Notes from the Field | Robert X. Cringely® » Geek Week: XP's not sacked, iPhone dev kit hacked

April 04, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Geek Week: XP's not sacked, iPhone dev kit hacked

TAGS: None

Full speed behind. It seems the rumors of XP's death have been greatly exaggerated. Microsoft has bowed to overwhelming demand and decided to give XP a reprieve, kinda sorta. Scheduled to get the gas chamber in July, XP will continue to live and breathe but only on the lowest of low end machines -- like the Classmate PC and Asus's EEE. In other words, machines that would otherwise run some flavor of Linux. I have a sneaking suspicion XP will find its way to other boxes as well, though. Does anyone else remember users clamoring for Microsoft to hang onto Windows 98, Win 2K, or (god help us) Windows ME after XP was released? Yet another sign of Vista's overwhelming market success. The ship is slowing sinking, but the musicians play on.

PWN 2 Phone. Well, the iPhone SDK everyone's been hotly anticipating has finally been released. I don't mean the official one Apple released last month, I mean the hacker-friendly PwnageTool created by the iPhone Dev Team. PwnageTool will allow third-party developers to build any app they please for the Jesus Phone, without first requiring the blessing of Pope Steven. The iPDT also claims that apps created by its Tool can't be broken by future Apple updates. (Hey, it's a product announcement, you're supposed to make inflated claims.) As I type this the SDK is available only for OS X, but  a Windows version is expected momentarily. So it took Jobs & Co. 9 months (at least) and lord knows how much money to birth its SDK, and these guys did theirs in less than a month for free. Shouldn't they be pulling down the big bucks in Cupertino while Apple's dev team lives in their parents' basements eating Dilberitos and playing Halo?

In Google we trust. When you have more money than God, people expect you to buy everything. That's what it must seem like for Google, which has been rumored to be acquiring just about every organization at one time or another (including the US government.) The normally staid Reuters cites rumors that Google will purchase Expedia and CNET, though for what purpose I can't imagine. TechCrunch's Michael Arrington foists yet another rumor that the G Forces are looking to swipe Skype away from eBay (which would probably be a good thing, because Skype is cool and eBay has no clue what to do with it). Here's my prediction: If you keep picking out new acquisition targets for Google, you will eventually be right. Even a blind pig finds the occasional acorn. I just wish Google would acquire me, and then lay me off with a nice options package. I could use a break.

Got hot tips or more Google acquisition rumors? Spread them below or send the skinny to me: cringe (at) infoworld (dot) com. Cool swag awaits top tipsters.

Think you've got the right stuff to pass our tech quizzes? They're not as easy as they look:
• The InfoWorld News Quiz
• Test Your Geek IQ
• Test Your Network Security IQ

Posted by Robert X. Cringely on April 4, 2008 06:57 AM

RATE THIS ARTICLE: