SAN FRANCISCO – Microsoft’s mystery product is a touch-based mouse, according to a scoop from Website Neowin. For the past week Microsoft’s hardware division has been teasing us via Twitter with cropped thumbnails of the mystery product. And now thanks to “company insiders” who allegedly spilled the beans to Neowin it is believed to be Microsoft’s own version of Apple’s recently announced Magic Trackpad.

The mouse from Microsoft will be called Arc Touch Mouse, according to Neowin’s sources, and will arrive sometime in September. Listings of the new Arc Touch Mouse also appeared on two resellers’ lists last night, one from Wisconsin, U.S.A., and one from Norway.

The pricing for the Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse will be in line with Apple’s Magic Trackpad, at just under $70, according to the two product listings. Microsoft also registered the arctouchmouse.com Web domain on March 30, making a solid case for the naming of the product.

Since Microsoft did not confirm the existence of the Arc Touch Mouse, there is still a possibility that the product teased on Twitter by the company is something else. My colleague JR Raphael had a run-down of the possible product in Microsoft’s teaser shot, which includes a phone, a new Zune, or a tablet.

However, a touch-based Microsoft mouse would be a cheaper alternative to the more expensive touchscreen displays used in the latest range of Windows 7 computers, despite the fact that Neowin’s report claims multi-touch won’t be on the feature list of the Arc Touch Mouse initially.

SAN FRANCISCO – With the success of Internet Explorer 8–gaining 1.38 percent market share in the United States to lead the pack with more than 42 percent of the market–it is easy to forget that Microsoft is hard at work developing Internet Explorer 9. Today, Microsoft unleashed the fourth Platform Preview release for developers, and told partners and developers to start preparing–the public beta of IE9 is coming soon.

Internet Explorer 9 is in high demand in the developer community. The IE9 Platform Preview has been downloaded more than 2.5 million times, and the Test Drive site has been viewed 20 million times.

The focus of the IE9 team has been on developing a cutting edge Web browser as fast as it is capable. When Microsoft shipped IE8, the Acid3 score was a paltry–perhaps even shameful–20. Responding to feedback from developers who have used the IE9 Platform Preview releases, Microsoft has increased the Acid3 score for IE9 by 40 points. This release has an Acid3 score of 95–almost five times that of IE8.

A post on Microsoft’s IEBlog explains that the IE9 development team is “committed to the right foundation for HTML5 applications, including performance and ensuring the same markup and same script work across browsers. One aspect of doing these things well is integrating the JavaScript engine natively inside the browser, rather than bolting it onto the side to support multiple JavaScript engines as some other browsers do today. How a JavaScript engine is integrated into the browser is as important as the engine itself for real-world HTML5.”

With Microsoft’s new JavaScript engine–codenamed Chakra–Internet Explorer is faster than ever. According to Webkit.org SunSpider, IE9 PP4 comes in at 326 milliseconds–more than 11 times faster than IE8, and even faster than the recently released Safari 5.0 browser from Apple. Check out the IE9 Test Drive site for examples of what IE9 is capable of, or to download Platform Preview 4.

Microsoft has been releasing new updates to IE9 approximately every eight weeks, and now it has begun hinting that the next release could be the public beta. If that is true, it means that the general public might be able to start using the beta version of IE9 by sometime in early October.

The timeline for IE8 from initial beta to official release was about one year–the beta was available in March of 2008 and IE8 officially launched in March of 2009. Assuming a similar timeline, IE9 should be available at least a few months ahead of the rumored release of Windows 8 in late 2011. All of the timelines are pure speculation at this point, though.

A blog post by James Pratt on the Exploring IE blog advises “Between now and the Beta, we encourage developers to test their web sites with PP4 to make sure well they’ll work with the Internet Explorer 9 Beta and begin to reimagine what they can build when they have a browser that is architected to take advantage of your hardware through Windows.”

IE8 has emerged as the leading Web browser in only 18 months. With the improvements Microsoft is making in IE9, it will be interesting to see if it can knock IE8 off of the pedestal even faster.

