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Microsoft's Surface Caught Windows OEMs By Surprise
MojoKid writes "Microsoft's Surface isn't just an attempt to take on the iPad or an articulation of MS's independent design philosophy — it's a fundamental threat against the OEMs who've spent decades as Microsoft's partners and collectively destroyed the industry's perception of the PC as a high-value product. The adversarial roots run deep. Microsoft didn't tell its partners about Surface until three days before the event and gave only the most minimal details on the product. Only the largest vendors even got a phone call; Asus and Acer, the 4th and 5th largest PC manufacturers worldwide, have stated that they had no idea anything was coming. For OEMs who have spent decades working in lock-step with Redmond, that's deeply unsettling."
HP and Dell are doing just fine killing themselves on their own, don't need Microsoft's help
Okay, so you've been partnering with the evil Overlord for decades, and you thought yourself immune?
I don't think that there are many former MS partners alive, and of those, all are alive not because MS, no they are alive despite MS.
Apple has taught them well. First locking down the software supply chain (Metro marketplace), now secrecy for new products.
Once upon a time a scorpion needed to cross the river and asked a frog to carry him across.
"No, you'll sting me", said the frog.
"I promise I won't", responded the scorpion.
Somewhat dubiously the frog agreed and they started to cross the river, the scorpion riding on the frogs back. However, halfway across the river,t he frog felt a siny sting and noticed the sting of the scorpions tail sticking into him.
"Why have you done that?", The frog asked as he died agonisingly.
"Because it's in my nature", returned the scorpion as the waters swallowed them both.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
For Microsoft, this isn't so much as a betrayal, as it is survival. Microsoft has spend decades relying upon third-parties innovating hardware in order to sell Windows Licenses. And, especially of late, those third-parties have failed. With the mobile market taking off and those third parties having mediocre mobile hardware AT BEST, Microsoft has no choice than to make a product. Maybe, it will diminish into a mere reference design, but only if those third parties actually get to serious work. This should be a wake up call for HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc., to "innovate or die." Of course, if Microsoft has signed agreements saying they'd never create a competing device, it IS downright betrayal.
There is a simple reason why MS is releasing their own tablet, the OEMs like Acer, Asus, etc.. keep producing shoddy pieces of crap. It is impossible for MS to compete in the tablet space with Apple when all the products are cheap, half baked, poorly designed products. In addition all these companies have been happy to jump on any and every bandwagon at the expense of MS.
Yet they expect MS to keep supporting them while they continually stab MS in the back? fat chance.
Actually I believe this is too bad for MS, they chose wrong time. Now the OEMs actually have an options (Android, Ubuntu and co.) to deliver compeling use experience without MS. The one who can actually loose here is MS, since it can have hard time to compete with gazillions of generic lower priced offerings on the bottom end and iPad on the high end.
You mean the second-best selling console of ths generation that was making profit on hardware sales long before Sony did with the PS3? Oh and let's not the billion+ revenue that Xbox Live brings in a year. Yeah, what a failure the 360 has been for Microsoft.
"Sources close to Microsoft have told us that the software giant built Surface because it was unhappy with the way its traditional partners [such as HP and Dell] weren't innovating around its next-generation operating system."
I wonder why manufacturers might not be "innovating around" windows mobile, or whatever they call it these days. Because there isn't any demand...? Because MS is 5 years too late to the party...?
The secret wasn't that they were testing a tablet idea and interface, it was that they were going to build the thing themselves.
The common assumption would be the MS was going to do things like they have for the last 3+ decades. That is, they'll make the software and the OEMs will make the hardware.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
The rest of the industry has had years to come back with an IPad competitor. Yet even with Apple sourcing all its hardware from the same parties, these OEMs haven't been unable to compete.
Yes, they didn't have Win8 but they had Android and potentially WebOS.
Right now MS realizes that the only way to take on Apple right now is to match ( or copy if you prefer ) their best moves.
For years now, I've been building my own PCs. I expect most people on this board do the same.
Why? So I don't have a crap power supply. So the motherboard has a few features beyond "power on". For decent air cooling. The hardware reasons go on and on. For years, anything that you couldn't easily put in a 20-word blurb about a PC has been shaved down and sacrificed beyond bone-deep cuts to create truly craptastic hardware setups.
I'm rather confident this isn't the vision Microsoft had as it built its OS. At least, not for the *entire* non-boutique market.
And then there's the software. My god, the crapware that gets shoveled onto computers. On the rare occasion I bow down to necessity and buy a laptop, the first thing I do is buy a new license to Windows, wipe the thing, and start fresh. It's damn near unusuable otherwise, thanks to the likes of McAfee, Norton, SomeDamnKidsGamesCompany, Yahoo, Earthlink, Google, AskJeeves, and every other piece of stupid bloaty crashy adware that I have to pull out root and branch.
