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Microsoft's Surface RT Was Doomed From Day One
Nerval's Lobster writes "Last fall, Microsoft launched its Surface RT tablet with high hopes. The sleek touch-screen ran Windows RT, a version of Windows 8 designed for hardware powered by the ARM architecture, which dominates the mobile-device market; it also included a flexible keyboard that doubled as a screen cover. Microsoft executives told any journalist who would listen that Surface RT would position their company as a major player in the tablet arena, ready to battle toe-to-toe with Apple and various Android device manufacturers. Fast-forward to this week, and Microsoft announcing its financial results for the quarter ended June 30. Amidst metrics such as operating income and diluted earnings per share, one number stood out: a $900 million charge (the equivalent of $0.07 per share) related to what Microsoft called 'Surface RT inventory adjustments.' Microsoft had already slashed Surface RT prices by $150, so that nearly-billion-dollar charge wasn't a total surprise — but it did underscore that Surface RT is a bomb. From the outset, Surface RT had an issue with the potential to mightily trip up Microsoft: While Windows RT looks exactly like Windows 8, it can't run legacy Windows programs built for x86 processors, limiting users to what they can download from the built-in Windows Store app hub. While the Windows Store launched with 10,000 apps, that seemed paltry in comparison to the well-developed Android and iOS ecosystems. There's likely nothing that Microsoft could have done about this—every platform has to start somewhere, after all—but the relative lack of apps put Surface RT between the proverbial rock and the hard place: it couldn't rely on Windows' extensive legacy, and it didn't have enough content to make it a true contender from the outset against the iPad and Android tablets. Then there was the matter of price. Microsoft could have taken the Amazon route and sold Surface RT at a relative pittance in order to drive adoption—something that made the Kindle Fire a sizable hit. However, that sort of pricing scheme isn't in Microsoft's corporate DNA: it only cut Surface RT's price several months after release, as a defensive maneuver, when it's likely to do much less good."
..it failed. The last thing we need right now is more Windows.
Related/recent /. article
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
At least that's they way it looks on the surface.
Assuming the price for the hardware continues to dive...
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
I think Ballmer will be out by the end of Q1 next year and Sinofsky will be on the short list of replacements. Bill Gates doesn't want to be CEO of Microsoft again, and he's old and out of touch anyway.
Microsoft should NOT be a devices and services company, it should be a consumer-facing OS and services company. Apple and Samsung are much better at consumer devices than MS will ever be.
I've been running a few proper Linux distributions on the ARM Chromebook for about half a year now, and I though I would have this problem. But, thanks to Open Source, pretty much everything in the Ubuntu and Arch Linux repositories is now complied for ARM v7, so it's really not an issue.
On the other hand, the stock ARM Chromebook is popular (best selling laptop under $300) simply because you can't install legacy apps on ChromeOS anyway (without going into dev mode).
Microsoft who initially got its foot in the door because it's OS can run across multiple manufactures and not just one. Now is having huge problems in writing cross platform OS's.
They made .NET to compete with Java. However why doesn't .NET programs work for arm and Intel like java does, or even for 32bit and 64bit systems. Microsoft just hasn't kept up with cross system compatibility.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Call me when they drop to $99.
Have gnu, will travel.
Those stupid ads with college students dressed up like what art school students think office workers dress like and ecstatically breakdancing around on tables to the clacky sound of attaching a bluetooth keyboard to a tablet just creeped me the fuck out. WTF MS, why don't you just put BillG & Seinfeld in your fail-mercials like you did back in the day? Or just give me the money if you're just going to flush it down the toilet.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
They could have released the PlayBook.
"..'that sort of pricing scheme isn't in Microsoft's corporate DNA..."
Er. No. MS sold both the original XBOX and the XBOX360 at a loss to drive adoption, the exact opposite of what the author is saying MS will not do...
I can't wait for microsoft to pull a HP Touchpad firesale.
Surface RT Tablets running android would be sweet.
Not a dup. The first was a blurb from IT Times, this one appears to be a slashdot origininal, judging from the link.
As to MS haters: How can you tell if someone hates Microsoft? Ask them if they've ever used MS software. If they say yes, they hate MS.
They are caught in the mix of trying to be several things. Their bread and butter is enterprise and desktop. Why are they pushing into hardware? They really don't have the expertise to get into it - and with the Surface mess, it really shows. They need to pick their path and shed the silly ideas. Want to be a software company? Be the best you can. Don't half ass hardware - where you will get schooled by older venders.
Good deal!... Took them 20yrs to get to the top of the pile and it'll take them 20 or more to drop off the radar, but they'll be gone for sure...
I remember developing on a PowerPC 601 box for Windows NT. Then... nothing. Abandoned. Wasted effort.
I've said before the Surface marketing was one of the nails in the coffin. The TV ads mostly featured hipster dambasses dancing and hiphoping while spinning the Surface tablet. Very little if any product knowledge is communicated.
MS has to tell people WHY they should choose their option over iPad and dozens of Androids, Kindles, and Nooks. There are tablet for all price points. Some offer decent performance and graphics. Others are affordable. Surface is.... from Microsoft. I guess that's all you need to know.
Then there's the Metro GUI fiasco. MS basically appologizes for Metro on Windows 8 and offers a Metro-less option on the new betas. What does that tell a potential tablet buyer?
I think this thing will be discontinued within a year. If I were a Surface owner I'd be hoping for an Android or Linux port right about now. Can you root a Surface??? I guess I'm lucky I don't need to worry about that one.
Microsoft has never made a case for why people would want to buy a Surface RT. What does it have going for it that makes it stand out against the competition? Lets take a look:
iPad - The brand name that made tablets mainstream, and that's a big help when selling a product. Also works well and has a ton of apps.
Android (Fire, Samsung, Nexus, etc) - The most popular ones seem to all have price going for them: they're the best game in town if you want a $250 or less tablet. Lots of people fit into that category. Has lots of apps.
Surface Pro - It runs x86 Windows apps. The market that really wants that in a tablet is niche, but still.
Surface RT - Not cheap, not blowing anybody away in hardware specs, not boasting any interesting unique apps. Aside from really wanting a Metro tablet, what's the point? (And no, the average joe doesn't really want a Metro or Windows tablet.)
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
It's not that people hate Microsoft. It's that Microsoft acts as if it hates it's customers.
