I like what Steve Jobs said when he returned to Apple. "Microsoft does not have to fail in order for Apple to succeed". I think this would be great advice to Microsoft. Flip the equation around. Stop trying to chase the iPad. These stupid commercials are not helping.
Make something new. A new class of device. Has Microsoft ever done that? Is it thier DNA? Or are they just cloners? Making evolutionary changes to existing project, throwing things at the wall,hoping that something will stick, is not the way to do it either.
I understand you want technology to stand still. I suppose it makes sense on a psychological point of view.
I'd prefer that you looked at it through a different lens. Mine may have a bit more estrogen in it, but the more Microsoft spends on it's tablet the better the iPad will be in the future.
I think we should all cheer Microsoft on and encourage them to spend an absorbent amount of money researching what really does work.
Your first suppositions are all wrong. And Microsoft is not Apple's main competition, the Android OS is what Apple sees in its rear-view mirror. Microsoft isn't even raising dust with their teensy sales. I enjoy watching Microsoft flailing away and spending money like a drunken sailor as Uncle Fester re-arranges the deck chairs once again. But Apple is not doing squat to the iPad because Microsoft's CEO is all puffed up and doing his on-stage monkey dance.
FInally, in your last sentence "exorbitant" was the word you were over-reaching for...
Nice article. for a decade before the iPad I wanted a tablet to surf and generally consume media. When the iPad appeared with its instant on, 10 hour battery, plus the power of the robust app store, I was on board the second it was available and had zero doubt that this would change the world. I'm on a mini now and have never looked back. And I had NO Apple products before this except an iPod. My whole family is Apple now. I loved my Windows Mobile phones and was enjoying voice control, multi-tasking, tethering, streaming audio, GPS mapping with voice Nav, well before the iPhone, but I had to burn custom ROM's to enjoy all of this. I reluctantly bought an iPhone 4S, after watching IOS get these features that I deemed as minimum needed to play. Guess what? the iPhone turned out to be the most stable phone I'd ever used, solid Bluetooth stack, generally flawless compared to win mobile, again I never looked back. And today, they are miles ahead. Not that Apple isn't clueless about providing support accessories like a 4 foot 30pin to lightning adapter for car users with legacy systems, or desk cradles etc.
At a minimum, if Microsoft gave us similar runtime, an app store with the same support in that they need to entice the app developer world to port to this platform as well as iPads. Then up the ante with more openness, external media and ports I'd give them a shot.
But as currently offered, the Surface line is a non starter and I'm amazed that they are so blind or arrogant to see it.
I loved Windows Vista, not the slow starting, or constant disk thrashing, but for the robust desktop behavior, every folder remembered its configuration etc. Win7 was fast and clean but lost desktop polish, then Win8 a clueless slap to long time users. Again, MS can't see this? how sad.
I was a serious Replay-TV DVR user, they changed the TV world with networked boxes, video sharing, commercial skipping etc. Sadly they were killed off, now Tivo and the cable co.'s carry the torch in a lesser way. I built up a Win7 5TB Media Center PC with Ceton HD Tuner cards, X-Boxes as clients around the house. Our family enjoys almost unlimited time shifted TV that records 8 different channels simultaneously. Add a software plug-in and commercials are skipped as well. Use Remote Potato App on iPad/iPhone and watch this content from anywhere. This is all KILLER app stuff and MS seems to have NO clue as to how to educate the public as to what they could have, today. With this infrastructure MS could change the game in TV if they made a purpose built box and had a clue as to how to market it..
My Pebble watch and Nike Fuel band have convinced me that the smart watch category will easily be a killer if done thoughtfully.
I was a MS fan, and wish with my whole heart that they would just listen to us. Make a superior product, make it more open than Apple, and win. Anything less and I'm not buying, 3-4 hour run times won't cut it any more. I'm the same age as Jobs, hand built my Altair PC as a kid, did 20 plus years at HP, and know what I like. For the last few years running I don't like what Microsoft does. A bunch of acrobats dancing around a bunch of lame tablets sell much? sheese, I wonder why.
I think you do DED a disservice. He has far more things he dislikes about Microsoft that what was written here .
Seriously though, I thought he was very reserved, selective and kept it to just what was appropriate. I promote his narrative too when and wherever I can. It's called the true history of micro computers since the late 70's to the present day.
I agree with the true history part. Maybe Dick was too close to the business part of the industry.
Microsoft nearly destroyed the personal computer with their incompetence, their unwillingness to say no, their willingness to say yes to bloat.
It's the same American trait that allowed GM and Ford to keep making urban battleships when the Japanese were flooding the market with nimble runabouts. Now Detroit is bankrupt.
