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Microsoft: Surface Tablet May Alienate OEM Partners
HangingChad sends this excerpt from PCMag:
"Microsoft this week admitted that its upcoming Surface tablet might hurt its relationships with PC maker partners. As first noted by the New York Times, Redmond said in a Thursday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that 'our Surface devices will compete with products made by our OEM partners, which may affect their commitment to our platform.'"
The filing also made note of the difficulties in building up another app marketplace: "In order to compete, we must successfully enlist developers to write applications for our marketplace and ensure that these applications have high quality, customer appeal and value. Efforts to compete with these application marketplaces may increase our cost of revenue and lower our operating margins."
Not only the Surface, but the Xbox can be a full blown PC with an interface just like Win8. What about the Microsoft Store? Sounds like the Apple store doesn't it? Just wait till Microsoft comes out with their own phone. This is another reason OEM's and deveopers are giving Linux another serious look. There is no viable alternative for them.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
It is about time, so far the oem's have failed misserably for MS. Perhaps this will spur them on to come up with some unique and innovative designs, it seems at the moment the only one that even tries is ASUS.
You have to mention everything that could be a potential threat to your business in SEC filings. Not particularly interesting since this is "may do this, may do that."
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Failed? OEMs were the key to Microsoft's success! Much more than developers, developers, developers. That's why Microsoft was a bigger company than Apple for most of its history. For OEMs Microsoft was a benevolent dictator. Now Microsoft is a desperate despot willing to sacrifice its allies just to maintain its position as an influential tech company.
As first noted by the NYT, they shit in the woods.
It'll be second rate and fail. It's not because MS is bad at this sort of thing, it's because it can't concentrate of the user, and UI consistency, it doesn't need to be distracted by hardware design. There are still stupid differences in the way the parts of the Office suit work, and the UI should work the same way. An MS made tablet will be second rate because it isn't new, it isn't wanted. Just supply the software and let people who know how to build hardware do their job, MS has been doing it this way from the beginning, why change now?
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Microsoft's Market Cap
http://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/market_cap
Apple's Market Cap
http://ycharts.com/companies/AAPL/market_cap
At one time Microsoft could have eaten Apple's lunch. They even bailed them out with a loan. Now look how things have changed. Microsft can clearly see where Apple has been a success and they think they can emulate it. A little envy?
If the DOJ now gives Apple a pass on this business model, why wouldn't they do the same for Microsoft?
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
dude, you're stupid. the appstore model is actually a copy of debian's "apt-get". apt-get is basically a "free appstore". you know the convenience of "apt-get install xyzapp" and it works automagically? well that's the convenience the appstore brings. also since the appstore takes care of your bandwidth costs and hosts promotional content and puts you in a place where costumers can actually find you i don't think 30% is very expensive at all. that's the problem with geeks, they have no clue about how to run a business. now get back to work before you boss sees you browsing slashdot again and chews you out, peon.
you should worry about everything microsoft does, sooner or later they'll do something mean that actually succeeds
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
Here is an apocalypse. First Microsoft kills all the other OEM's that were buying Intel CPU's to make PCs, notebooks and tablets. Then they buy AMD. What do they get? Radeon graphics and control of their CPU destiny. Then Apple buys Intel and Nvidia. Then many of the surviving OEM's buy ARM and Via processors to run Linux. I know it sounds unlikely. But it could happen.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
"Alienation" is putting it to lightly.
1. Debut of windows phone 8 effectively obsoletes all current windows phone products, including the weeks-old flagship Lumia. Microsoft made it clear that the current, entire phone7 ecosystem is EOL and NO devices will be upgradable. Anyone who buys a winphone7 is a moron.
2. The surface tablet is zune 2.0. - Years ago, microsoft got a bunch of OEMs on board with the "Plays for sure" framework that lets compatable players and stores buy and sell music. Great idea.. Until Microsoft canned the whole thing, created their own music player along with a it's music store. The Zune was neither able to use plays for sure stores, nor were plays for sure devices able to use the Zune store. Effectively Microsoft duped most of apple's competitors, then intentionally destroyed them in order to reduce competition with their own product. The parallel here is that microsoft has clearly shown that the surface tablet is the "true" windows tablet with exclusive features that only the surface has. 3rd party windows 8 RT tablets are clearly inferior products.
There are only two possible reasons for what we're seeing
1. Microsoft is being Microsoft, and backstabbing their partners to get a leg up on the mobile device market. (As others have speculated, I believe we'll see an official Microsoft branded win8 phone, followed by the complete and final implosion of Nokia)
2. Microsoft as a company has degenerated in to a sloppy and out of control monster where the left hand acts against the right, and the head is too incompetent to reign them both in.
*Note that the above two are not mutually exclusive
In the entire history of IBM PC clones, none have innovated. They usually copied the innovations from the Atari and Commodore machines..... and then the PC makers caught-up 5-10 years later to turn a boring business machine into one with sound/graphic cards. Or into integrated one-piece units like the iMac. THIS model has worked for them since the mid-80s so it's doubtful they'll suddenly change. It's cheaper to just copy.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I believe Microsoft's stance on the topic is "So." It's not like the OEMs have anywhere else to go, with any significant product sales that compare to Windows based sales.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
There already was a Microsoft branded phone. It was a failure called the Kin. I don't know anybody that ever bought one of those. But MS usually does better the second time around. Now they have been putting their hope in Nokia. Nokia has hit an iceberg and is rapidly sinking. But this time Microsoft will swallow them if for no other reason than patents.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
In what way have the OEMs "failed"? There was no Windows for ARM so they couldn't go toe to toe with the iPad and Windows 7 is unsuitable for a touch screen tablet. If anything Microsoft failed the OEMs.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
As Microsoft doesn't make any of their own hardware for PCs, I fail to see how OEMs have failed them, since their entire Windows line rests exclusively on OEM hardware, running on a third-party architecture. Without OEMs, there probably wouldn't even be Microsoft, or they'd probably be a 50-employee banking software company in rural Michigan.
I agree, though, that ASUS is the only company pushing the boundaries of conventional 'laptop shaped computer' design. There are a few nice leaps from Lenovo as well, but they seem to be on to rehashing the same designs now with different guts, over and over and over.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Look at MS over the last few years, they've actually put up a pretty damned good product and due to their OEMs, have suffered in reputation heavily. Apple has been able to gain a foothold not because it was so great, but because people really hated Windows PCs. What made them so terrible? Dell. HP. Gateway. And all their fucking crapware.
If you look at what MS is doing with the Surface they are building a device that tells the OEMs, if you build it shittier than this, don't bother selling it. They are trying to raise the bar. Look at Vizio, now coming out with some great looking PCs and -- surprise surprise, have NO crapware installed. It's a simple Windows 7 image with anti-virus. It runs smooth, clean and fast, as Windows 7 really does run. Despite what Linux lovers may say, Windows 7 is a pretty damned good desktop OS.
And why not? Microsoft has more OEMs (Vizio for one, and a few other Chinese ones) to offer their OS, and some opting to go the "Microsoft Signature" route -- no crapware, like Vizio. They don't need every OEM, but every OEM does need them. If Dell's sales drop off because Vizio starts to cannibalize them -- low cost, good looking PCs with no junk -- then you can bet that Dell will start to rethink its way it packages Windows 7. It will NOT at least, push out a tablet that's a piece of crap -- well, I say that by thinking that Dell has a modicum of sense, but I may be wrong. Surface sets the bar pretty high, and I expect that any tablet that comes into the ARM/x86 world with Windows on it will need to exceed that, or cut the price in order to compete against it.
And honestly, we could do with some higher quality hardware anyway. Now that Vizio is out there, and the Surface, I have a little more hope to see some good hardware from the PC centric OEMs. But I may have my faith misplaced in the others, but I am eyeing a new Vizio laptop at some point... after Windows 8 launches probably.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
ASUS doesn't get it and probably never will. They make some cool stuff, but the execution is lacking in ways I can't quite put my finger on (haven't made a big study of it). Maybe their marketing staff is tuned to the OEM side, therefor lacking the vision of creating a comprehensive product for delivery straight to customers. Definitely something to do with the distribution and segmentation strategies.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Any time you shave off the woolly parts the market slaps your hand. It is not the 30% that is the problem, it is the restrictions placed on the developer and the consumer that tame the potential for wild success. In those cases we have traded potential danger and great gain for safety and stifled innovation. Any time you regulate something, you get LESS of it. The app stores have tons of toys (fart apps and games), but I can't see a serious business application vendor risking their business on an app store.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
And deals with payment processing and identification and fraud. Those are an extraordinary burden on the small developer. A 30% fixed and predictable cost is a big win.
Why would any company want success of a very strategic OS dependant on OEM's who have no history of developing competitive hardware (against iPad)? Apple has demonstrated how good hardware, form and function can be addictive. There is no challenger (yet) to iPad. Surface, if priced right could be the first contender to grab share in the market. Why? right form, function and user experience. iPad is quite common in enterprises but the limitations are there, especially lack of true Office, USB, keyboard, etc. Quick reply to emails, browsing is fine but anything more and they open up their laptops.
