Editorials

Microsoft’s Windows 8 (both Windows RT and Windows 8 for x86-64) is due to hit the market around November of this year and it has already caused a ton of controversy. But there is one that did not get a ton of press when it was announced that highlights a few issues with Windows that many are not anticipating. Around the first of July it was announced that HP would not be making an ARM based tablet for the next OS and we also know that Acer will probably not as well.

Cisco is now facing exactly what we think will happen when people realize how tied down they will be with Windows 8. The networking giant attempted to force people that own their Linksys consumer line of wireless routers to use their cloud services to control simple management and administrative items in these devices. According to most reports the shift came after an automatic firmware update. This meant that most of the users complaining were never given the chance to accept this. According to some reports the update was required to continue using the product at all.

Apple and their supporters love to have fun with numbers and statistics. One of the recent ones that has caught our eye is that ratio of Macs to PCs. I have seen titles that claim the PC is dead (again) and that the new numbers are “killing” Microsoft and a ton of other crap that is as ridiculous as the titles are fantastic. However, this is nothing new for Apple (or really any company, but Apple is the king of this type of spin). They love to work the numbers in any direction they can. They take the terms median, mean, and mode to a new level (all of those are methods of finding an “average”).

If you want to get a good grasp on how much Microsoft needs Windows 8 and their Surface tablet to work all you have to do is take a look at who they have talking about it. Right now they have gotten Bill Gates to talk about Surface and also to back Ballmer’s play on having Microsoft make their own. This comes the day after they call for a $6.2 billion write down and not long after we have heard that Nokia is making backup plans for if Windows Phone 8 fails in the market.