There's a certain weakness this exposes in Microsoft's products: the fact that people stay with them because they have legacy programs they can't let go of. Microsoft products don't sell themselves. The programs people want to run on them do.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
I love it how you guys linkback to your own articles when there have been so many similar submissions, and even more interesting that just disappeared
No, I hate microsoft! Gates and company bullied and lied and pushed people out of business for their own self-interest. Now he wants to give away the billions he stole to charity. How about giving it back to the people you forced out of business! Modern day Robber Barons with no morals! So, yes we do hate Gates and his legacy! Hopefully, this is just another nail in their coffin! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist) Robber barons is a derogatory term applied to wealthy and powerful 19th-century American businessmen. By the late 1800s, the term was typically applied to businessmen who used what were considered to be exploitative practices to amass their wealth. These practices included exerting control over national resources, accruing high levels of government influence, paying extremely low wages, squashing competition by acquiring competitors in order to create monopolies and eventually raise prices, and schemes to sell stock at inflated prices to unsuspecting investors in a manner which would eventually destroy the company for which the stock was issued and impoverish investors. The term combines the sense of criminal ("robber") and illegitimate aristocracy (a baron is an illegitimate role in a republic).[1]
Locking "Metro" apps to their store was their biggest mistake. You'd think that after Ballmer's "Developers, developers, developers" chant, that they would have known that ahead of time! Imposing artificial barriers like this would have killed them in the early 90's.
Apple gets away with calling that sort of nonsense "good for consumers", sure, but they're a special case.
Required reading for internet skeptics
...very funny ballmer !!! must have been hard pressure to announce that right AFTER companies in EU have been warned not to save any data into the cloud.
It's not that hard to write low level emulation for this is it? Come on!
Running programs designed for a 3GHz quad-core x86 on a 1.3GHz ARM? That'll work.
Yes, I'm sure it can be done, but probably not in a form most people would want to use. If your program is idle 99% of the time and spends most of the other 1% inside the OS it's probably OK, but anything at all CPU-intensive (e.g. software video players) is probably toast.
I'n my opinion it was these things in this order:
1. Locked down OS. Windows is fairly open. RT was a locked down mess. If you wanted Android then make Android. Not Windows Locked-out edition with all the stuff we liked from past Windows blocked.
2. The Windows 8 look. Again if you would have called it Window Mobile edition people would have been more willing to try it as a, well mobile platform. But instead you made a carbon copy of the Windows 8 interface that everyone hates and marketed it as such.
3. Requirements/Price - Because of the hardware requirements and the 'Microsoft Tax' it pushed the price of these devices into the iPad with produced a...
4. Lack of good software - Its new, you practically had to buy a new version Visual Studio to build for it and you had to go through a certification nightmare to get your app on the store. BTW: Where the heck is a good version of Office or the game I can play on other tablets? Why is the #1-5 most downloaded app a replace for the Start Button.
ARM architecture needs a slim, functional Windows. This wasn't it.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
While there is no end to the problems that could list this product fail. One of the key parts I feel is killing Windows RT is the fact that you must use their Apps store to get new software unlike x86 version of Windows where you can go get it from any website.While it could be argued that it helps avoid viruses and security issues for the users and give a better experience using the device it was most likely their need to control the apps and be more like Apple to get more revenue.
If the system was open with tools to program and add software, that might have made it easier for people to port software over that was open sourced.
I don't know what is available in the Windows store for RT devices since I do not own a Windows 8/RT computer but I doubt they have Blender 3D or The Gimp or Libre Office available for Surface RT and I doubt people would be willing to pay a fee (I'm assuming there is a cost to get you're app in the Windows Store) to port it over free.
Had it been easier to port software over like it currently is for Windows using x86 processors, that would have made the tablet a lot more attractive.
That was a big part of it. Not letting RT join domains killed the enterprise sales. For the price of RT pro that can do that you could just get an ipad.
"From the outset, Surface RT had an issue with the potential to mightily trip up Microsoft: While Windows RT looks exactly like Windows 8, it can't run legacy Windows programs built for x86 processors, limiting users to what they can download from the built-in Windows Store app hub." I'm thinking of the PC, Jr.
The Surface RT hardware is pretty nice. I'm an iPad user, but playing around with the Surface RT in a Microsoft store impressed me. The kickstand is neat, and the keyboard covers work really well (especially the one with actual travel). The problem was software.
People point out Metro as an issue, but that's not quite it; Metro is a travesty on the desktop (or laptop), true, but on a mobile touch platform it's very appropriate. The problem was lack of familiarity, lack of compatibility, and lack of marketing.
For the first issue, what I mean to say is that Surface RT has a full desktop interface, but restricts it severely. Metro is much better suited to a tablet, but people are used to the desktop interface, and Surface RT can still make a decent laptop (plug a mouse in and use the keyboard cover). Had the desktop been unrestricted on RT (no side-loading restrictions, same as regular Windows), then people could have transitioned more gradually, at their own pace, or even stuck to the desktop entirely if they wanted. This would have let people use the RT as a tablet when they wanted to, or as a laptop when they wanted to.
For the second issue, lack of compatibility, there is basically none. This ties in a bit to the third point, but the thing looks identical to normal Win8, so people expect it to run the same stuff. It doesn't. As has been pointed out, the architectural differences would not have prevented .NET apps from running at full speed on the RT (Microsoft just doesn't support it), and emulation of x86 code would have worked well for many apps, since any call to an OS function via Win32 would have resulted in native code execution anyhow. Depending on the application, that means that large parts of an x86 application would be running natively anyhow.
The third issue is lack of marketing. Microsoft did a terrible job educating people about what RT is (and how it differs from regular Windows), or why they would want it instead of an ultrabook or chromebook or other tablet. Users who did buy the RT were likely confused about why it wouldn't run their programs.
I think that a combination of an unrestricted desktop, compatibility with existing apps (via a native .NET environment and emulation), and better marketing could have made the Surface RT a success. Not necessarily a market leader, but at least it would have sold enough units to be considered successful. I know that I was personally tempted to get one to replace both my tablet and laptop until I realized how all the stuff that interested me would be disabled...
All this shows is that Microsoft cannot compete in the marketplace without a previous monopoly in place.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Except most apps these days don't need a 3GHz quad core. That's why the PC market is in the crapper. Most people are hard pressed to overwhelm a 5 year old trailing edge PC. The bloat of a new OS like Win8 is far more likely to cause problem than the apps.
