Shots were fired in both directions as partisans previewed Microsoft's next tablet OS
A war of words -- blogged, tweeted and syndicated -- broke out at Microsoft's (MSFT) annual developers conference Tuesday when the company distributed Samsung tablets loaded with beta copies of Windows 8, its answer to Apple's (AAPL) OS X and iOS, rolled into one.
Paul Thurrott, the news editor of Windows IT Pro and host of the Windows Weekly podcast, set the tone when he tweeted an imaginary phone call in which the iPad concedes victory on the spot: "Hello, Windows 8? This is iPad. You win."
"Apple bloggers were apparently so flustered by the platform that they resorted to bombarding Twitter with jokes about cooling fans and Silverlight instead of stopping for a moment to realize that Microsoft is showing us the future of computing," wrote Boy Genius Report's Zach Epstein in a post entitled Sorry Apple, Windows 8 ushers in the post-post-PC era.
"I wasn't flustered," says The Loop's Jim Dalrymple, who had made one of those jokes, posting a photo of an industrial-size fan under the label Must-have accessory for Windows 8 tablet. "I was laughing my ass off."
Daring Fireball's John Gruber, speaking for the Apple establishment, granted that Windows 8 might turn out to be a successful OS, but added: "I'd be appalled if Apple were to unveil something in the half- (if that) finished state of Windows 8 for tablets."
Below: More sniping.
50 stories about a rumor, followed by 20 stories about a report that the rumor is untrue
Late Thursday night, the Apple (AAPL) rumor site called, appropriately enough, MacRumors, picked up a Japanese report that the company had scheduled a special event on Wednesday Sept. 7. Could this be the launch of the long-awaited iPhone 5?
By Friday morning, MacRumors' report was the lead item on Techmeme, the online news aggregator that MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Aug 12, 2011 6:45 PM ET
Rumors have it coming any time between late June and early 2012. Does it matter? Um, yes.
In early spring the folks who obsess about Apple (AAPL) are usually busy speculating about what features to expect in the next iteration of the iPhone -- a game neatly summarized in an infographic produced by the French site Nowhere Else, from which the image at right was taken.
But this year, reports that there MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Apr 12, 2011 11:02 AM ET
An Apple leak, hedge fund FUD or a false rumor out of the wild west of the blogosphere?
Several Wall Street analysts finally caught on to the significance of Jim Dalrymple's report in The Loop Monday that there would be no new hardware unveiled at Apple's (AAPL) Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
What this may mean -- as BMO Capital's Keith Bachman and Jefferies & Co.'s Peter Misek explained to clients Wednesday MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Mar 30, 2011 11:58 AM ET
The company will end its free iPhone 4 case program on Sept. 30
After more than three months of complaints, lawsuits and a global media frenzy that culminated in an extraordinary Steve Jobs' mea culpa, Apple (AAPL) quietly closed the book Friday on the story that even Jobs came to call Antennagate. As of Sept. 30, the company will no longer automatically provide free cases for iPhone 4s or offer a MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Sep 10, 2010 3:28 PM ET