Category: Tech news

According to InsideSocialGames, Zynga and EA have settled their legal dispute over the former’s alleged copying of EA’s popular game “The Sims.” It was clear to many that once Zynga started teasing “The Ville,” it took some major elements from EA’s classic. A source has told TechCrunch that no money has exchanged hands as part of the settlement.

At the time of the lawsuit, companies threw barbs back and forth with EA alleging that Zynga “doesn’t understand copyright.” Details as to what the terms of the settlement are haven’t been made available, but we’ve reached out to both companies, and people familiar with the case, for more information. At one point, Zynga countersued for “anti-competitive” practices, turning this into an online gaming bloodbath of epic proportions.

Things quieted down since August, and today it appears that both lawsuits are resolved.

EA and Zynga spokespeople have issued the following statements:

EA and Zynga have resolved their respective claims and have reached a settlement of their litigation in the Northern District of California.

Here is the copy of the proposal to dimiss the case, via AllThingsD:

eavszynga

This is developing.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

Ingrid Lunden began working for Techmeme in February of 2012, after an extensive career at paidContent.org and regular freelance work for publications such as the Financial Times. Today, she celebrates her one-year anniversary with Techmeme.

Ingrid is passionate about all new technology, but has specific interest in mobile, digital media, advertising. Her dedication to the intersection of these spaces has made her a true Techmeme star. We expect to see many more years where her stellar 2012 came from.

Lunden’s combination of smarts and sharpness have led to such notable Techmeme headlines as Mobile Phone Network Truphone Raises $118M Led By Russian Tycoon Roman Abramovich, At $473M Valuation and Yandex Confirms Wonder, A Voice-Powered Social Search App, As A U.S. ‘Experiment,’ Gets Legal Advice On Why It Shouldn’t Irk Facebook, and domestic news favorites like AOL Q4 2012 Beats The Street On Sales Of $600M, Showing Its First Revenue Growth In 8 Years.

Techmeme’s greatest asset, Lunden is a Swiss Army knife of experience and in-depth understanding, as analytical as she can be quick.

When approached for comment on her first year at Techmeme, Lunden responded with the following:

“It’s been good, busy and intense. Challenging, but fun. I love the people and the subject, and I love the buzz. I love the people I work with and most of the people I write about.”

The headline says it all. Literally.

Earlier this week, Opera announced that it would stop working on its own Presto layout engine and switch to WebKit. It’s obvious that the open source WebKit engine currently has a lot of momentum behind it, with Google, Apple and now Opera backing it. As Mozilla’s CTO Brendan Eich wrote last night, however, don’t expect Mozilla to switch engines anytime soon. Mozilla, thanks to its not-for-profit status (something most people are probably not even aware of), has a mission that’s very different from the other vendors.

If Mozilla were a more traditional business, though, Eich admits that “Mozilla would probably have to do what Opera has done. But we’re not just a business, and our desktop share seems to be holding or possibly rising — due in part to the short-term wins we have been able to build on Gecko.”

If WebKit’s momentum continues, our browsers will soon be little more than the Chrome around WebKit. This kind of monoculture can’t be good for the Web and is a reason to cheer on Firefox and even Internet Explorer, no matter how you feel about it. One thing Eich also point out, however, is that “there’s not just one WebKit.” With its eight build systems and various forks (V8, Apple’s Nitro, the iOS version of Safari), graphics back-ends and  network stacks, “web Developers dealing with Android 2.3 have learned this the hard way,” Eich writes.

Technically, using WebKit would also involve significantly larger switching costs for Mozilla than for Opera, Eich argues. Because Opera’s desktop share is relatively low, Eich argues that the switching cost for Opera are also relatively low – but still not “non-trivial.” Mozilla, however, is deeply invested in XUL, it’s own XML-based language for building user interfaces, and losing that in order to switch to WebKit would also involve losing the “the benefits of the rich, broad and deep Firefox Add-ons ecosystem.”

Having its own engine also means Firefox can work on projects like Firefox OS and Firefox for Android. Eich is especially bullish about Servo, the next generation of the Gecko engine Firefox currently uses. He argues that Servo, which will better support multicore CPUs and massively parallel GPUs, is a bit ahead of Apple’s and Google’s work on multi-threading their browsers.

For web developers, Opera’s switch is probably not a huge deal. Because of its small market share, most of them weren’t optimizing their sites for it anyway. Some may even be happy about this switch and it’ss worth having a discussion about whether Mozilla is really as innovative as Eich makes it look in his post (or if it is just following Chrome’s lead). In the end, though, having a robust and diverse browser ecosystem can only help push the web forward.

