Sorry but the need for something bigger that 3.5, 4, and 4.3 inch screen automatically makes you wrong MS. Come out with a tablet and then you can talk.
In the short term to medium-term, I agree, you need something with a bigger screen. In the long-term, say 5-10 years out, I'd say you would just wirelessly transmit the iPhone screen to a bigger screen... be that a TV screen, computer screen, digital picture frame or something else.
Microsoft’s FAD (Fear, Anxiety & Depression) leads to them spreading FUD when it comes to Apple’s success.
But can you blame them? Not only is every iPad sale a potentially lost PC with Windows sale*, it’s also a potential loss from all the other iPad clones running WebOS, Android, PlayBook OS and whatever other non-Windows platform Apple made a market for with the introduction of the iPad last year.
* I say potentially because I doubt there is a 1:1 ratio of tablet buyers to PC buyers, but there will surely be a good deal that directly decide to buy a tablet running a mobile OS instead of buying a new PC for their next CE purchase. Then, indirectly, if they get an iPad they may decide to get a Mac for their next ‘PC’ purchase
But where Jobs and Mundie differ is on the future success of the iPad: Jobs believes the iPad is leading the transition to the "uncomfortable" post-PC era of computing.
I'm sure I'm missing something obvious, but what is with the "uncomfortable" part of the post-PC era?
All these companies taking jabs at Apple is just ridiculous, first of all its making them sound like all they're doing it whining because they aren't as successful and they look completely juvenile. "I know you are but what am I?" Type of thing. As much as I didn't care for Dell, HP and microsoft before this is just adding fuel to the fire and making me like them even less. The numbers and the lines definitely don't lie, iPad/tablets are here to stay.
Microsoft?s FAD (Fear, Anxiety & Depression) leads to them spreading FUD when it comes to Apple?s success.
But can you blame them? Not only is every iPad sale a potentially lost PC sale running Windows, it?s also a potential loss from all the other iPad clones running WebOS, Android, PlayBook OS and whatever other non-Windows platform Apple made a market for with the introduction of the iPad last year.
Well, I can blame them for coming up with ridiculous claims, yes. Why not deal with the problem by spending time developing your own tablet?
This bit about there being more trucks than cars in the early years of the automobile industry has popped up again. It's simply not true, but let's not let facts get in the way of a good metaphor.
Mundie hasn't actually ever seen Kinect in action... he just read about it in one of the company reports and thought it sounded cool... then he just went from there after snorting back a couple of lines...
Shows what a square you are! You don't snort 'back' anything... you just 'do'/'snort' a few lines, or 'do' a 'bump'. There now you can sound cool to your co-workers.
What this comment illustrates is that Microsoft has no feel for user expertise and user interface. A phone? Here is one example: the Real Estate Agent showing you possible houses to go look at. On a phone? Here is another: The doctor showing you your X-Ray. On a phone?
For many, many things, a phone is too cramped and a laptop is unwieldy. The tablet is the perfect machine for that and touch interface based UI is making it possible.
Microsoft thinks apparently from "things you want to get done" (e.g. write a document). They apparently do not think from "how you are doing it".
Here is a quote from another M$ executive: "But I'm bullish about the prospects of the Tablet PC--since it already runs all of today's most important applications, many laptop users will want one right away. By the end of 2003, you can expect to see one-third to one-half of the ultraportable market move to the Tablet PC." Bill Gates, Nov. 9, 2001 to InformationWeek.
Microsoft has been really good at defending and extending its Windows and Office hegemony. When it comes to thinking past that, they seem to be a weird combination of poor execution now while constantly promising a future that never arrives.
Origami, Spot, Surface, Courier, all hyped and never delivered on. Not only not delivered on, but apparently not in any way integrated into anything like a shipping product. If not, what's the point? Does MS R&D get to just dick around with demo videos?
Kinect, to their credit, seems to work well and have a lot of potential. But why should we expect MS to ever deliver on that potential? It's all well and good to talk of interacting with "the room", but is anything substantial being done to make that idea into an actually useful product? And has anyone actually thought through the implications of waving your arms around to make things happen, outside of a game environment? Or this another "sounds cool if you don't think about much" MS vision thing?
