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Microsoft's Risky Tablet Announcement
itwbennett writes "The New York Times describes the tablet announcement that Steve Ballmer is supposed to make in his CES opening keynote tonight as 'one of Steve Ballmer's riskiest trade show moves in years.' And blogger Peter Smith is in complete agreement. Here's why: 'Whether or not this announcement is intended as a direct response to the much-rumored Apple event that may or may not be happening on January 27th, consumers will perceive it as one,' says Smith. And if Microsoft unveils a traditional tablet then 'they'll be up against the (presumably more expensive) iTablet and the cult of Apple.' But if the device is the dual-screen Courier that we heard about back in September then it'll be up against the (presumably less expensive) enTourage eDGe, says Smith."
The huge borders of enTourage eDGe really put me off. It looks like something from the 80's and only the other screen is LCD, other one is e-ink. While you can probably get more battery power only using the e-ink one for reading, a lot of other possibilities are lost for Courier's 2x LCD screens. And I dont really need that long battery power, as I'm mostly looking for something to use on sofa or bed. I don't think Microsoft has anything to worry about enTourage eDGe.
I really hope the announcement is Courier. It looks kickass, and it would be immediate choice over iTablet or other traditional tablets. Holding a tablet that is book like while laying on sofa makes just a lot more sense and is a lot more comfortable. And when you're done, you can just close it like a book. If it's Courier, Microsoft is up for a good battle with Apple. If it's a normal tablet, meh.
So the last thing Mr. Ballmer wants to hold up is a me-too device.
Huh, and here I was thinking that was precisely what he wanted to hold up. A "Me-Too" device that is the only authorized Windows Tablet for Windows 7. And it will sync with all your Microsoft crap and even let you carry around your Microsoft DRM'd media. Just like I'm sure Apple's tablet will do the same thing with Apple replaced for Microsoft.
Meanwhile here I'll sit with my eeePC running some flavor of Linux wondering when I'll get a tablet that provides support for open source.
Whether or not this announcement is intended as a direct response to the much-rumored Apple event that may or may not be happening on January 27th, consumers will perceive it as one
Oh no! Then surely consumers will see this as Microsoft entering another market they aren't experts in and not buy the MS Tablet just like how no one bought the original XBox ... oh, wait. Well, surely all those consumers will see through this ruse just like they did when Microsoft released the Zune ... oh, wait, that's still being shoved down our throats and people are still buying it.
And if Microsoft unveils a traditional tablet then 'they'll be up against the (presumably more expensive) iTablet and the cult of Apple.' But if the device is the dual-screen Courier, that we heard about back in September then it'll be up against the (presumably less expensive) enTourage eDGe
And the fact of the matter is that it doesn't matter if the market is large enough. Take the PS3 Vs XBox360 vs Wii console war. The XBox360 wasn't as powerful or as expensive as the PS3 yet wasn't as cheap as the Wii. And yet people gobbled them up.
The sad fact of the matter is that when you're the top dog in a lucrative industry and you're generating epic revenue, you have this peculiar ability to pay people to assess markets and then simply enter them by mirroring your opponents' every move in those markets. And you know what? With a good enough marketing team and a big enough brand name, you can't fail. Two tired adages: 1) You need money to make money. 2) The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. These apply on all scales.
For how much us tech savvy people will be able to bash Microsoft's tablet, it will turn a profit. Trust me, I don't say that as a fan I say that as a fact.
My work here is dung.
Including the ability for me to skin the UI with an LCARS theme without "jailbreaking" or flashing custom firmware.
I'm serious.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
I hope he throws it while chanting DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS...
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
I think the NYT is reading too much into this. First of all, Apple has it's own market. The folks who buy their products and are fans are not going to be swayed too much, if at all, by a cheaper price from MS for a similar gadget. Apple has proven that they can charge what they charge and their market sticks with them: the early adopters will pay the price. And those who won't pay the price will wait because we know that Apple will drop the price in the future.
The MS market is for those of us that are price conscious, the corporate market that locked themselves into MS solutions, and believe it or not, there are folks who actually like MS and HP products and even prefer them over Apple.
My point is that Apple is in their own league (and market) and any announcement from MS et al. isn't for their (Apple's or their users) benefit - it's for the MS fans that may want a tablet device. It also shows that MS is "keeping up".
MS isn't the power house that they once were. They're more like the obese ex-college football star that thinks they're still the big fast hunk they once were - that's another post from the Anonymous Business and Marketing Analyst.
