Microsoft exec says tablets like Apple's iPad may be just a fad - Page 5

Well duh. Of course the iPad is not the pinnacle of technological progress for the 21st century. I fully expect displacement of tablets as new tech that we've not even imagined becomes possible. Just as the PC displaced the mainframe, and the laptop has largely displaced the desktop.

But this claim of calling the iPad and clones a "fad" is not the same as saying "eventually tablets will become obsolete" - you're being completely disingenuous in conflating them.

Personally, I find it really frustrating (as a geek) to hear one of the head leader guys for a top technology company say something like this.

I guess this means we won't be seeing any competition from MS in the tablet market. Oh well, there's still a healthy amount of competition going on and we'll see plenty of cool advancements.

Stupid Microsoft.

Well that's the point isn't it!

Nobody said tablets were a "fad". I know that's in the title of the article, but no one actually said it.

Mundie said...

I don't know whether the big screen tablet pad category is going to remain with us or not.

I think there's an important distinction and frankly one we didnt jump on at Microsoft fast enough between mobile and portable.

Mobile is something that you want to use while you're moving, and portable is something that you move and then use.

These are going to bump into one another a little bit and so today you can see tablets and pads and other things that are starting to live in the space in between. Personally I dont know whether that space will be a persistent one or not.
He said the smartphone "as it emerges more will become your most personal computer" and went on to talk about smartphone technology he had seen in the labs where a user looks at the phone, "instead of seeing a screen it can beam individual rays of light into your eyes right on your retina ... [so] you can look at your phone and see HDTV".

They are activley building a custom tablet shell into Windows 8 which, I'm guessing, will run on the lightweight ARM version of Windows 8.

No, thank you. I prefer to keep my vision. And while we've gotten used to the vision of people seemingly talking to themselves and wearing devices that make them look like they're part of the Borg Collective, will future decades bring us a population frantically waving body parts around in order to interact with their devices? Virtual vertical screens (even physical vertical screens) don't work for touch interaction: try keeping your arm up in the air for five minutes - it's very annoying. Steve has alluded to the fact that he understands this. I don't think the competition does - I think they're going to attempt to go there.

Many have posted that there have been major transitions away from classic products in the PC industry, but I would make the case that there's actually been little transition: while there may be more use of laptops as opposed to desktop machines, in most business environments, people still sit at desks to use their computers and those computers have full-size keyboards and screens. All the enhancements in screen size, memory and storage have been incremental. In fact, one could make the case that with the use of laptops over desktops/towers, screen size/resolution has actually decreased over the last few years.

One technology does not replace another. They co-exist at least for a while. TV did not replace radio, although it affected the business model and as a result of that, it affected the nature of the product. Cable TV did not replace broadcast TV, although it affected the business model, etc. Online TV will not completely replace Cable TV, etc.

So we're going to have smartphones, Pads, laptops and desktops for quite some time. They each have different uses. I would not want to be typing Word documents on my phone or even a Pad. Even typing this response would be much slower on a Pad.

When Apple finally implements full wireless sync, that will actually help the older form factors survive, not hasten their demise.

As for Apple, I believe that the iPhone and iPads are the most successful consumer electronics launches of all time. The sales numbers are so incredible, it makes previous consumer launches seem trivial in comparison. The previous "winner" was DVD players, which took 21 months to achieve 1 million units (According to Greystone Communications, the Yankee Group). MP3 players took 38 months. The VCR took 58 months. Cable TV took 144 months. What did it take Apple at least from the 2nd iteration of the iPhone? 2- 3 days? Apple took the phone market, which was primarily based (outside of the Crackberry) on giving subsidized phones away for free or close to it and turned it into a market where the masses were willing to pay $200 of the cost (and generally pay a higher monthly bill) in return for great functionality. That is an incredible accomplishment. And finding that space between the phone and the laptop in a market that already had viable and less expensive ebook readers was also an incredible accomplishment. Apple has also had its best financial performance during the worst economic downturn since 1929. Imagine how they're going to do if the economy ever gets going again. And all this from a company that was perceived even by its supporters as "overpriced" and "niche". This is what is driving Microsoft, HP and Dell crazy. What they never understood is that while people bought their products, they only put up with them. They didn't love them. But people love their Apple products.

Some have posted that Apple doesn't give us their version of the future -- instead they just release products. That's true, but I think that Apple has some real surprises in store for us over the next decade. The combination of the North Carolina server farm and the new Apple campus (which is several times the size of the current one) tells me that Apple is planning to launch major new businesses that we can't even imagine as yet.

Granted Mundie chose his words carefully. I don't want to split hairs as to whether "I don't know whether that space will be persistent" means "fad"or something else. My interpretation is that the article title is a fair summary of his comments, even in light of the longer quote you posted.

