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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: Forget the iPad, Surface Is the Tablet People Want
zacharye writes "Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer undoubtedly knows that Apple has sold more than 100 million iPad tablets at this point, but according to the outspoken executive, that's not the tablet people really want. While speaking with CNBC, Ballmer said no company has built a tablet he believes customers want. 'You can go through the products from all those guys and none of them has a product that you can really use. Not Apple. Not Google. Not Amazon. Nobody has a product that lets you work and play that can be your tablet and your PC. Not at any price point,' he says."
One vendor lockin in enough and with the Copyright Board saying jailbreaking tablets is verboten, one is all I care to have.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Get out!
"Nobody has a product that lets you work and play that can be your tablet and your PC. Not at any price point,"
That's actually a true statement. Ballmer's problem is that it is still a true statement after Surface debuts.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Wow - that's probably the clearest example of a shill comment that I've ever seen.
- too expensive
- too confusing (it's obvious that the iPad won't run Mac OS X apps, it's not obvious that the RT Surface won't run Windows apps)
- too late
(and I write this as a guy who'd like to replace his Fujitsu Stylistic Tablet PC w/ a Surface (Intel version, if it's possible to install Mac OS X on it)
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
You can't do extensive photo editing or programming on an iPad either.
I just spent 6 weeks travelling with an iPad and the only thing it was really useful for was uploading photos I'd taken to and using it as a nice display to present the images to people I met. I did manage to edit up a video in iMovie to a reasonable degree though.
What *killed* it for me was the crappy keyboard and the limitations of IOS. I had to download an app in order to download and play freely available, legal MP3s off Soundcloud.
For my next trip I'm going to get a Mac Air I think, hardware wise the Surface looks exactly like it's what I want to be honest, but I'd miss OS X.
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Somebody seems to be wanting those iPads
I was excited to get my surface on Friday. By Sunday I decided to return it. I found it to be a compromise both as a tablet and a laptop. Many ui items are too small and I did not like the transitions from tablet ui to laptop ui and back again. I love the custom tiles of the start screen, unfortunately I found it to be all downhill from there.
If not, then don't bother me until it does. If I want a crayon-level interface, I'll go with the one that has a bazillion apps for all my media content consuming needs. When a really useful, 256+ pressure level, pen-accurate input with palm/heel rejection gets here, then I'll consider switching.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Go back and look at Balmer's track record with his "statements". It's not really good at all.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
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DogKia,
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Yes. Tim Cook Will say the iPad is what people want. Balmer will say the Surface is what people want. Google will be pushing Chrome...
Time will tell what people really want. Focus group are sometimes wrong. Even what the internet buzz thinks it want isn't what people really want.
We here tend to figure if people didn't make the same choice that we made, some how their decision is corrupted by marketing, or misinformation, while we are more pure... But we all see things and weight them differently. If someone says they like x for reason y. You really shouldn't discredit reason y, if reason y is important to them. Reason y may not matter to you. But that is the great thing about choice... We get to pick what we want. So trying to discredit someone elses choice is just stupid.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The iPad isn't perfect, yet, but the Surface is so far down from perfect that it is not even a contender. Ballmer is dreaming. Or spinning PR.
Sounds as if he was trying to the use the Force, as in: Stormtrooper, "These aren't the Droids you're looking for."
Yesterday's Weirdness is Tomorrow's Reason Why
Sounds like what you say when you're late to the party.
I can't remotely log in to my Linux machines and do programming on my iPad. I can't create presentations on it. I can't do photo editing or drawing. I can write papers for grad school.
No. wait. I can do all of those thing on my 1st gen iPad.
Nevermind.
May I assume he thought the same of the Zune? or Windows Mobile/CE?
Can't be... Microsoft doesn't use the "Metro" name anymore. All salesmen are supposed to use the new names for the various components. Shills are ethical and always follow the rules, right?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
It's not like people with tablets will be racing to go buy ANOTHER tablet.
Just seems to me Microsoft jumped into the market two years too late. This isn't a knock on Surface or anything, just an observation.
Microsoft has had their OS in tablets for years and they never took off. The reason: They tried to be both a tablet and a PC.
The iPad showed tablets work great as tablets, not PCs, and vice-versa, and in one year probably sold more than all other tablets combined in history.
Now Ballmer wants to do the combined tablet/PC again. Honest, it'll work this time.
This is just corporate bluster until such time as Microsoft can trot out sales figures proving that people are actually buying these.
As a general rule, when the CEO of a company says "our product is teh best and our competitors are teh sux0rs" ... well, they're mostly talking out of their asses for their own purposes.
And, in the case of Steve Ballmer, he's got a long history of speaking drivel that he wants other people to believe, and being out of touch with what people actually want.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Galaxy Note 10.1 It has 1,024 degrees of pressure and palm/heel rejection.
http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/15/samsung-galaxy-note-10-1-review/
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
wooooosh.
I believe the term for that comment is 'sarcasm' not shill. Tone doesn't translate over text well, but the user's word uses made it clear - that was definitely sarcasm.