By now you must know that Nokia can never be turned...
The vast majority of the phones that Nokia is actually selling isn't based on Windows Phone. The windows phones aren't selling, since they are already announced to be a dead platform before the end of the year. Nobody wants to buy a phone that doesn't get updates, there are no users for the phone so nobody develops apps for it, so it's not the Windows Phone Devision but the Windows Phone house of morning.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Their.
They're is they are
There is a place.
Nonsense.
Compaq was a huge innovator, they brought down the size and weight of portables and arguably invented the laptop.
Zeos was an innovator in micro electronics and pen based computing a decade before the OS had any support for it.
Micron was a huge innovator in memory technology.
Dell was an innovator in the manufacturing process and brought a degree of customization never seen before to electronics at good prices.
Packard Bell developed all sorts of ease of use features like: color coded cabling systems so that naive users could assemble a computer, their own DOS shell....
Most of those companies didn't survive. There has been a race to the bottom for the since 2000. But there certainly was a point where PC companies were innovators. Atari and Commodore were vastly vastly inferior to the PCs of the early 1980s. They were quite often 10% of the price so no one expected them to compete. I suspect you hearing a version of history that's a bit biased.
If you mean the iPhone app store, Apple doesn't want serious apps. They want the iOS devices to be secondary devices. And as secondary devices there are tons of applications that allow for viewing, editing and replying to data. QlikView (an end user business intelligence layer) iPhone client for example.
If you mean for OSX. there's little advantage to expensive apps through the app store, except for anti-piracy. And that might be enough.
I just checked my statements. Apparently, I (a small developer) am only being charged 2% fixed costs on each transaction, and have a fraud rate of zero. Yes, a 28% increase in fixed costs is definitely a "big win" for me. Where do I sign up?!?
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Don't see the problem if they go the apple route and charge twice as much as the product is worth. On the other hand if you go to the microsoft store you'll note that their machines all say "Asus".
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
>>>Atari and Commodore were vastly vastly inferior to the PCs of the early 1980s
Okay.
Give me an example of an IBM home PC that could play music-quality sound in 1979 (like Atari) or 1982 (Commodore). Or an example that could show full-screen in 1985 (both Atari & Commodore) or 1988 (Apple Mac).
Or 4000 colors in 1985 (Commodore). Or an example of an IBM home PC that could do preemptive tasking in 1985 (Commodore).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Give me an example of an IBM home PC that could play music-quality sound in 1979 (like Atari) or 1982 (Commodore)
The IBM PC wasn't released until 1981, so no they didn't have a good model to compete in '79. And with this any many other things I suspect you are reading spec sheets. In '79 if you wanted to use a computer for music you used analog computers not digital. Digital computers, except for extremely expensive ones, were worse than basic music equipment. Midi wasn't even untl about '85. Around '94 is when digital music on cheap hardware became a reality, not '79.
Or an example that could show full-screen in 1985 (both Atari & Commodore) or 1988 (Apple Mac).
I don't know what you mean by "full screen".
Or an example of an IBM home PC that could do preemptive tasking in 1985 (Commodore).
Commodore did not do preemptive multitasking in 1985. The 68000 didn't really support it, you had to wait until the 68030 for it to really work. You are reading too much Amiga propaganda. By 1985 people were happy that single tasking was working reliably. If you wanted to do task switching you were on a workstation in '85. You could multi task like that on a Mini or Mainframe. 1988 OS/2 Lan Manager was probably the first genuinely multi tasking application that ran on PC class machines and that was still expensive servers not cheap Commodores. Cooperative multi tasking / task switching existed for years because in real life these things were hard to do on the crappy hardware of the day. If Commodore had actually been capable of what you think they were
In 1993 I used to sell the Amiga 500 as a toy for kids. Which was essentially a slight upgrade from the 1000, the model you are making these claims for. No the 500 could not do these things. The Amiga 2000, 3000 were starting to be capable of what you are claiming for the 1000 but even then... this is a serious stretch.
I meant full-screen VIDEO but left out the word. Atari ST and Amigas could do it in 1985, but certainly not IBM PC or the Microsoft OS.
>>>Commodore did not do preemptive multitasking in 1985.
Of course it did. It wasn't the rather lame cooperative multitasking we saw on Mac OS7 or Windows 3, but genuine preemptive tasking where the CPU stopped the current process and moved on to the next process.
And no I wasn't reading amiga propaganda... I actually owned one. I routinely ran 3-4 programs at the same time, and just for fun (and to demonstrate the multitasking) ran ~100 desktop cartoon animations at the same time.
