Year in tech: the highs and lows of 2011 It was clear back in January that 2011 was going to be the year of the tablet. Indeed, if 2011 had a shape it was definitely rectangular with rounded corners, but of course there was much more to 2011's tech than that. In 2011 we saw some extraordinary things, said hello to some extraordinary kit and waved goodbye to an extraordinary man. Where's Windows? Microsoft didn't unveil Windows 8 as rumoured in January , but it spent most of the year bigging up its forthcoming operating system. A developer preview was made available in September , and by the end of the year we knew pretty much everything about Windows 8 on tablets and Windows 8 in general . When it wasn't banging on about Windows 8, Microsoft spent most of 2011 jumping out from behind things and shouting "boo!". The first shock was a multi-billion dollar deal with Nokia to make Windows Phone the new OS for Nokia's high-end kit, and the second was when Microsoft plonked down a staggering $8.5 billion for Skype for no other reason than to annoy Google. It was an odd and arguably overpriced move: as we said at the time, Microsoft "started with an opening bid of 'all the money in the world'." Rise of the robots The big news in 2011 was the rise of the robots: Android smartphones
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