That being said, I'll take a NON-RT tablet over anything out there at the moment. Compared to the RT tablets, you're better off with an iPad, and if you are better off with an iPad, you might as well get one of the better Androids out there. The non-RTs however, can use normal Windows software, which means they don't have the walled garden restriction of the iPad or RT. Mind you, they are x86, so battery life and/or weight probably are a bit sucky.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I hate to point it out to you, but you've not really made a PC that can be my tablet and or PC too either. You keep fucking failing. I know, I've spent hours and hours testing windows 8, just like I tested XP on a Q1 and 7 on the same Q1 before it.
The ARM move you made probably does have a place - but its got ZERO to do with running my 'PC' as a tablet. In fact I can't do any of that. The PC part doesn't even exist. As for your X86 tablet - oh sure, I can have my PC - but minus the start button. And minus anything to do with tablet - unless I accept Metro/Notro as my new PC life. Only 99% of everything PC I used or use is desktop based. I have no idea who you think you are talking to - Its not me.
And the real world information is rolling through the isles. The real benchmarks are closing in. Worse performance in use, worse gaming, worse multitasking, worse application compat, and continuing doese of screw me.
To be frank, by forcing this broken Notro paradigm down my through - I've never ever going to be less than hostile to your dumb sales pitch. Your new OS is a cut down 7 with some nice engineering changes in the normal method of win development - and to get them I am forced to use WinRT and this garbage UI (I won't - I'll re-engineer machinery not to - end of.) - and thats all she wrote according to you. It deserves to fail, and it deserves to supply the big pink slip to the people inside MS who ignored all the feedback from the userbase that said no.
We`re all equal
By this interview, Ballmer proves what I had suspected: that Microsoft doesn't understand why tablets are popular, and what tablets are for. And this failure to understand is why they are ruining Windows, by trying to make it a "universal" OS.
Tablets are not a substitute for a laptop or desktop PC, nor do most people want them to be. They are a more convenient and portable way of surfing the Web, listening to music, watching videos on YouTube or Netflix, playing simple games, doing Facebook, reading e-books, and so forth. They are, in short, content consumption devices. They aren't good at producing stuff, and aren't supposed to be. A tablet is not a "junior laptop" and when Microsoft tried to treat it as such with their previous attempts, they failed miserably. But nor is a desktop or laptop a scaled-up tablet; if it was, no one could ever get any work done.
Ballmer doesn't seem to understand that for the average home user, firing up MS Office is a rare use case, and one that is easily enough satisfied by a 6-year-old system running Windows XP that the buyer sees no reason to upgrade. As for businesses, they like things the way they are; many of them would still be running Windows 2000 if they were able to. Microsoft doesn't see that the fact that they would benefit by people spending more money is irrelevant; what matters is if the buyers see the benefit in spending more money. And when it does come time to spend, they have to demonstrate why their product is better than the competitor's. It's not enough any more just for them to show up.
I got a Surface RT on launch day, and was sitting at the bus stop playing with it, and some guy ran past and grabbed it.
I was about to give chase, but as he was running he looked at it, stopped, turned around, and gave it back saying "Sorry man, I'm so sorry for you man."
It's basically theft-proof.
Are you kidding me?! Surface is revolutionary! Its like a laptop, but the screen is where the keyboard goes and vice verse, and you use it the other way around! Then instead of a touchpad you just smear your fingers all over the screen and, if you are lucky, it doesn't tip over - Brilliant! Its like an ipad but without all the apps and fanboism, no wait... Its like a tablet for people that don't like tablets, wait...nobody likes tablets.
Ballmer continued to speak, explaining how he felt almost bad for Apple's losses after the Zune drove the iPod from the portable music player market. He then announced that Windows Vista had reached a new record of 92% market share, before taking a call on his Windows Phone and zipping off on his Segway.
I would like to see their sales forecasting. I mean outside of Apple, you've still got the Nook, the Fire, the Nexxus, and a plethora of other Android tablets eating up market share. Add the iPad Mini and the new HP Envy and I really don't see how this could go well for them.
Surface doesn't have any real competitive edge other than working with other Microsoft products (which is closer to a disadvantage IMHO).
True, but that doesn't mean there isn't the possibility that Ballmer is right.
They probably looked at people who *aren't* buying iPads, and saying "what do you want?" and the answer was a highly portable keyboard, and regular desktop programs. The latter isn't an issue for the ipad exactly, and Microsoft hasn't pulled a great job by forking x86 and ARM and all that stuff, but I can see the argument that a laptop that easily doubles as a slate is more appealing than a slate by itself (to use the MS parlance of slate rather than tablet).
ANd the thing is, this isn't really news that MS feels this way. They've been pushing convertible tablets for years, I've had several over the last 7 or 8 years, surface is like that, only adopting a slate form factor.
That doesn't mean any of this will actually sell well, or that their attempt at a solution is a good idea. But this is certainly the same line of thinking that MS has been pushing since the Bill Gates days.