It's so remarkably the opposite of how Apple operates. Apple never floats "vision" stuff. They announce shipping product, and ship it. They patiently build the systems that enable functionality that people want. Sometimes it's iterative, and not very sexy or flashy. But look at where they are now compared to where they were five years ago. MS, for all intents and purposes, is in exactly the same place they were five years ago-- making a lot of money selling Windows and Office licenses, and making vague stabs at keeping up with the market that's changing out from under them.
Here is a quote from another M$ executive: "But I'm bullish about the prospects of the Tablet PC--since it already runs all of today's most important applications, many laptop users will want one right away. By the end of 2003, you can expect to see one-third to one-half of the ultraportable market move to the Tablet PC." Bill Gates, Nov. 9, 2001 to InformationWeek.
They have done - many times. Their efforts have been nothing but total fail. Addabox said it perfectly when he said (paraphrased), "translation: we have no viable competing product..."
It's been, what, ten years since Microsoft put everything it had behind its own vision of a tablet future? They couldn't sell it then, because it was, typically, appallingly designed (multiple manufacturer issues notwithstanding). Now they're pouring scorn on the iPad phenomenon. That's pretty rich, albeit par for the course.
Still, it must be pretty depressing having to continually try to catch up on new market directions by attempting to bad mouth your competitors' successes.
anyone remember when Balmer made fun of the iPhone because "it doesn't even have a physical keyboard"?
This is just another comment in that area... and really means, we tried tables but failed. We know our current operating system (Windows 7) isn't really good at touch input and a new version using the Windows Phone interface isn't ready until 2012 / 2013. So in the meantime we'll just bad mouth the competition.
If Microsoft really feels this way, then they should focus all their attention to the Surface.
The Surface 2.0 looks real cool and I can imagine it being quite useful in certain environments.
It's the only 'cool' and interesting product Microsoft has at this point. It also caters to their 'industry' target audience.
Imagine a boardroom table where you could fling files and data back and forth. I imagine a lot of uses for the Surface... and right there is the problem with Microsoft. They have no imagination.
No idea how to implement - only gobble up patents and wait for someone else to eventually innovate... then sue and steal the business model.
This strategy may have worked in the 90's - but the curve is too fast now for them to keep up.
Ballmer is not a visionary. The more we hear from others in the company - I have doubts there is a single visionary working there - or if there is, they have been subdued by the corporate ladder climbers who were overly effective at what they do best.
Ask Ford or Chevy: they spend all that money advertising a product, among all their product lines, that the fewest people buy. (Well, there may be some dismal subcompact that gets outsold by an F-150, but you get the idea.)
Are they insane? No, they like big margins. Trucks have the biggest margins of any consumer class vehicle on the road.
These "post-PC" devices all suffer from thin margins that are only getting thinner as vendor X or vendor Y locks up the supply chain for various otherwise-hard-to-procure components. The easiest place for a Dell to compete and keep its margins somewhat higher than those in the tablet space is in the PC space, where commodification is still possible and profitable.
Microsoft shouldn't whine about the analogy; they should try to build a better truck.
Comments
Sorry but the need for something bigger that 3.5, 4, and 4.3 inch screen automatically makes you wrong MS. Come out with a tablet and then you can talk.
In the short term to medium-term, I agree, you need something with a bigger screen. In the long-term, say 5-10 years out, I'd say you would just wirelessly transmit the iPhone screen to a bigger screen... be that a TV screen, computer screen, digital picture frame or something else.
But can you blame them? Not only is every iPad sale a potentially lost PC with Windows sale*, it’s also a potential loss from all the other iPad clones running WebOS, Android, PlayBook OS and whatever other non-Windows platform Apple made a market for with the introduction of the iPad last year.
* I say potentially because I doubt there is a 1:1 ratio of tablet buyers to PC buyers, but there will surely be a good deal that directly decide to buy a tablet running a mobile OS instead of buying a new PC for their next CE purchase. Then, indirectly, if they get an iPad they may decide to get a Mac for their next ‘PC’ purchase
But where Jobs and Mundie differ is on the future success of the iPad: Jobs believes the iPad is leading the transition to the "uncomfortable" post-PC era of computing.
I'm sure I'm missing something obvious, but what is with the "uncomfortable" part of the post-PC era?
I like their strategy. I like it a lot.
