Minnaar Pieters

OK, you might have seen the rumours about Microsoft buying Skype. Microsoft is apparently offering $7 billion dollars for the VoIP service — which sounds like silly money. In fact, this might be the biggest acquisition that Microsoft has ever done. However the details lie in the partnerships this can enable for Microsoft. Skype is the […]

  At first glance, Microsoft needs to make a very convincing argument to make people take note of Office 2010. After all, it’s just another release of Office. Just about anyone would agree that Microsoft Office is by far the most feature-rich productivity suite out there, but this great advantage also makes it very difficult […]

Seems so… I am pretty sure most tech-loving internet users have read the posts by Gizmodo at this point. It sounds like a movie: young guy who programmes iPhone baseband software uses an unreleased iPhone prototype and goes for a drink at a bar. Guy forgets the iPhone on a bar stool. Guy #2 picks […]

Like many people these days, I work across many machines in a typical work-day. I have a Windows machine at the office, a Mac at home and back up all the computers to a Windows Home Server in the cupboard. I have a few “essential” folders that I always want to have access to (things […]

Microsoft is one of those companies that always seems to carry the weight of the computing world — and rightly so. If you think of any area within computing, MS somehow has a finger in the pie. In some areas of course, they are the pie. Credit has to be given to Microsoft’s improvement in […]

So what is my opinion of the iPad? Well first off, I do like it. Despite all its shortcomings, I think it might be a game-changing device. I read somewhere that the iPhone should be renamed the iPad Nano. And that might be a very apt description, seeing as the iPad is actually very similar […]

Once in a while a game-changing product comes along that makes you rethink conventions that are pretty much hardwired into our routines. This is immediately apparent in the consumption of media — be it music, movies or print. With the dawn of the internet our consumption of these have been altered dramatically. Take for example […]

On Wednesday morning I headed over to the Nokia The Way We Live Next event in Cape Town. Richard Mulholland did an excellent (and very objective) job of explaining the current mobile landscape. During the presentation a few things were highlighted that really did make me think. Needless to say, the topic soon shifted to […]

Today Google released enhancements of two of their products which seems pretty normal by the looks of it. However, these two updates were targeted primarily as a move to trounce Apple. These two applications are Picasa (a free photo managing and simple editing suite, for Windows and Mac) and Gmail Sync (Google’s free email service). […]

Vodacom launched the iPhone 3GS about a month ago on 28 July, but unfortunately stock was very limited — in fact, there is still a major shortage of the 3GS in South Africa. (you can read about my mission to get one here, and a bit of well-deserved praise for iStore here). To the untrained […]

On August 28 Apple finally released the latest version of its Mac OS X called Snow Leopard. Though it is a new version, the changes are very subtle, but those little things add up to a highly revamped Mac experience. And though the traditional Apple fan boy/journalism bigshots like Walt Mossberg and David Pogue got […]

So, the internet/blogosphere is abuzz with news of an Apple tablet, and deservedly so. While I am not going to say I don’t believe it is not coming any more (there is way too much evidence forming) I am having a tough time placing it in Apple’s line-up. Microsoft has been trying to push the […]