PC Pro's review of 2007: July - December

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 17 Dec 2007 at 23:24

As the year draws to a close we take a look back at the stories that have dominated the headlines in 2007, concluding with July to December. If you've missed our round-up of January to June, click here for a recap.

July

July was a good month for Apple which announced that it had sold 500,000 iPhones in the US during the first weekend on sale, teeing up a media frenzy as to when the "revolutionary" device would be hitting UK shores. November, as it turned out, though a hefty price tag meant British reception to the device was rather more... reserved that it had been in the US.

The BBC's iPlayer also suffered a lukewarm reception, as concerns over bugs and missing features took their toll. It was not the first of the problems the on-demand platform would face, as later announcements that Linux and Mac users would be receiving a stripped-down version brought storms of protest. As of December, the BBC says it is committed to a fully featured iPlayer for non-Windows machines, though it refuses to a give a timeframe.

August

August brought bad tidings for UK PC manufacturer Evesham, which confirmed it was heading into administration only to be bailed out by the former founder of Time Computers, Tahir Mohsan. We would later learn that Evesham had collapsed owning around £7 million to hundreds of creditors including AMD and Microsoft, explaining rather succinctly why the former wouldn't deal with the new company.

August was also the month in which the Lords' Science and Technology Committee described the internet as a "wild west", before claiming the government's "laissez faire" attitude to online security was undermining confidence in the internet. The report was subsequently brushed under the carpet by the government, which roundly ignored each of the 23 recommendations, leaving the Lords fuming.

September

September was a struggle for Microsoft, which had to endure the double ignominy of extending XP's shelf life by an extra five months and having to offer OEM manufacturers an option to "downgrade" from Vista to XP, as its much-hyped operating system failed to take off with either businesses or consumers.