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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."
*** Announcement project***
***to be distributed to all OEM guys.***
Hey guys, we're going to try ruin you again in 3
( ) years
( ) months
() days
***
Please select the right choice, boss.
Marketing Slime Department
HP and Dell are doing just fine killing themselves on their own, don't need Microsoft's help
They have counterparties.
Apple has taught them well. First locking down the software supply chain (Metro marketplace), now secrecy for new products.
Microsoft's lockstep with OEMs has been the most irritating part of their existence to me, from the Windows Tax to the horrendous upcoming UEFI SecureBoot debacle. Hopefully this will split the hardware manufacturers enough so that I can buy some decent parts that have been made with priorities other than 'get the windows sticker.'
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.
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.
All the disappointed OEMs will be turning to Linux, making this year (yes, I promise this time is for real!) the Linux Desktop year.
The way the story is normally told the scorpion specifically points out that the frog can trust it because stinging the frog would kill them both. The way you tell it, having the frog seemingly rely on the scorpion's promise instead of the scorpion's self interest, makes the frog seem dumb at the beginning.
While there are plenty of things I personally do not like about Windows 8 -- first and foremost Secure boot -- I still cannot help but feel that Microsoft's new direction will translate to various kinds of benefits for the general populace. Microsoft is now pushing for better integration of the hardware with the OS, for cleaner default installations and for innovation in the hardware, the only downside for the general populace being slightly higher prices on their new computers. One can hope that instead of rushing to the bottom the manufacturers will in the future try to focus on producing higher quality hardware and stop with their bloatware-installations and insanely crappy "feature software."(1) There are better ways of offering new software and getting people to buy stuff than just stuffing the computer full of pre-installed trialware, like e.g. why not ASK the user what kind of software they might need on their newly-installed device or what they plan on doing with it, and then OFFER to install trial-versions so they can try and see if the software does what they need?
(1): a girlfriend just recently bought herself a new laptop from ASUS and I went there to help her set it up. Well, not surprisingly it was chock-full of all kinds of crapware, and ASUS's own software was actually the worst of all. One example of such software from ASUS is ASUS Update: it is nothing more than an application that checks ASUS's website for new driver releases for the laptop, but it is chock-full of spelling mistakes, it's dog-slow, it tries its god damn best to stick out of the desktop like a needle in the eye and so on. Heck, it was trying to install a 500 kilobyte update for 30 minutes before I got fed up with waiting, killed it and installed the update manually, which only took 3 seconds! Another thing I noticed was that the application kept one of the cores at 100% usage at all times, even when it was not doing anything, but when I minimized the application the CPU usage dropped to about 12%: looks like a rather clear case of the application just redrawing its own window all the time as fast as it can, with or without any reason whatsoever for that. It really baffles me how on Earth can ASUS think this is good for their image or for their customers.
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.
I am surprised by this part: last time I tried with a Win7 Pro laptop, I was able to use my own license number (the one on the sticker on the laptop case) with another Windows setup disc, without having to purchase a new license!
What Apple product is the xbox360 meant to compete against?
Apple Pippin, of course.
Ignore this signature. By order.
"I have altered the deal. Pray that I do not alter it further"
I know the prevailing Slashdot wisdom about Microsoft partners and prevalent urban legends and fairy tales, but does someone have any hard numbers on how much revenues and profit the OEMs have made with Windows PC over the past 3 decades? A hundred billion? How about they invest some of those profits to try to one up Apple, Microsoft' Surface and Amazon. How is it Microsoft's fault that OEMs are failing to match Apple?
Lets take Compaq:
In November 1982 Compaq announced their first product, the Compaq Portable, a portable IBM PC compatible personal computer. It was released in March 1983 at $2995, considerably more affordable than the Canadian Hyperion. The Compaq Portable was one of the progenitors of today's laptop; some called it a "suitcase computer" for its size and the look of its case. It was the second IBM PC compatible, being capable of running all software that would run on an IBM PC. It was a commercial success, selling 53,000 units in its first year and generating $111 million in sales revenue. The Compaq Portable was the first in the range of the Compaq Portable series. Compaq was able to market a legal IBM clone because IBM mostly used "off the shelf" parts for their PC. Furthermore, Microsoft had kept the right to license the operating system to other computer manufacturers. The only part which had to be duplicated was the BIOS, which Compaq did legally by using clean room reverse engineering at a cost of $1 million.[12][13][14] Phoenix Technologies would shortly follow their lead, but soon "clone BIOSes" were available from many other companies who reverse engineered IBM's design, then sold their version to the PC clone manufacturers
So without Microsoft, Compaq and IBM clones wouldn't exist. What about Dell?
