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Apple, Microsoft to release big updates soon. Everyone excited about copy and paste.

Recent big news from the two big players in personal computing include updates to both operating systems and both player’s media devices. To no one’s surprise, the iPod update has had more attention, plus, the Zune team’s update, which was fairly big, was actually for their website. The entire podcast library for the Zune Marketplace is now available to stream directly from their website. While this new feature is cool, it’s one of those updates that no one really asked for…so maybe now that they got that bug out of their pants, they can actually make some updates to the player. To be fair, the team has actually said they’ll be rolling out new updates over the next nine months, beginning with some “little steps in March”. The Zune team, unlike the rest of Microsoft, really keep their cards close: most of the updates have zero feature leaks before they’re intended to be released.

Apple is also updating the iPod. They just released a new Shuffle, which doesn’t seem to be of great interest to anyone, except conspiracy freaks who are upset that you have to use Apple’s headphones. The real iPod/iPhone news is the 3.0 software update, which is rumored to have…wait for it…copy and paste! While I’m sure the implementation is going to be super cool (‘cause it’s Apple), it’s just ridiculous that the big news here is something that every other “smart” phone (and some not-so-smart ones, too) has had for the last 10 years. Still no video, though; which, even if I wanted an iPhone, would seal the coffin for me. I see no reason to pay hundreds of dollars for a phone which is lacks such basic  functionality (even if the Japanese do like it). For an interesting side story, you can check out how to use VoIP to (temporarily) turn the iTouch into an iPhone. Apple is expected to preview the iPhone OS 3.0 features on St. Patrick’s Day (March 17).

I recently read an article by Joe Wilcox entitled “Operating Systems Don’t Matter”. It really stated the obvious (but overlooked) premise that people never buy a computer for the operating system, but for what they can do with the operating system. The hype of Windows versus Mac is just that to people who want to browse the web, organize photos, play games, or write an email. I think that Gates and Co really understood this back in the day. That’s why he was able to turn his entire company on a dime to provide the best office suite available, embrace the web as a part of the every day computing experience, and, as his last major initiative, take security as seriously as it should be taken. That last initiative (although it should have been done) probably cost Microsoft the adoption rate they would have had for Vista, because they stopped mid-stream to develop XP SP2. Long story short, Microsoft ended up releasing a system that most of the industry (and consumers) felt was severely under-developed. Apple had a field day with the debacle, and, at one point, actually included Vista in more advertising than Microsoft.

Fast-forward to today, and both Microsoft and Apple are again readying new releases for their operating systems. Apple isn’t saying much (as usual) about Snow Leopard, and Microsoft has released several versions of Windows 7 for the public to test. So far, the word is that MS has gotten their teams in shape and produced a quality bit of software. The new OS can run on the ultra-inexpensive netbooks with little performance degradation, improves on the fancy graphics that Vista introduced, and natively supports multi-touch (think all of the cool Surface features, but on your $400 netbook). There are also some new features to help you switch apps, which, as someone who usually has about 10-12 windows open at a time, I’m really looking forward to, and the ability to have “jump lists”: special shortcuts that jump directly to an action within an application, like opening an item from your history with the IE button. Perhaps the biggest news is that Windows 7 actually performs better than both Vista or XP in certain tests, which really improves the Vista bloat image. Still no word on WinFS, though (video).

While, as I mentioned, not much is known for sure about the Apple OS update, it seems to be their version of W7 – a largely incremental update that doesn’t aim to revolutionize the desktop experience, but slightly improve it. Some of the major updates include a much smaller OS (in size), and inclusion of Microsoft’s ActiveSync technology, which allows access to Exchange Server. They’ve also improved the Stacks feature, allowing you to click on a folder without actually collapsing the stack. Another feature that they’ve apparently had to spend a lot of time on is implementing AutoCorrect and AutoReplace and a feature similar to that in phones that identifies phone numbers, addresses, etc, and creates actions based on the type of information that it is. They’re also including a framework for developers to utilize the multi-touch capability of the touchpad in their applications. One fairly big item that I found interesting was the work Apple has done on the OpenCL technology. OpenCL basically lets programmers utilize the processors inside of a graphics card to do any number of actions without ever knowing the type of processor that is doing the work. The really amazing part is that OpenCL lets you do non-graphics work, like sorting text, or mathematical operations.

A professor of mine once made a bet with anyone who would take it that 10 years from then (2003) Microsoft and Apple would no longer exist as the major players that they were then. I took that bet, of course; and I’d take it again today. Both companies have introduced major new technologies that continue to make geeks everywhere drool and shell out money to buy their flashy new toys, and, eventually, function as practical tools for everyone else. And that’s not going to stop anytime soon.