Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley's blog covers the products, people and strategies that make Microsoft tick.
Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 25 years for a variety of publications and Web sites, and is a frequent guest on radio, TV and podcasts, speaking about all things Microsoft-related. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).
Microsoft is "trying to restrict customers' flexibility and freedom to choose virtualization software by limiting who can run their software and how they can run it." Those are the charges levied by Microsoft virtualization competitor VMware, which over the past few days, has come out swinging against Microsoft.
Microsoft's Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack (SP) 1 now has an official due date: Same time as Longhorn Server in the latter half of 2007.
It hasn't been such a great Friday for the Live teams over at Microsoft.
Microsoft plans to announce on February 26 the formation of a new group designed to focus on the needs of joint Microsoft and Oracle customers.
It's going to take a lot more than a Web-based productivity suite aimed at business users to get Microsoft panicked about Google. That's the main message the Redmond software maker is expected to seed among market researchers via a strategy-update call on February 22.
You'd think with so many former Softies on the payroll, Google would know a thing or two about avoiding mistakes Microsoft already made. But if you look at the just-announced Google Apps Premier Edition, it seems Google missed at least one lesson that Microsoft learned the hard way.
It seems like everyone, other than possibly Microsoft's Vista team itself, seems to believe that the User Account Control (UAC) in Vista already needs an overhaul. The question is, who is going to do it? And what form will it take?
Mr. Debian, a k a Linux Foundation Chief Technology Officer Ian Murdock, isn't working on any secret Microsoft deals during his trip to Microsoft, he says.
On Microsoft's just-released "Certified for Vista" list of apps, more than 100 of the 800 total are from Microsoft. Depending on your point of view, this could be either a good or a bad thing.
It's been a while since Microsoft has talked publicly about the # (Sharp) programming languages under development by its research unit. But the silence doesn't mean nothing's been happening.