Daily Update: Tough Love, Revolutions, Office 365 Edu and iPhone 4 on Verizon

Good morning.

Depending on your perspective, I either spend a lot of time biting the hand that feeds me (which suggests a misunderstanding of my relationship with Microsoft) or I am actively engaged in a "tough love" campaign in which I try to goad the software giant into doing the right thing. Honestly, the latter is closer to the truth. And when you look at an article like yesterday's Windows Everywhere? Wake Up, Microsoft! It's 2011, or my series of "How Microsoft Can Fix..." articles, really, that's the point. Some people don't seem to get that. Many do, however. But regardless of your technological leanings (i.e. left toward Apple or right towards Microsoft), please do understand this: At the heart of all this is a simple goal to make life easier for the people who use technology. And to cut through the BS.

Speaking of which, Ed Bott had an awesome post the other day that I should have linked to earlier: At Apple, everything is "revolutionary". Good stuff, though I'd point out that I did just call the new Mac App Store revolutionary in my own overview, though the point there was that this was unexpected. Apple is usually a bit on the hypetastic side when it comes to describes its products. In case you hadn't noticed.

Microsoft announced today that it will launch Office 365 for Education this year in addition to the standard business-oriented versions.

Remember that phone that had several endemic hardware faults that the manufacture refused to fix, and then it still couldn't make a phone call without dropping? Yeah, now you can get it on Verizon too. Progress!