more up-to-date tech they use at home should take heart: it appears CIOs are beginning to get wise to users' preferences. In an interview with silicon.com last month, Westminster Council CIO David Wilde revealed that the local authority is considering embracing a bring-your-own laptop policy for staff.
Of course, if Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Michael Cusumano is proved correct, it won't be long 'til all hardware is intrinsically worthless - you can find out why in this interview with the man himself.
Hardware could become something of an endangered species if the uptake of cloud computing continues to grow at the rate many industry watchers have predicted.
Microsoft recently woke up to the trend with the launch of its Azure offering and June saw silicon.com reporter Tim Ferguson take a look inside Redmond's strategy for the cloud platform here.
Along with public clouds such as Azure, private clouds were also making the news as tech companies demoed technology that could allow companies to link up every datacentre they own into a single virtualised computer that could potentially span the globe.
And from opening the doors to new tech, silicon.com moved onto shutting the door on a past-its-best IT project. As the coalition government finally put an end to the unloved ID cards scheme, senior reporter Nick Heath took a look at where it all went wrong.