Tech Buzz

The most important and daring move that Microsoft made Wednesday is far and away making the upgrade to Windows 10 free. Seems dirt-simple and intuitive on the surface, but it represents a startling and abrupt shift in both how users will relate to Microsoft and how Microsoft innovates with Windows g...

SpaceX, the space transport services company founded by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, has raised $1 billion in funding from Google and Fidelity Investments. Together, they will together own almost 10 percent of SpaceX. Musk last November confirmed that SpaceX was developing advanced micro-sate...

Apple will introduce a stylus to accompany its expected new, larger iPad, an analyst with a good scorecard in predicting Apple products wrote in a research note on Sunday. Speculation about a 12.9-inch iPad Pro to be launched this year has been grist for the rumor mill for months, but the predicti...

IBM's z13 mainframe launch last week brought back a lot of memories, because I was at IBM when the era of the mainframe collapsed. I also happened to be covering Apple when the era of the Mac collapsed, and I have watched both companies recover -- largely by rediscovering what made them great in the...

Welcome to Gadget Dreams and Nightmares, the column that takes freshly announced gadgets out for a hypothetical test run, rendering judgement long before they hit the shelves. In the offing this week: Samsung's latest mid-range smartphone, a gesture-based ring, shiny headphones and much more. Samsun...

Despite having the most popular camera on the planet in the form of the iPhone, the odds of Apple pulling the rug out from under GoPro by building its own action sports camera system -- even with using its forthcoming Apple Watch as a controller -- are so low they stand in stark contrast to the hyst...

Etsy reportedly is working on an initial public offering that could debut this quarter. The crafts and antiques etailer hopes to raise $300 million. If the IPO does indeed materialize, it could give the New York City tech community some much-needed financial oomph. The last tech IPO to originate i...

Rumors about Microsoft's new browser, code-named "Spartan," have been heating up: It will be an app; no, it will not. It will replace Internet Explorer -- no, it will not. It will use Microsoft's Trident rendering engine and the Chakra JavaScript engine developed for IE 9. Probably. Spartan will be...

Google soon will update its Translate mobile app to render words spoken in popular languages into written text, according to reports. This feature is already available for some major languages in the Google Chrome browser. In essence, the update will let two people converse in their own native tongu...

Google reportedly is gearing up to launch a shopping and comparison site for auto insurance in the United States. The company has been operating such a site in the UK, dubbed "Google Compare," for the past two years. Although it apparently has been beset by delays, an entity called "Google Compare A...