I'm rather confident this isn't the vision Microsoft had as it built its OS. At least, not for the *entire* non-boutique market.
It will be a joy and a wonder to see someone not fuck over a Windows machine before it ever comes out of the box. Eyes will be opened, tears of joy will be shed, and people will think it's all because of Windows 8.
And that's the true shame.
Because it was always there to begin with.
Apple has always gained value from controlling the software and the hardware. How many Windows headaches are directly attributable to the @#)(*#@) hardware various OEMs use?
But the iOS success has really made it clear: Control the hardware supply chain and you can produce products (e.g. the iPad, the iPhone) that are actually cheaper than your competitor's products, as well as better.
(For those who say the iPhone is not cheaper, its that the carriers subsidize it less because the phone itself is more valuable to customers. Compare the no-contract price of a shiny new Samsung Galaxy or Windows phone vs an iPhone 4s)
Test your net with Netalyzr
If Surface is a success it will jumpstart the entire Windows ecosystem and check the growth of the iPad. This will only help the OEMs in the end. If it's not a success then it's not a threat to OEMs.
They rely on microsoft more than the other way round, therefore microsoft can treat them however they like with impunity.
It just goes to show that you shouldn't build your business in such a way that its dependent on a single supplier.
Notice how about the most successful computer manufacturer these days is the only one who doesn't rely on ms and is able to differentiate themselves?
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Because these companies were never innovators to begin with. They were box builders with economies of scale.
You buy a $600 Mac Mini, drop in more RAM, then install the OS of your choice on it...
One of the things Apple does is make sure that their hardware isn't the bottom-of-the-line crap that PC OEMs use.
So yeah, with a Mac Mini, you're paying a $200 premium for the elegant packaging compared to the typical PE OEM drek of comparible specs, but you also get IO chips that don't blow dead goats.
Apple is vicious about getting the most out of their suppliers, but at the same time, they demand a level of quality out of their suppliers thats lacking in the misbegotten cess-pool that is the rest of the x86 OEM world.
Test your net with Netalyzr
"Sources close to Microsoft have told us that the software giant built Surface because it was unhappy with the way its traditional partners [such as HP and Dell] weren't innovating around its next-generation operating system."
I wonder why manufacturers might not be "innovating around" windows mobile, or whatever they call it these days. Because there isn't any demand...? Because MS is 5 years too late to the party...?
cough PCs are commodity resources cough
Seriously, this is like 1973, but with tablets and phones rather than cars - price of gas suddenly goes sky high (from 0.25$US/gallon to about 1.30$US/gallon, shortages abound) the GM, Ford, Chrysler and American Motoros only focused on big V8 engines (think 6L or more displacement) Meanwhile the automakers of the rest of the world, who made cars which could stretch a gallon to 25 or more miles ate their lunch. Took about 10 years for Detroit to sort their junk out.
PCs have been more cores, more clock, more memory, but basically the same old sh*t operating system, just more confusing from release to release. Then the iPhone shows up and reveals not everyone is in love with being chained to a desktop or laptop (which can only choke out a few hours on battery.) Paradigm change.
Early Win XP tablets are clunky and problematic, because the operating system isn't geared to the interface. Most tablets are useless without a keyboard. Then the iPad launches and people find they don't need no steenking keyboard (though still nice to have sometimes, it's not entirely necessary.)
Now the war is in full swing between Google and Apple, which have trampled the laptop and desktop markets, largely because people want to be more portable and more mobile. And there are loads of apps which work great, Android promotes development more openly than Apple. And Microsoft has no answer but some abandoned Slate thingie.
Lot of water under the bridge and now iOS and Android rule the roost, with large customer bases, app stores, consumer acceptance (even lust in some cases.) Microsoft thinks they're going to walk in with these things and get it right on the first try, because their OEM buds were dropping the ball? Not quite.
Fewer people need Microsoft and many are happy to be free of that enigmatic and often incompetent company (Hey, what's a few security holes here and there? How about a few botched OS releases?) Honestly, adios MS.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
MS devised Surface, very clever and a rational progression from Kinect. Quick, how many manufacturers have integrated Kinect into their products? I'm unaware of it being integrated into any hardware. Would a Kinect interface in a laptop be interesting?
So, it's really like this: If you want your innovations in the marketplace fast, you better be putting them there yourself. Apple gets this.
Microsoft can either plead with its 'partners' to build these things, or they can contract with a partner or two to make stuff for them.
Dell, HP, Lenovo, Acer, etc are not going to risk much making cool PC stuff, they are just volume manufacturers. Some (Dell) aren't really manufacturers at all.
