Big News coming from Microsoft and Apple

January is going to be a huge month for tech news, with two major technology exhibitions and two major keynotes from the world’s biggest tech titans.
Next Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft chairman and founder Bill Gates will do the opening keynote for the seventh year in a row. The following Tuesday at the MacWorld gathering in San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs will do his keynote.
Both will make major news.
Gates, after years of trying to convince us that we will all have digital living-rooms with all our computer and entertainment devices interconnected (I swear it was the same message with different celebrities interspersed to bring life to Gate’s droll delivery), is expected to shed major new light on the new Vista Operating System that will go on sale by Christmas 2006.
Microsoft critics are already carping that many of the Vista features like tabbed browsing and RSS feeds in Internet Explorer and desktop search and better security have been around fro years through competitors. True. But the competitors are not Microsoft. Microsoft has 90% of the market and when it does an update, it shakes the marketplace. That will happen with Vista.
Besides, Vista has one feature that I hope we learn more of next week that truly is revolutionary. It uses new technology that drastically reduces the time it takes to boot-up a computer. Instead of minutes, it will supposedly be done with Vista in seconds. This is huge, something I’ve heard Gates dreamily talk about for years, and if Vista delivers with this feature alone, I predict a huge win for Microsoft.
But Microsoft has more than Vista coming in 2006. By summer, it is expected to release Version 12 of its Microsoft Office productivity suite. It’s a major upgrade with a new feel and look and the company geeks I’ve talked to who have worked on it are genuinely excited. We’ll see, with maybe and Office 12 at CES, too.
Then there’s Apple.
The Tuesday after Gates delivers his keynote, Jobs will do his thing before the Mac faithful. Jobs is in style the exact opposite of Gates, just as Macs are from PCs. Where Gates is geeky and dull, Jobs, in his jeans and trademark black turtleneck, is charismatic, almost evangelistic. And the crowd at MacWorld is made up of rabid loyalists, fans all. Even the journalists cheer.
Apple is on a huge roll, a comeback company with bling and buzz, thanks to the iPod and the sea change influence it has had on the digital lifestyle that Gates had so hoped to influence but that Apple stole right out from under him.
The Apple momentum is expected to build even more in 2006, with new iPod features, for sure, but, more importantly, new computers.
Apple isn’t leaking what Jobs will talk about on Jan 10 but the industry is running heavy with speculation that he will unveil the first Macs that run on the Intel platform. What that means to consumers is that Macs will be able to run both the Apple OS X and the Windows operating systems. Think of it: The best of the Mac and the best of the PC on one machine.
We have two very busy weeks ahead.