Microsoft needs to break apart. They would make a lot more money for their shareholders. Imagine a Microsoft free to make software for every platform (iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, etc.). I would love to see that.
They could easily be 3 or 4 different companies, maybe 5.
That is one strategy, but then with that reasoning you could say the same about Apple. Apple could easily be 3 or 4 companies too. The difference between Apple and Microsoft is the 3 or 4 divisions actually work together and complement one another at Apple, not so much at Microsoft. Perhaps Microsoft should concentrate on gaining more synergy between their product categories which I think is what they are trying to do. They are looking to copy the Apple style ecosystem. Splitting up the company would just create less integration and even if it made more money that way, the individual companies would be tripping all over themselves with overlapping and competing solutions. I don't think that is the answer for Microsoft.
although PC makers Dell and Lenovo both voiced continued commitment to Microsoft as a valuable partner.
What are they going to do?! Develop their own desktop OS? Not going to happen. MS can start their own PC hardware and no one can do anything. All they can do is pay to get Window on their PCs and accept it.
Has anybody done this kind of thing successfully in the past [as in both created their own software/hardware and licensed the software to others to make competing products]. It was a train wreck when Apple did it with PowerPC clones, and PalmOS licensing really went nowhere...and that's all I can think of off the top of my head.
The classic example from around 10 years ago was 3Dfx deciding to make their own video cards. The rest of the gaming video card industry gave them the finger because they didn't want to compete with their supplier, and exclusively started making ATI and Nvidia-based cards. Between that bonehead decision, and some severely brain-dead design decisions and backing some dying proprietary 3D technologies; 3Dfx was dead within 2 years with their assets (read: patents) bought by Nvidia, and the rest of the company dissolved.
This cycle has repeated many times. Microsoft leverages "partners" for a while then chews them up and grunts them out in tightly packed coils steaming on the ground. A few years go by, history is forgotten or ignored and new "partners" embrace Microsoft saying: this time will be different. Rinse and repeat.
Linux was tried at least once before. I remember the Lindows brand. Even if the OS and the Office clone software works perfectly, it is a tough sell to consumers and impossible for business.
I have a Linux box at home and several at the office (servers). The one at home I use for writing code only. It sits next to an iMac which I use for graphics. I'll use either for casual web surfing, or reading Office documents since I don't even own MS Office on either machine. I think most people only have one computer and they feel more comfortable belonging to either the Mac crowd or the Windows crowd. Linux is too foreign and perceived as only for geeks when it actually is very similar to the other more common OSs and could easily be used by average users, however few people realize that.
The trouble with firing Balmer is that like many corporations in their situation, Microsoft's executives have been purged so many times there isn't any likely person hanging around that can step in and take the CEO's place. Also, as much as we love to hate him, Balmer actually represents both hope, as well as the days of past glory for Microsoft's board and shareholders. It's hard to decide to give that up.
The rational thing to do would be to fire Balmer and do a basic re-organisation of the company as is always done in cases like this, paring off the less profitable areas of the company and the bloat and re-focussing on their core strengths. To do that however, they have to get rid of all the cool stuff like X-Box etc. and turn back into the most boring software company on earth just making regular old windows (updated each year though) and Office. They could get a bit of pizzaz back by making Office actually compatible, and by extending it's reach into all the other OS's that they previously eschewed, but that's about it.
So ... to get rid of Balmer, they have to basically give up on all their dreams of conquering Apple and the greater PC market.
Not only that, the price of software, especially OS's and productivity software is falling through the floor. Even if they get back into their core market of software production, they'd have to reduce costs by multiple orders of magnitude just to stay profitable.
Ya' know....
I just did a little checking :
First, MS has too frickin' many SKUs!
A Windows OS upgrade costs somewhere between $79 and $219 per PC (ANAICT).
A windows Office purchase costs from $119 ($149 for 3 PCs); $199 ($279 for 2 PCs); $349 ($499 for 2 pcs).
