Microsoft News Tracker

Some Microsoft related news items from this week that didn’t find a post of their own.

What does Apple have up their sleeve for the iPod? And more European consumer groups are complaining about the iTunes/iPod interlock. What until they see Zune.

Microsoft has revised the Office 2007 user interface because of beta tester complaints. Among other things, the (unique but space consuming) “ribbon” is now collapsible. (Update: Jensen Harris says the ribbon always could be minimized, now the option is just more visible.) Speaking of Office, Microsoft has now come out on top in Massachusetts because of accessibility concerns - Massachusetts OpenDocument plan will use Office plug-in.

Windows Servers Gain:

Windows servers also continued to show strength, with 3.1 percent growth in revenues, and 11 percent growth in shipments year over year. Servers based on the operating system made up 34.2 percent of quarterly revenue, as opposed to Unix’s 35 percent share, a 1.6 percent decline in revenues and 1.8 percent drop in unit shipments.

Microsoft Updates Flawed IE6 Patch:

It turns out Microsoft’s indefinite postponement of security bulletin MS06-042 only lasted a day. The Redmond company on Thursday released an updated version of the patch that corrects a security vulnerability in IE 6.0 SP1.

The original patch contained a deployment issue, and was later discovered to include another security vulnerability.

The 2007 Games Convention was held in Leipzig, Germany this week and Microsoft put on a big show. I mentioned some of the news separately, but in addition:

• Madden NFL 07 was launched on Xbox 360
• Microsoft relaunched IntelliMouse Explorer 3.0 and announced a wireless game controller for Windows and the Xbox 360 as well as the Habu mouse mentioned earlier in the week.
• Various games and accessories for Windows and Xbox 360 were announced or reannounced as well as launches of the Xbox 360 in more countries.

Anti-monopoly push by China may hit Microsoft. Microsoft runs that risk everywhere.

MSN Messenger and Windows Live Messenger users in the UK will soon have a “report abuse” button to report sexual predators to the police. Also Microsoft is starting a beta for Windows Live Messenger 8.1.