After spotting it on video and briefly playing with it at CES, Canonical’s mobile-friendly version of Ubuntu will soon be available for the truly curious to muck around with. Starting on February 21, developers will be able to load the build onto their Galaxy Nexus or Nexus 4 — on the off-chance that you’re attending MWC like we are, Canonical will be on hand to flash your compatible hardware for you.

As you’d expect, the release is intended to familiarize enthusiasts with Ubuntu mobile, but Canonical has also released templates, a preview SDK and an app design guide to give us all a better understanding of the development process involved.

Curiously, developers looking to make their mark in a relatively new mobile environment may end up working with a slightly different distribution process at first. Canonical confirmed early on that Ubuntu for phones would launch without a centralized app store in tow. As Canonical product manager Richard Collins put it in an interview with Engadget, the company is going after a market segment “where users are primarily interested in being able to use a core set of applications” rather than a picking and choosing pre-loaded storefront full of them.

It may seem like a crazy omission for a platform that’s being pegged with potential in markets as varying as enterprise and developing economies, and that’s at least partially because of how these Ubuntu apps are meant to work. You see, the sorts of applications that will ultimately run on an Ubuntu-powered phone will also run on Ubuntu PCs, televisions, and tablets in addition to just smartphones The onus on developers then is to craft the sort of all-encompassing experiences that work across these different devices, a task that’s no small feat even for experienced designers and programmers.

Naturally, that extra work can yield some big gains in terms of stickiness too — this sort of one-app-fits-all mentality may mean that the apps developers do wind up creating for Ubuntu phones can follow them as users bound from device to device, a compelling argument for adopting the Ubuntu platform as a whole. Sure it’ll take plenty of work to make sure these experiences are actually worth using, but at least Canonical is giving the app development world at large a bit of lead time.

It’s the most wonderful time of year… because Disrupt New York is getting closer! We’re now wrapping things up behind the scenes, and the show is shaping up to be our best ever — we know, we know, we always say that.

Today we’re honored to be announcing three more luminaries who will take the much-vaunted Disrupt stage in late April.

Sequoia Capital partner Roelof Botha, SV Angel’s David Lee and Valley don Ron Conway are all speaking at Disrupt NYC 2013. They’ll be joining previously-announced speakers Fred Wilson, Ken Lerer and Ben Lerer.

Remember, Startup Battlefield applications are due on 2/22. Battlefield is the heart and soul of Disrupt, and a fantastic launch platform for a startup. We know you can be the next Mint, Dropbox, or Yammer but you have to apply first. 

And for those of you who are already Mint, Dropbox and/or Yammer, you can sign on to sponsor the event by mailing [email protected].

Roelof Botha
Partner, Sequoia Capital

Roelof Botha is a partner at Sequoia Capital, and works with a broad range of companies. Some democratize technology access (Square, Eventbrite, Unity, Nimbula); some create global user communities (YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram); and others disrupt markets through innovative business models (Evernote, Weebly, Xoom). Roelof also sits on the boards of Aliph, Mahalo, and TokBox. Roelof is a champion of consumer Web plays and considers himself “just another consumer.”

Roelof led the initial financing of YouTube on behalf of Sequoia Capital in 2005.

Roelof served as the Chief Financial Officer of PayPal, where he led the company through its IPO in 2002, and the acquisition by eBay before joining Sequoia Capital in 2003.

Roelof loves to hear a founder recount what inspired them to strike out on their own and to gain an understanding of how the founder is uniquely solving a customer pain point.

David Lee
Founder & Managing Member, SV Angel

David Lee is the Managing Member at SV Angel, where Ron Conway is a Special Partner. SV Angel focuses its investments on early-stage consumer media companies.

He focuses on investments within the consumer Internet, mobile, video and other IT industries. Prior to SV Angel, he was at Google, where he led new business development efforts in video, media and content/data partnerships. After Google, he led all business development-related efforts for StumbleUpon.

Recently he was a partner at Baseline Ventures and also an attorney at Morrison and Foerster representing high-tech companies in commercial transactions. He is a graduate of Johns Hopkins, NYU (JD) and Stanford (MSEE), where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate fellow. He is an individual investor in Square, WePay, Chomp and EQAL; an adviser at ScanScout, SocialDeck (acq. by Google) and Rupture (acq. by EA); and was on the board of directors of BookFresh (acq. by Sugar Inc.).

