Now the snappily named Windows Phone Series 7 has been revealed, it’s fisticuffs at dawn between Microsoft and Apple. Well, between Microsoft and a cardboard cut-out of Apple, because no words are coming from Cupertino (bar Steve Jobs bitching about Flash every few minutes), but Microsoft’s taking swipes at iPhone at every opportunity.

The latest snipe regarding gaming comes from Oded Ran, head of consumer marketing for Windows phone in the UK. “It’s not about whether you have 6,000 different arcade puzzle games in a specific category on your app store,” he says. “It’s about how good they are—it’s not about the number, it’s about the quality.” (Source: Mobile Entertainment.)

To be fair, I agree. Quality over quantity is always the best way to go (although I’d argue the App Store offers both to gamers), but here’s the thing: for years, Microsoft has taken the exact opposite stance regarding Apple. Windows, it’s said, is better than Mac OS because it has more apps, more devs, more support (and more exciting viruses—oho!), but now Microsoft’s in the minority, it’s playing the ‘we only care about quality’ game. Right. And I’m sure Microsoft wouldn’t change its tune at all if someone could somehow magic 10,000 games for its upcoming platform out of thin air while simultaneously deleting 99% of Apple’s App Store content.

MacRumors reports that HP execs are to soon meet for discussion regarding pricing and features on the company’s upcoming iPadalike. If the Wall Street Journal is to be believed, HP’s cunning plan is to provide something “similar to the iPad in size and features” but to undercut the Apple device’s price.

Well done, HP—you’ve learned nothing. After all, hardware-oriented willy waving and low price-points worked out so well for you in the PC industry, didn’t they?

TechRadar and a billion other sites confirm Microsoft won’t be offering any upgrade pricing for Office 2010. In the UK, you’ll pay £109.99 for Office Home and Student version, £239.99 for Office Home and Business and £399.99 for Office Professional, which reportedly comes with an aversion to actual work, a slick hair-do and a propensity for leering after digital secretaries.

Microsoft’s reasoning is that “Office Home & Business 2010 represents a substantial saving over [the] comparative Office Standard 2007 suite while including an additional application (OneNote) and Office Web Apps” and claims “the majority of users will immediately benefit from the greater value and simplified setup experience offered by Product Key Cards”. The lack of an upgrade path has nothing to do with Microsoft “wanting more of your money, scumbag users who are locked into our product and yet don’t realise they don’t really need to upgrade if they’re happy with what they have—mwahahahaha”, or “sticking our fingers in our ears and going lalalalalalalalala, I can’t hear you, whenever OpenOffice.org and other dangerous competing products are mentioned”.

The BBC reports that 24 large phone operators are ganging up to give Apple a smack. The Wholesale Applications Community is aiming to offer its own take on the App Store, presumably because they want a tasty slice of profits pie.

On reading the BBC’s article, it’s hard to tell whether this is a profits grab or a genuine stab for the future of apps. The article talks about building and selling apps “irrespective of device or technology”, which could mean advanced open web apps or web apps dumbed down to work in any old system. Likewise for the quote about overcoming market fragmentation by creating a single “open platform that delivers applications to all mobile phone users”.

Long-term, web apps are a good bet. As JavaScript and HTML evolves, browser-based environments will be able to do more and more. At the present time, though, to truly support “all mobile phone users,” you’ve no choice but to drag devices down to the lowest common denominator—and when consortiums of this sort are born, compromise usually forces hands, to the point that exciting and visionary aims are ditched in favour of short-term market-share and profits. Here’s hoping that’s not the case here.

Update: John Nack of Adobe posts on his blog, strongly refuting the claim.

Since Steve Jobs demoed the iPad, showing quite blatantly that it didn’t support Flash, the backlash has been severe. Lots of (frankly stupid) journos have blathered on about how no Flash spells doom for Apple’s device, forgetting that people don’t care about technology—they just care about what you can do with it. In other words, Flash isn’t important, but the things you can do with it are. Flash is mostly used for games, ads, video and overblown interactive websites. Right now, popular Flash-originated games already exist on the App Store (often for free), everyone hates ads, video services are transitioning to open standards and overblown interfaces can go die in a fire.

But despite what some claim, Apple’s rather brutal stance as far as the web goes isn’t to block competition, but to push open standards, rather than proprietary ones. People forget that Flash isn’t open—it’s just very popular. Somehow, even many geeks are OK with this, despite the fact they rallied against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer for being in much the same position fairly recently.

Perhaps the difference in reaction to Microsoft and Adobe was down to the former’s appalling business practices, using its ‘unfair’ advantage to bully the competition into submission. Sadly, it appears Adobe’s now overstepped this mark. Various sources reported yesterday that Adobe has blocked the latest publication of HTML5 (AppleInsider), the standard that could knock Flash down a peg or 20.

This revelation comes off the back of months of regular comments from Adobe about the importance of supporting open standards. Nonetheless, if there’s any truth to the linked article (and similar ones doing the rounds) it appears Adobe’s narked about the ‘canvas’ element in HTML5, which is a direct threat to Flash. What Adobe should do is start work on some amazing authoring tools to create content for HTML5, rather than trying to slow its ascent and keep Flash in the spotlight for longer. As Microsoft will tell you, a company can only hold back the tide for so long, and the tech community holds grudges for many years.