But there seem to be a lot of voices questioning the sustainability of the tablet market in the past few days from Apple's competitors and PC analysts. Regardless of what MS is cooking in their labs, those ideas aren't coming to market in the near term to compete with tablets. So what's the point of his commentary other than to provide cover for the flat-footed MS partners that can't compete with the iPad today?

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...3041200216.htm

Hahaha, I guess Android's "Open" is a fad too.

Anarchy always leads to a dictatorship. Android 3.1 will be known as Francisco Franco.

So then I would expect Android fans to pirouette neatly from "Open rules!" to "Thank-you Google, for reigning in those unruly carriers/handset manufacturers who were ruining your glorious works!"

And it's different from Apple because Apple is bad and Google is good and shut-up.

Agreed.

Precisely. In the absence of any product able to compete with Apple, just share around a little FUD...

Giving up your "Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, iMac, couple of Windows machines, and a boat load of Unix servers"

Ford F-Series Truck (1948-present) America's bestselling vehicle for 28 consecutive years; 33,900,000 in 12 generations to May 2010 (source = Wikipedia).

I guess the PC/Truck business isn't a bad place to be

he didn't say the PC/Truck would go away. Growth projections for PCs continue to be revised down while growth projections for the iPad continue to be revised up. It'll take a few years of that trend before tablets actually outsell PCs.

Not in this day and age where there's plenty of people with more money than brains buying SUVs (which are really little more than a $23,000 truck enclosed and with a $40,000 price tag).

You cannot wave arms for more than a hour. It works for games as they don't last more than a hour, using the interface should not cause fatigue.

They had a viable product. The HP Slate 500!!

If this has already been pointed out somewhere in the 170+ threads that exist for this article, apologies but, here it is again. Mr. Mundie is spot-on with his view. Don't get me wrong - I love Apple and their products. But his vision makes perfect sense as the natural evolutionary track of the technology. Where are 8-tracks today? The same place the iPad or any other 'smart-device' (tablet or phone) will be as technology matures. Maybe he's using that as an excuse for their lackluster results in the tablet market, but you can't deny the success of the Kinect, and if they are going to remain viable in the future, that's where they have to chart their course.

Whistling in the dark past the graveyard...despite Apple's heavy-handed control, NO ONE in the software or hardware industry has perfected FUD as well as Microsoft. If they did not have a viable product in a category, all others did not exist, were marginal/futile, or "Microsoft's soon to be released XXX has a thousand more features" (where "soon" was anytime in the next two years).

So, of course, tablets are a passing fad because M$haft has no clue how to build a workable subset of Windows that is light, nimble, and easy to use as Android, much less IOS. When quantum physics is finally conquered so they can get an i7 processor with 8gb ram, 500gb SSD and battery that will run for 10 hours, all in an iPad 2 size shell (with a UI as simple and smooth as IOS), then tablets will be a viable market for M$haft. Until then, they are a fad (so sayeth baldy).

It's not really splitting hairs. He said one thing, he didn't say the other.

I'm not sure how you interpret someone saying that they "don't know" if tablets will be around forever and that they may eventually be replaced by other display technology with someone saying the iPad is just a short-lived fashion.

You even said yourself calling the iPad and clones a "fad" is not the same as saying "eventually tablets will become obsolete".

Mundie even goes as far as specifically mentioning future technology that could possibly, one day, replace the current tablet.

As in, the only thing that can potentially replace the tablet is a future technology, not current technology.

This is totally different to a fad which is a short lived fashion trend before returning to the status quo.

IMO the fact Microsoft are working with Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and NVidia on an ARM version of Windows 8 means it's fairly likely that there will be a version of Windows 8 that runs on ARM... that's just my opinion of course...


IMO the ARM Windows 8, the dual UI (touch/desktop) and the fact that Mundie didn't say tablets were a fad point to Microsoft actually believing that tablets aren't a fad.

Again, just my opinion...

Again, pretending like this is just some lab guy sharing his thoughts about the future of technology is utterly disingenuous. He didn't talk about how the Xbox will go away, replaced by cloud connected contact lenses and implants. He didn't talk about how Windows will go away, replaced by distributed modules interacting via neural nets. He didn't talk about how huge, monolithic software companies like Microsoft will be replaced by agile startups.

He talked about tablets. Of all the technologies that he might have cast on the inevitable dustheap of history (and it's a given that each and every technology will change or be replaced, it's nothing unique to tablets) he picked the one that is very obviously the technology that MS has fumbled, and the one that has the most potential to drive MS towards irrelevancy.