Ron Conway
Angel, SV Angel

Ronald Conway has been an active angel investor for over 15 years. He was the Founder and Managing Partner of the Angel Investors LP funds (1998-2005) whose investments included: Google, Ask Jeeves, PayPal, Good Technology, Opsware, and Brightmail.

Ron was previously with National Semiconductor Corporation in marketing positions from 1973-1979, and Altos Computer Systems as a co-founder, President and CEO from 1979-1990. He eventually took Altos public in 1982 and served as CEO of Personal Training Systems (PTS) from 1991-1995. PTS went on to be acquired by SmartForce/SkillSoft. Ron has served/serves on Boards/Advisory Boards including: Twitter, Digg, Brightmail, Ask Jeeves, Rupture (acquired by EA), Associated Content(acquired by Yahoo!), Facebook, RockYou, ScanScout, Zappos, Trulia, StumbleUpon, Plaxo (acquired by Comcast), Photobucket (acquired by Fox), and Anchor Intelligence (co-founder).

Ron was recently named #6 in Forbes Magazine Midas list of top “deal-makers” in 2008 and is actively involved in numerous philanthropic endeavors. Ron is Vice Chairman of the UCSF Medical Foundation in SF, Board Member of The Tiger Woods Foundation, and SF Homeless Connect, and on the Benefit Committee of Ronald McDonald House, College Track, and the Black Eyed Peas-PeaPod Academy Foundation.

Conway is also featured in Gary Rivlin’s book “The Godfather of Silicon Valley: Ron Conway and the Fall of the Dot-coms”, in which he is described as ‘the man who has placed more bets on Internet start-ups than anyone else in Silicon Valley.’

Sometimes, I feel like every single person in their 20s is hoping to either create or work at the next big startup. But Bryan Schreier, a partner at Sequoia Capital, said that’s largely a West Coast phenomenon. For example, according to Sequoia’s research, 41 percent of Stanford’s computer science majors go to work for a startup after graduation, while that number is only 13 percent for Harvard, with similar results at other top East Coast schools.

So Sequoia is hoping to bring those numbers up, in part through a conference at Princeton this weekend (co-hosted by student publication Business Today) called Start @ A Startup.

Obviously, there’s an element of self interest here. As everyone in Silicon Valley has said ad nauseum, startups are desperate to find the top technical talent, so it’s in Sequoia’s interest to convince smart programmers to come work for its portfolio companies. And indeed, there will be speakers from a number of Sequoia startups (including Dropbox, Inkling, and Square) on stage and holding interviews. But there will be speakers from non-portfolio companies, too, including Uber.

Schreier said this is also a personal issue for him, since he studied CS at Princeton and worked at Morgan Stanley after graduating. There’s just more opportunity at a startup, he said, because most large companies have a certain “maximum velocity” — they only allow you to grow and advance so quickly, and at a certain point, you’re just waiting for “somebody to die or retire” in order to take their position. Startups, on the other hand, “can’t find enough bodies,” and they’re often run like true meritocracies.

“I feel like I joined a big bank because I was following the herd,” Schreier said.

Sujay Jaswa is the vice president of busines developments at Dropbox and he has a similar story — he said he was “a victim of that same mentality,” so after he graduated from Princeton, he went to work for McKinsey. He will be speaking at the conference, which made me wonder: In the context of looking for a job, what does it mean to be a “startup”?

Jaswa admitted that Dropbox is a big company compared to many of the brand-new startups that TechCrunch covers. However, he argued Dropbox is a “startup with scale” — there are still “certain functions that don’t really exist yet” and the number of engineers working on any given project is still very small. The bottom line, he argued, is that you should look for a company “where you can work on hard problems, that’s going to change the world, and where you can work with the most brilliant people in the world.”

But as much as Schreier and Jaswa complain about the tendency to go work for big companies, isn’t that already changing, thanks to The Social Network and growing attention to startups in popular culture? Jaswa said that may be true, but at the same time, he recalled making a recruiting trip to the East Coast last fall, and he said, “There were still people who wanted to talk about my experience at McKinsey, which was 12 years ago!”

Schreier said it’s also hard to overcome the enormous presence that established companies have on Ivy League campuses. This conference is an attempt to provide some balance, but they only had room for 140 or 150 attendees (selected from more than 500 applicants from a number of schools). Schreier said Sequoia hasn’t committed to doing another event, but if this one does well, he’s definitely interested.