SAN FRANCISCO – Oh, that Microsoft. She’s such a tease.

Microsoft has some sort of new hardware product in the works, and it’s revealing it only one tiny corner at a time. The kooky crew from Redmond created a new Twitter account — @msfthardware — and has been using it to send out subtle clues about its latest creation.

So far, two photos have been published of the top-secret product.

If we take the liberty of attempting to piece them together, we see a thin, black, rectangle-shaped device with the word “Microsoft” along what appears to be the bottom back side.

The only other hint Microsoft has dropped has been the following sentence: “Don’t be so touchy…flat is where it’s at.”

All right — so what the hell is this thing? A handful of possibilities come to mind, all of which could fit into our “flat” and “touchy” clue:

• A Microsoft Phone

The photo, especially the composite image, sure looks like a smartphone. I think we can safely assume it isn’t another Kin, but Microsoft has been talking up its soon-to-launch Windows Phone 7 platform more and more lately. Just a couple of weeks ago, Microsoft’s Windows Phone Blog announced its team had hit a “technical preview” milestone and was ready to begin broader consumer-based testing. Could this be a Microsoft-branded mobile device?

• A New Zune

It’d be an unexpected twist, but there’s always the chance Microsoft’s mystery product could be a Zune of some sort. After all, Apple’s iPod Touch is likely getting a refresh this fall. Perhaps Microsoft has something music-related up its sleeve.

• A Microsoft Tablet

Days ago, Steve Ballmer told the world his company was working on a competitor to Apple’s iPad (it’s presumably not the Courier or the HP Windows 7 slate). Maybe Microsoft’s tablet is closer to launch than we think.

• A Touch Pad

With Apple’s Magic Trackpad magically revolutionizing everything in its path, we could always be looking at Microsoft’s answer to the multitouch input device.

So what do you think? Could it be any of these things? Or is it something altogether different — say, a Microsoft Bob commemorative paperweight, or maybe a remote control for Bill Gates’ hurricane machine?

SAN FRANCISCO – According to Net Applications, it’s been a good month for Microsoft. Internet Explorer 8 gained more market share to continue dominating the browser market, and Windows 7 surpassed its predecessor–Windows Vista–in market share for the first time. So, what exactly is driving the success of Windows 7?

1. Management. With integrated support for PowerShell 2.0, Windows 7 provides a superior infrastructure for IT admins to be able to automate common tasks and manage the desktops more efficiently.

IT admins can create powerful scripts with PowerShell 2.0. PowerShell uses the Windows Management Interface (WMI), and can call command-line tools–making it a very versatile tool for IT admins.

2. Troubleshooting. For some IT admins, helping users troubleshoot problems takes up a significant amount of time and gets in the way of other tasks that might improve the network for everyone. Troubleshooting problems remotely can be a uniquely difficult task challenging the patience of both the user and the IT technician.

Windows 7 provides Troubleshooting Packs that enable users to conduct their own troubleshooting for many common issues. IT admins can also create custom Troubleshooting Packs for recurring issues or internal applications.

For remote troubleshooting, Windows 7 has the Problem Steps Recorder feature. The Problem Steps Recorder lets users record the screenshots illustrating–click-by-click–the steps they are performing that seem to be causing the problem. The ability to replay the exact problem scenario greatly enhances the ability of remote IT technicians to identify and resolve the issue.

3. Security. Windows XP–which is still by far the most used operating system–is far behind Windows 7 when it comes to security controls. Windows 7 has security controls–like ASLR (address space layout randomization), DEP (data execution prevention), and UAC (user account control), and PMIE (Protected Mode IE)– that don’t exist in Windows XP.

Windows 7 also has AppLocker which lets IT admins set policies restricting which applications or scripts are allowed to run on the PC. Controlling which software can run on the desktop provides better security, as well as simpler system management.
BitLocker and BitLocker to Go enable IT admins to ensure that sensitive data is protected with encryption, and it can be easily managed via Group Policy.

