St. Stephen

The iPad App Store is going pretty well, with 8000 apps already accepted and developers quite happy with the sales results. But what about an application that’s been approved and then pulled from the App Store for some strange reason? That’s what happened to My Frame, and that’s why the developers decided to email Steve Jobs and ask.

It turns out that Apple, as usual, retains ultimate control on the kind of software that can be approved or not, but in a way that is not very clear to developers and people who’d like to develop applications. My Frame is (was) a photo frame app with some additional features, like music controls, weather info, twitter feeds and birthday reminders in the shape of “overlays” to the photos you have to manually pick.

We know that Apple doesn’t approve widget-like applications, but could you call My Frame a widget app? I guess that if it was approved in the first place, this is the kind of app that sits in between, and that’s exactly the place where Apple retains ultimate control. In between.

Bach got the boot because Microsoft is taking it in the assets in the mobile space, and the Redmond Behemoth has (belatedly) realized that's where its future lies.

Yes, the Windows Mobile OS sucks harder than an asthmatic at an oxygen bar, but I'm not entirely convinced that's Bach's fault. An interface that's barely tolerable from 18 inches away with a full keyboard and mouse is completely useless on a 2- or 3-inch screen and a teensy keypad. And yet for years Microsoft has insisted on bringing the Windows to Windows Mobile.

Whose vision was that? It wasn't Bach's. Windows on every device? Windows to control your phones and your TVs and the lights in your house? Windows in your car? That belongs to our favorite semi-retired billionaire, the churros-munching, hurricane-battlin' Billy Gates.

So with Bach gone, Steve Ballmer is taking over Microsoft's mobile operations. That's a little like saying, "Son, you crashed the car, so I'm going to hand the car keys to this gorilla and let him drive for a while."

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Where did all of these products come from? You guessed it -- Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division. Boy, what a bunch of screw-ups.

Pop quiz: What's the biggest Microsoft disaster of all time? Sorry, time's up. The correct answer is Windows Vista. Seven years in the making, and a complete and utter cluster-zune.

Yet Windows and Office are still the cash cows...They're not the future, though. The future lives in mobile devices and the cloud. That's now in the hands of Ballmer.

InfoWorld's Ted Samson says this is Microsoft's way of telling the world it's serious about mobile. I think this is their way of telling shareholders it's time to sell.

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So Microsoft axing one of its captains may look like it's taking its troubles seriously, but it isn't going to solve the problem. Microsoft's biggest problem is the big, bald sweaty guy at the top. You want to see real change in Redmond, that's where it has to happen.

Even for non-techies, it's easy to understand just how far Microsoft has fallen since Steve Ballmer was put in charge.

Ballmer -- the sweatinest, spittinest CEO this side of the Mississippi -- was handed the reins in January of 2000. And while his tenure has always been a little rocky, it's never seemed as tumultuous as it has in the past week.

Microsoft Corp. is marking the one-year anniversary of the release of its revamped Internet search engine known as Bing this week, though the software giant may be in no mood to party.