Of course, the big Silicon Valley dream isn’t just working at a startup, but actually launching one yourself. Still, Schreier said that if students don’t already have “the one idea that they’re ready to dedicate their life to,” then working at a startup is great preparation: “There’s no better way to learn how to be a founder.”

Another day, another salvo in the long-running NY Times/Tesla Motors war. This time the NYT journalist John Broder, writing on the New York Times blog Wheels, has refuted nearly all of Elon Musk’s points regarding fabrication at worst and lying at best.

This piece is full of clear statements of fact like this one:

You can read it: he even explains the evidence of his “doing donuts” in the parking lot when he was really trying to find a charger. If Broder is a fabulist, he’s doing an excellent job of staying well within the realm of the possible.

As I noted in my defense of both sides, this trip was as data rich as a moon shot. Tesla engineers were following Broder as he drove and the logs that came from the drive pointed to odd inconsistencies that Musk took to mean falsification. Musk, in short, defended his company with the tools at his disposal – this case data – while Broder, a 16-year-veteran at the Times, told his side of the truth, as he experienced it. This is what separates PR from journalism.

Meanwhile, two CNN reporters replicated the trip and had a swell time driving from Boston to Washington and having no issues with the car. It is unfortunate that this experience is what Tesla fans will cling to as proof of Broder’s bias which, at this point in the game, should be considered nil. Two people can have two different experiences in the same car. Tesla owners will defend their purchase and report excellent performance. Broder will drive it and find it wanting. CNN reporters will drive it and stop a few times for Sbarro. This does not damn Tesla in the eyes of the public and, I’d add, this will be forgotten by Wednesday. It’s not as if the average driver in the market for an electric car would abstain from pulling the trigger on a $100,000 sedan because of some spat. In fact. Most of us have Tesla dreams but a Prius budget.

Both parties did the best with the tools at their disposal. I can’t fault Musk for defending his honor and I can’t fault Broder for defending his. In the end, it becomes a case of “The Elon doth protest too much, methinks” and, as we roll into the weekend, we can do little more than hope for silence.

There’s nothing more terrifying than thinking you crossed the line by sending a risqué photo. Worrying that the person you sent a goofy Snapchat or Facebook Poke to thinks you’re an idiot is no fun either. Did they even actually see your self-destructing photo? Ephemeral messaging has a feedback problem.

The philosophy of the whole impermanent communication craze is that, in the real world, the things you say aren’t written in stone for eternity, so everything you say online shouldn’t be either. People are sick of having all their posts lasts forever thanks to Facebook Timeline, Twitter’s indexability and blog archives. Permanence makes things too formal and stodgy. It promotes vanity and success theater, where you only want to share what makes you look good.

Ephemeral messaging is supposed to give you the freedom to let your guard down, be silly and shoot from the hip (sometimes literally). That’s how we act offline when we’re with friends and lovers.

But communicating in-person also affords us real-time feedback. Be too silly and friends roll their eyes. Get too raunchy and your partner will visibly squirm. That helps you backtrack, apologize and return to your mutual comfort zone. We’re not getting this in Snapchat or Poke, the top ephemeral messaging apps. That leads to anxiety, awkwardness and broken conversations.

Both apps have read receipts, meaning you can see whether someone “opened” the message you sent them. But that doesn’t tell you if they slipped and clicked a message but didn’t actually see it. And it definitely doesn’t tell you if they thought it was funny, sexy, mundane, stupid or offensive. When I send someone a Poke or Snap and don’t know if they dug it, I’m a lot less likely to Poke/Snap them in the future.

Snapchat is all photos and videos. So unless you switch to text messages, the only way to give someone positive feedback on something they sent you is to Snap back a photo of you smiling or giving the thumbs up, or a quick video in which you voice your approval. That’s a fair amount of work. Poke has better solutions. You can send text-only Pokes or a nondescript, old-fashioned “Poke” as well as photos and videos. But I rarely get those in return when I send people Pokes.

Both of these apps need a lightweight, one-click way of saying “Hey, that was awesome. Send me more.”

My only guess as to why they don’t already is a misguided hope that you’ll go the full nine yards and send a photo or video back that could keep the conversation going. But that’s not working. In most cases, my ephemeral messages get a daunting silence in return.

Maybe the answer is a Like button, which people are familiar with. Likes are typically pretty public, though, so that might not be exactly the right term. The fiercely independent Snapchat probably wouldn’t call it a Like button anyway.