I would hate to see Seattle go bankrupt. But we see it could happen
Fact is consumers don't need Windows or Office. Microsoft still doesn't get that. Go watch the Surface event from last July. It was all Windows, Windows, Windows. Heck Microsoft's new logo is a Windows logo. The other thing Microsoft doesn't get is people are perfectly fine with tablets being mostly consumption devices. I think we're finding out that a large number of consumers were really using their PCs mostly for consumption purposes. Email, web surfing, watching movies, etc. Tablets now provide all those services in a much more convenient form factor. And since people are using PCs less frequently, the need to upgrade isn't really there. Google and Amazon don't help Microsoft's cause as they're pushing tablets as cheap consumption devices that they don't need to make any money on. Can Microsoft really afford to get in to a race to the bottom there?
Your first sentence says it all: "Fact is consumers don't need Windows or Office."
You have hit on the dilemma facing Wintel Vendors -- their main market, desktop computers in business/enterprise, has declining growth.
There is little need for most Wintel business installations to upgrade their hardware, their Windows OS, Their Office application suite -- what they have/had from XP or Win 7 more than meets their needs.
When I first became interested in personal computers (1978) the market was mostly hobbyists who built their own computers. Then, with the Apple ][, home/personal use drove the market. When VisiCalc was announced it started the uptake of personal computers by business/enterprise. The arrival of the IBM/PC with MS DOS, then MS Windows and MS Office brought about the Wintel market dominance through 2008.
Sure there were specialist Mac installations for high-end uses like video editing -- but it was 96% a Wintel World driven by business/enterprise.
In 2007, all that changed with the iPhone -- for the first time you had a powerful computer and the Internet in your pocket (usable Internet not WAP). You could access whatever information you wanted wherever it existed -- you did not know or care about the OS, end-all apps or complex UIs -- they were just moved aside... out of the way instead of being between you and your stuff. Using it was so easy that a child or grandparent took to it intuitively.
So we are in the middle of a sea change... the era of "Consumer Computing" is upon us and it changes all the rules.
Likely Wintel will still dominate the business/enterprise purchased solutions (and Macs will dominate niches like video editing)...
But who cares... the action is in the "Consumer" Arena -- and business/enterprise and their suppliers need to adapt or die!
I like the editorials, but I'd prefer less sarcasm.
Well that's just you. I like sarcasm, and this POS tablet deserves to be mocked and so does anybody who defended this POS tablet on this forum in the past.
This was an obvious flop from the very beginning and anybody who didn't see that is extremely out of touch.
It added the verb "Sinofsky" to the world dictionary -- so it wasn't all bad
I always wondered what would happen if Apple bought Yahoo and distanced them from using Bing for search and created a true rival to Google for search that used their own search engine . It would immediately get a lot of use as the default on all iOS and OS X devices. It would certainly effect Google's revenue with so much of it coming from iOS users. Apple never seems to want to do big M&A's and prefer smaller companies but that would be very interesting. Google certainly got their money back from YouTube as did Ebay when they bought Paypal. Not all big buys are a bad move and Apple certainly has the money if not the time or inclination to take the fight to search if they chose.
The whole point of a vacation though, is not to do any work, and let yourself recharge. I also took only my iPad on my last holiday. But try using it as your only computing device during work time...
i bring both my 13" & 15" rMBPs wih me on vaca and every tim only the iPad gets any use.
Well, I feel sorry for you if you can only feel good when you're looking down on others. I used (only) Apple products for the last decade and I owned every single iPhone there has been, but the more successful Apple get's, the more arrogant they get, the more they lose their drive and the greater the probability they will fail.
Why isn't it enough to feel good about the success of Apple? Why the need to (with great exaggerations) 'diss' their competitors? I also own an Android tabled (and phone) and a Surface Pro as well. I prefer the iPad, but those devices aren't THAT bad. And if you need to run Windows Software, there's not much choice. You could even run OS X on a Surface, try that on the iPad
By the way, being called names by certain people is no offense to me...
What makes you think I was trying to refute your point? I was trying to be helpful.
I'm not a gamer. So I'm not really sure about the point of the thread above However, to me it appears like all the effort and money they have dumped into the game console market may have been for nothing.
Microsoft's first game console was called simply the "Xbox". The second one was called "Xbox 360". I think their third generation is called the Xbox One". It seems to me that their naming suggests their confidence in total market domination. I am not so sure it was worth it. To me it appears that with the success of gaming on iOS, their next console may need to be called the" Xbox Lonely". $50 on a game after consumers are getting used to spending a few bucks per game on iOS? Hmm. How long is that gonna last? I bought Lego Batman for my daughter the other day iOS for a few bucks. She plays it more than the Wii version that cost $40.
