Microsoft Windows 8 Mess; Windows Phone Disappoints

Microsoft 2013 -- Windows 8 #FAIL; Windows Phone the "biggest disappointment" (see next two articles) --

Microsoft’s Windows 8 Is Such a Mess Hewlett-Packard Is Now Teaching People How to Use It (GOOG, HPQ, MSFT): "Confused by Microsoft's Windows 8? You're not alone. Microsoft's hardware partner, Hewlett-Packard, is going to great lengths to explain the operating system to potential customers, launching a website for such a purpose. The decision to essentially do Microsoft's work for it highlights HP's dependency on Microsoft, although the company has been working to reduce it by strengthening its partnership with Google. Windows 8 adoption has been poor . . ."

The best and worst of smartphones in 2013: Gearing up for the next big thing | VentureBeat | Mobile | by Devindra Hardawar: "Biggest disappointment: Windows Phone Windows Phone finally managed to snag the No. 3 spot in the smartphone market this year, jumping up 150 percent to take 3.6 percent of the global market (according to IDC). But that rise mostly stemmed from a slew of great handsets from Nokia’s and BlackBerry’s implosion, not through any major improvements in Windows Phone itself."

Verizon, AT&T monthly data use could force end of caps | BGR: "If more mobile subscribers get hit with monthly overage fees then it could benefit both T-Mobile and Sprint, neither of which implements data caps on their smartphone plans. Sprint has already taken shots at the two major incumbent carriers for their capped family data plans and T-Mobile has shown that it will gleefully bash its rivals for just about everything, so we can expect to see a renewed focus on data caps next year if they increasingly become a pain point for more consumers."

Taiwan Fines Apple for iPhone Price-Plan Meddling - Jenny W. Hsu ...

Jenny W. Hsu

Apple Inc. AAPL -0.51%  has been fined 20 million New Taiwan dollars (US$670,000) and ordered to stop interfering with mobile service providers and handset distributors' pricing, Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission said on Wednesday. Apple can appeal but may face a fine up to NT$50 million if it doesn't comply, the commission said....

Google sues to protect Android device makers from Apple-backed patent hell — Tech News and Analysis: "... Despite its cocky name, Rockstar is simply a corporate patent troll hatched by Google rivals — including Apple, Microsoft and BlackBerry — after the rivals spent $4.5 billion ($2.5 billion from Apple) in 2012 for a trove of patents from Nortel, a long defunct Canadian telco company. Today, Rockstar employs once-proud Canadian engineers to help with the trolling operation. The filing says: Rockstar produces no products and practices no patents. Instead, Rockstar employs a staff of engineers in Ontario, Canada, who examine other companies’ successful products to find anything that Rockstar might use to demand and extract licenses to its patents under threat of litigation...."

BlackBerry Co-Founder Cuts Stake - NYTimes.com: "Mike Lazaridis, a founder and former executive at BlackBerry, took advantage of a rare rise in its share price to cut his stake in the company. Mr. Lazaridis reported in a regulatory filing that a holding company he controls sold 3.5 million shares for about $27.4 million on Monday and Tuesday. Before the sale, Mr. Lazaridis owned about 5.7 percent of the company. Mr. Lazaridis offered no explanation for the sale in the filing, and a spokesman said Mr. Lazaridis had no comment."

Amazon offers shipping refunds as UPS misses some Christmas ...
Dallas Morning News
Packages ready to ship move along a conveyor belt at Amazon.com's Phoenix fulfillment center. Millions of online shoppers were expected to click on ...

Dallas Morning News

Amazon: 5 bold predictions for 2014

CNET
Amazon spent 2013 attempting to wow us and, for the most part, succeeded. ... The strategy has worked for Google and its Nexus 5 phone, which it is ...

Google and Apple gear up for next mobile battle

Telegraph.co.uk
Google has predicted its dominant web search engine will mean it will beatApple in the race to ... It uses Microsoft Bing for web searches, for instance.

Telegraph.co.uk

Google Nexus 5 review

Hindu Business Line
Apple might be the queen bee of design, but that doesn't mean the others don't know how to do 'minimalism' right. Look at the Nexus 5 and you'll ...

Hindu Business Line

Microsoft Wants To Get Rid of Passwords, Joins Group

Tom's Hardware Guide
Microsoft joins Google, BlackBerry, Lenovo, MasterCard, LG Electronics and many other industry leaders in making FIDO specifications the global ...

Apple's 2nd generation Mac Pro: The first hands-on reviews

Fortune
Apple's 2nd generation Mac Pro: The first hands-on reviews ... "Not since our first "eyes on" experience with Google Glass earlier this year has the ...

Merck, Apple, BMW, Google: Intellectual Property

Bloomberg
A consortium created by Apple Inc. (AAPL), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and other technology companies to acquire $4.5 billion of patents from Nortel ...

Google Gains Another Ally in Its War With Microsoft

DailyFinance
Meanwhile, Microsoft, in its attempt to compete with Google and Apple on the tablet front, has alienated many of its longtime allies. Hewlett-Packard's ...

The Hindu

Top science and space stories of 2013

CNN
(CNN) -- It has been a thrilling year of discovery in many areas of science, but also a sobering time -- federal funding cuts threaten the future of innovation, and rising carbon dioxide levels foreshadow environmental and health challenges linked to climate ...

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