So Microsoft will contract for stuff that is cool. Apple does this, and iPads get the better technology earlier. Microsoft's Surface would NOT, repeat NOT be on the market before 2014 if left to the manufacturers. They need to noodle over the design, drive out the cost, maximize profit, and guarantee a market. Microsoft needs to establish themselves in the market, get there before someone else does, and provide the MVP to at least leverage their capital and crush the opposition. Surface is a step past whatever the iPad interface is. Gestures that don't even need a touch screen interest me.
Apple strategy. Evil is as evil does, no matter the name on the product.
If you need examples of failure, the HP touchpad and RIM Playbook come to mind first. Toshiba, Acer, etc have tablets that are superfluous in the marketplace. If you want the iPad market, you have to do B E T T E R than the iPad.
'as good as' leads me to just buy an iPad. Feh.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
How many consoles have been returned for service? And how financially successful has Xbox 360 been? Objectively, 33+% return rate is a hardware fiasco. Objectively, not breaking even after 9 years is a financial failure. It's only now starting to be in the black quarterly. If Xbox was a separate company, it would have had to declare bankruptcy. Other companies like NEC and Sega gave up console divisions because it wasn't financially successful.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Microsoft was on of the first to the party. It is just that they sucked. I wish people would get a grip on this. Windows Phone 7 was not their first version of their phone OS! Microsoft was pushing Windows Mobile for many version before the rebranding and new UI! I am not even a hard core Microsoft hater. Windows 7 didn't suck, Microsoft Flight Simulator rocks, the XBox 360 is a great consol and has made them a pile of money. Windows Phone is a disaster.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
They don't have the margins to make big bold bets.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The 302 and 350 cubic inch V8s (5 & 5.7 litres respectively) were far more common than the 400s or 427s. Your point still stands IMO. Though the double-whammy of fuel prices and increased safety standards didn't help Detroit out either.
True, 289, 327, 330, 351, etc. were common, but the flagships were driven by 454 (Chevy), 455 Olds, 430 (Buick), 400, 429 (Ford), 500.1 (Cadillac). Such focus on multi cores and large memory resources to hand the shear bloat of operating system and applications -- if it weren't for an operating system which tries so hard to be all and do all, the market would have been more focused upon lower current draw / tighter code / better peformance, but all Microsoft and their buddies were doing were selling us more demand upon resources. That's fine, if your work requires massive resources, but many people don't. With the web and a few apps some people get everything done without needing a big machine.
It's entertaining, in some ways, but sad in others. I'm sure someone at IBM is looking at Microsoft, in light of how the PC eclipsed the mainframe, and thinking "Didn't see it coming, did you?"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Now the war is in full swing between Google and Apple, which have trampled the laptop and desktop markets
Portable devices have more or less supplemented laptops and desktops, they really haven't made any big dent towards replacing them, let alone "trample" them. They've taken more away from the mobile phone market than desktop computing.
See, that's just it, everyone keeps saying that Win 7 doesn't exactly do anything spectacular that WinXP didn't, except for its re-architected security. (Vista being the Giant Bluff Beta).
So now that they're moving away from the Aero Shiny thing, why can't they use one of these iteration rounds to really drill down the code, under the hood, and make it absolutely sizzle? Portions of the conversation keep floating around Laptop vs Tablet but there shouldn't be any differences! A Tablet should just be the Final Generation of a Laptop, with solid state memory instead of the spinning drive, and other improvements. Then you make Metro and Classic (Windows Explorer) be alternating interfaces to the same back end code. There really isn't a reason one tablet-sized machine can't do both. You dock the thing in an office to a big screen and "do work", then you undock it to play Angry Birds and read the NY Times (Your Media May Vary) at home. Then Mom checks her email.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I'll repeat a shorter version of my theme to you.
There's gonna come a time when they're almost all the same, except phones. "Desktop" = "Portable In a Dock to a screen".
They're struggling a little on Moore's law this generation, but one good boost of game changing technology will kick it all back into overdrive.
You see the first hints of it in the All In One Screen-Computers.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
They don't have the margins to make big bold bets.
True, but that is in part due to not having the obsene amounts of cash that rolls in when a big bold bet pays off.
Apple has shown that there are so few people willing to make the bets, that they can safely win about 70% of the time. The payoff seems high enough to cover the few misses (AppleTV), which is why Apple is now has a market capitalization of twice Microsoft, fourteen times HP, and twentyeight times Dell.
HP and Dell made the obscene amounts of cash on big bold bets, that's how they came to be. The friuts of their prior successes, like all fruits, don't keep forever.