This is going to be WAY cooler than Windows XP Tablet Edition running on the Compaq Tablet that it was introduced with. Or Vista with built in Tablet Extensions that MS demoed a while back. Yay!!!! Windows 7 Tablet!!! it will be great where the two previous attempted failed miserably because it's new!
I beg to differ.
There's nothing that equals the experience of using a Tablet PC, whether you are browsing the internet, drawing, playing stupid multitouch games, or taking notes in class.
The only thing Microsoft got wrong with it is that they've never made the mere existence of the platform known to the normal people. I've lost the count of the times I took my tablet out to take notes and the people next to me dropped their jaws when i converted it to slate mode and started writing on it.
The Tablet PC is one of the few things I admire Microsoft for, even though saying I'm hostile to them is an euphemism on may occasions.
sorry people, you'll all have to stand... we removed all chairs as a precaution
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
The NYT article is ridiculous. Granted Apple will probably release a tablet like device or at least announce it in the next month or so. However how can MS/HP announce a me-too device without there being a device to emulate? What's unfortunate is that as usual the Mac boosters in the media who believe that the Mac is the be all for all users are going to pass judgement on this device by comparing it to the mythical Apple tablet. It's like comparing a good race horse to a unicorn sure that horse is fast, but it's not a magical and can't fly. (Granted Apple may deliver a unicorn, but the point is it just doesn't exist yet however cool it may be)
But what about software for it. I think part of the anticipation of the Apple tablet is that it will be a larger iPod Touch with added functionality. If the Apple tablet can run iPhone apps it already has a huge advantage over the Microsoft tablet, more so if it can also run OS X apps.
What software would the Microsoft tablet run? Windows 7? It will have all the speed of a netbook. Windows Mobile? It will be DOA if it runs Windows Mobile.
As a side note, how much do you want to bet that Microsoft somehow tries to connect their tablet to Xbox Live?
I swear that sometimes the future is stupidly obvious and these big dumb corporations adamantly try to refuse it.. A $1000 tablet may be a temporary success... but the future is cheap 'netbook' tablets like in Star Trek TNG. The point of a tablet PC is to offer a computing platform that removes the need for paper. Paper is cheap. A dual-screen tablet is the stupidest of the stupid moronic stupid things Microsoft would do..
So right now, while electronics shops cope with el-cheapo lcd screens being placed in every product, why the hell aren't these big dumb companies seeing that the el-cheapo lcd photoframes are just a few steps away from being the tablets we need? To truly remove the need for paper, we do not need speed or the latest in 3d multimedia. We need el-cheapo tablets that can be passed around while the personal information is contained in removable cards (SD? miniSD? microSD? who cares). Let me write on the screen. Convert my text to type. Let me play a video - but not necessarily a video game. Let me browse the net. Let me read an ebook. Let me write up my notes at a meeting and toss them on my boss's desk. Put this with a slow-ass cheap processor, minimum OS (fuck you Microsoft, but still XP is small enough), minimum other parts, and a touch-screen. Also, make it easily replaceable.. If I lose my tablet, lemme buy another for $200. Let the data automatically sync to my desktop computer when I bring the tablet near it. Waterproof the tablet.. should be easy, right? just one rubber compartment around the storage cards and ports.. let it borrow internet access from my nearby cell phone or my wifi..
The tablet does not need to do the following:
- charge me a monthly fee of any kind - so it should not have cell phone shit in it
- play 3d games
- rival my desktop in performance
- weigh more than 1.2 lbs
- be more than 3/8" thick
- download automatic updates
- use front surface area for anything other than a screen
- cost more than $200 ($300 in 2011, $500 in 2012 to account for inflation)
This is the future of tablet computing that I remember.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
So what makes Microsoft think that they can make a decent tablet?
Seriously, think about it for a minute. Forget about all the hype, forget about Apple's tablet (which hasn't even been announced). Forget about prototypes and mockups. Look at what we already know for a fact. Look at the state of Windows Mobile. How much attention has Microsoft given it? Now consider what they did to Danger, and the whole Pink debacle spearheaded by Roz Ho. And look at what they're doing with Bing, trying to compete with Google. Finally, what happened with the Tablet PC? Remember those? I ask you in all honesty: do you think that Microsoft is actually capable of launching a touchscreen tablet device that is going to provide an elegant, rich, and relatively bug-free user experience? Do you think that they will put their weight behind a putative MS tablet?
