The dirty little secret at Microsoft (and at Red Hat, for that matter) has been the rise of the iPhone within employee ranks.
It's one thing to try to impose one's technology on an unsuspecting market, but Microsoft employees know that the iPhone makes their Windows Mobile devices look like Tinkertoys, which is why it's so easy to find iPhones at Microsoft's Redmond campus.
Or has been. In a relatively recent move, as The Business Insider reports, Microsoft has cut off reimbursements for data plans other than those linked to Windows Mobile devices. The move was ostensibly made to cut costs but likely also intended to save face by ensuring company employees use company technology.
It's a noble attempt to impose change through legislation. Perhaps Microsoft has learned something from European regulators.
Not that Microsoft is alone in trying to restrict choice. Microsoft enthusiast groups like the JCXP site are calling for a ban on the Opera browser to protest its involvement in recent European Commission antitrust proceedings. It's unclear whether the protesters will actually be able to find any Opera users to persuade away from the browser.
But good luck all the same.
There was a day when Microsoft was so impervious to competition that actions like this would have been unthinkable. Those days are gone. Microsoft is still dominant, but it's becoming clearer every day that there are mainstream alternatives to Microsoft technology that are clearly better than its own offerings.
Rather than legislating change, Microsoft could try innovating change. Those who can, compete....
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Google's latest version of Chrome has claimed the lead in my JavaScript speed tests, but Apple's new Safari 4 beta is the first browser to challenge it on Google's own performance benchmark.
JavaScript is a programming language that powers not just innumerable ordinary Web sites, but also many Web-based applications such as Google Docs. With the computing industry's major push to cloud computing, Web application performance is increasingly important, and there's a race on to see who's got the best JavaScript engine. JavaScript engines even have become a named feature, with Chrome's V8, Firefox's TraceMonkey, Opera's Futhark and upcoming Carakan, and now the Safari's newly branded Nitro, which is Apple's version of WebKit's Squirrelfish.
On the SunSpider test, the new Safari 4 beta scored third place.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)
The newest versions of Opera's Web browsers will allow both mobile devices and PCs to share a common set of bookmarks.
The Norwegian browser company is set to release beta versions of Opera 9.5 and Opera Mini 4 later Thursday at a rock show, of all things, in San Francisco on the last day of the CTIA conference. The company is most excited about a new feature called Opera Link, Jon von Tetzchner, co-founder and CEO of Opera, said in an interview just a block away from the Moscone Center and the CTIA crowds. Opera Link is a service that lets Web surfers access a common set of bookmarks from both a mobile phone running Opera Mini and a PC running Opera 9.5.
Opera's CEO Jon von Tetzchner is eager to watch how future mobile computers access the Internet.
(Credit: Opera)Opera is somewhat unique among its competitors in the browser world in that it has been focused on mobile devices for a very long time. Mozilla recently announced plans to develop a browser with smartphones in mind and Microsoft has Internet Explorer Mobile, but Opera is a popular browsing choice for smartphones running Symbian, the dominant operating system in this arena.
The idea behind Opera's mobile products is similar to how Apple CEO Steve Jobs has sold the iPhone: smartphone users will no longer endure a compromised Internet experience on their phones, von Tetzchner said. Opera has versions of its browser for PCs, smartphones, and regular mobile phones (as well as Nintendo's Wii) and it's very focused on the development of smartphones into full-fledge Internet-capable computers.
"Things are moving in our direction," von Tetzchner said. "The Web is changing, and it's moving in our direction as people are using it on more and more devices, and people are looking at alternatives on the desktop." Application development on both PCs and mobile devices is increasingly shifting toward Web-based applications that can run on any device through the browser, and although that's still a pretty fragmented notion in the smartphone world, it's an interesting time for a company like Opera.
Opera Link aims to help out mobile Web surfers who want to check out all the Web pages they usually access from their PC, but who don't want to type long URLs on small keyboards or store a ton of bookmarks on a small device. Unlike social bookmarking services like Delicio.us, you don't have to access a separate Web page to get to your bookmarks. You have to sign up for the Opera Link service, which stores bookmarks in a central place that can be directly accessed by your Opera browser either on your PC or mobile phone.
I haven't had a chance to test the service, so let us know if it works as seamlessly as the company claims. Opera is throwing a launch party for Opera Link as well as the new betas at San Francisco's Rickshaw Stop, described by BPM Magazine as "Your uncle's rec room where rock kids and electronic kids come together in fabulously dressed debauchery," on the club's Web site. Whatever that means.
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