If you can believe Microsoft, they frequently put groups of users in little test rooms — or some sort of testing environment — and expose them to the new features in a product. By gauging their reactions, they decide whether those capabilities deserve to go into production. Now if you look at Microsoft’s shipping products, […]

So here’s the deal: Whenever Steve Jobs doesn’t emerge from his office or subterranean hiding place for a few weeks, the rumors about his health begin anew. Certainly his expected lack of visibility at the forthcoming Macworld Expo, where marketing VP Philip Schiller is slated to deliver the keynote, fuels the speculative files still further. […]

All right, so if I heard someone tell me that Steve Jobs not only wasn’t going to deliver his famous keynote at the next Macworld Expo and that Apple itself would pull out of the event after 2009, I would tell them they were probably drinking too much Kool-Aid. Yet, that’s precisely the news that […]

Imagine if you were the CEO of the world’s largest software company, and that some of your products had shares of upwards of 90% in certain market segments. You are sitting at the top of the mountain, reasonably secure in your knowledge that there were no credible competitors out there, and that your place in […]