Andrew Orlowski

Collected Journalism

Tag: Microsoft

  • Windows Metro Maoist cadres reach the desktop, and pound it flat

    Windows Metro Maoist cadres reach the desktop, and pound it flat

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    metro_hubris_450w

    The revolutionary dogma of Metro is sweeping through the old Windows desktop, too, a new leak of Window 8 confirms. The leaked build, newer than the public release of a fortnight ago, abandons the 3D design elements introduced into Windows in 1990 for a resolutely two-dimensional world. The ‘legacy’ desktop in Windows 8 is denuded of anything that takes advantage of human depth perception, such as window shadows, gradients or sculpted controls.

    It’s a flat, flat world.… Read More

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  • Windows 8’s Metro means no gain for lots of pain

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    By far the most ill-judged design decision I can remember – Andrew

    The public preview of Windows 8 has won “rave reviews” according to the Daily Mail, the newspaper that claims to reflect Middle England and is proudly conservative in every sense of the word. The Mail, it’ll have you know, is a feisty opponent of “change for the sake of it”.

    So not only do I fear that somebody has spiked the water supply at the Kensington HQ … Read More

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  • Five ways to rescue Windows Phone

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Windows Phone might be the most impressive bit of software Microsoft has produced – but it isn’t setting the world on fire. The iPhone and Android go from strength to strength – the latter proliferating so widely even Google doesn’t know how many Android systems are out there. (It can’t count the Chinese forks which don’t use any Google services and don’t phone home.)

    This discrepancy puzzles people. Reviewers like WinPho a lot – it’s clean, fast, functional and … Read More

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  • Perhaps there’s no ‘Third Ecosystem’?

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    There’s a whiff of something – it isn’t desperation, more like earnest exasperation – around Microsoft’s phone business these days

    Humiliatingly, Nokia was forced to deny rumours last week that it was planning to break up and sell its crown jewels to Microsoft. Normally a company can remain impervious to Twitter-born gossip, particularly from a known antagonist.

    Acknowledging the rumour simply gives it a chauffeured ride around the internet. But not this time: the ‘Microsoft buys Nokia’ story fulfils … Read More

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  • Google’s vanity OS is Microsoft’s dream

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    No one will be happier than Microsoft about Google’s vanity venture to market computers with a Google-brand OS. It gives us the illusion of competition without seriously troubling either business, although both will obligingly huff and puff about how serious they are about this new, phoney OS war. Since both of these giants are permanently in trouble with antitrust regulators – they’re at different stages of IBM-style thirty years legal epics – that’s just the ticket for them both.

    Google’s … Read More

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  • MS-DOS paternity suit settled

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    An overlooked court case in Seattle has helped restore the reputation of the late computer pioneer Gary Kildall.

    Last week, a Judge dismissed a defamation law suit brought by Tim Paterson, who sold a computer operating system to Microsoft in 1980, against journalist and author Sir Harold Evans and his publisher Little Brown. The software became the basis of Microsoft’s MS-DOS monopoly, and the basis of its dominance of the PC industry.

    But history has overlooked the contribution of Kildall, … Read More

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