4. It’s Not Vista. The reputation of Vista is more a Microsoft marketing failure than the result of any real issues with Vista. While Windows 7 is not “Windows Vista R2″ as some have suggested, but it is does have many of the same core elements that Vista has.

The launch of Windows Vista was marred by a lack of drivers and vendor-support–something Microsoft should have proactively addressed prior to launching a major new OS. Many of the other issues of Windows Vista, though, were actually misunderstood features that Microsoft allowed competitors like Apple to exploit in attacking Vista in marketing.

5. It’s Still Supported. Although Windows 7 has surpassed Windows Vista, Windows XP still has more than twice the market share of both Windows 7 and Windows Vista combined. Those that have applied Windows XP SP3 are still being supported by Microsoft, but Microsoft no longer supports Windows XP SP2, or earlier OS versions such as Windows 2000.

Windows XP was a phenomenal success. The familiarity and comfort level of Windows XP, combined with tighter budgets and the fumbled launch of Windows Vista have all contributed to the extended success of the legacy OS.

Now that Windows 7 is in town, though, most companies are looking at finally refreshing hardware and upgrading the operating system to catch up with this decade and take advantage of the benefits listed here, as well as the hardware and software technologies that have come along that the archaic Windows XP is simply not compatible with.

SAN FRANCISCO – Ballmer promised the world that a Windows 7 tablet is coming. Maybe it is, or maybe it’s just a pipedream, but Microsoft doesn’t need to focus on developing a Windows 7 tablet. Microsoft does need to focus on having a strategy for taking advantage of the changing mobile computing market–but it doesn’t have to include a Windows 7 tablet.
The assurance of a Microsoft tablet from Ballmer seemed more like a macho reaction to a triple-dog dare than a legitimate Microsoft project. It’s as if the analysts and media challenged Ballmer’s manhood, and Ballmer couldn’t accept that Apple and Google have tablets without throwing Microsoft’s hat into the ring as well.

Here is what I have noticed, though: Exxon-Mobil does not build cars, and Coca Cola does not involve itself in manufacturing refrigerators. Exxon-Mobil wants to continue to ensure that its fuel is used in as many different vehicles as possible, and Coca-Cola would like to have its beverages in every refrigerator, but each focuses on how to adapt and improve its own products, and how to better market existing products, rather than trying to sell the cow and the milk at the same time.

Microsoft has strengths, and it has weaknesses. Rather than trying to overcome its weaknesses to flounder about in a futile attempt to compete in markets that aren’t its core business, Microsoft should focus on its strengths, and how to continue to evolve and adapt them to meet the changing needs of its customers.

At one point, mobility was about putting a Windows desktop into a more portable form factor, and supplying the world with Windows laptops, but the game has changed. That means that Microsoft does need to recognize that mobility is rapidly changing and determine where it fits in the new equation, but it doesn’t need to build the mobile platforms.
The rise of increasingly powerful and capable smartphones, and the introduction of the tablet revolution have shifted mobility away from Windows. The next generation of mobile computing relies on a mobile OS that is uniquely suited for mobile devices. Microsoft will shoot itself in the foot if it continues to try to make mobile computing about putting its Windows desktop operating system into new gadgets.

Most of the world relies on Microsoft Office for essential productivity software. Microsoft’s customers are heavily invested in Microsoft server technologies like Exchange, SharePoint, and Office Communications Server, and they want tools to allow them to access the Microsoft backend while on the go.

Rather than wasting time and money pursuing a Microsoft-centric platform that would probably only capture 10 percent of the market anyway, Microsoft should be building its mobility strategy on developing cross-platform solutions, or platform-specific apps that enable the 90 percent of the market to continue using Microsoft software no matter what smartphone or tablet they choose.

SAN FRANCISCO – Photos of a near-final version of an alleged HTC Windows Phone 7 device have leaked online. The photos show a handset with a 3.7-inch Super LCD screen, with a purported 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, 8-megapixel camera, and three touch-sensitive buttons at the bottom of the device. HTC is rumored to be in talks with Verizon and possibly Sprint about the unnamed device, according to Engadget.