If I've got that right, it takes about $200 - $720 per PC to run Windows and Office (depending on SKUs, mix and match),
Compare that to Apple's offering:
1) OS X Mountain Lion -- $19 for all your PCs (non-enterprise)
2) iWork - $79 each (not enforced) or $99 Family pack (5 Macs, not enforced)
3) Pages, Numbers, Keynote -- $10 each -- 1 copy for all your iDevices
For Macs, The OS and Apple's iWork Suite costs $120 total for 5 Macs -- or $24 per Mac...
This is not to suggest that the Mac package (especially the Office Suite) is equivalent to the MS package.
However there is a lot of room between $24 per computer and $200-$720 per computer.
This appears to be a great opportunity for Apple:
1) Enhance their iWork offerings so they accommodate more (50-75%) of the capabilities of MS Office -- assumably targeting 50% of Office users.
2) Offer it for $50 per computer
3) Offer enhanced iDevice IWork apps for $20 each for all iDevices
4) Offer comparable pricing for businesses
Let's just assume that many businesses could satisfy 50% of their "Office" needs with the Apple offerings and the other 50% would remain Windows/Office installs.
Also, it may turn out that the best price/performers to run both solutions are Mac pcs.
This kind (software) of hybridization seems to make more sense than a schizo TabletTop.
I don't the media was allowed to play with one of these Surface tablets. I think they were for show only. Remember, the one presenter had his first Surface not work for the demo, so I don't think they are ready for people to play with them. It seems like it is a pre-production prototype so that the hardware PULLS the software towards the future.
I’m not convinced the Touch cover will work given it’s pseudo keys, although attendees of the event assure me it works just fine.
...and within the comments, he says:
It's (Windows Surface RT) now slated to start delivering the end of June. We'll see. Someone at the MS press event yesterday told me you can use those KB covers in the lap, they are that steady.
Ohhh.... we've gone from a lap joystick -- to a lap mouse -- to a lap touchpad... Isn't progress wonderful?
If this announcement was about Microsoft selling premium laptops... I could see these OEMs really starting to get worried.
Then again... laptops are pretty ubiquitous and there are already a million different laptops from many manufacturers. The PC OEMs deal with that every day.
In short... the Windows tablet market is still in the experimental stage at this point. Who knows what is gonna happen with Windows 8 tablets. The PC manufacturers should looking into tablets... but still focus on their laptop and desktops.
The Surface Pro is not a tablet as anyone else has thought of a tablet. It is a MacBook Air equivalent. Size, weight, processor, keyboard & screen; all are 11" MBA class, the only thing we don't know is the price. If it is about $999, it will be a 11" MBA class device exactly. That thought is a very scary one for all the laptop manufacturers because that is exactly the price point they have been desperately trying to get their quality ultrabooks down to, unsuccessfully to date.
The Surface Pro is not a tablet as anyone else has thought of a tablet. It is a MacBook Air equivalent. Size, weight, processor, keyboard & screen; all are 11" MBA class, the only thing we don't know is the price. If it is about $999, it will be a 11" MBA class device exactly. That thought is a very scary one for all the laptop manufacturers because that is exactly the price point they have been desperately trying to get their quality ultrabooks down to, unsuccessfully to date.
In the announcement video they did not even refer to the Surface Pro as a "tablet" -- they repeatedly called it a "pc".
The Surface Pro is not a tablet as anyone else has thought of a tablet. It is a MacBook Air equivalent. Size, weight, processor, keyboard & screen; all are 11" MBA class, the only thing we don't know is the price. If it is about $999, it will be a 11" MBA class device exactly. That thought is a very scary one for all the laptop manufacturers because that is exactly the price point they have been desperately trying to get their quality ultrabooks down to, unsuccessfully to date.
They actually said at the event that it will be priced in the same range as "other" ultra book class PC's.
So you're analysis is correct at least for the Pro version which will be probably 900-1000 dollars or so. Since they copied pretty much everything else from Apple, I would be this will be announced at the exact same price point as the Air. The RT model (the one the idiots will buy), is almost certainly cheaper, but likely can't approach the 500 dollars of the iPad, so I would say $699.00 or $649.00 or thereabouts. This will force everyone in the market to eat margins for breakfast and accelerate the whole "the rest of the industry except for Apple is failing" syndrome.