The real problem is that ARM doesn't stack up to x86 even on a 1:1 basis in terms of clock speed. An Atom is going to smack around an ARM when it comes time to do actual computation.
It's like emulating current desktop app on a PC from the 90s.
It would probably work just as well as the early java version of Corel Office from back in the 90s.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
...HP Touchpad was a disaster at the end.
.... I don't know, it may work.. Do you remember that with the xbox 1 MS used to loose money at first?
But there was a moment when they slashed the price to $99 (16GB model) when the tablet got complete sold out and it became for a moment the best selling tablet after the ipad. The best selling tablet in quantity, not in profit.
I think that If HP would took that moment to create a successor for the WebOS tablet it will possible turned the history we know up-side down. But HP preferred to discontinued WebOS.
But Maybe Microsoft can do the same strategy, slash the prices of the "Surface RT" but do not discontinue it, release Win 8.1 for RT like it is on the plan and possible get more acceptance on the tablet market.
Microsoft could change their name to "MyopicSoft" and it would fit better. They sincerely believe that they are a popular company and that people cannot wait to get their hands on Microsoft products. Too many yes men. Too many marketing people drawing the wrong conclusions from their numbers. So they produced a high-priced product that was, frankly, pretty bland. And they tried to market this bland product as the greatest tablet ever, to a yawning generation that knows when they're being lied to. What a waste of time and energy.
Proverbs 21:19
Don't tell me... you were one of the original developers of QDOS?
Trolling is a art,
1. No Instagram client. True, this means nothing to the Slashdot crowd, but even a 41 megapixel camera is worthless if you can't share them. I don't think that this alone would cause WinRT/WP8 to remain on the shelf, but if $499 tablet X has instagram, $499 tablet Y has instagram, and $499 Surface doesn't have instagram, it's going to help narrow down the purchasing decisions pretty quick to anyone who uses the service regularly.
2. Too many migrations at once. Amongst the things that helped jump-start the iPhone back in 2007 was the fact that it integrated nicely with the iTunes library that people already had. Android integrated nicely with the gmail and picasa accounts people already had, and Google went to great lengths to simplify extending those services. Microsoft had hackneyed support for gmail (outlook.com is natively required), no official dropbox support (skydrive is natively supported), no support for iTunes (Xbox Music is natively supported), no drag-and-drop file system support; there's a fancy desktop client for it..but it doesn't work under Windows RT. Going the Microsoft route requires LOTS of changes for many people.
3. The devices that require less migration of stuff frequently cost the same or less.
4. Friends and family had iPads or Android tablets already. Easy ways to learn about new apps and figure out how to do some things are explained socially. If you're getting a WinRT device, you're standing alone. At some level, tablets are fashion accessories for many. This doesn't work when you're the only one with a tablet branded with a name reminiscent of your ridiculously locked down work PC or your slow, spyware infested home PC.
5. Little incentive for devs to help change any of this.
it still leaves you with less RAM on tablets which is the real limitation of the apps now
It's a mistake to think that the RT was the real product.
Reasons to have the RT:
1. As a reminder to Intel that MS controls the ecosystem
2. To remind hardware manufacturers who is boss.
3. As a way to blunt the rise of tablets from Apple and Android by introducing confusion.
4. As a potential future growth path - an option.
Reasons not to have RT:
1. Anything that takes sales away from Windows on PCs is bad. That's where the money is.
2. Anything that drives down the cost of hardware is bad; when the Window tax is a large percentage of the cost of a machine, it looks like Windows is too expensive. The strategic reasons would have been related to a focus on users.
None of these point mention the end-users, and they don't buy stategies. A viable tablet from MS would have been better than Apple's, with as much software, cheaper without looking cheap, faster, with better battery life.
Honestly, I don't think either of those issues had an impact on sales... The RT tablets should have been priced somewhere between the iPad, and Android tablets... if they were around $250-300 they would have sold fine (relatively speaking). As it is, they were priced against more capable, and powerful, low end laptops. They were dramatically more expensive than most competing tablets. They were doomed from the start on pricing alone.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Interesting how that same tactic worked for Jobs but makes Gates seem like a bull in a china shop.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
There's likely nothing that Microsoft could have done about this—every platform has to start somewhere
What about interoperability? MS bet it had a chance to create its own walled garden from scratch, but had it tried to apply the "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy (like providing an Android runtime or whatever) the outcome probably wouldn't be such an utter failure (although I guess it would fail nevertheless).
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
Steve Ballmer is not a good business man.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
should had side loading / desktop ui open for apps.
The desktop ui is there for office and you jailbreak it you can run apps on the desktop if they are ARM apps.
MS needed not try the app store lock in idea.
iPad uses an os that can not run any of the applications of a mac yet the iPad has been a succes since day one.
Most people don't have thousands of dollars worth of crusty old Mac software that they expect to run on an iPad.
They were dramatically more expensive than most competing tablets.
Nah, if I recall, they were on par with iPads. I think the lack of apps really did them in here, plus the price. If you had $500 burning a hole in your pocket and you were itching to try a tablet last year would you dip your toe in the water by buying an already established platform with tons of apps, acceptence, and user experience, or a brand new one with not so much of that, for about the same price? Microsoft should have been selling those things for a song from the get-go. Surface is a good interface but not so scary great that its going to whisk those tablets out the door.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
..and apple doesnt do it on OS/X while Microsoft was trying it on all Windows 8's of any flavor....
It truly does boggle the mind what Microsoft was thinking, and this is coming from someone that doesnt hate Microsoft.
Its not the Metro Interface that is the problem. Its the restrictions associated with it. They took the strongest quality of their ecosystem and buried it out back.
Windows users dont even want a fucking integrated app store, let alone be forced to use the damn thing.
"His name was James Damore."
to the clacky sound of attaching a bluetooth keyboard to a tablet
*Begin Comic Book Guy Voice*
Technically, the Surface keyboards use connectors that attach when you click and not bluetooth at all, which is why they made clicking such a big deal in the ads.
*End Comic Book Guy Voice*
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Or did they for marketing reasons need to have anything that played in that space, even if it was ultimately a failure?