Forget the iPad. Live with us in forests of Surface. Out here on the perimeter there are no stars, Out here we is stoned - immaculate.
Or because they want a product which isn't overly fiddly to use and which does what they want. For years, Microsoft over-promised, and under-delivered, which is why many of us started using Linux and other alternatives in the first place.
Since I was already using iTunes, it was a no-brainer for me. Everything was ready to go in about 5 minutes.
Define 'use'? I can do everything on a tablet that can be done on a smart phone (if you have a smart phone, you probably don't need a tablet -- for those of us who don't want/have smart phones, the tablet is a better choice due to screen size).
But when I travel, I get a lot of use out of my iPad -- movies on the plane, checking Gmail in the airport and hotel, Google voice calls to the wife, and video games to pass the time. Finding restaurants with Urban Spoon and the map applications come in handy as well. The last few times I travelled for business, I didn't use my laptop even once, but I used my iPad 3-4 hours daily.
It's also my eBook reader, and gets used in the living room when I need to quickly check something on the web. And, all of those Bluray disks I buy that have a digital copy can go onto it, so I can watch Avengers on an airplane or in a hotel room (on their TV if I bring the cable I have for that).
I wouldn't do my daily work on it, but a lot of things I do on a computer don't require that I be sitting at a desk and typing. For those things my tablet is fine, if not actually better (and probably would be true of any tablet).
When I go on vacation the only device I'll bring is my iPad -- because I can access all of my email accounts (including my corporate Outlook web stuff) and have ready access to the stuff that I need when I'm on vacation. If I can check my company email from the hammock in my mom's back yard, and then go back to reading my book (all without getting up), I call that a pretty useful thing.
Every time I see someone say "tablets don't have much use" I can only think that it should be qualified as "for you". I actually get quite a bit of use out of mine. Everybody I know with a tablet gets a fair bit of use out of it ... just not to do the same tasks they'd be doing on their work computer.
Hell, a friend of a friend is a professional photographer. Last year after he and his team had covered an event, he logged into his system, and kicked off the first few steps of his photo processing workflow -- all from poolside with a beer in his hand. In 5 minutes, he had initiated the automated stuff, and could relax for the rest of the day.
You may not be able to think of uses for one, and that's fine. But for many of us, it does cover a lot of things.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Yeah, 'cause they let someone else write the most popular OS for PCs and then released MS-DOS and took over the world.
Oh, wait, they owned the PC market with MS-DOS right from the start, and then released Windows 3.x when IBM were dabbling with OS/2 with much higher system requirements.
The only way they could get 'success' in the console market was to blow billions of dollars buying market share. If they'd put the same money into Apple shares, they'd be vastly richer today.
I don't know how many times it has to be said, people neither want nor need a tablet that can double as a desktop. That is not what tablets are for. That is why all the tablets that came before were niche products at best, landfill at worst.
Apple grasped it was not a desktop replacement, but a specialized appliance. You can't use a tablet like a PC, nor should you. It's a different feature set, a different interface, different everything. I thought perhaps MS had got the message but apparently this is not the case, esp. with the keyboard-case thingy they've got. They're still trying to shoehorn two disparate user experiences together into one, and this neither can nor should be done.
Frankly, as long as Ballmer is in charge, I fear MS is going to keep going down this primrose path, and before it gets better it's going to get a lot worse.
That's not this Surface. That's another Surface that is almost twice as expensive, and not available.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Contrary to popular opinion, and for that matter to MS marketing, the walled garden on RT is a myth. Sideloading apps is fully possible (built into the OS and free to enable) so it's not really any more "walled" than Android in that respect.
Additionally, people have already figured out how to bypass the desktop app restriction, so you aren't even limited to just "Metro"-style apps from third parties either. That one *is* unofficial, so it's possible Microsoft may patch it out, but for now you can do pretty much anything you like with RT.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Of course he was right. He spoke to those people personally. Both of them want a Surface tablet.
"Lame" - Galaxar
I don't want any tablet by any-maker. I remember the days of the 13 inch monitors and i don't want a tiny or small screen the days of me squinting over a tiny screen are over and no i don't own a smartphone either no need.
Jack of all trades,master of none
I've seen how apps are sideloaded on a Windows RT tablet, and it's ugly - it's just one step removed from being rooting the device. It's such a hack that it looks like MS is going to plug it ASAP.
And, as you said yourself, even MS is saying that sideloading apps isn't possible, which signals their actual intentions on the issue.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
"Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer undoubtedly knows that Apple has sold more than 100 million iPad tablets at this point, but according to the outspoken executive, that's not the tablet people really want"
In Mandy Rice-Davies's immortal words, "Well, he would say that, wouldn't he".
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Seriously this has to be the Microsoft bonehead move of the year. The obvious move would have been to release the x86 version first, sell the platform on the benefit of working exactly like your bulky office laptop, and then try their hand at trapping people in the walled garden with the iPad style/Microsoft store 4 years too late. Bonehead Ballmer strikes again.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Know how I can tell you didn't read the article?
Try moving your lips this time.