1) starting at 26:44 where Mike is copying and, quote "....copying a Gigabyte worth of photos to the desktop and then editing them in Lightroom"... I have a problem with
2) because opening up LR never finishes, (which to be fair... it doesn't here either, so that can be discarded) and supposedly loading those photos finishes at 26:59... exactly when the screen flickers, zooms in...and the first photo is ready to adjust (15 seconds for a gigabyte of photos...impressive if to be believed?!)
3) he apparently zoomed into the picture at 27:13... the mouse moved to the right over exposure adjustment in Develop mode... he's talking about editing the picture... but never does.
Whatever. The opening of LR could have been real... but he did nothing to edit the photo, and it had already been previously imported, and NOT from the photos he had just copied to the desktop. I can almost state that as fact. Not 1gb worth.
Also interesting is that they never showed Office running on either of these things. I mean they never showed *anything* really, but the chief draw of the RT tablet is the (supposedly) built-in ARM versions of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint that come with the thing and are (presumably, supposedly), optimised for touch input.
I mean if your selling something as an Office tool, the least you could do is show how it works with a simple document.
Personally, I don't believe "Office for ARM" even exists or ever will.
Comments
"Lame" is insufficient to describe the tastelessness of these crass, tardy to the party, half-assed imitations.
The word "tacky" needs to make a comeback.
Quote:
Originally Posted by geoffrobinson
Microsoft needs to break apart. They would make a lot more money for their shareholders. Imagine a Microsoft free to make software for every platform (iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, etc.). I would love to see that.
They could easily be 3 or 4 different companies, maybe 5.
That is one strategy, but then with that reasoning you could say the same about Apple. Apple could easily be 3 or 4 companies too. The difference between Apple and Microsoft is the 3 or 4 divisions actually work together and complement one another at Apple, not so much at Microsoft. Perhaps Microsoft should concentrate on gaining more synergy between their product categories which I think is what they are trying to do. They are looking to copy the Apple style ecosystem. Splitting up the company would just create less integration and even if it made more money that way, the individual companies would be tripping all over themselves with overlapping and competing solutions. I don't think that is the answer for Microsoft.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogifan
Yet according to the windoze fanboys Jony Ive is sh*tting his pants over this.
What the Heck? Our one and only emoticon is now having a seizure!
Quote:
Originally Posted by NasserAE
Quote:
although PC makers Dell and Lenovo both voiced continued commitment to Microsoft as a valuable partner.
What are they going to do?! Develop their own desktop OS? Not going to happen. MS can start their own PC hardware and no one can do anything. All they can do is pay to get Window on their PCs and accept it.
There's always WebOS and Linux.
Quote:
Has anybody done this kind of thing successfully in the past [as in both created their own software/hardware and licensed the software to others to make competing products]. It was a train wreck when Apple did it with PowerPC clones, and PalmOS licensing really went nowhere...and that's all I can think of off the top of my head.
The classic example from around 10 years ago was 3Dfx deciding to make their own video cards. The rest of the gaming video card industry gave them the finger because they didn't want to compete with their supplier, and exclusively started making ATI and Nvidia-based cards. Between that bonehead decision, and some severely brain-dead design decisions and backing some dying proprietary 3D technologies; 3Dfx was dead within 2 years with their assets (read: patents) bought by Nvidia, and the rest of the company dissolved.
This cycle has repeated many times. Microsoft leverages "partners" for a while then chews them up and grunts them out in tightly packed coils steaming on the ground. A few years go by, history is forgotten or ignored and new "partners" embrace Microsoft saying: this time will be different. Rinse and repeat.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpamSandwich
There's always WebOS and Linux.
Linux was tried at least once before. I remember the Lindows brand. Even if the OS and the Office clone software works perfectly, it is a tough sell to consumers and impossible for business.
