--Former Microsoft manager

MICROSOFT bribed influential bloggers and journalists for positive early reviews of Vista 7 and Windows Vista. It worked. Both operating systems were praised prior to their release. Yes, even Windows Vista got some rave reviews; it's hard to criticise someone who gifts you with a $2,000 item. Microsoft bribes AstroTurfers in very much the same way [1, 2]. Based on the example of Andre Da Costa, they pretend to be fans of Microsoft's products while approaching Apple at the same time to find out if they too can bribe, in which case they would "switch teams", so to speak. Watch how Don Dodge changed his tune after Microsoft had stopped paying him to be a professional, full-time AstroTurfer [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].

“This generally shows that Apple's and Microsoft's marketing strategies are similar.”The fake hype company might be up to similar tricks. Yes, it turns out that Apple secretly gave tablets to famous reporters (probably for free) in advance. Why? In order to generate buzz and "receive feedback" (nice cover-up). It's not as though the product can be re-manufactured within weeks. One of these people was Cringely, who has been writing about tablets recently, only later to reveal that he had been "beta testing the Apple tablet for the past two weeks..."

Of course he would generally be cocky towards them. They sent him this product in advance because he has influence. This generally shows that Apple's and Microsoft's marketing strategies are similar. We also wrote about Apple and AstroTurfing last year.

Anyway, here is a satire about the Apple iPad, courtesy of our reader David. "Defective by Design", an FSF campaign, was there at the announcement in order to educate attendees about the harms of Apple products. There is also this petition protesting against the iPad.

Microsoft's own tablet disappointed at CES 2010 and here is a new article about it:

HP shows off its slate computer while revealing a key disappointing detail (Windows)

[...]

That’s sort-of why Windows Mobile never really left the nerd market and Palm had great early success. Winmo required computer skills with layers and layers of OS until just recently when companies started to skin the GUI with a more friendly interface. Palm OS on the other hand was simple , but yet robust enough for most mobile computing tasks ten years ago.