It's like chatting about how your enemy will die someday and someone you like will probably take their place. That's not a discussion about human mortality, it's a motivated daydream.

I'm just talking about what the guy actually did or didn't say.

You can feel free to theorise about his motivation all you want, although I think the only way you will ever know the truth is by actually asking him.

Yes, I believe that you have the tenor correct.

Apparently Google isn't too impressed with Microsoft's Kinect driven future.

I saw that.

Antitrust cases, tightening the grip on supposedly open projects, blocking competitors from accessing YouTube API's, attempting to belittle competitors instead of focusing on their own products... 2011 may very well be the year that Google publicly drops that "don't be evil" tag.

Can't wait for it....




















.... to fail miserably

Why? What's the benefit to you in Microsoft releasing a crap tablet?

There's no benefit. I just don't see it succeeding. I'd rather it fail quickly so another possible iPad alternative can come to the fore. Let Microsoft dump millions down the drain. Just do it fast.

If that's what you want you're going to be better served by Microsoft succeeding than failing.

There are going to be plenty of iPad competitors over the next few years, but Microsoft are the only company at the moment that have the range of products and integrated services to create the potential for a real alternative to the iPad.

In any case I'm not quite so sure about Microsoft failing quickly. It looks like the Microsoft tablet is half of the dual UI in Windows 8... and Windows 8 is a Microsoft business product which falls under the phenoninomally long product support agreement (maybe 10 years or so).

So even if it is a total train wreak, you're going to be seeing it around for another ten years.

*Sigh* I'm just so sick of Windows though... I want to completely get rid of it but XBOX360 and especially PS3 graphics for games is really poor nowadays compared to PC.

Windows on a tablet, in whatever form, I'd prefer Android. It's just not in their DNA for Microsoft to even understand what people want from a tablet... But you could be right, they'll just copy-and-paste from here and there, cobble something together, make it sync smoothly with desktop Windows, market the hell out of it and another decade of living with Windows on the desktop AND now the tablet.

Re: My assertion that machine controls are "cheap"


Good point - even while I was writing it, I was a bit troubled on how to classify machine controls. I do agree that per unit, COTS machine controls can be very expensive! This is due to the very specialized nature and tiny production runs.

However, the non-recurring development costs, and component costs are generally pretty low. Usually, these are not pushing the limits of technology, and the hardware and software are not very complex (next to a PC or smart phone).

There is a significant amount of hobbyist involvement in home automation, robotics, kinetic art, and the like, and most of these people don't have massive budgets. An Arduino is cheap ($30!), and can do simple machine-control jobs.

I myself built a one-off controller that was used by a company to make parts in production. A friend employed there designed the machine itself. I charged $500 and made money (at a pretty poor hourly rate, but I did it more for the challenge and experience). There is no way I would be able to design a PC or phone!

OK, so last year I read an article about Steve Ballmer commenting about the iPad, saying they're overpriced, they don't have a keyboard, and for heaven's sake, you cannot even print from them....He said that when the Windows tablet comes out, your going to be able to print from it, by golly! I heard the pronouncements about the iPad being suitable for content consumption but not not content origination, and how the iPad is unsuited for use in enterprise environments, etc. I think this demonstrates how some people have gotten stuck in this 'legacy mindset' about computing and computers: plugging in cables and physically connecting peripherals and such. As for the iPad being embraced by the business community: that horse is already out of the barn: I work in an upscale hotel and you would not believe how many business people, doctors, science-related professionals,and salespeople I see using iPads. I read somewhere last week that 22% of doctors are using iPads now...I think we're moving a little beyond the fad stage, if we're using that term in it's most trivial sense, anyway.
Microsoft had a whole team working on tablet computing over ten years ago. Bill Gates said that tablets are the future of computing.....but Microsoft Office software team started haggling with the tablet dev. team about how Office would work on a tablet and eventually the project was shelved. They had a good idea, they just couldn't get it to the marketplace.

awsome, katie does a DED and makes a story out of nothin, then people spend pages upon pages arguing over nothing.

Ballmer: "But Windows machines are not going to be trucks."

Oh my, why do they let this guy speak in public. No, maybe they're not trucks, maybe they're tractors.

Compared to Jobs, Ballmer and most other industry leaders are monkeys. Jobs is brilliant, the 1983 tape re-confirms it, and he outshines them all.

When Ballmer sits there with his 10 lbs, 14 USB ports, DTS surround projector home entertainment station, torpedo loaded nuclear charged Apple-killer, ultra "super-slate" with it's blue screen calling for support his grandma will sit next to him with her iPad just browsing the web, reading mails, video chatting with her grandchildren while listening to music.

 

Well, that is why they call him Monkey Boy.