While the specs of the supposed HTC Windows Phone 7 device are only speculation, they do line up with minimum hardware requirements Microsoft is dictating to its manufacturing partners. The company requires that all Windows Phone 7 devices include Home, Search, and Back hardware buttons; a capacitive multitouch screen; a minimum 5-megapixel camera; and 1 GHz Snapdragon or similar processor. Microsoft is also requiring Windows Phone 7 handsets to ship with Wi-Fi, GPS, accelerometer, and a minimum of 256MB RAM and 4GB of flash memory storage.  Windows Phone 7 devices must also ship with Microsoft’s interface, and manufacturer device overlays, such as HTC’s Sense UI, are forbidden.

Microsoft’s hardware requirements will help Windows Phone 7 avoid Android’s overly fragmented market where virtually any device maker can slap Google’s smartphone OS onto any device it wants.   Fragmentation can deter third-party application developers since they have to take into account multiple device form factors when designing an app. Microsoft’s approach is similar to Apple’s approach to iPhone hardware where certain features have remained consistent, at least so far, throughout different iterations of the iPhone including screen size and physical button layout.

Windows Phone 7: Hot or Not

Speculation and criticism surrounding Windows Phone 7 continues to grow after Microsoft released developer previews of its new handset OS in mid-July. Some critics have completely panned the device calling it a “waste of time and money,” while others such as Windows blogger Paul Thurrott call Microsoft’s new smartphone platform “more innovative” than anything currently offered by Apple or Google.

Opinions on Microsoft’s new smartphone OS may vary, but considering the buzz around Windows Phone 7, it could be Microsoft’s most anticipated product launch in 2010. But whether smartphone shoppers this holiday season will pick a Windows Phone 7 device over a strong roster of iPhones, Android devices, and the forthcoming Blackberry 6 OS is anybody’s guess.

SAN FRANCISCO – Microsoft‘s quarterly earnings announcement on Thursday painted a rosy picture of a healthy and vibrant tech company. Revenue from Windows sales jumped 28 percent versus the same quarter a year ago.

And there’s little doubt that Windows 7 is a hit. More than 10 percent of all PCs worldwide run Windows 7, which is the fastest-selling operating system in history, Redmond claims. And while Microsoft’s third-quarter revenue of $14.5 billion rose a modest 6 percent over the same period a year earlier, profits shot up an impressive 35 percent.
So what’s not to like?

Well, for starters, Microsoft’s position in the emerging mobile computing market is questionable at best. For large enterprises, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry phones still rule, while Apple’s iPhone and Google Android-based devices continue to make inroads.

Redmond has stumbled badly in the cell phone arena. Its Windows Mobile 6.x platform is essentially moribund. Know anyone who uses a Windows phone anymore? (Yes, I know they’re out there, but their numbers are dwindling fast.) The company recently scrapped its social media-oriented Kin device, which arrived on the mobile scene at least a year too late. And while Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Phone 7 software does look promising, devices that run it won’t debut for a few more months.

Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to milk its Windows PC cash cow for all its worth. When it comes to the desktop and laptop market (both business and consumer), Redmond rules with its series of dominant products, including Windows 7 and the latest versions of Office, Exchange, and SharePoint.

But that could quickly change if low-cost laptop and tablet devices running one of Google’s mobile operating systems–Android or the upcoming Chrome OS–prove popular for businesses.

Microsoft’s PC-centric ways should be a cause for alarm in Redmond. It’s no surprise that the company’s biggest revenue growth is in its Windows and Windows Live division, while its Online Services and Entertainment and Devices divisions are relatively flat. Microsoft sees its Bing search, Xbox Live, and budding cloud services as areas of growth–but they’re not there yet.

Redmond’s revenue stream is too desktop-centric for its own good. Despite its Windows-oriented success, the company is a big question mark moving forward.