HP comes to market too slowly, and kills great products before the public can get excited about them. Dell has streamlined manufacturing and custom orderability enough that it is hard to imagine buying a computer without a Dell like experience.
The real question is, what has HP and Dell done lately?
That's pretty much it.
Microsofts business model for years was to build software that could run on a wide variety of hardware. They'd do some mock up non commercial things to show off concepts, and then leave it up to all of the 3rd party teams to either develop their own ideas, or to pick up on microsofts ideas and role with it.
And that's why we've all been using mTablets since 2000, because Bill Gates told us tablets were the future in 2000, with a half decent demo in 2002 of something that I think was even keyboardless (in the MS parlance that made it a slate).
Now here's the strange part. I've had tablets (convertible tablets) since 2005. Toshiba, HP. The latter has working touch on it, but the virtual keyboard input was always shitty, given that it was connected to a keyboard already that's not a huge surprise. So microsoft and partners *could* have had the iPad equivalent as early as 2003. And didn't, unless they didn't get touch working nicely until 2008. But either way, the manufacturers didn't innovate.
Surface is microsoft trying to either give their manufacturers a swift kick in the arse and shame them into doing something. Or its microsoft deciding that it can't rely on the manufacturers anymore, and it's going to do it itself (think xbox). A microsoft equivalent of the google nexus line of thinking is actually really compelling. Not so much because I'd want to buy one, but because it might make everyone else wake up and start making things worth buying.
This is slashdot. We all know better than everyone else, therefore without senseless disagreement in the forums, the site would fail to exist.
The reasonI disagree is because I feel the lack of demand for Windows Phone is more because the only companies who make them have long histories of lack of commitment to their phones. Nokia made a fortune for decades by selling new phones when a feature could have been adde through an update, but because software updates are free to the consumer, they sold new phones instead. Having been a developer on Nokia phones for years, I can say even the developers often couldn't update the phones without a JTAG cable and sometimes soldering on wires to connect it.
Samsung and LG have dipped their toes in te water, but their commitment is half assed. HTC... Don't make me laugh. They toss the OS on the phone, load it up with crapware, ship it and say screw it.
Apple changed the way we perceive phones. If Nokia had adopted Android as opposed to Windows Phone, they'd have released 10 new Android phones back to back and screwed all their users from version to version and Android would have sucked instead.
Apple's success wasn't entirely because of iOS. It was very much about the commitment to the actual platform. They provided an operating system, tools, PC and Mac software which was good (unlike Android sync crap and Zune) and then gave content distributors a reason to hype their product for them too.
Android would have been screwed if Samsung didn't try to duplicate the iPhone experience by committing to a small number of variations of the device which were each maintained for long periods. People like to know their phones will have all the cool features for a year or two after they buy them.
Also, Apple and Samsung focused less on tech (let's face it, you can getter better tech elsewhere) and instead focused on style. Nokia makes a crap phone that only people in poor parts of Asia and the Eastern Block would think looks cool. LG and Samsung's Windows Phones look like utility bricks. And HTC... Well... Looks like HTC. Dell tried and ended up making something which looks like "The Budget Windows Phone".
If Microsoft wants Windows Phone to succeed (and Windows 8 tablets), try have to try and make one device a year with NO focus on the underlying tech and a huge focus on the overall experience. It has to be snappy, easy and sexy. Sell the features and style, not the tech.
I hope they polish Metro or made it djinn able enough so others can. Metro is amazing, but it needs some more sex appear to work. The start screen is either too busy or busy in a non-astheticly pleasing way. But it works so damn well it's forgivable. Additionally, when using Metro split-screen, the splitter bar is too wide or maybe chunky. It gives it a kindergarten or preschoolish feel. App design using existing controls is troublesome since drill down entry is hard to work out in the screen format the way they did it. Classic Windows desktop doesn't integrate as well in split screen as it should.
I think the fatal flaw of Surface is that they didn't make one or the other. They should have made x86 only (Windows RT is lame... No classic desktop apps and no visual studio on device... So development sucks for it) and they should have made a ultra and a lite version of it. Core i3 ULV with 8" screen and Core i5 with 10" or 11".
I will buy one of each of the surface tablets anyway, but I don't like that it seems too PCish. Specs don't really matter. Functionality and price are all that matters
Speaking of Zune and iPod ... have you seen this parody that was created internally by Microsoft?
Microsoft Designs the IPOD package
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9HfdSp2E2A
It sums up "Why Microsoft Just. Doesn't. Get it." (With apologies to Shatner's / Kirk's stutter.)
Ironically it was made by Microsoft! Googleï for these words: "Microsoft spokesman Tom Pilla on Tuesday confirmed with iPod Observer that his company initiated the creation of the iPod packaging parody"