The alternate is that they honestly thought that they could come out with a mostly incompatible product with an anemic ecosystem and it would just... somehow take off. Because they're microsoft, and hey, you don't get fired for buying microsoft. This works as a marketing sell but I can't believe that they actually bought that line of thinking.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The problem is that with RT, MS made a cheap knock-off of their own product. It looked a lot like the pro to the average consumer, but cost a little less and wouldn't actually do the things that the real surface would. But since MS doesn't know how to bargain price, it was an expensive cheap knock-off.
Consumers felt just like the excited kid on his birthday anticipating his Transformers action figures he just knows he's getting, only to unwrap the present and discover his parents were confused by the 'Transmogrifiers' action figures that say 6 exciting phrases in Chinenglish.
Yeah, because Slashdot is a bastion of Apple / Steve Jobs love, right?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The market only had room for one iPad-like device with App Store lock-in. In order to upset the Apple cart (heheh) you had to be fantastically superlative in some way. That didn't happen.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Yeah, but maybe they couldn't make back their costs pricing them at $300. They were not going for $700 or whatever because MS wanted them to be perceived as high-end, but because they were expensive machines to produce.
Wacom digitizer and OneNote.
iOS has OneNote now also.
As for the digitizer - iOS doesn't have a Wacom pen but there are some pressure sensitive styluses now that a number of art programs support. Not as precise as the WaCom but close enough for a lot of people.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
last thing we need right now is more Windows
If only it had an unlocked bootloader, I would have bought one to port Debian to it if no-one else had already.
have you ever seen one?
the screen is good, the build quality is good, performance is decent.
but add up all those parts, you end up with a device that's got a serious identity crisis.
We have a pro in the office. I can't figure out what it's trying to replace. it's not quite a tablet (it's .5 inches think and has a fan).. and it's not quite a laptop - the keyboard cover (while it's a decent keyboard) is not as good as a true laptop.
MS wanted it to do too many things.. it does none of them well. even at $150 off, they're still not selling.
One major fail was selling the type covers separately for a hundred bucks. They showed the product everywhere *with* the cover, making people think it was all one product. To walk into Best Buy with a picture in your head about what you want to get, and then be told it's another $100 - that kills any forgiveness anyone might have over Surface RT's other issues.
And then they screwed themselves yet again. Announcing a $150 price cut should have also included the cover. Yet again, Microsoft keeps thinking those covers are oh so precious.
I actually think Surface RT is a decent product. I'd buy it *with* a cover for $300. No more. And so, no deal. From someone not fundamentally opposed to the product.
So what's left for Microsoft?. The RT was their feet in the ARM water, but they barely got wet. So all they have left is the Desktop market that keeps declining. Future wise, their core business model has bombed, leaving Microsoft in a river with no paddle. I guess stockholders can relax, seeing that nobody is betting on Microsoft's future; judging from their stock. If they were betting on Microsoft's future, their stock would be pretty grim by now.
Take a step back for a moment, when in the last several years has there been any good news about Microsoft?. Exactly, so what is holding their stock value up?. The news gets worse everyday, to the point where there is a big restructuring going on and everything from Microsoft is going Subscription based. The general idea here is a Company wouldn't do this unless they see a future in which they're strapped for cash. Subscription models lock customers in and keep the money flowing.
I'm willing to bet very soon we will see a version of Windows running on the cloud. You'll have the hardware, but the software is on Azure; and you will pay for it. Over and over again. If the recent outings about MS/NSA aren't enough to make people switch, the Windows Azure won't be either. It's hard to beat an addiction, especially when it's forced upon people whom are unaware of real options or how to use those alternative options. A sad state of affairs really.
You can't break into the market against the market maker when your (perceived) price to benefit is higher. You either need to be cheaper or better or have better marketing. Preferably all of those.
That's the same thing that killed other also (never) rans, like the HP Touchpad.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Lots of old games are 16-bit apps
I liked Sonic the Hedgehog 2 too, and it was a 16-bit app. That's why when Sega rereleased the Sonic games for PC, Sega included an emulator to run them. Likewise with old DOS games on GOG: they include a DOSBox emulator.
And that's all I need. I think once you get past a certain number of apps, does it really matter any more?
Tony
If Microsoft can't compete and build a monopoly without already having a monopoly, then how did Microsoft get its first monopoly? Perhaps the answer to that question might help fans of user freedom figure out how to build a product that effectively competes with the locked-down products that currently dominate some market sectors.
The cost doesn't matter because they were trying to enter a new but very established market. Anyone with a spare $700 already has an iPad.
The only logical way to enter the market would be to buy their way in: giving away the hardware and hoping to make it up on MS App Store sales. They could have given RTs to schools full of children, sold them in phone kiosks at the mall for $50, stuffed them free in cereal boxes. Giving away a billion dollars worth of hardware is the only approach that would have made an impact.
The real crime against Microsoft's shareholders is there was already sufficient evidence that there was no room in the market for a fourth player. Look at the Nook: it's pretty much the same as a Kindle Fire HD, and it's even priced competitively. It's priced well below the iPad mini. Yet Barney Snowball is completely tanking as a result of its failure. Who at Microsoft could have believed that adding "me three" to B&N's "me too" was ever going to work?
If Microsoft wants to be a leader again, they've got to get in front of a trend, not follow it for four years then release a clone. They also have to stop swallowing their own bullshit and stop believing "ours will have the coolest software." Even if they did have the coolest software, it doesn't matter. Nobody with a wallet gives a damn. Consumers have proven they want "new", not "better".
John
The problem is that it costs too much. If they got the price down below $100, like generic Android tablets, it would be a big hit. Vast numbers of low-end tablets are pouring out of China, and some of them aren't bad. ARM tablets just aren't that expensive to make.
I am actually glad the Surface RT failed. I also wish the Windows Phone to fail, even though I own a Lumia and find it much better than similarly priced Android phones. I hate that I cannot write or run my own programs on a machine I own without paying MS 100 USD per year. That's beyond stupid.
MS has probably the best dev tools in the industry; they even give it away for free. But if you want to actually run the program you wrote using these tools, you have to pay. What's the logic in that ?!
I actually like the hardware, both RT and the Lumia. I just hate the walled garden crap. Let us write code for our own machines and you will definitely make a lot more sells.
Besides, anybody who is okay with a walled garden already owns an iPad.
