It’s that time again folks, the time of the week when we gather around to poke at four Microsoft stories that were big hitters in the past seven days.
Instead of being serious this time around, we are going to relax and look at mostly fun stories today, because it is Friday, and it’s too hot, and we deserve it, darn it. As always, make sure that you are following TNWmicrosoft on Twitter here, and Facebook here, and let’s get into the news.
DOS is old, very old
Did you know that DOS turned 30 this week? It’s true! That lovely operating system, originally developed to handle Microsoft’s BASIC language, is finally into its 30s. If you are older than DOS, do think back to when you first used it.
If you are younger than DOS, you are lucky that you never had to.
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What we thought was a bit scary is that Hotmail is 15 years old. For more than half the life of DOS, Hotmail has been around. And Hotmail hasn’t gotten much better. Operating systems, on the other hand, have. You have to wonder about the pace of innovation: Has it slowed down?
Whatever the case, happy birthday DOS, you old thing you. When you turn 50, we promise to bake you a cake.
Microsoft thinks that Gmail is a bit bad
Yeah, so that Gmail thing? Microsoft is not that big of a fan. I bet that you could have guessed that, but the company is so set on its giving Gmail a ‘no’ that it made a video mocking it.
What is that? Microsoft spoofing Gmail? You bet your posterior. Now, the clip was meant only for internal consumption, but as things go, we got a copy. Enjoy:
Microsoft should probably keep Bing around
In the past week, a stupid editorial made the rounds. I say stupid, and I mean it. It was so dripping in naiveté that many publications didn’t even bother to respond, as to do so would be to simply mock its authors.
TNWmicrosoft is no such white knight, and attacked it with vigor. From our coverage:
The Bing brand, in other words, is far more than a simple search market share number. It is an interconnected web of search related products that are being systematically baked into every corner of the Microsoft empire. Microsoft should sell that? Simply because it is expensive? Could it even sell Bing, as it is so deeply tied to a plethora of products?
It’s almost sheer lunacy, but the craziness behind the idea of pushing Bing off the back of the boat goes even farther, as the search engine is also one of Microsoft’s best moors to the Facebook boat. Bing is deeply integrated in Facebook, and Facebook into Bing. To sell off Bing would be to cut the biggest tie that Microsoft has to the social behemoth, harming the company’s future; Facebook is a critical, and critically willing, Microsoft partner.
We went on and on. You can read the full post here.
Mango is like, almost here, man
You read that right, app submissions for Mango begin on August 22nd, and phones that run the code are going to land in September.
The bad news is that individual carriers are going to have to approve the code for their handsets before it goes out to the masses. Yes, that means that if you already own a handset, you are going to be in for a wait. Lame, yeah?
Anyway, after all the hype, and waiting, and hope, Mango is finally crystallizing into something that is more than simple promises. Now we just need to get the RTM edition into the hands of developers, and off to the races we will be.
That’s all, we told you we were going to take it easy this week. Wasn’t that fun?
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