I'm not a gamer. So I'm not really sure about the point of the thread above However, to me it appears like all the effort and money they have dumped into the game console market may have been for nothing.
Microsoft's first game console was called simply the "Xbox". The second one was called "Xbox 360". I think their third generation is called the Xbox One". It seems to me that their naming suggests their confidence in total market domination. I am not so sure it was worth it. To me it appears that with the success of gaming on iOS, their next console may need to be called the" Xbox Lonely". $50 on a game after consumers are getting used to spending a few bucks per game on iOS? Hmm. How long is that gonna last? I bought Lego Batman for my daughter the other day iOS for a few bucks. She plays it more than the Wii version that cost $40.
My point that the PS3 has out sold the Xbox 360 even though it came out a year later and together they've sold over 150 million devices. I wouldn't call that nothing.
I'm sure that there's much more game play in the Wii version. I read that the console manufacturers get $10 per game sold. Black OPs 2 had a billion dollars in sales in 10 days, proving that plenty of people will indeed dish out $50-60 for a game. iOS games are a great time killer but given a choice of a playing a game on a big screen TV with a console or a iDevice the console will always win.
Comments
Make something new. A new class of device. Has Microsoft ever done that? Is it thier DNA? Or are they just cloners? Making evolutionary changes to existing project, throwing things at the wall,hoping that something will stick, is not the way to do it either.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vadania
I understand you want technology to stand still. I suppose it makes sense on a psychological point of view.
I'd prefer that you looked at it through a different lens. Mine may have a bit more estrogen in it, but the more Microsoft spends on it's tablet the better the iPad will be in the future.
I think we should all cheer Microsoft on and encourage them to spend an absorbent amount of money researching what really does work.
Your first suppositions are all wrong. And Microsoft is not Apple's main competition, the Android OS is what Apple sees in its rear-view mirror. Microsoft isn't even raising dust with their teensy sales. I enjoy watching Microsoft flailing away and spending money like a drunken sailor as Uncle Fester re-arranges the deck chairs once again. But Apple is not doing squat to the iPad because Microsoft's CEO is all puffed up and doing his on-stage monkey dance.
FInally, in your last sentence "exorbitant" was the word you were over-reaching for...
At a minimum, if Microsoft gave us similar runtime, an app store with the same support in that they need to entice the app developer world to port to this platform as well as iPads. Then up the ante with more openness, external media and ports I'd give them a shot.
But as currently offered, the Surface line is a non starter and I'm amazed that they are so blind or arrogant to see it.
I loved Windows Vista, not the slow starting, or constant disk thrashing, but for the robust desktop behavior, every folder remembered its configuration etc. Win7 was fast and clean but lost desktop polish, then Win8 a clueless slap to long time users. Again, MS can't see this? how sad.
I was a serious Replay-TV DVR user, they changed the TV world with networked boxes, video sharing, commercial skipping etc. Sadly they were killed off, now Tivo and the cable co.'s carry the torch in a lesser way. I built up a Win7 5TB Media Center PC with Ceton HD Tuner cards, X-Boxes as clients around the house. Our family enjoys almost unlimited time shifted TV that records 8 different channels simultaneously. Add a software plug-in and commercials are skipped as well. Use Remote Potato App on iPad/iPhone and watch this content from anywhere. This is all KILLER app stuff and MS seems to have NO clue as to how to educate the public as to what they could have, today. With this infrastructure MS could change the game in TV if they made a purpose built box and had a clue as to how to market it..
My Pebble watch and Nike Fuel band have convinced me that the smart watch category will easily be a killer if done thoughtfully.
I was a MS fan, and wish with my whole heart that they would just listen to us. Make a superior product, make it more open than Apple, and win. Anything less and I'm not buying, 3-4 hour run times won't cut it any more. I'm the same age as Jobs, hand built my Altair PC as a kid, did 20 plus years at HP, and know what I like. For the last few years running I don't like what Microsoft does. A bunch of acrobats dancing around a bunch of lame tablets sell much? sheese, I wonder why.
Wow, don't know what lit my fuse today...
They're a clone, themselves, of Apple.
I agree with the true history part. Maybe Dick was too close to the business part of the industry.
Microsoft nearly destroyed the personal computer with their incompetence, their unwillingness to say no, their willingness to say yes to bloat.
It's the same American trait that allowed GM and Ford to keep making urban battleships when the Japanese were flooding the market with nimble runabouts. Now Detroit is bankrupt.
I would hate to see Seattle go bankrupt. But we see it could happen
I hope it's not too late for Microsoft to find a sustainable world view, for the sake of the people who work there.
