Stories by Jon Brodkin

IBM: The PC is the new mainframe

"The PC is dead!" We've heard that message a lot since the birth of Apple's iPad, but when one of the creators of IBM's first PC added his voice to the chorus, people took notice.

On Linux's 20th anniversary, recounting past slights from Microsoft

The mythical "year of the Linux desktop" still hasn't come, and may never, but on the 20th anniversary of Linux the free operating system's proponents threw a party to celebrate its success and scoff at past attacks launched by Microsoft, its biggest...

The epic unpopularity of Windows smartphones

Pop quiz: Can you name every smartphone platform that's more popular than Windows Phone 7? Go on. We dare you.

Google accuses Microsoft, Oracle, Apple of "hostile" patent campaign

Google's chief legal officer today accused rivals Microsoft, Oracle and Apple of "a hostile, organized campaign against Android ... waged through bogus patents."

Apple to have one OS for Macs and iPads by 2016, analyst predicts

With Microsoft trumpeting the idea that PCs and tablets should run the same operating system and have all the same capabilities, will Apple go down the same road?

Internet Explorer gains among Windows 7 users, despite Microsoft's overall losses

Microsoft's long and steady decline in browser market share continued in July, but there is one bright spot for Redmond: Among Windows 7 PC owners, Internet Explorer is gaining, albeit only slightly.

Android Trojan records phone calls

A new Android Trojan is capable of recording phone conversations, according to a CA security researcher.

Google founders were talked out of ignoring user email

In Google's early days, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin argued that answering email complaints would be a waste of time, and that Googlers should fix problems behind the scenes without interacting directly with users, according to a former Google...

Microsoft struggles to get Hyper-V drivers in Linux kernel

Microsoft isn't exactly dumping Windows for Linux, but it has become one of the busiest contributors to the Linux kernel. Microsoft's attempt to get Hyper-V drivers into the Linux kernel has taken longer than expected, having begun in July 2009, so M...

Microsoft previews Windows 8, Skype/Lync; bashes competition

Microsoft's annual partner conference last week featured previews of the Windows 8 server and desktop operating systems, talk of integration between Skype and Lync, and a barrage of insults aimed at the company's competitors.

Microsoft: Cloud computing won't hurt us

Cloud computing is widely perceived as a threat to Microsoft, because the maker of Windows and Microsoft Office earns the lion's share of its money selling licenses for packaged software.

Microsoft, Google and Twitter debate whether HTML5 is "Holy Grail"

Is HTML5 the Holy Grail for building next-generation Web applications?

Research tackles powering the virtual data center

Data center managers are well versed in distributing power efficiently to physical servers. But the proliferation of virtualization, with multiple virtual machines and applications running on a single piece of hardware, has made this task a lot more ...

The data center needs an operating system?

Personal computers have operating systems. Even phones have operating systems. So why doesn't the data center have one?

Who needs a cloud? Microsoft sold 31 million copies of Office 2010

Microsoft is taking aim at some unspecified critics on the one-year anniversary of Office 2010, saying the product has sold a copy every second despite the rise of Google Apps and other cloud-based alternatives.