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.'"

Comments

Re:Not a threat, a counter offer

[SuricouRaven]

Except you can't, quite. You can run *metro* applications on phone, tablet or PC (Subject to some slight modifications for the different versions), but not the windows software of today. Eventually users are going to figure out that there is a difference, but until that happens there will be a lot of angry users who just spent hundreds of dollars on a tablet only to find that all the software they have purchased over the last few years is no use on it and they'll have to buy it all over again, or as close as they can manage in a not-yet-mature store.

And, best of all...

[AliasMarlowe]

Microsoft will ensure that every tablet is infested by MyCleanPC, straight from the factory!

Re:The Rush for Second Place

[Anonymous Coward]

False. Microsoft existed in the table space while Apple was still floundering around for dear life.
 
And yet again, a Slashtard tries to rewrite computing history (and gets modded up for it).