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Microsoft To PC and Tablet Makers: You're Not Our Future
snydeq writes "Microsoft's plan to build its own Windows 8 tablets puts longtime allies in peril — and it may be the right thing to do. 'In announcing the Surface tablets, due to be released this fall, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer cited Apple's advantage (without mentioning Apple) of integrated software and hardware. "Things work better when hardware and software are considered together," he said. "We control it all, we design it all, and we manufacture it all ourselves." ... Like Apple, Microsoft will hire a few PC makers to do the actual production work. But the need for 20 brands of me-too laptops, tablets, and convertibles is low. Manufacturing sophisticated electronics is a skill requiring manufacturing innovation. But all those branded-but-otherwise-undifferentiated PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones just aren't needed in the vision Ballmer sketched out yesterday.'"
If the stories about WinRT costing $90 per copy for OEMs are true, they're not going to be undercutting anything unless Microsoft charges a ton for Surface. You can't make a cheap tablet when the OS costs that much.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
The Raspberry Pi is a desktop machine. It costs $35.
We're moving from a culture that encourages individual learning/mastery/understanding of the things used in life, to one of apathetic dependence on convenient 'service'. This is intellectually stunting, which causes all kinds of other problems.
And yet, there's this.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Marketing wasn't the only problem. The Zune was the best PMP on the market beating the iPod Classic. The problem was that Apple moved the goal posts and the iPod Touch wasn't a PMP. It was a portable computing device that functioned as a PMP, a PDA, internet browser, email application, gaming device, etc. The Zune was always behind Apple on this. If all you wanted was a PMP, the Zune was your best bet. If you wanted more, the iPod Touch was it. And many people wanted an iPhone without the phone part because of the 3rd party applications.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
when Apple releases a product, it's fully baked and ready to go.
As long as you hold it right