Technology, Operating System | featured news

Microsoft's Windows 95 rollout presented the most challenges in the company's history, leading to several last-minute changes to technical features that would no longer support a rival software maker's word processor, Bill Gates testified Monday in a $1 billion antitrust lawsuit filed by the creator of WordPerfect.

Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth thinks Ubuntu Linux has a shot to be a contending operating system for future phones and tablets. It'll be a tough go -- Apple iOS and Google Android dominate the field now, with new Windows Phone 7 also making a play.

RIM delays an update to its PlayBook tablet computer's system software until February 2012.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. unveiled a new operating system Tuesday in hopes of grabbing some attention away from the iPhone and Android phones.

If you're reading this story on your iPad or iPhone, perhaps searching for "iOS 5 release date," well -- it's now, says Apple. Apple has reinvented its operating system, promising 200 new features, and, in the process, changing the way users relate to the online world.

On Tuesday, Microsoft explained why the Windows 8 start menu is now a start screen: no one used it.

Last week, at a large developers’ event, Microsoft formally introduced its next operating system to the world, and it’s nothing like the Windows you’re used to. It’s clear the company has watched and learned as Apple stormed into the marketplace with the iPhone and iPad. Microsoft’s new Windows 8 looks and feels like it’s built from the ground up to do away with the noisy, dated interfaces of the desktop computer, replacing them with a touch-friendly experience that’s focused on a new way of computing.

There was a time in the tech business when your company could be as slow as molasses in January yet still prevail based on shear market size. That day disappeared in the rear view mirror many years ago, as Microsoft is about to learn as it prepares to introduce a major Windows upgrade.

One of the unambiguous messages we heard from Microsoft's Build 2011 conference in Anaheim all last week was that development of HTML5 "Metro-style apps" for Windows 8 would be "plug-in free." All requests for Microsoft to "clarify" that rule only underscored the blunt reality of the statement: HTML5 is about the absence of plug-ins, and thus, Metro will have an absence of plug-ins ...

Never has so much been at stake for Microsoft in a single product release. After the successful launch of Windows 7 in 2009, the company continues to rule the desktop, but has faltered in the emerging tablet space. The next version of its popular operating system, codenamed Windows 8, is designed to bridge the gap between PCs and slates, but will it be enough to help the world’s leading software company catch up to its competitors in the mobile space when it launches sometime in 2012?