I have a Linux box at home and several at the office (servers). The one at home I use for writing code only. It sits next to an iMac which I use for graphics. I'll use either for casual web surfing, or reading Office documents since I don't even own MS Office on either machine. I think most people only have one computer and they feel more comfortable belonging to either the Mac crowd or the Windows crowd. Linux is too foreign and perceived as only for geeks when it actually is very similar to the other more common OSs and could easily be used by average users, however few people realize that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gazoobee
The trouble with firing Balmer is that like many corporations in their situation, Microsoft's executives have been purged so many times there isn't any likely person hanging around that can step in and take the CEO's place. Also, as much as we love to hate him, Balmer actually represents both hope, as well as the days of past glory for Microsoft's board and shareholders. It's hard to decide to give that up.
The rational thing to do would be to fire Balmer and do a basic re-organisation of the company as is always done in cases like this, paring off the less profitable areas of the company and the bloat and re-focussing on their core strengths. To do that however, they have to get rid of all the cool stuff like X-Box etc. and turn back into the most boring software company on earth just making regular old windows (updated each year though) and Office. They could get a bit of pizzaz back by making Office actually compatible, and by extending it's reach into all the other OS's that they previously eschewed, but that's about it.
So ... to get rid of Balmer, they have to basically give up on all their dreams of conquering Apple and the greater PC market.
Not only that, the price of software, especially OS's and productivity software is falling through the floor. Even if they get back into their core market of software production, they'd have to reduce costs by multiple orders of magnitude just to stay profitable.
Ya' know....
I just did a little checking :
First, MS has too frickin' many SKUs!
A Windows OS upgrade costs somewhere between $79 and $219 per PC (ANAICT).
A windows Office purchase costs from $119 ($149 for 3 PCs); $199 ($279 for 2 PCs); $349 ($499 for 2 pcs).
If I've got that right, it takes about $200 - $720 per PC to run Windows and Office (depending on SKUs, mix and match),
Compare that to Apple's offering:
1) OS X Mountain Lion -- $19 for all your PCs (non-enterprise)
2) iWork - $79 each (not enforced) or $99 Family pack (5 Macs, not enforced)
3) Pages, Numbers, Keynote -- $10 each -- 1 copy for all your iDevices
For Macs, The OS and Apple's iWork Suite costs $120 total for 5 Macs -- or $24 per Mac...
This is not to suggest that the Mac package (especially the Office Suite) is equivalent to the MS package.
However there is a lot of room between $24 per computer and $200-$720 per computer.
This appears to be a great opportunity for Apple:
1) Enhance their iWork offerings so they accommodate more (50-75%) of the capabilities of MS Office -- assumably targeting 50% of Office users.
2) Offer it for $50 per computer
3) Offer enhanced iDevice IWork apps for $20 each for all iDevices
4) Offer comparable pricing for businesses
Let's just assume that many businesses could satisfy 50% of their "Office" needs with the Apple offerings and the other 50% would remain Windows/Office installs.
Also, it may turn out that the best price/performers to run both solutions are Mac pcs.
This kind (software) of hybridization seems to make more sense than a schizo TabletTop.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum
...
2) iWork - $79 each (not enforced) or $99 Family pack (5 Macs, not enforced)
3) Pages, Numbers, Keynote -- $!0 each -- 1 copy for all your iDevices
...
OpenOffice = 0 $ !!!!! People must be mad to purchase Microsoft Office !
Right. That's SIR Jony Ive, OOBE.
Let the Windows fans have their little denial party.
Quote:
Originally Posted by drblank
I don't the media was allowed to play with one of these Surface tablets. I think they were for show only. Remember, the one presenter had his first Surface not work for the demo, so I don't think they are ready for people to play with them. It seems like it is a pre-production prototype so that the hardware PULLS the software towards the future.
Lest we forget....
...and we all know how that turns out!
Quote:
Originally Posted by ThePixelDoc
Quote from James Kendrick at ZDNet:
I’m not convinced the Touch cover will work given it’s pseudo keys, although attendees of the event assure me it works just fine.
...and within the comments, he says:
It's (Windows Surface RT) now slated to start delivering the end of June. We'll see. Someone at the MS press event yesterday told me you can use those KB covers in the lap, they are that steady.