All of the original poster's points were painfully visible long before Day One. Windows RT was conceived a Dodo, born a Dodo and will die a Dodo. An evolutionary mutation that never really stood a chance: over-priced, incompatible, lacking apps and burdened with a very awkward UX. Darwinism at work. Instead of wasting their efforts on a two platforms, Microsoft should have focused on their full-Windows tablets and the corporate space and trying to make the Windows 8 user interface more intuitive and usable.
Hey Ballmer; knock it down to $89 and I'll buy a couple to go along with my TouchPads.
You can keep the chair, Monkey Boy.
Technical point: Microsoft isn't run by Bill Gates anymore. This is Ballmer's fault.
and apple doesnt do it on OS/X
OS X has had a Mac App Store for a while, and 10.8 added Gatekeeper with a default configuration not to run anything that hasn't been digitally signed with a code signing certificate purchased from Apple's CA.
It's like emulating current desktop app on a PC from the 90s.
This is true for applications that are CPU bound. But if it's network bound or user interaction bound, as is true of a lot of vertical market software, it'll run almost as fast in a JIT emulator as it does on an Atom. That would at least tide users over until the application can be recompiled for ARM, just as it did for Apple's transitions from 68K to PowerPC to x86. But no, Microsoft had to lock out the desktop APIs to keep even a recompile from working.
Imposing artificial barriers like this would have killed them in the early 90's.
But "publishers, publishers, publishers" worked for Microsoft throughout the 2000s with the original Xbox and Xbox 360. Microsoft lost some money on the first Xbox, but it managed to tie for second in both generations.
Microsoft's last big consumer-facing moneymaker is Office. But Office n is suffering from a huge competitor, and that is Office n-1. Nobody who owns Office 2010 would spend extra to get Office 2014, because there isn't a single feature they need to make it better than it is. They truly have released a very good product. And now they can't sell upgraded versions anymore, because they've run out of improvements that could possibly make a difference.
Except one. Computer management. Consumers are truly tired of the hassles of backing up disks, losing files, can't share because I left it at home, viruses, or buying a new computer because the old one's full. In the minds of homeowners and small business owners, computers suck.
Microsoft's answer is they've gone all-in on Office365. Office365 lets you rent the software and storage in the cloud, and get at it everywhere. The hassles of actually owning the software are theoretically gone.
And Microsoft? They are now the proud owners of a giant, giant cloud, and all the business they hope it will bring. And this is about the smartest bet they could make, because they really are out of options. Not only does this give them a continual stream of money, but if they lose the desktop to Apple and tablets, they can still be everyone's Office provider, even if they're on an iPad or Android phone.
John
No, I hate microsoft! Gates and company bullied and lied and pushed people out of business for their own self-interest.
I'm not saying you're wrong, not at all, but name a business who didn't do that, ever, when it could.
The reason is the same reason a dog licks its balls: because it can. Period.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I think the tablets themselves were the same price; however, MS was pushing consumers to buy the keyboards as well which made them more expensive. Even it were the same price as iPad/Android with the accessories, Surface RT didn't have any real advantage. Sure the UI was different but I can't name one feature that would make a consumer choose it over existing tablets. This was the same issue as Zune and apparently MS didn't learn the lesson back then.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The iPhone UI was beautiful, responsive, clear, consistent, and usable.
Metro is none of those things.
It has nothing to do with whether it was "Bill Gates" or "Steve Jobs"; one project was done well, and the other was done badly. Of course, when you think about it, Steve Jobs had a solid design sense and stuck to it. The Microsoft team (not sure exactly who) have absolutely no concept of what a user interface needs to accomplish, and no managers are willing to tell them that their UI designs suck.
And Microsoft? They are now the proud owners of a giant, giant cloud, and all the business they hope it will bring. And this is about the smartest bet they could make, because they really are out of options.
That would have been true if we hadn't discovered that 'The Cloud' has an open back door for the NSA.
The saddest instance, for me, is what MS did to Be. Be had deals in place with Dell and other vendors to sell computers preconfigured with BeOS. At the time, BeOS was a far-superior OS to Windows. MS didn't like that and added a 100%-illegal exclusivity clause to their contract...either sell all Windows machines or sell no Windows machines. They eventually got a wrist-slap fine, but it came way too late for Be which ran out of money and was forced to sell.
For this alone, I will never buy, support or in any way further a Microsoft product.
Drop some Android on it, and see if it'll fly then.
The other thing MS could have done is work out with all the important developers such that their apps were available for the surface on day 1. It was amusing for us iPad/Android tablet users when a co-worker of ours came in all smiles a few months after purchasing his Surface. When asked why he was so happy, the response was, "They just released Pandora for Surface."
There are a ton of apps, but MS has the resources to have lined them up ahead of the launch.
Or, possibly, add a compatibility layer (ala Wine) that would allow Android apps to install on a Surface.
THAT was MS's killer app. Your old legacy windows programs on the tablet. Don't tell me they can't put a version of windows on an inexpensive tablet. Some linux gurus got windows XP to run on an android phone. With some optimization there is no reason windows 8 couldn't have run on that platform. Or baring that... scrap the arm processor entirely and try out one of the new ultra efficient x86 processors.
MS keeps failing to grasp this... their primary draw is STANDARDS. Why do we not switch to apple or linux? Because we're use to windows. Because we have a lot of programs that only really work on windows. Because we interact all the time with other people in the same situation and being different would either be inconvenient or expensive.
Think about it like this, at one time there was no standard for gasoline. They were all different octanes and frequently had different chemicals in them which were billed as "features" by their producers. Well... those "features" make engine performance unreliable. You'd fill up your gas tank one day and it would run fine. You'd fill up the next and you'd have no idea what would happen when you put your foot down.
Then Standard Oil came along and gobbled up all their rivals ruthlessly and replaced everything with STANDARD fuel blends. Consistency.
Engine designers built their engines around the assumption that consumers would pour one of the standard fuels into their cars... and nothing else.
It became easier to design the engines knowing that they didn't have to be that tolerant to weird fuel blends. And the consumer got the confidence that if they followed some pretty basic rules they'd get reliable service out of their engine.
This is largely the secret to Microsoft's success. Standards. A lot of it is chicken and egg stuff. You become big, you make the rules, everyone uses those rules. But even microsoft's rise to power was about standards. There was once many operating systems. Many many many operating systems. Practically every computer manufactuer was pitching their own operating system.
