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A former Microsoft employee has written a lengthy post about the history of Windows Mobile, noting with regret that the software giant should have owned the mobile market. That sounds pleasant. But it was never going to happen.

On Wednesday, Apple is going to announce the iPhone 7, and I'm going to spend the day on Twitter skewering them and their terrible marketing as they so richly deserve. But before this time of great frivolity, it is perhaps worth remembering and examining why the iPhone matters quite a bit.

Forget Microsoft Surface and by all means ignore Apple's Mac. Because it is once-staid HP that is reinventing the PC today. And the hits just keep on coming.

There are a lot of announcements coming out of IFA 2016 today in Berlin, most of which are unsurprising new PC releases. But here's one that caught my eye: ASUS is selling a portable display for laptops. And I'm curious whether there is a market for such a thing.

In May 2015, Microsoft announced a major update to its consumer-focused Outlook.com service, which would include changes to its front-end user experience and back-end infrastructure. Today, Microsoft literally has no idea when it will ever complete this migration.

Some believe that Intel's new Kaby Lake processors are not a significant upgrade. Don't believe it. Kaby Lake is nothing less than an apology, and a do-over, for Intel's woefully bug-ridden Skylake processors. It's a family of chips that Intel never intended to make.

Microsoft is no stranger to playfully---and not so playfully---poking the competition. But it seems like the firm is escalating things with a series of ads pitting its Surface products against Apple's MacBook family. This is smart timing, I think. But the window is closing.

Several years back, Microsoft launched a widely-mocked marketing campaign in which PC users claimed that "Windows 7 was my idea." In the same spirit, I'd like to formally apologize to Windows 10 users. Because Webcamgate was my fault.

Faced with rampant security issues in the recently-released Windows XP, Microsoft in 2002 announced its Trustworthy Computing Initiative and halted all major software development so that it could fix the problems. Today, Microsoft needs a similar effort, but for reliability. And the stakes are just as high.

Business Insider this week is providing an uplifting story about the success of Microsoft's Surface business. But I have a number of issues with this narrative. Here's what they left out.

Apple's iPhone kicked off the modern smartphone era, and it's arguably the most important personal technology product of all time. But the iPhone is suddenly not so cool anymore, with consumers, with tech enthusiasts, or with Wall Street. What went wrong?

So Microsoft is freeing the Windows Holographic shell from its HoloLens shackles and will make it available on mainstream PCs. But I'm still not sold on augmented reality, or mixed reality, or whatever they're calling it this week. And part of the problem is Microsoft's mixed up messaging.

For over two weeks now, I've secretly made a major change to my daily workflow and have been using as many Microsoft mobile apps on PC, tablet, and smartphone as possible. And my relative levels of success speak volumes, I think, to the state of Microsoft's mobile efforts here in mid-2016.

Windows phone fans have suffered countless indignities in the year since Microsoft surrendered the smartphone market to Android and iPhone. But none are as hard to bear as the growing exodus of apps from the platform.

With the release of the Windows 10 Anniversary update, I have given Edge a second chance after abandoning the browser in favor of Chrome after the initial release of Windows 10.

Microsoft Garage apps are frequently released but they don't always support every platform; the company explained why they do this during my trip to Redmond last week.

There's probably no more contentious topic for Microsoft fans than the failure of Windows phone. But as the successor to this platform, Windows 10 Mobile is still a key part of Microsoft's strategy for what it calls "more personal computing."

Microsoft hosted its OneWeek event at its campus this week and I was able to get inside one of the tents to see what goes on at the company-wide festival where new products are brought to life.