Microsoft now openly admits Vista sucked. Which means it has something to mock Apple with over the current iPhone 4 issues. You may be aware of the slight problem Apple is currently having with the iPhone, the latest iteration of its bestselling smartphone.

Microsoft certainly has, and one of the Redmond company’s execs has decided to put the boot in. How? By comparing the iPhone 4 to Windows Vista. For the three people who don’t know anything about Vista, it’s the Windows operating system sandwiched between XP and Windows 7.

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Jean-Philippe Courtois, president of Microsoft International, was in SA last week to meet with the software company’s customers and to attend the soccer World Cup final in Johannesburg. TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod sat down with Courtois, who is responsible for all of Microsoft’s operations outside the US, for an exclusive media interview and asked him about life at the company after the departure of Bill Gates, cloud computing and the plans for its Bing search engine.

What follows is a shortened and edited transcript of the interview. In what way has Microsoft changed since Gates stepped down? The biggest transformation of the company ever is the move to cloud (online) computing. I’ve been at the company for 26 years and I’ve seen a few big transformations — when the graphical user interface arrived and when the Internet came along. But I must tell you: the cloud is the biggest-ever change for our company. This is the biggest shift in the industry for the next decade.

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Microsoft is having a rough month. In addition to known vulnerabilities, including one discovered this week, Microsoft now faces vulnerabilities in IIS, along with problems found in Windows Vista and Server 2008. Moreover, vulnerabilities discovered in Office 2010 pose another challenge entirely.

Starting with the vulnerabilities in Office 2010, the security firm responsible for discovering them, VUPEN, will gladly share the deals with Microsoft, as long as they are paying customers. For now, VUPEN will only share the vulnerability and mitigation details with paying customers.

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After a disastrous Kin experience, Microsoft is doubling down on the launch of Windows Phone 7 this fall. The question is whether the same problems that plagued the Kin might also torpedo Windows Phone 7. One of those problems is something that used to help Microsoft: monopolies.

Microsoft still enjoys a near-monopolistic lock on desktop computers. That view from the top of the market-share heap has influenced the way the company thinks, the way it’s organized, and the way it does business. Many other companies may manufacture PC hardware, but the experience is defined by Microsoft. Just about every major hardware advance on the desktop has to be sanctioned and shepherded by Microsoft and supported by Windows, or it won’t succeed.

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Microsoft’s engineers and executives spent two years creating a new line of smartphones with playful names that sounded like creatures straight out of “The Cat in the Hat”  Kin One and Kin Two. Stylish designs, an emphasis.

On flashy social-networking features and an all-out marketing blitz were meant to prove that Microsoft could build the right product at the right time for the finickiest customers  gossiping youngsters with gadget skills.

But last week, less than two months after the Kins arrived in stores, Microsoft said it would kill the products. “That’s a record-breaking quick end to a product, as far as I am concerned,” said Michael Cronan.

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In yet another major defeat for Microsoft in two days, search rival Google has scooped up ITA, the travel data service used by Microsoft's Bing search engine. The move comes a day after Microsoft killed its Kin phones after just seven weeks of pathetic sales at Verizon(VZ).

But it's Google's $700 million deal for ITA Thursday that provides probably the clearest sign yet that Microsoft is totally consumed by internal battles. The distraction has left Microsoft's growth ventures outside its core computer software vulnerable and neglected.

Bing, Microsoft's revamped search effort, has been the biggest challenge yet to Google's Internet dominance. So why take the pressure off? How do you let Google get control of the industry's leading travel search engine, the very service that powers your own travel research and ticket booking site? And given that the Google-ITA deal has been openly in the works since April, how do you let them snag it for $300 million less than the $1 billion price tag originally batted about?

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News organizations are filled with stories about the iPad selling three million in three months. Most federal IT professionals don't know that Microsoft sells one copy of Windows 7 every seven seconds! That works out to 300,000 million in 2010.

Microsoft has addressed the issues with its Vista operating system and is moving into the cloud. Vince Menzione will describe how Microsoft's Azure platform will work for federal IT professionals considering both private and public clouds.

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Perhaps those rumors about iPhone going to Verizon are true. Microsoft is killing off KIN, just six weeks after putting the smartphone on sale. Microsoft launched the KIN -- its youth-oriented, consumer social networking smartphone -- in early April Today

The company answered the question I asked on May 5: "Is Microsoft KIN stud or dud?" Somebody up the corporate decision tree decided the latter -- or perhaps that KIN isn't stud enough to share Verizon with iPhone. Concurrent with KIN's sudden death -- oh, baby, we hardly knew you -- Microsoft is shifting resources and personnel to Windows Phone 7.

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The biggest corporate success stories in American history. From its humble beginnings in Bill Gates' Harvard dorm room, in only 35 years the company grew to become one of the biggest companies in the world.

The Numbers 1975: The year Microsoft was founded. The company was initially formed as the partnership Micro-soft, which operated for over five years until the firm was incorporated in 1981.Aug. 12, 1981: Microsoft releases its first personal computer running its operating system, MS-DOS 1.0.

4,000: The number of lines of code in MSDOS 1.0--Microsoft's first operating system. 50 million: The number of lines of code estimated to be in Microsoft Vista. Aug. 1, 1989: The first incarnation of Microsoft Office is released.9 cents: the March 13, 1986, Microsoft IPO price, as adjusted for stock splits.

10,000: The estimated number of Microsoft employees that became millionaires as a result of their stock ownership in the firm. 88,180: The number of employees as of April 2010.The number of countries where Microsoft has subsidiaries.

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Microsoft, which has been slow in responding to Apple’s advances, was recently taken by surprise as Apple edged past the software giant in market capitalization.

Recently, Apple emerged with a market value of roughly $222 billion compared with Microsoft’s $219 billion. Apple spearheaded into the second highest-valued American company directly behind Exxon Mobile, which was valued at $278.6 billion.

Enderle Group analyst Rob Enderle says against Microsoft, Apple funded better, executed at a higher level and marketed the benefits of the product more successfully.

“Microsoft actually had what should have been a more attractive service, retailers liked them better and Microsoft had a more robust product, but Apple out executed them on marketing to an incredible level,” Enderle says. “Oh and Microsoft chose to fight Apple on Apple’s turf by bringing out a hardware device and that is always a really bad idea.”

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