Ohhh.... we've gone from a lap joystick -- to a lap mouse -- to a lap touchpad... Isn't progress wonderful?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dick Applebaum
Ohhh.... we've gone from a lap joystick -- to a lap mouse -- to a lap touchpad... Isn't progress wonderful?
That calls for a dance...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Scrip
If this announcement was about Microsoft selling premium laptops... I could see these OEMs really starting to get worried.
Then again... laptops are pretty ubiquitous and there are already a million different laptops from many manufacturers. The PC OEMs deal with that every day.
In short... the Windows tablet market is still in the experimental stage at this point. Who knows what is gonna happen with Windows 8 tablets. The PC manufacturers should looking into tablets... but still focus on their laptop and desktops.
The Surface Pro is not a tablet as anyone else has thought of a tablet. It is a MacBook Air equivalent. Size, weight, processor, keyboard & screen; all are 11" MBA class, the only thing we don't know is the price. If it is about $999, it will be a 11" MBA class device exactly. That thought is a very scary one for all the laptop manufacturers because that is exactly the price point they have been desperately trying to get their quality ultrabooks down to, unsuccessfully to date.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hiro
The Surface Pro is not a tablet as anyone else has thought of a tablet. It is a MacBook Air equivalent. Size, weight, processor, keyboard & screen; all are 11" MBA class, the only thing we don't know is the price. If it is about $999, it will be a 11" MBA class device exactly. That thought is a very scary one for all the laptop manufacturers because that is exactly the price point they have been desperately trying to get their quality ultrabooks down to, unsuccessfully to date.
In the announcement video they did not even refer to the Surface Pro as a "tablet" -- they repeatedly called it a "pc".
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hiro
The Surface Pro is not a tablet as anyone else has thought of a tablet. It is a MacBook Air equivalent. Size, weight, processor, keyboard & screen; all are 11" MBA class, the only thing we don't know is the price. If it is about $999, it will be a 11" MBA class device exactly. That thought is a very scary one for all the laptop manufacturers because that is exactly the price point they have been desperately trying to get their quality ultrabooks down to, unsuccessfully to date.
They actually said at the event that it will be priced in the same range as "other" ultra book class PC's.
So you're analysis is correct at least for the Pro version which will be probably 900-1000 dollars or so. Since they copied pretty much everything else from Apple, I would be this will be announced at the exact same price point as the Air. The RT model (the one the idiots will buy), is almost certainly cheaper, but likely can't approach the 500 dollars of the iPad, so I would say $699.00 or $649.00 or thereabouts. This will force everyone in the market to eat margins for breakfast and accelerate the whole "the rest of the industry except for Apple is failing" syndrome.
Quote:
Originally Posted by umrk_lab
OpenOffice = 0 $ !!!!! People must be mad to purchase Microsoft Office !
I think the thing that attracts business to pay (non-free) software is the implied support and recourse if things don't work.
The whole keynote looked like an Apple knockoff, funny when the surface crashed and he had to be another one lol.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ThePixelDoc
It was made to appear that it was:
1) starting at 26:44 where Mike is copying and, quote "....copying a Gigabyte worth of photos to the desktop and then editing them in Lightroom"... I have a problem with
2) because opening up LR never finishes, (which to be fair... it doesn't here either, so that can be discarded) and supposedly loading those photos finishes at 26:59... exactly when the screen flickers, zooms in...and the first photo is ready to adjust (15 seconds for a gigabyte of photos...impressive if to be believed?!)
3) he apparently zoomed into the picture at 27:13... the mouse moved to the right over exposure adjustment in Develop mode... he's talking about editing the picture... but never does.
Whatever. The opening of LR could have been real... but he did nothing to edit the photo, and it had already been previously imported, and NOT from the photos he had just copied to the desktop. I can almost state that as fact. Not 1gb worth.
Also interesting is that they never showed Office running on either of these things. I mean they never showed *anything* really, but the chief draw of the RT tablet is the (supposedly) built-in ARM versions of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint that come with the thing and are (presumably, supposedly), optimised for touch input.
I mean if your selling something as an Office tool, the least you could do is show how it works with a simple document.
Personally, I don't believe "Office for ARM" even exists or ever will.