Dell traces its origins to 1984, when Michael Dell created PCs Limited while a student at the University of Texas at Austin. The dorm-room headquartered company sold IBM PC-compatible computers built from stock components.[7] Dell dropped out of school in order to focus full-time on his fledgling business, after getting about $300,000 in expansion-capital from his family.
In 1985, the company produced the first computer of its own design, the "Turbo PC", which sold for US$795.[8] PCs Limited advertised its systems in national computer magazines for sale directly to consumers and custom assembled each ordered unit according to a selection of options. The company grossed more than $73 million in its first year of operation.
The company changed its name to "Dell Computer Corporation" in 1988 and began expanding globally. In June 1988, Dell's market capitalization grew by $30 million to $80 million from its June 22 initial public offering of 3.5 million shares at $8.50 a share.[9] In 1992, Fortune magazine included Dell Computer Corporation in its list of the world's 500 largest companies, making Michael Dell the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company ever.[10]
To get back to your analogy, the frog became a Fortune 500 company thanks to the scorpion. Cry me a fucking river.
What about HTC, the big maker of Android phones? Another poor frog, right?
HTC was founded in 1997 by Cher Wang, HT Cho, and Peter Chou.[6] Initially a manufacturer of notebook computers, HTC began designing some of the world's first touch and wireless hand-held devices in 1998.[7] The company has a rich heritage of many "firsts", including creating the first Microsoft-powered smartphone (2002) and the first Microsoft 3G phone (2005).[6] Their first major product was made in 2000 and was one of the world's first touch screen smartphones.
Not to mention the fact that all this lead to prices going from about $5000 each to a very decent machine for $500 and made them affordable to the masses including the 3rd world leading to the PC and internet revolutions which everyone is reaping the benefits of(Including Apple which switched to x86 to drive down costs). If you think Apple hardware is exp
This space for rent.
Wait; a guy from Microsoft, at a Microsoft media event, announces, without sales data, that the XBOX 360 is the best selling console worldwide?
This information seems very reliable and extremely trustworthy.
The way the story is normally told the scorpion specifically points out that the frog can trust it because stinging the frog would kill them both.
Actually, the way I remember it is that the scorpion refreshes the tree of liberty while the river gradually warms up until the frog boils, but before that the frog uses 4 boxes for defense after it votes with two foxes about dinner, then the scorpion trades one thing for another, so it deserves neither, all of which is like if Ford sold cars with the hoods welded shut... or something like that.
> 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?
Microsoft won't license out Kinect technology (which they did not even develop themselves, but rather got an exclusive license for from PrimeSense). Furthermore, at the same time they signed the deal, they bought the only other company to offer similar products (I think 3DVision, not sure about the name), and closed them. So they now own an exclusive license for one technology, and all the patents for a differently implemented technology.
There is no way for anyone to integrate that functionality. And if I were microsoft, I'd buy LeapMotion tomorrow to make sure that stays true for the future.
Wow, you're basically the only Non-AC guy who mentions Zune.
That is the comparison I see the biggest here, except this time it's right in MS's home camp.
Apple takes world by storm with iPod. MS Scrambles.
They start with their usual "commodity" strategy and license 20 3rd party hardware makers with some cert specs and calls it "Plays For Sure". So far, so fine. Except Apple was on to something with the whole Integration thing, so generic makers aren't working this time. So then MS does a giant evil backstab and makes the Zune, switching from their classic biz style into a Me Too but minus the 5 years of secret R&D that Apple was doing. So it flopped.
Apple crushed the phone market with the iPhone, and I'm a casualty. I had a Win Mobile 6 phone, and I hated it. It was an overgrown brick in my pocket. While I dislike some of Apple's snooping, the iPhone makes it easy to download apps and it doesn't auto ring by itself twice a day like the HTC phone did.
So suddenly Apple figures out that Mac OS isn't actually going anywhere, but it has some good concepts. So they switch the game to Phone & Tablet, and suddenly Microsoft is panicking, after a 20+ year monopoly on Windows? They want to make their own hardware now? THAT has GOT to piss off the OEM network to no end.
MS gave up ever influencing music, and washed their hands of it.
But this one? This feels like a Bet the Farm move. Remind me to look up the news 4 years from now when the fake urgency wears off. But this feels different.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine