Ballmer Says Microsoft Is 'Hardcore' About Tablets

gbll writes with news that Microsoft is gearing up to aggressively pursue the tablet PC market, according to CEO Steve Ballmer. Microsoft is working with a variety of hardware companies including Asus, Dell, Samsung, Toshiba and Sony, to release Windows 7 slates later this year. "These slates will be available at a variety of price points and in a variety of form factors — with keyboards, touch only, dockable, able to handle digital ink, etc. Since Ballmer showed off a prototype of a Windows 7 slate from Hewlett-Packard at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, the company has said next-to-nothing about how it planned to address the slate form-factor space. ... Ballmer never mentioned the iPad or the coming Chrome OS-based slates by name during his remarks. Microsoft’s pitch will be that these slates will be sanctioned by corporate IT departments, enabling customers to use them at work and at home."

Comments

Still want Courier

[SquarePixel]

I hope Microsoft brings back their Courier project or some other device with two screens that you hold like a book.

There is hope for the future of the 'Courier'. On June 30, 2010, Network World posted that Microsoft received a patent on June 29th, which might be for the 'Courier', "[p]atent number D618683 for a 'dual display device'."

It's seriously the only tablet I would feel comfortable to hold and use. A hard single surface tablet is not nice to hold, especially since we have used to hold books in our hands for hundreds of years.

Personally I will be waiting and will not buy a tablet unless I can hold it like that. Otherwise I might just as well use a laptop.

Re:Still want Courier

[Yvan256]

Books are too complicated.

Re:Still want Courier

[rtb61]

Chump, it is not about reading books it is about writing books. Computers, them things are meant to be interactive, like inputs and outputs, you know. So form factor wise touch screen means hold in one hand with input by the other hand, so palm up spread fingers and thumb and that gap between fingers and thumbs partially clenching defines comfortable screen width, with one proviso, you must be able to park it comfortably in a pocket ie. the best tablet is a smart phone (add a keyboard for two handed thumb typing).

Tablets have been hyped and died for the last decade, form factor kills their usability and drop factor tends to kill of any remaining desirability (the bigger it is the more likely you are to drop it and of course the more expensive it will be).

Re:Still want Courier

[gyrogeerloose]

Tablets have been hyped and died for the last decade, form factor kills their usability

It wasn't the form factor that killed it, it was that manufacturers had designed tablets as scaled-down desktop machines. That didn't work. Once someone came along and introduced a tablet with an interface that made sense for that type of device, tablets suddenly took off.

Re:Still want Courier

[nschubach]

Yeah, and if Microsoft thinks they can throw Windows 7 on a tablet without massively changing the interface and take over the tablet landscape, they are sadly mistaken. (Yes, I still own a tablet and I hated using it, so it collects dust.)

Re:Still want Courier

[gilesjuk]

Indeed, who wants to use a WIMP desktop on a tablet?

Who wants to switch on a tablet and wait 1-2 minutes for it to boot up? (plus the obligatory BIOS screen, yum).

Internal politics completely ruined Microsoft's chances of doing well in the tablet market.

Re:Still want Courier

[sortius_nod]

This is not true, iOS is very different under the hood than OS X. There may be similarities, but at the core they have nothing to do with each other. Kind of the opposite to Android & Linux (core is Linux, but that's where the similarities seem to end).

I think MS needs to drop this idea that Silverlight is the panacea for all things mobile. I'm not impressed with them using it with both Win 7 Phone or Win 7 Embeded. It's almost as bad as rumoured the Flash OS that does the rounds every few months. Why you would turn such a resource hog into a mobile platform I have no idea.

While I would love to have seen the Courier get off the ground, I know deep down that MS was never going to release something as cool as that. It's not in their best interest to beat out the iPad, but to create an OS that can compete with iOS. Although I have my doubts they can do this at such a late stage in the game.

Re:Still want Courier

[TheRaven64]

This is not true, iOS is very different under the hood than OS X. There may be similarities, but at the core they have nothing to do with each other

Absolutely untrue. Aside from achitecture-specific bits, they run the same XNU kernel. On top of this, they have the same libc, the same CoreFoundation framework and the same Foundation framework, providing interfaces to the system. They run the same display server, with the same CoreGraphics / CoreAnimation frameworks providing interfaces to it. Text rendering on both is done via the same CoreText framework. They have the same Objective-C runtime, although the ARM version does not support Autozone GC. Both provide most of the same high-level frameworks, such as the address book and calendar store. There are some differences:

• OS X uses an evolution of NeXT's AppKit for GUI programming, iOS uses UIKit, which is a cut-down version.
• OS X provides OpenGL, iOS only provides OpenGL ES.
• iOS doesn't have Carbon or any of the other legacy technologies inherited from the Classic MacOS line.

UIKit is about the only major addition in iOS, and I wouldn't be surprised if it shares a lot of code with AppKit (a lot of the classes are almost identical, or just cut-down versions UIKit). Pretty much everything else in iOS is also present in OS X.

Get ready for....

[the_one_wesp]

Tablets, Tablets, Tablets, Tablets!!!!!

Re:Get ready for....

[tomhudson]

First day: "Hello, Mr. Ballmer and welcome to Microsoft R & D. Windows tablets? Sure - here, take two and call me in the morning!"

Second day: "They didn't work? Sorry, I meant you should use Windows tablets like suppositories. You know the drill."

Third day: "Can't run as fast as you used to? Windows will do that to you."

Fourth day: "Can you feel the PAIN? Remember - no pain, no gain!"

Fifth day: "What do I look like - tech support? Call your next of KIN"

Sixth day: "You can't get it out? We need to reboot you. Bend over - this guy here used to be the kicker for Texas. Will this fix it? No, but you'll now know exactly what it feels like to be a long-term Microsoft customer."

Seventh day: *crickets*

Kin?

[whisper_jeff]

Last I heard, Microsoft was also hardcore about the smartphone market. So, how is the Kin doing? Oh. Right.

It really is a shame that Microsoft has such lethal corporate politics impacting their every decision... Not that I thought the Kin was cool (it certainly didn't appear to be...) but to kill a product line mere months after launch is pathetic...

But, hey, Ballmer says they're hardcore about the tablet market so that clearly means they'll be serious about it...

Re:Kin?

[E-Rock]

They killed the Kin long before it launched, they just had to put out something to fullfill their contract with Verizon. Otherwise, I don't think it would have ever left the campus. They already stole all the good parts for the Windows 7 Phone.

Re:Kin?

[Man On Pink Corner]

It really is a shame that Microsoft has such lethal corporate politics impacting their every decision...

Exactly. Microsoft is the NASA of technology companies. The engineers are capable of building great things, but any project worth doing is worth doing right, and any project worth doing right will probably take longer than the tenure of whatever politician or administrator sponsored it. When the new head honcho comes in, or the next election is held, the old administration's pet projects are put in a box and gassed.

Re:Kin?

[gilesjuk]

LOL. They started the Smartphone market?

I had a smartphone in 2001, *9* years ago.

Look up the Nokia 9110i communicator.

The US lagged massively behind the rest of the world in terms of cell phones, so you might want to read up about smartphones in Europe and Asia, they've been around longer than you think.

The 9110i was an AMD 486 running DOS with a GEOS front end, quite a cool thing.

Re:Kin?

[dunkelfalke]

Windows Mobile phones also have been around for longer than you think.
I've got my first one in 2003.

Re:Kin?

[wickerprints]

Even assuming that your claim that "[MS] started the smartphone market" is true, you incorrectly imply that being the pioneer of a particular market should somehow say something about the present status of that pioneer's products in that market. It clearly does not.

If anything, what Microsoft's relatively long history of handheld mobile device development has revealed is that they have consistently and repeatedly squandered each opportunity to develop breakthrough products with a sense of refinement and attention to the user experience. Quite the opposite--they try to shoehorn existing paradigms (and therefore existing software and interfaces) into new hardware because they suffer from such a pervasive degree of corporate mismanagement, unwillingness to take design risks, and complete lack of imagination, that the contrast in Apple vs. MS approaches might well be considered the quintessential object lesson in product development. Indeed, the fact that MS has been developing such devices for so long and yet have so little to show for it, makes their blatant incompetence all the more inexcusable.

MS is not lacking in the essential capability (both financial and technological) to develop good products. What they lack is the proper management, and that starts from the top of the organizational hierarchy, not the bottom. As long as MS is run by spoiled MBAs who are just riding the gravy train and waste their time with corporate politics, the company is doomed to mediocrity.

And as for the consumer, all one has to do is look at (1) the lack of any real innovation--no real competitor to the iPad and the fact that any such future device will be perceived as a follower to be measured against that standard; and (2) the fact that MS killed the Kin so quickly after its announcement, to realize that this kind of half-assed proclamation means absolutely nothing, and that you would be a fool to buy into the idea of a MS tablet. And the dumbest part of it all is that THE iPad ISN'T EVEN ALL THAT AMAZING. It's a nice, polished product, but true to Apple strategy, it could be SO MUCH MORE yet it is not because they're going to improve it incrementally to maximize sales. Next year's iPad will look like the iPhone 4 and have Facetime, but they obviously didn't put it in the iPad because it would have cannibalized the 4's sales. MS in theory could have outdone the iPad. In fact, they still could. But does anyone really honestly think that they will, given their abysmal track record?

Re:Kin?

[UnknowingFool]

There were no great first party applications, and there was no organized way to find applications for the phone (not advocating a singular market entity, but having no means at all to find applications isn't good either). They also didn't market it to anybody.

Windows Mobile was basically an attempt to compete with Palm. When Palm no longer looked to be a threat, MS stopped caring about it. Since people who got Mobile (business types) had to get Mobile or nothing, MS thought they could just coast. Then RIM came into the picture. But MS was too busy distracted by Google and OpenOffice to focus even on their bread-and-butter Windows OS. Then Apple and Android showed that consumers would buy smartphones if designed and marketed specifically to them, MS was bailing themselves out of the Vista debacle. Now they are years behind.

Hardcordz

[Itninja]

Ballmer using words like 'hardcore' makes me feel the same as when my Grampa would talk about 'the Googles' or any other time a male-menapausal coot tries to use 'cool' words to 'relate' to 'todays youth'

Re:Hardcordz

[Tau Neutrino]

Gnarly, dude. Totally tubular.

If all they do

[Low Ranked Craig]

Is tweak Windows 7 a little bit and replace the mouse with a stylus or the user's finger, this will fail. A tablet needs a UI and OS designed specifically for touch, and applications need to be designed for that OS. I have yet to see anything from Microsoft that indicates to me that they really understand that. No amount of corporate IT agreements will get companies to purchase devices they don't really need.

Re:If all they do

[Darkness404]

On the bright side though, at least Windows 7 with tablet-esque ad-ons would at least have programs and independence without having to sync -everything- like Windows CE does.

Really, MS needs to stop imitating Apple, tablets aren't the "next big thing" unless you can deliver workable software or have an army of fanboys willing to buy anything no matter how overpriced and how many features it lacks.

If MS is to release a tablet it needs to create a UI over-layer over Windows 7 and provide ways to use existing Windows programs and such easy on the device. If MS tries to create -yet- another similar yet incompatible OS, it will fail yet again. Lets see here what are all the OSes that MS has released devices for in the past year or two? We have Windows 7, the OS for the Zune, Windows Mobile, Whatever the kin ran, standard Windows CE, etc. Apple has 2 major OSes, OS X and iOS, and most programs for Linux are open source making porting pretty easy.

Re:If all they do

[zmollusc]

Meh, a tablet that was just a laptop without a hinge and with an on-screen keyboard that can be minimised when not in use would suit me. Especially if it had plenty of usb, sd and micro-sd slots.And wirelessness.

And if it ran gnu/linux.

Re:If all they do

[Anonymous Coward]

That's simply not true. Our company develops applications with multi-touch on Win7 for our internal cloud management platform. Our users love the touch capabilities more than the automation it helps them accomplish on a daily basis. When Win7 tablets start to appear we will already have a head start on this. And to be honest, all we need is any device that can run Silverlight then Win7 wouldn't even be necessary. You are so thinking inside the box.

Posted as AC because my boss would prefer it.

Re:If all they do

[Anonymous Coward]

Internal Cloud management. Now there's a killer app for touch! Hey 18-24 year old, what are *you* using to monitor your internal clouds? You're not using that old n-teir VB 6 app are you! That's so 1998! You need our touch based windows 7 app. Then the ladies will be all upons! Spend less time managing your internal clouds and spend more time working on managing your upponment schedule!

"Hardcore" means something different at MS

[realmolo]

It means "We have dedicated 5 different development and marketing teams to 5 different products that all compete with each other. Each of them has different strengths and weaknesses, each of them is mostly, but not *completely* compatible with the other, and NONE of them will actually be available for sale before Apple or Google makes them completely obsolete. Also, there will be skins available."

"Slates," huh?

[PCM2]

I assume Microsoft is calling these new products "slates" -- while everybody else still calls them tablets -- to distance them from the last time Microsoft tried to create a market for tablets and failed?

Re:"Slates," huh?

[jbezorg]

I assume Microsoft is calling these new products "slates"...

That way, when they make bricks, MS can say they met 95% of the design goals.

Corporate IT departments

[wandazulu]

Microsoft’s pitch will be that these slates will be sanctioned by corporate IT departments, enabling customers to use them at work and at home.

Translation: We will aggressively shove these down the throats of everyone though the CIOs who saw our ad in the in-flight magazine.

I think he needs a new sales pitch

[CigarBuff]

His argument will be that they are sanctioned by corporate IT departments? You mean, these tablets that don't even exist yet? How does he know? Did he say the same thing about Windows Vista-based machines six months before they were released?

Several companies, mine included, already support the iPad, so this "sales pitch" is less than compelling to me.

How this Ballmer guy still has a job is beyond me.

It's like watching a swordfighter

[phantomfive]

It's like watching a quick sword-fighter dancing around a slow, lumbering, barbarian. Apple keeps nicking at Microsoft with light, little jabs and Microsoft unleashed a giant wave of power that misses the target. Zune, Kin, now this.

The sad thing is Microsoft has such a strong position, Apple can't dethrone them. The only way Microsoft will fall is they get so confused thrashing around that they destroy themselves from the inside. It almost seems like what's happening.

The biggest problem I see here is an apparent lack of understanding about the market segment. Check this Ballmer quote (paraphrase?) from the article:

These slates will be available at a variety of price points and in a variety of form factors -- with keyboards, touch only, dockable, able to handle digital ink, etc.

Notice the focus on hardware. I couldn't find anywhere that he mentions software. Microsoft has had windows on tablets that reasonable match the hardware specs of the iPad for nearly a decade. What they've utterly failed at is the software side, the software that makes the tablet worth using. Apple clearly gets that, but Microsoft doesn't even seem to be aware of it at all. It seems to think the business link is going to be able to carry it, just like it carried the PC 25 years ago, and he might be right, but it hasn't worked for the last 10 years, so why should it now?

Re:It's like watching a swordfighter

[phantomfive]

My ideal world is one that is 1/3 Apple, 1/3 Microsoft, and 1/3 Linux. May not happen, but if any one company gets too powerful it gives us problems.

Re:It's like watching a swordfighter

[dclozier]

Linux isn't a company. A world with 3/3 Linux would provide you with companies competing on their services and value added options such as remote backups or such. They wouldn't be trying to get you into their walled garden so they can tell you what to do. A 3/3 Linux to me is a more ideal world. (but to each his own) :)

Lets be honest here...

[Charliemopps]

The only reason to use Windows is DirectX for gaming. I don't plan on gaming on a tablet so I doubt they are going to get anywhere with their plans. The fact that Linux isn't crushing Windows and MacOS at the moment is a testament to the Linux communities own dis-functionality. Please, we're begging you, get your act together.

Re:Lets be honest here...

[BigJClark]

I disagree. MS software has a huge association factor with it. Most people, my mom included, can navigate the UI blindfolded. That counts for something.

Why do they have to announce these things?

[dilvish_the_damned]

I mean, why not just do them? Or is this more of a move relating to the stock market? Maybe its better phrased "This announcement will make our stock more competitive". I guess I just don't understand the motivation.

Re:Success with little risk

[phillymjs]

Microsoft will defiantly put out a good tablet they know what people want and they will defiantly do a good job.

1. They've been flogging "tablet computing" unsuccessfully for damn near 10 years now, because they do a shitty job at tablet computing. That's not just me saying that, the market has spoken. Clearly, nobody wants a bloated desktop OS with a few UI changes, shoehorned into a tablet form factor that then must have heavy-duty hardware and a big, heavy battery to make it usable. As long as they keep trying to stuff Windows and Windows applications into a tablet, they will fail. The iPad is doing well because it uses a purpose-built OS with a UI made for fingers that runs fast on relatively lightweight hardware.

2. It's spelled "definitely"

~Philly

"Sanctioned" by Corporate IT

[Kenshin]

"Microsoft's pitch will be that these slates will be sanctioned by corporate IT departments, enabling customers to use them at work and at home."

Lovely.

I translate that as "We can't sell these things on their own merit, so we'll just convince / bribe / put pressure on our corporate partners to disallow anything else." Like a command from the Vatican.

Oh, a bonus result: Ten years from now the Windows 7 Tablet will be an IT albatross just like IE6.

Oh noes!

[Aggrajag]

I'll bet this has something to do with squirting!

Re:fail

[shutdown -p now]

Which is precisely what no IT department in the world wants their people to do. Use the same machine for work and private? Yeah, right.

People I know in several different companies do just that - and companies love that because it enables those people to work from home (VPN) in an environment that is exactly the same as at work. IT departments may hate the extra support for such a configuration, but they don't call the shots. And as for security, that's precisely what BitLocker (and other similar options) are for.

I still don't think this makes much sense with tablets since they are inherently not productivity devices. Actually, scratch that - they are, but in their not-so-popular "Tablet PC" incarnation, where you actually get a full-featured laptop which can be folded into a "slate" on which you can jot notes in a meeting - I've seen that used to great effect in combination with OneNote. But this is not a new market - you can buy a ThinkPad that lets you do it today - and it's completely different from tablet as (re)defined by iPad and the likes.

Just what you need

[gilesjuk]

Rather than one tablet design which people liked, the courier project, there will be shed loads of really amateur, plastic, butt ugly tablets from OEMs running an OS that is two years behind Apple and has a fraction of the software.

Microsoft could have nailed the tablet market with the dual screen tablet design. But nope, they killed it and they lost their most productive consumer electronics whizz kid J Allard.

doesnt matter.

[nimbius]

preface: this post gets real ugly...some might even say...trollish...but i need to form an opinion here.

being in IT ive already "sanctioned" the ipad, the iphone, and droid for our networks. My blessing doesnt automatically cause a product to fly off the fucking shelves, steve; it never had a bearing on the ipad at all.

in fact considering as we're still hopelessly mired in a recession that just wont end and my state has 10% unemployment as our company looms to cut costs of everything from daytime office lights to toilet paper, i could make a compelling argument that if i dont even have the budget for new CRAC filters, i damned sure dont have the budget for another lifeless battery sucking piece of half-hack competitionalist horse shit from redmond that will either die off completely in 2 years or cease to have any bearing on "productivity" in 3 weeks. I also dont have the manpower to support such a Utopian wireless dog turd, and i dont have the maintenance budget to replace it when someone leaves it in their car in the 110 deg. blistering desert summer heat.

1993 - the IBM Simon - a touchpad mobile with apps

[earlymon]

And sold by BellSouth.

Nokia 9000 in 1996.

Smartphone 2002 announced by Microsoft in 2001 - defined as lacking a touchscreen.

Winner: IBM, by nearly a decade.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone#History

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2002/feb02/02-19intelwirelesspr.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2002/feb02/02-19tismartphonepr.mspx

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2004/01/01/mpx2002.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_9000_Communicator

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_(phone)

Re:Success with little risk

[forceman130]

Nope, they are going defy skeptics like you and defiantly put out a good tablet.

This is the MS way of buying time

[walterbyrd]

MS has been doing this for decades. When a competitor is beating MS, MS announces that MS has a better product right around the corner. Then MS starts announcing delays, and cutting features. Either MS will cancel the product, and announce a better product; or MS will eventually launch a POS.