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Red-Faced Microsoft Pulls Controversial Ad Spot Featured PR Agency Employee POSTED: 9:28 p.m. EDT October 14, 2002 WASHINGTON -- Red-faced Microsoft executives have pulled an ad that purports to show a free-lance writer who switched to Windows from rival Macintosh. There were questions about whether the woman actually existed. It turns out she works at a public relations company hired by Microsoft. The Associated Press tracked her down by examining personal data hidden within documents that Microsoft published with its ad. She says, "It was me. I made the switch." Microsoft's ad was apparently a response to a national...

Frustration with Microsoft is prompting more companies to consider "un-Windows" alternatives, according to a study released Tuesday. "Corporate user resentment and dissatisfaction with Microsoft and some of its practices is at an all-time high," says Laura DiDio, senior analyst with the Yankee Group and the report's author. That frustration is pushing more companies to consider Linux-based operating systems as well as Apple's OS X, she says. Licensing Hostility The survey, conducted last April and May by the Yankee Group and Sunbelt Software, asked 1500 corporations about their satisfaction with Microsoft. Bottom line: Many customers aren't happy. At the heart of...

  Full Disclosure: Sick of Blue Screens? Get a Mac!   Don't fret: Fantasies about ditching Windows are perfectly normal--maybe even healthy. Stephen Manes From the September 2002 issue of PC World magazinePosted Thursday, July 25, 2002 Mac heads are dissing our machines again! Nothing new about that--except that now they're doing it on television in commercials paid for by Apple. They're calling Windows machines "horrid" and "clunky" and "unwieldy." They're even saying that they're "disgusted!"You're probably thinking, "So what? They're like a religious cult. Apple's last big campaign featured famous dead people who'd never touched a computer, let alone...

Might Apple ditch PowerPC for Satanic chips? Citizen Smith Resolution wavering? By Tony Smith: Monday 22 July 2002, 10:17 IS APPLE SERIOUSLY thinking about switching processor platforms? There's been no end of speculative answers to that question over the past few years, but Apple itself has been resolute on the point: no we're not. That stance may have changed, if comments made by CEO Steve Jobs at the company's quarterly earnings confab. Asked whether Apple is now mooting a move to x86 chips, Jobs noted that that couldn't happen until the vast majority of its users and - more importantly...

Microsoft on Monday launched the first of several pre-emptive strikes against Apple Computer's Macworld trade show by making announcements about new technologies far ahead of their delivery to market. The strategic attack comes as tensions mount between Apple and Microsoft. During Macworld five years ago, the two companies announced a five-year technology agreement, whereby Microsoft committed to continued development of Office and Internet Explorer for the Mac. The two companies have said that they have no intention of extending the agreement, choosing instead to work together without a written contract. In Microsoft's first salvo, the company revealed details about the...

Hacker to Apple: Watch those downloads A security mailing list has alerted Apple Computer OS X users to a program that could let a hacker piggyback malicious code on downloads from the company's SoftwareUpdate service. According to the BugTraq mailing list, a hacker named Russell Harding has posted full instructions online for how to fool Apple's SoftwareUpdate feature to allowing a hacker to install a backdoor on any Mac running OS X. The exploit takes advantage of SoftwareUpdate, Apple's software updating mechanism in OS X, which checks weekly for new updates from the company. According to Harding, who claims to...