“Frankly, the economy is good for us, because people do understand that Macintoshes are quite a bit more expensive for essentially the same computer.”

– Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says the econalypse has improved the competitive position for Windows at Apple’s expense.

“You start off by saying I want these cabinets this counter top and this kind of a sink and all of a sudden you’ve got this kitchen you can’t afford and don’t have the time to build. That’s pretty much the first phase of building a laptop.”

— Microsoft Windows division president Steven Sinofsky on designing and building a Windows 7 laptop with Acer

“unfriend–verb–To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.”

– Oxford University Press announces the 2009 Word of the Year

“Let me say that I have never used Twitter.”

– President Barack Obama, proprietor of one of the world’s most followed Twitter accounts, says he’s never used the microblogging service.

“You’ve got to have Internet Explorer 8 to use Web slices…shoot, I didn’t even know there was a 1 through 7.”

–Dolly Parton endorses Internet Explorer 8

“It makes a lot of sense, I think, for us to stipulate that we won’t do things that we both agree are wrong. From our side, we won’t do those things, we haven’t done those things, and therefore there’s no difference carrying forward.”

— During a conference call to discuss its $1.25 billion settlement with AMD, Intel CEO Paul Otellini says that by agreeing to abide by a set of “business practice provisions” Intel isn’t doing anything that it wasn’t doing already.

“One of the things that people say an awful lot about the Apple Mac is that the OS is fantastic, that it’s very graphical and easy to use. What we’ve tried to do with Windows 7–whether it’s traditional format or in a touch format–is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics. We’ve significantly improved the graphical user interface, but it’s built on that very stable core Vista technology, which is far more stable than the current Mac platform, for instance.”

– Microsoft partner group manager Simon Aldous

“An inaccurate quote has been floating around the Internet today about the design origins of Windows 7 and whether its look and feel was ‘borrowed’ from Mac OS X. Unfortunately this came from a Microsoft employee who was not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7. I hate to say this about one of our own, but his comments were inaccurate and uninformed.”

– Windows Communications Manager Brandon LeBlanc

“We made so many acquisitions at eBay, so many of which were absolutely terrific. PayPal, a lot of our classified sites. And actually I think Skype will prove to be a good acquisition for eBay.”

– Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman

“iPhone tethering is coming soon.”

– AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph De La Vega, Nov. 6, 2008

“We plan to offer tethering on the iPhone but have not announced a date.”

– An AT&T spokesman Nov. 9, 2009

“The Court finds that the term ‘broadcasting’ in Rule 53 includes sending electronic messages from a courtroom that contemporaneously describe the trial proceedings and are instantaneously available for public viewing. Although ‘broadcasting’ is typically associated with the dissemination of information via television or radio, its plain meaning is broader than that. The definition of ‘broadcast’ includes ‘casting or scattering in all directions’ and ‘the act of making widely known.’ Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (Unabridged) 280 (1993). It cannot be reasonably disputed that ‘twittering,’ as previously described, would result in casting to the general public and thus making widely known the trial proceedings.”

– U.S. District Judge Clay Land bans Twitter from his courtroom

“Hopefully, we won’t repeat the mistakes that Microsoft made 10 years ago that ultimately led to all these things that happened to them.”

– Google CEO Eric Schmidt

“I don’t understand how Apple could ruin the record business in one year on Mac.”

– Universal Music CEO Doug Morris

“The game looks to be a throw-back to the classic Space Invaders/Galaga style of games from the early 1980s. However, what brings this game into the realm of malicious code is that for every alien ship you destroy, the game deletes a file from your home directory.”

– Symantec flags the “game” Lose/Lose as malware

“We were able to eliminate a whole bunch of actually U.S.-based jobs and kind of replace them with two folks out of India to serve a 1,200-person engineering organization.”

– Richard Marcello, president of technology, consulting, and integration solutions at Unisys

“The Wii has stalled.”

– Nintendo executive Satoru Iwata