After years of relative quiet, both Microsoft and Apple are frenetically working on major new upgrades to the base software that run the personal computers of tens of millions of business and consumer users. Microsoft is using the code name Longhorn to refer to its next upgrade to the Windows operating system. Apple, keeping the theme of naming its operating system software after big and fast cats, calls its next release Tiger.
We"ll see Tiger in stores this year -- perhaps within a few weeks. Longhorn, as is typical of Microsoft, has been delayed a couple of times and is now not expected until mid-2006. Longhorn will be the first major Microsoft upgrade since Windows XP hit computer hard drives in 2001. That"s light-years in the world of personal computers, and much has changed in that time: Wireless Bluetooth connections for printers and keyboards are now common, floppy drives have disappeared, Wi-Fi is now widespread and dozens of new security challenges and issues like spyware and Trojans have surfaced.