Microsoft yesterday unveiled Windows 8, which includes a touch-optimized, tile-based main interface, melding the user friendliness of modern smartphones with powerful PC features like complete access to the file system, the ability to see more than one app at a time on screen, and desktop caliber apps.

Apple, on the other hand, is poised to announce the eagerly awaited cloud system iCloud during Monday’s WWDC, among many other new features and announcements (OS X Lion, iOS 5).

We used Social Radar to measure buzz around Microsoft Windows 8 to Apple iCloud, OS X Lion and iOS 5.

Microsoft Windows 8 vs. Apple iCloud, OS X Lion, iOS 5 buzz

Windows 8 is currently generating more buzz than Apple iCloud, iOS 5 and OS X Lion.

Microsoft vs. Apple buzz

Throughout the last 30 days, Apple has generated more chatter overall than Microsoft, despite a large spike for Microsoft around May 10 following the Skype acquisition.

Microsoft sentiment

Microsoft conversations are currently 65% positive, which is below the average 80% positive throughout the last month.

We will check back Monday following Apple’s WWDC with further analysis around Apple buzz.

News broke today that Apple will start its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with several important software releases: iCloud, Apple’s upcoming cloud service, as well as the next iteration of its desktop and mobile platform, Mac OS X Lion and iOS 5.

The really big announcement at this year’s June 6 WWDC will be iCloud, which is rumored to be Apple’s cloud service for music. Recent reports said that Apple has signed a licensing deal with EMI and was close to signing similar deals with Sony and Universal, which would pave the way for iCloud.

WWDC buzz

Chatter around Apple’s WWDC is already up 426%, still a week away from the conference.

WWDC sentiment

Conversations around WWDC are currently 83% positive. Steve Jobs is currently being mentioned in 11% of WWDC posts after speculation that he would participate in the keynote.

We will report back next week following the conference to break down the buzz.

In typical Apple fashion, leading up to the Worldwide Developers Conference 2009, no one outside of Apple had a clue what the new iPhone would be called, nor could they confirm with certainty that a new iPhone would even be announced. When they made the announcement during the keynote, everyone heard Apple call the device, “iPhone 3G S”. It was an odd decision for Apple to include a space between “3G” and “S”, as many search engines don’t even index the letter “S”. In fact, many people simply called it “iPhone 3GS”.

As Apple started to realize the issues with this decision, such as the fact that their new device developed two names, they decided to pull a switch-a-roo name change with no prior warning. Apple issued a press release on June 22 titled Apple Sells Over One Million iPhone 3GS Models.

Lots of bloggers, news sources, and others picked up on this name change and people followed the trend quite quickly. The chart below shows you just how quickly the Internet changed their spelling. Pretty fascinating.

Apple announced a new iPhone 3GS at their World Wide Development Conference in San Francisco on Monday. We analyzed buzz on several of the key features announced and ranked them below by percentage of posts. Video recording capability received a significant amount of buzz, with mentions in nearly 15% of all iPhone-related posts in the last 24 hours. Price and camera were also hot topics of discussion.

Overall user sentiment around the iPhone 3GS has been positive so far.

We also compared buzz around the iPhone 3GS to the Palm Pre launch over the weekend. iPhone 3G and 3GS generated significantly higher buzz after its 6/8 announcement than Palm Pre did on its 6/6 announcement. Which will continue to generate more buzz in the weeks ahead? Will buzz correlate to sales?

The long awaited iPhone 3G announcement came as no surprise to enthusiasts last Monday at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Many websites have been discussing and rumoring the iPhone 3G months prior to the event. But, it didn’t stop the roars and cheers of the crowd as Steve Jobs made the official confirmation. As with any iPhone related news, we expected a surge in online chatter. We were right.

That’s a nice surge. On June 9th, 2008, 1 in every 55 post mentioned the iPhone.

I think it’s safe to say that there was plenty of buzz about it. However, we wanted to dive in a little deeper and find the hot topics of discussion around the 3G iPhone. We ran our popular topics feature in Social Radar. Here is what we found.

1: “gps” (30%)
2: “price” or “cost” (26%)
3: “app” or “applications” (21%)
4: “speed” or “fast” (10%)
5: “mobileme” (7%)
6: “audio” (7%)
7: “battery” (5%)

Above is a list of the most interesting topics we found, showing a percentage of how much each topic appeared in iPhone related chatter. The words are stemmed, so “fast” should also pick up “faster” or “fastest”. This is an interesting outcome, as I would have expected more mentions of its increase in speed and improved battery life. As we can see from this list, the GPS was a very large topic of discussion among this chatter, and it’s easy to see that people feel this was the most substantial upgrade to the phone.