Perhaps the right move is to let people send a thumbs up, a heart or an emoticon. But something, soon, please. I’m tired of getting the cold shoulder and feeling like I’m caught with my pants down.

On a panel discussion at D: Dive Into Media with Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos and Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz, comedian Will Arnett praised the freedom that the streaming provider is giving creatives building its new slate of original programming.

Netflix is “allowing the creative community to do what they do best,” Arnett said. That freedom is helping to draw creatives who wish to build shows that they wouldn’t be able to develop for network or even cable TV. Hurwitz said that while Arrested Development was being created for the web, the staff was being paid in the same way they would for most network shows, and the show is being made on a similar budget.

“We are absolutely making the show we would have made if we were still at Fox,” Hurwitz said. “There are certain things we’re not going to have… We’re not going to have residuals. But the tradeoff is that we’re encouraged to do a more interesting show, as opposed to flattening it out.”

Arrested Development returns after a multi-year hiatus on May 4, and will count as the second major series to be released as part of Netflix’s ambitious original programming initiative. A few weeks ago, Netflix debuted its Kevin Spacey and David-Fincher led political thriller House of Cards, releasing the entire first season of 13 episodes all in one batch.

The new season of Arrested Development will follow the same distribution model. The show will bring back most of the cast from the original Fox series, with the series picking up several years after Season 3 left off. But all involved believe that the show will do well, thanks to the built-in audience already on Netflix.

Netflix has carried the previous seasons of Arrested Development for years, and Sarandos said that the data shows the audience for the series has only grown with time, as opposed to most shows that are cancelled. What’s more, Hurwitz, Arnett, and Sarandos all agreed that the Netflix subscribers fit squarely in the Arrested Development target demographic.

At the D: Dive Into Media conference, Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said that the company’s political thriller House of Cards has been the most-watched piece of content on the site a few weeks after its release. Not only is that true in the company’s home market of the U.S., but it’s true across all regions that the company operates in, Sarandos said.

The Kevin Spacey-David Fincher show was released earlier this month, about a year and a half after the company announced it was committing to license the content from production house Media Rights Capital. Sarandos wouldn’t provide absolute viewer numbers or try to give relative ratings numbers to compare it to other content that is distributed through traditional TV. But he did say that nearly everyone who watched episode 1 of the show watched the next episode.

Sarandos said that by releasing the show all at once, the company is “crafting long-form storytelling to be told any way you want to watch it.” That differs from the traditional storytelling model on networks, where shows are released on a weekly basis.

“No one has ever watched anything on Netflix that they couldn’t watch all at once,” Sarandos said. There was no interest in changing that model for a new group of originals. But that not only meant changing consumer behavior, it also meant dealing with the realities of today’s social network environment.

Sarandos called it a “different style of watercooler etiquette.” Rather than having to deal with the weekly conversation that is produced, viewers need to ask each other which episodes they’re watching and dealing with that. Still, the strategy seems to be paying off, as viewers are continuing to tune in.

Okay so maybe you and two million of your closest peers made “LinkedIn’s Top 1% most viewed profiles for 2012.” But are you on “Forbes 450 under 30″? Or “TIME’s 100 best randomly assorted names of people, with a few from Silicon Valley”?

Well, you’re probably also not on this list of “People who have achieved incredible things in tech” either but you might want to check, just in case. I mean, you probably deserve to be on it more than 49ers Coach Jim Harbaugh.

Comcast is already the country’s largest cable television provider, but its entertainment ambitions don’t end there — the company has just announced that it will spend $16.7 billion to purchase General Electric’s stake in NBCUniversal. To top it off, Comcast will also shell out an additional $1.4 billion to purchase CNBC’s headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. and the NBCUniversal facilities at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York.

This whole sordid process started off back in late 2009 when GE announced a deal in which Comcast would take over its holdings in NBCUniversal, and U.S. regulators eventually gave the transaction their blessing (with certain caveats in place) in early 2011. With all of that regulatory scrutiny already accounted for, Comcast expects everything to officially close by the end of this quarter.

The news comes right on the heels of Comcast’s fiscal Q4 2012 earnings release, in which the Philadelphia-based company announced earnings of $0.56 per share on $15.9 billion in revenue — Comcast easily beat the street’s consensus earnings estimates and just barely met analysts’ revenue targets. Operating income surged 12.9 percent year-over-year from $2.92 billion to nearly $3.3 billion. Comcast also announced that it planned to raise the dividends it pays out to shareholders by 20 percent, and would seek to repurchase some $2 billion worth of stock throughout the course of this year.