I'm a bit surprised to hear you say Amiga could only singletask or cooperative task. You sound extremely uneducated when you say stupid shit like that..... well you did say you were a SALESMAN. It reminds me of the salesman I met at Staples last week..... he couldn't even answer a basic question like "How many gigahertz is this laptop?" He came-up with 1.6 which was flat wrong.
You sound similarly uninformed.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Lets assume I am an uniformed sales guy. And lets further assume you weren't approx a high school age kid in the around 94 who had an Amiga 2000 or 3000 and was unhappy when the system died... but that you were really around to talk about what was happening in '79 or 85. So we'll ignore the nonsense about what was happening in the 70s and 80s, and focus on the stuff you do remember.
The Amiga did cooperative not pre-emptive multitasking. The hardware didn't support the kinds of memory protection and process protection needed for the sort of multi-tasking that exists today. At the same time, Commodore couldn't throw all the monitoring hardware that had existed in late 60s mainframes in for cost reasons. The reason your Amiga crashed so much is because it was attempting to do in software something the hardware couldn't really support. It did it well and that made for showy demos but there is a difference between a stage magician and a genuine psychic. Having built an OS with this lack of hardware support was of course one of the main reasons the Amiga died. Amiga's OS needed to evolve in the same way Windows did with the migration to the NT kernel, because people now expected a multitasking environment that was much more stable. But to do that, without the emulation layers that Microsoft would spend a fortune on, would require developer support. And heavy rewrites at a time of falling sales were not in the cards. The Amiga OS couldn't stay where it was nor move forward. You see this today, in fact one of the reasons Aros doesn't support Amiga software, unlike the other emulator OSes is to get the clean break for hardware supported multi tasking.
This is why Xenix didn't support pre-emptive multitasking but SCO, BSDs and Linux did. This struggle of how to move from cooperative multi tasking to full pre-emption is what did MacOS in and almost killed Apple.
Of course it did. It wasn't the rather lame cooperative multitasking we saw on Mac OS7 or Windows 3, but genuine preemptive tasking where the CPU stopped the current process and moved on to the next process.
No, the program had to pass control back to the scheduler. That's why runaway programs could take the whole system down. It was close, and I understand why Amiga used this in their marketing; but there was a huge difference in what your Amiga 2000 was doing and what a mainframe was doing. Both used a similar system but on the mainframe the scheduler had its own memory and its own CPU so it could in a very electrical engineering sense of the word pre-empt.
You aren't 15 anymore its time to stop showing your friends what your cool Amiga can do, grow up and realize that in adult world there are real differences between the systems that were $50k in in 1990 like the RISC/6000, the ones that were $7k like the NeXT and the systems that were $2k like the Amiga 2000.
'our Surface devices will compete with products made by our OEM partners, which may affect their commitment to our platform.'"
What this REALLY means is "We can't get the damned thing to work, and the hardware engineering team is fighting with the software engineering team over whose at fault."
So we're killing the product.
Please. Like no one at MS considered before embarking on the "Surface" project that their hardware OEM "partners" might consider it a direct threat? Riiiiiiight.
Nope. This is just an excuse to kill of a dog of a (non)-product without revealing the real reason: Engineering incompetence at MS (or whoever is actually doing the Surface) from top to bottom and side to side.
>>>The Amiga did cooperative not pre-emptive multitasking.
Bullshit. If that were true (cooperative tasking) when a program crashed it would freeze the whole system (because the crashed program would never release control of the CPU). As often happened with the cooperative tasking Macs and PCs of the 80s and early 90s (if for example Eudora Mail froze, the whole computer froze).
In reality if a program crashed the Amiga CPU simply jumped to the next program because the CPU maintained control of which task executed. The user could continue working with the 2-3 programs that were still running. Just like a modern OS. It didn't freeze the whole computer just because one program froze-up.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Really? You can process credit cards at 2%?
I can indeed. That's the fixed costs - just the transaction. However I don't believe the admin effort I put in is worth a 28% per transaction increase in costs. To me that's highway robbery.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
In reality if a program crashed the Amiga CPU simply jumped to the next program because the CPU maintained control of which task executed.
The Amiga CPU, the 68000, had no idea what a task was or what a program was. It doesn't maintain control of anything. That's the point there is no hardware here that can act independently of the current task. There was no protected memory. If Eudora went down lightly things might be salvageable, for example a scheduled interrupt. But if Eudora has a bad pointer it is corrupting all of memory including the kernel or even the interrupts table.
Just think for a second about what you are claiming here. Figure out how this could work, in detail.