Jul 2, 2012 | blog, featured
Microsoft Surface with Black Type Cover
The question in my mind is why Microsoft hadn’t acted on the hardware front earlier. Yeah, I know all about it’s relationship with it’s hardware vendors. Sure, it is a threatening move. Apple stuck with that decision from the beginning. Of course, they were a hardware company that produced software to help sell the hardware. Now, of course, they’re an ‘experiences’ company that sells hardware.
The surface is what it is, and we have few real details about quality, feel, and usability to make any kind of good analysis other than how this might impact the marketplace.
In my opinion the x86 market needed a really significant shakeup. The predictable, mundane hardware advances, and lack of real innovation is screaming for disruption. Microsoft itself is delivering that disruption – the company who has demonstrated its ability to keep the status quo, and try to accomodate all players and customers for way too long is leading that disruption.
I know that Microsoft’s moves are causing concern for their corporate customers. It’s causing concern for their developer community and causing some confusion on the consumer side. Its causing relationship issues with their hardware partners who now feel betrayed, and making some competitors curious of their actions, probably evaluating technology & usability patent infringement issues. Its causing competitors customers to laugh outright at the wild changes of what “used to be” so predictable – as if Microsoft is simply stabbing in the dark.
Thing is, this move is significant for the technology industry as a whole. It signals that computing as we’ve known it for 30 years is changing radically. Quicker than many established companies can adapt. Take a look at some of the moves in the industry: Nokia and RIM in steep dangerous decline, Palm & it’s tragic demise at the hands of HP, HP itself who has always made great laptops and desktops and servers but can’t understand mobile to save its life, Yahoo which is only now figuring out that it diversify enough in other technologies, IBM selling off it’s PC division back in 2004 (smart move guys), Dell trying all sorts of new things to find something that sticks so it has a place to hang it’s hat in the future.
When you start looking at the larger picture, and I’ve only pointed out a small handful of things, you see how the Surface is both bold & brilliant, while still being a stunning reversal on one of the cornerstones of modern computing. The Surface will succeed, the definition of success of course is with Microsoft. It was not designed to be an iPad killer (those headlines are overhyped link bait), it was designed to demonstrate Microsoft’s vision for tablet computing. Something it knew that its hardware partners were not able to execute on properly without Microsoft demonstrating some of it’s ideas.
Microsoft Surface… I’ll buy one.
Mar 26, 2012 | blog, featured
You know, I think I’ve had enough of the silliness of Apple’s naming if the iPad. Being unpredictable sounds great, but not giving a product a differentiating name is simply stupid.
“The new iPad”. Great, next year we can refer to it as “last year’s new iPad”. Really Apple? That’s as brilliant as Microsoft’s year-naming of software. It was dumb in 1995, and it’s not any better now.
What the hell was wrong with “iPad 3” or “iPad HD”, even though its screen is a light year beyond HD. What about a name that really differentiates it from the iPad 2? Where was the originality that we expect from you? Guess it died with Steve. Why should we get excited about a product that can’t describe itself in its name?
Guess we’ll find out next year when you deliver “the new iPad 2013”.
Doh!
Jul 30, 2010 | blog
I really hate saying that, but it’ll be true. Why? Because we’ll all compare them to the iPad.
The real problem will be two fold: Microsoft and Windows 7.
Yes, Win7 is a great improvement over Vista, is too big. Windows is too many things to too many people, used for too many purposes. It’s exactly what it needs to be though – a general purpose operating system. That is the very thing that makes it inappropriate for tablets, er excuse me, “slates”.
Secondly, Microsoft is interested in catching up, but they’re going to hamper the non-iPad tablet efforts in the market simply by being themselves. For the corporate customers, it’ll be another hardware choice that they get to support – !$@&! yay!
The reality is that a true tablet needs to do the basics quickly, easily, and reliably. That’s messaging, browsing, viewing, reading, and probably listening. Anything more than that is overburdening the system.
While we can debate whether the iPad does this well or not, the point I’m making is that Microsoft and their partners can’t compete in this market if Windows and/or Microsoft specifications are in the mix.
By the way, Microsoft has been down the tablet/slate road twice before. Windows Tablet PC was first and Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) was the other one, like the picture above of an Asus R2H Ultra Mobile PC from November 2006.
Photo credit: Josh Bancroft
Jan 29, 2010 | blog
< warning >I’m not an Apple Fanboy, but I play one in this post< /warning >
Hardly, but I do have a point to make so hang with me.
In Windows Vista in 2007, Microsoft had rebuilt several portions of it’s operating system, installed a new device driver model & API, updated the UI for a more modern feel, and polished many areas in need of attention. Of course, there were ineveitable issues, especially for poorly written, decade-old, legacy applications that many companies run their business. Also at issue at the time were a lack of device drivers for anything other than the most generic hardware & peripherals. Because of these issues , and a few others, the press and bloggers couldn’t help but tear the new OS to shreads and created a huge discussion that Microsoft never saw coming.
Of course being in IT myself, I couldn’t figure out the fuss – after all, I’d heard it 6 years earlier. The same criticisms were thrown about from the same sources about Windows XP in 2001. So what was the difference?
Social Media.
In 2001, the blogosphere was much smaller, not taken for serious journalism or news, and didn’t cause any more product or public relations for Microsoft than an Op-Ed piece in your hometown newspaper at the time. In 2007 that was totally different and was the driving factor of creating the impression that Microsoft release a completely inept piece of software that they expected people to pay a premium for. In short, Microsoft never got out front of the issue to listen and participate.
So here we are in 2010 and a large chunk of initial reviews and feedback for the new Apple iPad is fairly negative. “They under-delivered”, “Didn’t they market-test that name?”, “doesn’t look too sturdy”, “it’s an over-sized iPhone”, “where’s the camera?”, “doesn’t run OS/X”, “we expected more from Apple…”.
I highly doubt that Apple will have an issue with negative press in the long run and I fully expect the iPad to succeed where other efforts in this ‘tween area of mobile technology have failed. The key is to look not at the hardware, but what Jobs and Co. had set out to do.
This space between smartphone and laptop is rare territory. We tend to expect computing power approaching a real computer, but we want that half-pound sized, last-all-day battery, instant on, always connected device to cost us about $300 (less is better). We’ve experienced some of this in Netbooks, and while totally disagree with Jobs’ position on them, they deliver the content in a different way, and really fit for a different crowd (budget conscious & tech geeks).
The iPad is one device that was truly built for the specific market it’s targeted at. It’s a content consumption device, plain and simple. Having a slate/tablet style device that allows you to consume blogs, news, books, video, streaming content, music, podcasts, email, social networking, and also create content as well in a hand-held format that we’re all comfortable with is just too great. They even got the pricing in the right area, which is something Apple only get’s right for itself. 😛
Simply from my perspective, the iPad is the first Apple product that speaks to me, that answers a need that I have. I find that kind of surprising after all the wildly successful products they have, the one that peeks my interest is the one that isn’t quite as well received. That hasn’t happened since the Newton – and yes I owned one of those. It was way ahead of it’s time, but unlike 1995, the market is looking for this kind of product.
Photo credit: Joachim S. Müller
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