Microsoft?s FAD (Fear, Anxiety & Depression) leads to them spreading FUD when it comes to Apple?s success.
But can you blame them? Not only is every iPad sale a potentially lost PC sale running Windows, it?s also a potential loss from all the other iPad clones running WebOS, Android, PlayBook OS and whatever other non-Windows platform Apple made a market for with the introduction of the iPad last year.
Well, I can blame them for coming up with ridiculous claims, yes. Why not deal with the problem by spending time developing your own tablet?
This comes off as juvenile and unprofessional.
Yours
Vern
Mundie hasn't actually ever seen Kinect in action... he just read about it in one of the company reports and thought it sounded cool... then he just went from there after snorting back a couple of lines...
Shows what a square you are! You don't snort 'back' anything... you just 'do'/'snort' a few lines, or 'do' a 'bump'. There now you can sound cool to your co-workers.
Reference: Some really wide eyed hipster told me.
For many, many things, a phone is too cramped and a laptop is unwieldy. The tablet is the perfect machine for that and touch interface based UI is making it possible.
Microsoft thinks apparently from "things you want to get done" (e.g. write a document). They apparently do not think from "how you are doing it".
They didn't get it then and they still don't.
Origami, Spot, Surface, Courier, all hyped and never delivered on. Not only not delivered on, but apparently not in any way integrated into anything like a shipping product. If not, what's the point? Does MS R&D get to just dick around with demo videos?
Kinect, to their credit, seems to work well and have a lot of potential. But why should we expect MS to ever deliver on that potential? It's all well and good to talk of interacting with "the room", but is anything substantial being done to make that idea into an actually useful product? And has anyone actually thought through the implications of waving your arms around to make things happen, outside of a game environment? Or this another "sounds cool if you don't think about much" MS vision thing?
It's so remarkably the opposite of how Apple operates. Apple never floats "vision" stuff. They announce shipping product, and ship it. They patiently build the systems that enable functionality that people want. Sometimes it's iterative, and not very sexy or flashy. But look at where they are now compared to where they were five years ago. MS, for all intents and purposes, is in exactly the same place they were five years ago-- making a lot of money selling Windows and Office licenses, and making vague stabs at keeping up with the market that's changing out from under them.
Here is a quote from another M$ executive: "But I'm bullish about the prospects of the Tablet PC--since it already runs all of today's most important applications, many laptop users will want one right away. By the end of 2003, you can expect to see one-third to one-half of the ultraportable market move to the Tablet PC." Bill Gates, Nov. 9, 2001 to InformationWeek.
They didn't get it then and they still don't.
Ouchie.
Come out with a tablet and then you can talk.
They have done - many times. Their efforts have been nothing but total fail. Addabox said it perfectly when he said (paraphrased), "translation: we have no viable competing product..."
Still, it must be pretty depressing having to continually try to catch up on new market directions by attempting to bad mouth your competitors' successes.
Wow. Just. Wow.
This is just another comment in that area... and really means, we tried tables but failed. We know our current operating system (Windows 7) isn't really good at touch input and a new version using the Windows Phone interface isn't ready until 2012 / 2013. So in the meantime we'll just bad mouth the competition.
The Surface 2.0 looks real cool and I can imagine it being quite useful in certain environments.
It's the only 'cool' and interesting product Microsoft has at this point. It also caters to their 'industry' target audience.
Imagine a boardroom table where you could fling files and data back and forth. I imagine a lot of uses for the Surface... and right there is the problem with Microsoft. They have no imagination.
No idea how to implement - only gobble up patents and wait for someone else to eventually innovate... then sue and steal the business model.
This strategy may have worked in the 90's - but the curve is too fast now for them to keep up.
Ballmer is not a visionary. The more we hear from others in the company - I have doubts there is a single visionary working there - or if there is, they have been subdued by the corporate ladder climbers who were overly effective at what they do best.
Are they insane? No, they like big margins. Trucks have the biggest margins of any consumer class vehicle on the road.
These "post-PC" devices all suffer from thin margins that are only getting thinner as vendor X or vendor Y locks up the supply chain for various otherwise-hard-to-procure components. The easiest place for a Dell to compete and keep its margins somewhat higher than those in the tablet space is in the PC space, where commodification is still possible and profitable.
Microsoft shouldn't whine about the analogy; they should try to build a better truck.