The rise of google OS and Mac OS and I OS and linux frankly speaks to Microsoft's stupidity.
Google offers a reliable super cheap very efficient OS. The licensing appears to be about zero.
Mac OS offers a very pretty but reliable experience. iOS is the same thing on the phone/tablet.
And linux is sort of whatever you want it to be... which is both fantastic and daunting to many.
MS needs to grasp what their place is in the software ecosystem and fill it before they're eaten alive by rivals or "time".
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Wouldn't it have made sense to just develop Windows RT as an internal product? In the event that x86 market is no longer profitable and ARM takes off, they've got something ready to go, and all the time be figuring a way to emulate existing x86 apps so people can continue to use everything they know transparently until people have had time to make a full (workforce/home) transition.
At the present time they can continue to market their "Surface PRO" as the x86 tablet with compatibility for everything, and you're never stuck with a $900 million dollar write off in unsold hardware that people don't want.
iOS's UI and metro are two peas in the same pod. One uses icons, the other uses tiles. There's more power in the metro interface, but it's all tucked away and you need to be trained to find, but that's not an issue for some. On iOS, it's not there to find, but at least it makes for a very simple interface - More limited, but simpler, which for some is better. However, at least on non-iOS systems you can do obvious things like, plug it in to a computer and copy an mp3 to it just using OS tools. iOS requires iTunes for this most basic function. iTunes is a terrible piece of software, and the crap it drags on to your system with it and hijacks your media settings by default (bonjour service, quicktime, airplay service) makes it completely unacceptable as a medium just to copy your music to your device. The iTunes requirement make iOS less simple than Android or Win8.
That would have been true if we hadn't discovered that 'The Cloud' has an open back door for the NSA.
I was just watching my FutureVision screen, and saw the world busily yawning at last week's news about the NSA, and wishing Congressman Mr. Paranoid Nutjob would shut up about it already. Oh, look, the Royal Baby and Jennifer Aniston are on America's Dancing with the Next Talented Idol!
The average consumer simply won't care if the NSA is reading their kid's Word documents for school, just as long as they don't have to back up their damn computer anymore.
John
To be fair, sideloading (for "Metro") is present and free, though it's a little better hidden than on Android. The earlier versions of that "Jailbreak" you refer to required it, in fact.
Powershell command: Show-WindowsDeveloperLicenseRegistration
(yes, it supports Tab-completion.)
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
If you were walking down a street with him and found $10 on the sidewalk, Gates is the kind of person who would say, "Let me track down the rightful owner of this" and then pocket the money.
well, assuming this happened in the US, and speaking statistically, he's most likely to be the rightful owner
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
Surface RT has 2GB of RAM. Any app that would run in x86 emulation won't have a clue what to do with that much RAM.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
That is, if it can run Linux or Android.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
You can't be priced as high as a "high end market leader" unless you are better... Like MS Windows maintains dominance by "all the applications" that run on it... RT doesn't have that advantage. Beyond that, most windows apps run like crap in a tablet form... the number of apps for windows tablets is dwarfed by iOS and Android at this point... they needed to be at a price point below Android tablets with similar hardware to enter that market. At the reduced price point, the Surface RT is *now* matched up against the Nexus 10. That doesn't even account for the number of 7" tablets around the $200 price point that seem to be the biggest sellers for the past year.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
The new pricing puts them level with some 10" Android tablets... for roughly equivalent hardware would you choose Android, which already has *** apps, or a windows OS with only a handful of apps you might want to use? The issue is, they need to be priced below Android devices with similar hardware, or really improve marketing... As it stands, it's similar hardware that after price cuts is *now* at similar pricing, and still at a software disadvantage.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Is Metro a bad interface? I haven't used it but the idea seemed pretty ok to me. I dunno, just my impression.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
What they should have done is license Mono and change the default display DLLs to make existing .NET apps more tablet-friendly and able to run on ARM devices. Making yet another brand-new library that they can quickly ignore (CE, Win Phone 7, Silverlight, Zune) was a really dumb move.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
The iPhone UI was the top of the game at one time. It's kinda stale now.
Metro, on the other hand, was broken from day one.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Given a choice, ios or Android are far better. Probably hard boiled pig shit would be better than another dose of WinCE5.
WinRT should never have been born.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
What is holding Microsoft's stock up?
I am assuming: NSA subcontracting.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I would also note that the Surface had a 1366x768 display and the iPad that came out six months earlier was 2048x1536. You don't have to be a hardware enthusiast to notice a difference between them.
At the time the Surface went on sale, remember:
1. The nifty keyboards cost $100 or $150 extra, putting it on par with the iPad 3.
2. The iPad 3 had 2048x1536 display resolution, the Surface had 1366x768. You can easily see the difference, you don't have to be an Apple fan.
3. The iPad 2 was still on sale, at a significant discount, so it undercut the Surface on price but had a huge application market.
4. The Windows App Store for Surface had nothing compelling.
An integrated app store makes a lot of sense - as long as it's well done and optional.
I have Windows 8 on my home PC. I wanted to set up two accounts, one for my kids which included a few Windows 8 games from the App store, and one for me to get things done. I couldn't figure out how to buy games for my account and give them access on their account. I could do that in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, but not the actual release version. So I had to create a new email account, associate a credit card with that account, give that email account a login on my Windows 8 machine, buy the applications, and then remove the credit card (so my youngest could not accidentally buy anything else).
Naturally I am not recommending Windows 8 to other parents for its ease-of-use. I am still astonished my use-case was not covered by the software. Or if it was covered, it wasn't in any of the documentation I could find.
I'll admit, I haven't ever been a Microsoft fanboy. But I respected their attempt to re-invent themselves with Windows 8. I really did. But it came out half-baked.
Microsoft isn't run by Bill Gates anymore.
You don't know that.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
After being mortally wounded by Microsoft, Be drove the last nail into their own coffin themselves: they failed to open source the code base, thus guaranteeing that whatever is/was good about it is now permanently relegated to some deep sedimentary layer of the internet instead of being vibrant and influential as some claim it should be.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Bill Gates is a particularly cynical recidivist scofflaw and Microsoft's DNA has that embedded in it.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Microsoft's last big consumer-facing moneymaker is Office.
