Announcing Bing

Actually, the definition provided does not agree with your own. I guess that you need to be Italian to understand;) Didn't you ever see the Sopranos? Doc

tayme "@mikegalos - I'm glad to see you acknowledge that Apple listened and delivered what their customers wanted. " Partly. Let's look at some cases: Developers wanted the same SDK that Apple and their favored partners got. They didn't get it but did get a subset missing key functionality. (Score that as partly responding to the developer partners) Developers wanted freedom to develop what they wanted. They got an opaque approval program that blocked apps that competed with Apple or their favored partners. (Score that as a no) Developers wanted to distribute through multiple channels. They got a license that gave Apple total control over their air supply. (Score that as a no) Developers wanted a controlled review system for the Apple store rather than popularity based listings open to flooding. They got price pressure that drove the profit out of the market so that the only way to compete was to make less than a dollar for an app no matter how complex. And a "reviewing process" that tends to favor flashlights, tip calculators and fart apps. (Score that as a disaster) Developers wanted the ability to ship demos so that people could try apps before buying them. Apple said no way. (Score that as damaging to everyone involved but Apple) Developers wanted equity on refunds so that when the people who had to buy their app when they couldn't try it first could get a refund with no cost to the customer or the developer. They got a system where every refund meant the developer paid Apple their cut no matter what and so they lost money on every return - even the ones their competitors bought and returned just to screw with them. (Call that a total disaster) Developers wanted their customers to be able to unlock the phones they'd paid for if the Apple straightjacket was too tight or the customer wanted to run an app that didn't get blessed by the often arbitrary Apple "review" process. Their customers got bricked phones if they dared to cross Apple and threats that it would be done to them again whenever Apple felt like enforcing their control over their customers. (Score that as a heavy handed no) So, when it hurt Apple badly enough, they were willing to do a total 180 and count on their fanatics to pretend that was the plan all along while ignoring all the other limits. And when it was in Apple's best interests, they did what they've historically done to all their partners and that sure isn't "listening to them". But, hey, you'll probably not remember any of that...

And yet the iPhone is an unqualified success or are you saying that it isn't Mike? ^ This should be an interesting response.

I think some of you need to ask yourself what value to you actually bring to these discussions? A few of you really need to grow up. Do you really think you're being taken seriously? Do you like others having zero respect for you? Do you like presenting yourself as a moron? If you expect to make it in the I.T. industry, you need to grow up.

"Jeez." losta would put a [sic] beside that and say that it's spelled "Geez", short for "Gee whiz". @sub: Besides that, I was only telling the truth. If losta wants to dispute the truth and make himself look like a fool when I correct him, then so be it. The point was not about making Apple look silly (they do a good enough job doing that on their own), it was this: "Something interesting going on here too: Microsoft is using some nice AJAX stuff on here, what with integration to Live Maps (is that still the name?). When you figure that the iPhone 3rd-party developer support was supposed to be entirely AJAX web apps, it's funny that so much of the Google location information is still standard application code with custom Google API's and almost nothing is pure AJAX running in a browser or HTML app. Microsoft is essentially embracing what Apple said they would, but didn't. I'm wondering if Microsoft will leverage more AJAX with this and Windows Mobile in WM7...." Ok, well maybe it does make Apple look silly. Anyway, I'd like to see more of this on Windows Mobile 7. AJAX is good on a mobile platform if done correctly, but Apple doesn't "get" it yet. Instead, they did a 180 and copped-out/gave-in/failed-to-deliver/etc. on the web app platform - take your pick. I think Palm webOS is headed into territory that Apple couldn't go. I'd like to see Microsoft leverage Expression Studio, XAML, and Silverlight towards the mobile space too. FWIW, I'd also like to see a list of developers that decided to use AJAX and CSS for web apps tailored to the iPhone.

Dude Somewhat successful? Sure. "Unqualified success"? Hardly. Imagine what would have occurred if they hadn't abused their developers. I know that I hear developers saying "Android or Palm Pre or WinMo - anybody but Apple" more and more lately which is NOT where you want to be when your "unqualified success" has only resulted in capturing 11% of the market in two years (and that's using the pro-Apple numbers). Do you think treating partners badly has no reprecussions or are you claiming Apple hasn't treated developers badly? Seeing which justification of Apple's policies you're going to fall back on should be an "interesting response"

I hate the name but I thought Google sounded pretty stupid when I first heard it so what do I know. Cnet gives it a good review so that's encouraging, (thanks to Shark for that one) I use Live search as well as a few others once in a while but I usually end up on Google. I'm not sure why Microsoft pursues this at all, why not concentrate on their strengths? But I'm glad they make the Zune and the Xbox they probably make more profit on search so what the heck.

whiplash " I thought Google sounded pretty stupid when I first heard it " And I hate that they've taught an entire generation to misspell googol.