rainbow

Using the strictest of palates - black, blood orange, sinful red and more black - Cosenza created a truly chic Fall 2009. Though it was a trifle derivative, one can forgive that when the looks are so good.

Made in classy fabrics like silk faille, calico and shantung and cut with a precise surgical scalpel, these were grand yet not stuffy clothes.

Sleekly cut, lean cocktail dresses jazzed up with lace inserts and semi-sheer panels, paneled felt wool suits and one grand opening and big shouldered gown worn by Isabeli Fontana were the highlights of this highly exportable collection.

But the classiest moment of the day came when Carla Cavendish showed how haute gamme and finely finished Brazilian fashion can be. Her layered demi-military boleros with spidery bugle beading and refined mock Musketeers coats with broken pattern beaded embroidery had lots of distinction.

Best of all, Cavendish, whose 12-year-old label now retails in 300 locations, cuts a great pair of pants. Her standouts were a natty new take on a favorite local look, elongated and slimmed down jodhpurs. Composed in gray, earth, stone and anthracite hues and shown on a catwalk split in two by an enormous tropical tree trunk, this was a great example of distinguished tropical style.

Fashion Rio also unveiled one significant new talent, Daniela Connolly, whose clever take of Victoriana meets posh punk showed a designer in synch with global brands but creating her own specific look.

Connolly, whose brand is named Koolture, put plenty of pep into this Fall 2009 collection with agit-prop graffiti prints used in bomber jackets, party mini frocks and sequined dresses. Above all, she cuts with a cool hand, best exemplified by her Edwardian columns.

Connolly presented her collection in a Novos Estilistas joint show of young designers with another fledgling brand named Filhas de Gaia, designed by the duo of Marcela Calmon and Renata Salles.

Filhas de Gaia had the idea of incorporating Portuguese wrought iron patterns and tile designs into some charming wispy fabrics. However, too often the execution was let down by the draping, the Achilles Heel of fashion brands in Brazil, where most attempts to be creative and add volume to dresses and gowns frequently ends up just making the wearer look heavier.

Calmen and Salles did show some snazzy rouched shantung cocktails, which looked great, but the collection was undermined by the silhouette.

Labels: fashion

In an email to employees on Wednesday, Jobs said he is going on leave "in order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products."

Jobs, 53, a cancer survivor who disclosed on January 5 that he was being treated for a "hormone imbalance," said that since that time "I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought."

"I have asked (chief operating officer) Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple's day-to-day operations, and I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job," he added.

"As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out," said Jobs. "Our board of directors fully supports this plan."

The price of Apple's stock plunged 7.07 percent to 79.30 dollars in after-hours trading following the announcement.

"Everyone is going to speculate he is on his deathbed, like it usually goes," said Gartner analyst Van Baker. "The company will do just fine with Steve taking a leave of absence.

"Steve is the public face of Apple," Baker said, but "Apple is not going to collapse without him there."

Jobs had explained his no-show at Macworld, this month's annual cult-like gathering of Apple devotees, with a letter stating that a hormone imbalance had caused him to lose a troubling amount of weight.

Jobs, who underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer in 2005, looked gaunt at his last public appearance in September.

Hormonal imbalance is a common symptom of pancreatic cancer and could signal that Jobs isn't done battling the often terminal illness, said Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group in Silicon Valley.

"It is likely that he is not coming back, because he wouldn't step away from this job for five minutes unless it was critical," Enderle said.

"Steve Jobs is the Ronald McDonald of Apple; he is the face. They either need to redefine the company so his role is divided among different people or they need to find somebody that can clone Steve Jobs."

Apple has been notoriously secretive about Jobs's health and speculation has been rampant since it was announced that for the first time in 11 years he would not give the keynote speech at the Macworld Expo.

Marketing vice president Phil Schiller gave the keynote at Macworld, which ran from January 6-9 and featured companies promoting gadgets, gear, software or services tailored for Apple products.

NPD Group analyst Stephen Baker said Jobs's absence should not cripple the company.

"Apple has a lot of great people there and ought to be able to execute on plans they have," Baker said. "That is what working on a team is all about. While Steve Jobs is the boss, there are lots of other smart people there."

As Apple's chief operating officer, Cook has been in charge of the nitty-gritty running of the company. Cook also heads the California firm's Macintosh computer division.

"Steve's role has been largely big direction, not hands-on," said Gartner's Baker. "He is more the resident visionary in terms of strategic decisions, not the detail guy. I don't see his leave-of-absence having a big impact on Apple."

However, in the public's eyes Jobs is Apple incarnate. Apple was teetering on the brink of ruin when Jobs returned to the helm in 1996 and led it to marketplace glory.

He had left the company in 1985 after an internal power struggle.

Born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955 to a single mother and adopted at a young age, Jobs founded Apple in 1976 with engineer Steve Wozniak after dropping out of college.

Labels: apple

If you were hoping Microsoft would issue a dramatic last minute, Hollywood-style stay of execution for Windows XP, then you've been watching too many movies.

In a thank you letter sent to customers Monday, Bill Veghte, senior vice president of Microsoft's Online Services and Windows Business Group, reiterated Microsoft's June 30 end-of-life date for XP and said Microsoft plans to continue supporting XP with security updates and other critical updates until April 2014.

The letter contains no new information, but instead reprises the main talking points to which Microsoft has stuck since customers and partners began complaining about Vista's shortcomings: Namely, that unhappy Vista customers will still be able to use XP, and that the market's perception of Vista is quite different from the reality.

Veghte emphasized that XP-hungry customers will still be able to buy PCs with XP from system builders until January 31, 2009, or by exercising the downgrade rights Microsoft offers with OEM versions of Vista Business or Vista Ultimate and to volume licensing customers.

Microsoft will also continue to sell XP Home and XP Starter versions with low cost notebooks and PCs (also known as Netbooks and Nettops) until June 30, 2010, according to Veghte.

Describing Vista as "a very ambitious release", Veghte said the security enhancements Microsoft added to the OS have paid major dividends. For example, in 2007 Vista had half as many critical vulnerabilities as XP SP2 had during the same period, and PCs running Vista are 60 percent less likely to be infected by malware than machines running XP SP2, said Veghte.

Veghte acknowledged that the architectural changes Microsoft had to make with Vista to achieve these security improvements led to compatibility issues with existing hardware and applications, but said these issues have for the most part been resolved.

The good news, according to Veghte, is that Windows 7, the successor to Vista that's due either in late 2009 or early 2010, uses the same core architecture as Vista, which means customers won't have to suffer through another painful migration.

"Our goal is to ensure the migration process from Windows Vista to Windows 7 is straightforward," Veghte said in the letter. (telephonesonline.com.au)

Labels: Microsoft, windows