Almost correct. Microsoft also makes major money with "Server and Tools", primarily by employing nominally illegal means of technological tying.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
there only good tablet is the pro line thats x86. but the pricing is still way to high.
true but the big expensive ipads where started to get dominated by the cheaper android tablets. hence the ipad mini at around the same price point as a decent android tablet.
WinRT should never have been born.
What is nice about Windows RT compared to iOS and Android is that it is effectively a full Windows 8. You could leave the Metro world when you had a keyboard and mouse, and effectively start using a laptop.
A huge problem was that Microsoft locked down Surface RT's desktop mode such that only they could make desktop RT programs. You could get to the Windows desktop, but all you could do there is copy files and run Office. Had Microsoft allows making desktop RT apps, some commercial developers would have started porting their apps to RT. In most regards, porting to Windows RT desktop mode is just a recompile with a different CPU setting.
There is a jailbreak for Windows RT, and some open-source desktop applications have been ported to it. However, the fact that it's only unlockable with a jailbreak has meant that no commercial developers have ported their software to the RT desktop mode.
Rather than back down from their mistake, they're actually doubling down: Windows 8.1 not just fixes the jailbreak, but has a bunch of kernel architectural changes just to prevent the type of attack used to jailbreak RT 8.0. If you have a desktop machine running x86/x64 Windows 8.1 Preview, try attaching a debugger to lsass.exe. lsass.exe, csrss.exe, and smss.exe are now "Protected Processes" in 8.1. Protected Processes up until 8.1 have only been DRM-related processes, such as audiodg.exe. And yet, Microsoft went to the trouble to make those system processes Protected just because of the Windows RT jailbreak's existence.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
But look at history before the iPhone as well. All the bad things said about Microsoft can apply to Apple too. Apple was even more controlling since it controlled hardware and locked it down tight, and Microsoft only dreamed about being able to control the PC to that extent. But as an underdog Apple was given a lot more leeway. They even have fans who will explain to unbelievers that choice is bad.
1. It's Microsoft and Windows. The reputation of both are quite strong.
2. It was late to the game which offers the advantage of being able to see what people like without all that needless research.
3. The price was right and it became "righter" as they lowered it to make it more attractive.
4. It could integrate seamlessly with everything people were already doing.
Full disclosure: I've never seen, let alone touched or used a Windows RT tablet. I didn't want to because of #1 and didn't believe Microsoft would avail itself of #2. The price is never right if you don't want it...at all. And since I don't like Microsoft all that much, integration with non-Microsoft things isn't all the likely to happen.
And the marketplace seems to agree with me on all points.
Microsoft? Are you reading this? Hope so. I used to be a huge fan. Windows 95 was awesome. Windows 98 was just improvements over 95 which was awesome too. But you lost me when you started playing some pretty heavy-handed games and made your OSes too heavy and started obsoleting perfectly good hardware. Then you got worse and worse. You kept taking from OSS and calling it "new." I remember when AD was being talked about. It's LDAP but it's not LDAP. Embrace and extent. Your crap with the web simply angered anyone who knew what you were doing while you [intentionally] fooled the majority into thinking that no one else could do it right. You took from the world and gave back nothing good at all. It took a really long time but business and consumers did eventually catch on with what you were doing. ("Why is my XP so damned slow?! All I did was re-install and run updates?")
And while the RT was a failure before the Snowden leaks, most of us knew you were giving it all up to governments around the world. Only the uninformed felt safe using your products. And now? Everyone knows. As alternatives present themselves, people are increasingly interested in them. People didn't want Linux, but they're REALLY interested in Android. This is proof positive that you COULD HAVE created a Linux based product of your own a very long time ago. Why didn't you? "Developers developers developers?" Really? How's that working out for you now? Kinda slowing down isn't it. If it doesn't work for or support iPad and/or Android, people are less interested.
Microsoft, your hubris has cost you the game. A company doesn't have to "age." But its leaders certainly do. Balmer, you should have retired on a high-note. I'm not sure you were ever young and inventive to begin with. You will die a slow and painful death, but it would seem the decreasing trust in you by consumers, business and government will speed up the process.
And seriously? (And this is directed at Google too) You have to "ask permission" to tell people the truth? Snowden will get the Nobel peace prize for his courage. The world will support you if you tell the truth about what you have been doing with government. Why are you afraid? If you and everyone else stand up, not only will we regain some respect, we might even start to love you again. Get your heads out of government asses.
PC applications usually don't need that power. They need it mostly because there's so much bloat now. Processors ten times more powerful than what we used to have, and yet the applications still feel sluggish. Most people just want to email, browse the web, write some docs, churn some numbers, crop some photos, etc. You can do that on a 1.3Ghz ARM easily.
My take was that they were trying to pull an Apple--they invited only a select few people to a splashy launch event in the hope they'd get some advance buzz, but then they forget that Apple product-launch events also generally include prices, ship dates, and the chance to do a hands-on inspection of the product. That did not go over well.
(FWIW, they didn't send me a review unit either, but I was hardly alone in being shut out. I wound up buying one at a Microsoft Store to write my review, then returning it two weeks later.)
MS may make more money out of Office for iOS than it would on its tablets.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Microsoft needs to learn that they need to give people SOME reason to buy a particular product rather than another one from them or competition.
I think this presents an exciting opportunity for MS.
What they need to do is create a competition where entrants have to propose the best idea for what could be done with all these unsold devices. The catch is thought that your idea must use all the devices.
That way they can get a lot of publicity and also get rid of all that stock in one go.
So ideas could be for instance:
- laying them all down in a big grid to make the worlds largest disco floor, then breaking the record for largest number of hipsters dancing on it in one go.
- Getting them all to run a SETI program
- Developing a plot for a movie that involves saving the world from an invading army of highly efficient worker class aliens by clicking the keyboard onto millions of Surfaces at exactly the same time.
- I'm sure you can come up with better ones...
Ryans Tutorials - A collection of technology tutorials.
The iPad Mini was cheaper than the Surface and has a smaller physical screen. The full size iPad 3 and Microsoft Surface are both about 10 inch screens, and the iPad 3 has nearly twice the pixel density. There is a visible difference.
No, Windows 8 is not new. It's a touch oriented GUI on top of a boring old OS. It's not even better than the OS it is intended to replace.