The company’s shareholders will likely take a shine to today’s announcements — at the time of this writing, Comcast’s stock is up nearly 8 percent in after-hours trading, and GE’s share price is currently up about 3.5 percent

While the question remains whether or not you should be eating Domino’s pizza at all, a clever service now allows you to pay for your pie with Bitcoins. The service is far from an official Domino’s app and is instead a gateway or broker between the world of pizza and the world of popular virtual currencies.

The site, PizzaForCoins, asks for your address and then brings up pizza places near you. You place your order and send over your coins – the exchange rate is “APPROXIMATELY $0.50 Cents less then the current Mt.Gox Rate,” their emphasis – and wait for your pizza. Then you eat it.

The team behind the site, Matt Burkinshaw and Riley Alexander, built the service as a conduit between bitcoin and the real world, a key tool that will improve the visibility and viability of the platform.

The pair are working on adding other pizza places to the service including Papa John’s.

Bitcoins are currently trading at about $25 so two pizzas and bread bites will cost you $17.75. You can also add things to your order like wings, different crusts, and the like. It’s a fascinating tool and far more valuable to the average user than sites like Silk Road where bitcoins are used for more illicit purposes. I’m sure an entire subset of users would love a way to use an untraceable currency to pay for everyday things and pizza is a great start.

via DigitalTrends

In its second earnings report as a public company, online real estate site Trulia saw both higher revenue and a bigger loss than analysts had estimated. The company saw revenue of $20.6 million and a net loss of $1.59 million for the quarter ending on December 31. That’s a (non-GAAP) loss of 3 cents per share.

Revenue is up 25 percent year-over-year, while the company’s net loss has fallen from $2.5 million. In its previous earnings report, Trulia saw record revenue and had positive EBITDA (namely, it was profitable before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) for the first time. The company continued the pattern of positive EBITDA this quarter.

Analysts had predicted Trulia would see $19 million in revenue with a loss of 2 cents per share.

“We finished the year on a resounding note, achieving record quarterly revenue, a rapid increase in mobile traffic, and strong subscriber growth,” CEO Pete Flint said in the press release. “We are well positioned to grow in 2013 as the real estate market continues its recovery.”

Traffic and subscriptions were also up. The company said it averaged 23.6 million monthly unique users, a 50 percent year-over-year increase, with 5.8 million coming from mobile. The company ended the quarter of 24,443 subscribers (compared to 16,849 last year), and it made an average of $172 in monthly revenue from each subscriber. Users have now contributed 7 million pieces of content to the site, including 810,000 in the past quarter.

Competitor Zillow plans to announce earnings tomorrow.

Microsoft launched its curious Surface Pro hybrid earlier this week, but it turns out that actually trying to buy one was a bit more problematic than people had hoped. Folks looking to get their hands on one of the 128GB models had it especially rough — the $999 device sold out in Microsoft’s online store and some of the company’s retail outlets, not to mention some Best Buy and Staples locations.

Well, according to a tweet from Surface GM Panos Panay, the process of snagging a 128GB Surface Pro will be much easier in just a few days — he confirmed that units were on their way to Best Buy and Microsoft retail stores and that they would be ready to sell by Saturday.

Naturally, Panay didn’t let that tentative timeframe slip uncajoled — he engaged the masses on Twitter in an hour-long chat earlier today that also saw him tackle questions about the Surface Pro’s stylus and the company’s toe-tapping commercials. It wasn’t until a user named @EvanSturdivant pressed Panay on the generic statement about Surface Pro availability he had previously issued that the truth finally came out.

At first glance, all these reports of Surface Pro sell-outs seem to point to a considerable amount of demand for the product — Paul Thurrott noted the existence of “Apple-like lines” in some Microsoft stores — but we’ve since learned that the scarcity of the Surface Pro may have had more to do with limited supply than overwhelming demand. Both 64 and 128GB Surface Pros were apparently in short supply when some people called around asking for them, and one unlucky ZDNet writer had to schlep to a Microsoft Store 50 miles from where he lived because it was the only place he could find a 128GB model. As is usually the case, some people began to cook up some strange conspiracy theories (like one that claimed Microsoft deliberately limited supplies in order to say that it had sold out of Surface Pros), but I seriously doubt that’s the case. Sure, the whole rigmarole was a headache for people itching for a high-end Surface Pro, but the smart money’s on all this being an issue of mismanagement and not malice.