It’s certainly true that outgoing Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had plenty of confidence. Sometimes too much confidence, they say, as he could be somewhat overbearing; well, maybe not somewhat. But he certainly hung around Redmond for a long time, having joined the company run by his pal Bill Gates in 1980 in a sales capacity. […]

So Bill Gates is disappointed that Microsoft hasn’t done more to gain a substantial foothold in the smartphone market. Well, maybe, but coming up with a credible alternative to the iOS and Android, and discovering that noisy ads only turn people off, would be good for a start. But you have to wonder about many […]

Let’s start with Apple: We can assume that the recent executive changes at our favorite fruit company were the result of failures. iOS head Scott Forstall apparently got dumped for his Maps misfire, his refusal to sign the letter apologizing for the mapping defects, and perhaps for being  a jerk. John Browett was fired because […]

I have a client who spent years preparing reports in Microsoft Word for local educational systems. He had devised a fairly sophisticated workflow that involved using a keyboard shortcut program to trigger such functions as application launching, opening a new page, and choosing the proper text format. Now before we go on, let me also […]