Apple and Microsoft: The battle of one-upmanship

So the iPad landed in the states on Saturday and every tech blog is saturated with news of Apple's latest technological savior. This all came after Microsoft took MWC by storm by announcing Windows Phone 7 (official new name). However, just when the news from Cupertino & Redmond looked to be slowing down Apple and Microsoft have both announced press events in the next week....

So not content on announcing 300, 000  sales of the iPad on day one, Apple is already preparing for a 'sneak peak' event showcasing iPhone OS4 on Thursday 8th April.
I'm actually quite excited about this one, as I have mentioned before i have issues with the current iPhone OS and there have been lots of rumours recently about Apple finally bringing multitasking and a more dynamic homescreen to the Jesusphone which could possibly tempt me away from Android towards Apple. Allegedly the multitasking will be a cross between an OSX style Expose and cmd-tab interface and will be activated by holding the home key down.
There is less information on the dynamic homescreen at the moment, but seriously, with the barrage of Android variants, Palm OS and now Windows Phone 7 all focusing on an information rich homescreen, how can they not include something similar?? I'll be very surprised if they stick to the pages of icons approach and not at least have some kind of widget-like implementation.
There is also rumours of the long awaited Macbook Pro's getting an i5/i7 upgrade, however i doubt this will be mentioned, as Apple don't tend to dilute the focus of their events. I suspect the Macbook pros will merely appear on the store sometime around the event.

Not to be outdone by Apple, Microsoft also have super secret product announcement on April 12th (my birthday, just saying) and have sent out their own invitations via snail mail (I'm assuming ours got lost in the post!) While the invite teases us with the text "It's time to share", the details of the event remains a mystery. All available information points to the rumoured 'Project Pink' line of feature phones aimed at kids and 20 somethings serving as the natural successor of (the recently acquired) Danger's Sidekick.

As Ive mentioned before Microsoft are on a roll of great product launches at the moment and I will be surprised if it is merely a line of feature phones in a world that is quickly demanding smartphones as the norm. Will it run Windows Phone 7? Unlikely, however i can see it being based on the same Win CE6 core and possibly have some kind of cross platform love (Xbox Live anyone??)
I guess we will have to wait until next week to see, personally I'd love to see the Courier announced to really throw the cat among the pigeons the week after the iPad launch.


Tick Tock, Tick Tock, it's a good time to be a tech enthusiast geek.


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