New would be something completely different, like an implant or holographic projector, or a redefining of the cell phone, like cigar-sized device that uncurls into a full screen phone, and unscrolls even further into a mini iPad sized device.
John
Thus the qualification with the words "consumer-facing".
John
3D TVs must have done great when they were new.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Microsoft has offered pen/touch/tablet features in Windows since 1991, when Windows for Pen Computing 1.0 was released as an add-on to Win3.1x. Between WfPC, XP "Tablet PC Edition," and gradually including the features outright in the OS, it really seems like they've had "a few rounds" already.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
The controls are hidden, rendering it unusable without a manual, someone to tell you how to use it, a video of someone using it, or stumbling around in the dark until you find out which corner offscreen the stuff you are looking for is hidden behind. For bonus points that manual doesn't exist unless a third party has brought out an "idiots guide".
So "bad" does not convey forcefully enough what is wrong with it.
Apparently after you get used to it the total lack of visual cues doesn't matter but I haven't met anyone that has used Win8 enough to reach that point yet.
Even earlier than that was the refusal to sell out to Apple when a deal was offered. In hindsight that was a huge mistake but maybe at the time Be thought they could get something on Dells. Having Macs come out with BeOS on them five or more years before we ended up with OSX may have revived Apple earlier than what ended up happening.
It appears that they think their name counts but do not understand that it is worthless in markets that they are not already known in. For example, who would buy Microsoft beer? It's a name everyone knows but people just say "don't they make software?".
Flexible e-ink is getting us partway there, not quote rollup yet.
http://wexler-global.com/products/79/347
Odd, that's exactly how I feel about MacOS. I accidentally hit the wrong f button and the screen zooms, or goes to an alternate desktop, or other such "useful" nonsense. It then takes me a while to figure out how to get back, and by then my train of thought is thoroughly derailed. I'm sticking with windows, thank you very much. I'm quite productive with it.
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
The Surface RT is identical hardware to the Asus Transformer Prime. It's speculated that WinRT was developed on the Prime. When Surface RT released the Transformer Infinity was already out six months and had a 1920 x 1200 display. Not quite the iPad level, but you also don't need to be a hardware enthusiast to notice that difference either.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
their stock would be pretty grim by now.
Off 12% today, the biggest hit since the government announce the antitrust suit. People are starting to realize that Microsoft has lost control of the platform in the transition to mobile. Their products can be locked out. From there the conclusion is obvious.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Really? I worked out Metro in less than a minute by myself. And I thought it was typographically elegant, and a genuine improvement over the previous XBox interface.
Oh, you were referring to Windows 8? Never mind.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
If they throw in a keyboard cover at that price, I'll pick one up. Maybe. It's smaller than a Macbook Air and a third the price, and I guess I do occasionally need to type something on the go.
The average consumer won't -- but businesses, where Office makes its money will. Already our management here have decreed we will NOT be using any third party cloud ever for daily office work.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
All right then - "the interface formerly known as metro", but we're all calling it metro instead of squiggly symbol or whatever the new name is.
Right. My wife has an Asus Transformer Prime and I have a Barnes & Noble Nook HD Plus. Both have 10 inch screens, hers has 1280x800 pixels, mine has 1920x1080. The difference is pretty easy to notice, especially when you have a website that doesn't use oversize fonts.
Microsoft screwed the pooch on this and we all knew it from the day it was announced. They come to the tablet party with their own proprietary OS and app store 2 years AFTER the two dominant players in this arena have already obliterated all their competition. Strike 1.
And hey, let's call it Windows RT and make it look like it's running the PC version of Windows and is fully compatible so we can trick people into buying it and hope they're not so thoroughly disgusted by the ruse that they return it. Yeah, well that strategy surely had no flaws. Strike 2.
The third nail in the coffin: price. Let's charge a premium price for a deceptive device that has a fraction of the usability of competing tablets. Aaaand strike 3, you're OUT!
Honestly, a better way to go would have been to make these Android tablets with a Windows 8 launcher/shell. So you get the benefits of promoting your brand, the interface of your new PC OS, and some genuinely innovative hardware features, but without actually deceiving people and delivering an overpriced tablet that has no ecosystem to support it.
But since when in recent memory has Microsoft ever done the smart thing? They just keep proving over and over again in the last 5 years they are COMPLETELY CLUELESS. So none of this should come as a shock to anyone.
Huh? "If Microsoft wants to be a leader again"? The one thing Mr Softee has never done is lead. Sorry... err... the two things Mr. Softee has never done are lead and innovate. Rather... sorry again... the three things Mr. Softee has never done are lead, innovate, and care about customers. Ummm... well... the four things Mr Softee never will do are lead, innovate, care about customers, and have a real vision of what they are trying to accomplish that is viable and valuable. Simply said - Microsoft, under Gates, was superb at linking one crummy (but dominant) OS to everything in the world, and watching their so-called partners to find big markets where they could embrace, extend, and extinguish. Microsoft under Ballmer? Still can't create a product people like, can't engineer their way out of a wet paper bag, and is just as obnoxious about trying to control the markets through secondary means (proxy orgs complaining about competition (esp,. Google), manipulating "standards", generally being a bad player). I've lived in the Seattle area (hell, even Redmond) for the better part of 30 years, and one of the proudest things I've done is to NEVER work for this crap company.
Ballmer is Gates' fault
Good grief; "seemed" is hardly an opinion. Back off, dolt.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
out there. Someone port Linux to it to replace the Windows RT OS with a Linux one designed for touch screens. Since it is ARM based I am sure Android can be ported to it as well. It is a much better solution that to just have Microsoft fill up a landfill with them because they won't sell.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Microsoft is in a position where it's core market is about to be superseded by mobile technology. They thought that they could do something like they did with Internet Explorer and just make their main competition part of the operating system, while making Windows 8 all touch, so that what you use in the office is what you use on the phone, and tablet. This approach has not worked for them so far to move into this already established market. People seem more willing to learn new interfaces than they were a few years ago, and the interfaces are just better and more intuitive and reliable, so the fear factor and desire to keep to the familiar is working against them rather than for them. They need to give these things away to businesses, with designed integration with business software and processes, so that the Surface can become the device that businesses just assume they need for mobile applications. Either that, or Microsoft will become a server operating system company.
Right, good point. But Interesting to note that Microsoft isn't just failing in its consumer facing efforts.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.