The problem here is that I have serious reservations about Microsoft's competence as well as their sincerity in developing and supporting such a device. I look at their track record with past initiatives and all I see are half-baked attempts. This rumor, if true, totally reeks of desperation, and I would not go near this one with a ten-foot pole. Such a device would not only have to be freaking amazing, it would have to be available by next month AND it would need to be bug-free, and cheap. In other words, it would have to be perfect now. Not in five years. Otherwise, it'll be a joke.
"The Tablet takes cutting-edge PC technology and makes it available wherever you want it, which is why I'm already using a Tablet as my everyday computer. It's a PC that is virtually without limits -- and within five years I predict it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America."
Bill Gates, 2001
According to Amazon's best seller list the top *17* music players are made by Apple. Numbers 18 & 19 are Sandisks. Then comes another iPod. Zune is the 21st in popularity.
I've got a Hitachi Visionplate for.. well, practically free. It's several years old though. 512MB CF card with Puppy linux on it. 600mhz proc. Hitachi must have made the visionplates even before netbooks took off. It's like a nice big wireless touchscreen LCD that you can carry around the house. Super cool.. not sure why nobody likes these things. You can find them cheap on ebay sometimes.
Check it out: http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y104/tibman/VisionPlate/DSCN0921.jpg
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
Microsoft's earlier attempts to push out a tablet PC had a few differences:
1) It relied on a stylus
2) It used a traditional UI (standard windows with some extra apps)
To address the two points:
1) Apple, presumably Microsoft, and various toher companies working on "modern" tablets are clearly going for touchscreen. Just like the stylus has been largely abandoned in the smartphone market, moving to touchscreens for tablets could make them a heck of a lot more accessible; styluses are another layer removing the user from the content, they don't work as well with gestures (flick-to-scroll feels a lot less natural), they don't have any equivalent to multi-touch, etc.
2) Tablet PC was just Windows with some handwriting recognition stuff tossed in. Apple (and I presume Microsoft and others) are going, this time, with completely different UIs. Apple is using the iPhone interface scaled up, which is a touch-screen interface to begin with. I assume Microsoft will also have something similar, although hopefully not based on Windows Mobile (or it will bomb).
I see a few uses for a touch-based tablet:
1) eBook reader. They don't have the power advantage of eInk here, but they do get the advantage of colour. Useless in novels, useful for textbooks, magazines, etc. Apple has tried to pull this off on the iPhone, but it's a decidedly sub-standard experience due to the tiny screen.
2) PMP. A 10" screen at arms length is a lot bigger than the 3.5" screens you get in most PMPs or smartphones.
3) Browser. Browsing on smartphones has made incredible leaps forward in the past few years, starting with Opera's work and continuing with mobile Safari. Smartphone browsing is pretty close to desktop browsing, except for the tiny screens. Scale that up to a high res 10" screen and suddenly you've got something that can dispay websites at full size without having to zoom.
It seems that the current approach to tablets is more about taking the smartphone experience and removing the limitations of screen size, rather than the previous approach which was to take the laptop PC experience and switch the input and form factor. I think that this new approach will be much more successful.
The price point is important too. The latest leaks from Apple have them considering a $1000 pricepoint, which I believe is lower than what most Tablet PCs sold for.
What MS did for most of it's life is produce good enough software for a good price. MS products were cheap enough, or could be acquired cheaply enough, so that more expensive systems made no economic sense for many common applications. What MS is doing now is trying to upscale the product. The software now costs more than the hardware, something that to many people seem unreasonable. Like IBM, MS now makes little sense for small groups. Once can buy a 3 macs for $5000, and keep them operating through 2 upgrade cycles for less than $1000, including iWork upgrades. The same three PCs of similar quantity might cost $2500, but each upgrade cycle is going to cost another $1500, assuming you don't buy the crippled OS, and don't upgrade the MS Office applications.
MS is trying to be the upscale systems manufacturer because that is where the money is. The problem is that if they compete on pice, then they alienate their hardware partners. So they have to compete on quality which means they are competing on product quality. In cell phones they have failed as the Nokia phones are just too good. In console they succeeded because they are better in many ways than the Wii, and the sony stuff is very expensive. In the tablet market we are back in the realm of alienating hardware partners and jeopardizing the MS Windows cash cow, so they are likely to be competing with Apple and Kindle, rather than the more commodity products.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Keep in mind that Clay Aiken's holiday album sold over one million copies in SIX WEEKS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merry_Christmas_with_Love
Popularity doesn't equal quality. You can keep your filthy locked down device. I'll stay with my Zen, thank you very much.
Living With a Nerd
If Apple do release a tablet, then tablets will become about as niche as smartphones and MP3 players.