Edit: Except for the clowns who did the iPhone funeral. They can go into pizza delivery, for all I care.
Your first sentence says it all: "Fact is consumers don't need Windows or Office."
You have hit on the dilemma facing Wintel Vendors -- their main market, desktop computers in business/enterprise, has declining growth.
http://www.asymco.com
There is little need for most Wintel business installations to upgrade their hardware, their Windows OS, Their Office application suite -- what they have/had from XP or Win 7 more than meets their needs.
When I first became interested in personal computers (1978) the market was mostly hobbyists who built their own computers. Then, with the Apple ][, home/personal use drove the market. When VisiCalc was announced it started the uptake of personal computers by business/enterprise. The arrival of the IBM/PC with MS DOS, then MS Windows and MS Office brought about the Wintel market dominance through 2008.
Sure there were specialist Mac installations for high-end uses like video editing -- but it was 96% a Wintel World driven by business/enterprise.
In 2007, all that changed with the iPhone -- for the first time you had a powerful computer and the Internet in your pocket (usable Internet not WAP). You could access whatever information you wanted wherever it existed -- you did not know or care about the OS, end-all apps or complex UIs -- they were just moved aside... out of the way instead of being between you and your stuff. Using it was so easy that a child or grandparent took to it intuitively.
So we are in the middle of a sea change... the era of "Consumer Computing" is upon us and it changes all the rules.
Likely Wintel will still dominate the business/enterprise purchased solutions (and Macs will dominate niches like video editing)...
But who cares... the action is in the "Consumer" Arena -- and business/enterprise and their suppliers need to adapt or die!
I disagree, Microsoft will be long remembered for their revolutionary kickstand idea. ;-P
It added the verb "Sinofsky" to the world dictionary -- so it wasn't all bad
Quote:
Originally Posted by snova
Ok I'm game. Which technological advancement did Microsoft make going from pre-ipad tablets to post-ipad tablets?
How have they evolved in a positive manner?
It's not really a technological advancement, but thousands are grateful that Steve Baller doesn't sweat on stage so much "post-ipad."
I always wondered what would happen if Apple bought Yahoo and distanced them from using Bing for search and created a true rival to Google for search that used their own search engine . It would immediately get a lot of use as the default on all iOS and OS X devices. It would certainly effect Google's revenue with so much of it coming from iOS users. Apple never seems to want to do big M&A's and prefer smaller companies but that would be very interesting. Google certainly got their money back from YouTube as did Ebay when they bought Paypal. Not all big buys are a bad move and Apple certainly has the money if not the time or inclination to take the fight to search if they chose.
The word is "exorbitant", although MS could do with something "absorbent" to wipe up their mess. LOL.
What makes you think I was trying to refute your point? I was trying to be helpful.
Which they stole from HTC.
Everyone is a member of the "consumer market" -- even business/enterprise/government etc.
I used (only) Apple products for the last decade and I owned every single iPhone there has been, but the more successful Apple get's, the more arrogant they get, the more they lose their drive and the greater the probability they will fail.
Why isn't it enough to feel good about the success of Apple? Why the need to (with great exaggerations) 'diss' their competitors?
I also own an Android tabled (and phone) and a Surface Pro as well. I prefer the iPad, but those devices aren't THAT bad. And if you need to run Windows Software, there's not much choice. You could even run OS X on a Surface, try that on the iPad
By the way, being called names by certain people is no offense to me...
Go away. :no:
I'm not a gamer. So I'm not really sure about the point of the thread above However, to me it appears like all the effort and money they have dumped into the game console market may have been for nothing.
Microsoft's first game console was called simply the "Xbox". The second one was called "Xbox 360". I think their third generation is called the Xbox One". It seems to me that their naming suggests their confidence in total market domination. I am not so sure it was worth it. To me it appears that with the success of gaming on iOS, their next console may need to be called the" Xbox Lonely". $50 on a game after consumers are getting used to spending a few bucks per game on iOS? Hmm. How long is that gonna last? I bought Lego Batman for my daughter the other day iOS for a few bucks. She plays it more than the Wii version that cost $40.
This is his MO. Best to ignore him.
My point that the PS3 has out sold the Xbox 360 even though it came out a year later and together they've sold over 150 million devices. I wouldn't call that nothing.
I'm sure that there's much more game play in the Wii version. I read that the console manufacturers get $10 per game sold. Black OPs 2 had a billion dollars in sales in 10 days, proving that plenty of people will indeed dish out $50-60 for a game. iOS games are a great time killer but given a choice of a playing a game on a big screen TV with a console or a iDevice the console will always win.