Apple Demands Microsoft Stops Laptop Hunter Ads

Microsoft's Chief Operating Office, Kevin Turner told audience members during his Worldwide Partner Conference keynote told his employees about how Apple's lawyers wanted Microsoft to take down their Laptop Hunter ads. Here's the story he told.

And so we've been running these PC value ads. Just giving people saying, hey, what are you looking to spend? "Oh, I'm looking to spend less than $1,000." Well we'll give you $1,000. Go in and look and see what you can buy. And they come out and they just show them. Those are completely unscripted commercials.

And you know why I know they're working? Because two weeks ago we got a call from the Apple legal department saying, hey -- this is a true story -- saying, "Hey, you need to stop running those ads, we lowered our prices." They took like $100 off or something. It was the greatest single phone call in the history that I've ever taken in business. (Applause.)

I did cartwheels down the hallway. At first I said, "Is this a joke? Who are you?" Not understanding what an opportunity. And so we're just going to keep running them and running them and running them.

The whole keynote is available on Microsoft Presspass.

The most recent Laptop features Matt and Olivia, who were looking for a $700 laptop that they can use to share photos. It needs to have a large screen and great battery life, and of course they find their dream machine:

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New iPhone SMS Vulnerability Found

I am quite surprised that over the years there have not been many holes discovered on the iPhone. In fact the last exploit that was patched happened over two years ago and now, thanks to OS X security expert Charlie Miller -- we're seeing yet another come to light. At the SysScan conference in Syngapore, Miller talked about a vulnerability, which would allow hackers to "run software code on the phone that is sent by SMS over a mobile operator's network in order to monitor the location of the phone using GPS, turn on the phone's microphone to eavesdrop on conversations, or make the phone join a distributed denial of service attack or a botnet." Miller is planning to further discuss the vulnerability at the Black Hat conference. Apple is hoping to have the hole patched by the end of the month.

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Apple Bashes Windows 7, While Talking Snow Leopard

While Microsoft tries to reinvent Windows with their next operating system, Windows 7 Apple has characterised it as “the same old Windows”.

In a keynote speech at the Worldwide Developer Conference Apples Bertrand Serlet said that Windows 7 contained the same complexities of previous versions of Windows.

“Fundamentally it is just another Windows Vista” – Bertrand Serlet

Serlet tried to draw a contrast between Windows and what Apple is doing with Snow Leopard, the next version of its own operating system. "We've come at it from such a different place."

Apples goal with Snow Leopard is to make a “better Leopard”

There are similarities between what Apple's and Microsoft's efforts. Among the new features in Snow Leopard is a feature that adds the Expose window--previewing feature to the Dock--not unlike the Aero Peek feature that Windows 7 has as part of its new task bar.

In all fairness Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are very different Operating Systems.

Windows 7 is largely focused on improving the look, perception and core of the Vista engine, while Snow Leopard is more focused on improving the core.

Apple is also trying to improve Windows compatibility by adding Microsoft Exchange support in Snow Leopard. According to Apple all the user needs to type their e-mail address and password and Snow Leopard will auto detect the exchange server.

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