Very good post at Computerworld from Mike Elgan about Apple, though I'd venture that a lot of you already know this:

Tech watchers love the horse race aspect of technology industry competition. Apple competes with Microsoft. Apple competes with Google. Apple competes with companies like HP. But Apple doesn't see it that way.

Industry titans like Microsoft, Google and HP instinctively "fill out" their product lines to dominate huge areas of technology. Microsoft, for example, wants Microsoft software running on wristwatches, supercomputers and everything in between. Google wants to offer every conceivable service that can be squeezed through an internet connection. HP's massive product line runs the gamut from consumer digital cameras sold at Best Buy to entire data centers filled with enterprise systems.

Apple doesn't want to dominate like this. It has no interest in this kind of imperialist expansion. Apple is interested only in surgical strikes into this business or that product category, where they can solve design problems others have failed to solve.

Microsoft executives faced a barrage of Apple-related questions during that company’s annual shareholder’s meeting last night, while disappointed Dell revealed net income decline of 54 percent, year-on-year.

Dell announced $12.9 billion in revenue (down 15 percent y-on-y) for net income of $337 million. The company blamed its results on poor public sector sales and a consumer move to favour cheaper Dell PCs. All told, disappointing results for Dell.

Yep, we knew this would happen.  Apple, for whatever reason (they didn't test it and don't care or they are trying to prevent Hackintosh) killed support for Atom in their latest 10.6.2 build.  

All of you cheap bastard Hackintoshers can rest easy though.  A Russian hacker was able to slap an old Atom-supporting OSX Kernel on the newer Mac OS 10.6.2 build and get it running on his little Atom netbook.  Depending on how much Apple cares, we'll probably see this shut down in 10.6.3.  Rinse. Repeat.

A video demo of Google's Chrome OS from TechChrunch. 

Google today released information on its ChromeOS.  Some fun facts:

• Released 2H2010 (Just like Apple's tablet?)
• Will boot only from SSD, in 7 seconds
• Runs on ARM or x86
• Will only work on new Netbooks, not your current POS Netbook
• Is basically just an Internet Thin client -Just a HTML 5 Browser - Chrome
• Open Source so other browser makers could use it as well, and Microsoft already has an online version of Excel ready for it.

This is so slimmed down that it will run on extremely small laptops.  That might give Apple's tablet some competition.  Feel free to comment below.

We’re unhappy to report the latest Apple tablet rumour, which claims the as-yet unannounced but already industry-changing device won’t now ship until later next year.

“Apple reportedly plans to postpone the launch of its tablet PC from an original March launch schedule to the second half of 2010, as the vendor has decided to switch some components and plans to launch a model using a 9.7-inch OLED panel from LG Display, according to sources from component makers,” reports Digitimes.

Seems that everybody and their brother’s involved in making the new device: Foxconn/Hon Hai; Quanta and Pegatron technology are all thought to be manufacturing partners for the two models of tablet Apple’s got planned.

One tablet will have a 10.6-inch TFT LCD panel while the other will have a 9.7-inch OLED panel, the report claims. LG Display currently makes OLED panels and has an existing $500 million panel purchasing contract with Apple.

Mozilla just released Firefox 3.6 Beta3.  This one features Component Directory Lockdown which will disable support for incompatible add-ons, theoretically making Firefox more stable.  Make sure your important Add-ons are Kosher before installing.  Other fun new stuff in this version. 

Download here

Update: In other Mozilla/Apple News, Camino 2.0 has gone final.

Apple has quietly begun development of Mac OS X 10.7, the next iteration of its OS and an as-yet completely unknown animal, MacRumors informs.

That Apple’s engineers are already hard at work figuring out what to do next with the lean, Intel-only software at the heart of the current Mac OS X ‘Snow Leopard’ OS is no great surprise. Work has to begin sometime, and Apple is a company known for a five or ten-year planning cycle.

MacRumors reports a post in a database of changes to the open source “launchd” framework, which “oversees booting of Mac OS X and administers processes running on the system”.

The post included a new build number - 11A47 - which MR explains is likely to indicate an initial version of Mac OS X 10.7.

So it looks like they’ve managed to create a software mechanism to boot the system - we’re curious what the new OS will offer.

We could speculate on this based on some of the emerging trends across the technology industry.

Microsoft is getting in the Holiday spirit by offering $20 off of the retail prices of Home and Student, $40 off of Business Upgrade and $50 off Business Edition of Office 2008 for Mac.  The new prices are still more than Amazon charges but it is the thought that counts, right?

So, here are some of the more athletic staff at Microsoft's Mission Viejo (Calif.) store basically demonstrating the do's and don'ts of school dance doings, (with an accent on the don'ts, frankly). Something about this is, well, it is embarrassing - even to watch - so don't miss it! (Comments plz).

Adobe has introduced pre-release beta versions of Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0, making these available from Adobe Labs for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.

Flash Player 10.1 is also available for x86-based netbooks, and expected to be available across a broad spectrum of smartphones and other Internet-connected devices in 2010. Adobe AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1 are easily updateable across all supported platforms to help ensure rapid adoption of new innovations that move the Web forward.

Both Adobe AIR 2 and Flash Player 10.1 boast support for multi-touch and gestures and deliver full GPU acceleration of H.264 for smoother HD Flash video playback - though, somewhat tellingly, not on Mac OS X.

AIR 2  functionality can be updated/added to current AIR 1.0 applications. New AIR 2 features include enhanced support for mass storage devices and native application processes, as well as peer-to-peer and UDP networking alongside faster WebKit rendering