Microsoft News Tracker

Microsoft just released the July Community Technology Preview of SQL Server 2008 (codenamed Katmai) and plans a new CTP approximately every 60 days instead of a formal beta testing process:

The company is using the CTP process instead of a more formal beta test cycle for SQL Server 2008. By the schedule, a third CTP is targeted to ship roughly 60 days from now, and that would put a fourth CTP at about the end of the year.

Of course, the ship date is somewhere in 2Q08 despite prominent participation in a goofy launch event next February.

After Microsoft corporate VP Satya Nadella let the cat out of the bag last week, Microsoft’s PR folks belatedly came up with a statement yesterday revealing a pilot for a new free, ad-supported version of Works called Microsoft Works SE 9:

(more…)

In January, Microsoft’s MAC Business Unit (BU) promised that Office 2008 for the Mac would ship in 2H2007. Today that date slipped to a plan for a launch at Macworld in mid-January 2008 with general availability in 1Q2008. The delay is blamed on quality issues related to the new XML document formats introduced with Office 2007 for Windows and Apple’s switch to Intel processors.

Mac fans are typically grumpy about what seems to be second class treatment, but here’s an interesting factoid (from the second link above):

Sales of Office for Macs rose about 72 percent from 2001 to 2006, compared with an increase of about 18 percent for Windows versions. Sales of the Mac versions made up about 20 percent of dollars spent on Office at U.S. retail stores and Web sites in 2006, up from 4 percent in 2001.

That’s probably not enough to banish all conspiracy and neglect theories, but it certainly isn’t chump change.