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Why Is Microsoft Setting More Money On Fire With Surface 2?
Nerval's Lobster writes "Never mind that sales of the original Surface totaled a pitiful $853 million in its first few months of release, or that the tablet failed to make Microsoft an up-and-coming player (or any kind of player, really) in the mobile-device wars: Microsoft's now rolling out Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2, which feature upgraded specs and accessories but no radical adjustments to the first generation. Why would Microsoft pour good money after bad? The answer could be outgoing Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who late last year released a memo suggesting that Microsoft was evolving into a 'devices and services' company. 'There will be times when we build specific devices for specific purposes, as we have chosen to do with Xbox and the recently announced Microsoft Surface,' he wrote. 'In all our work with partners and on our own devices, we will focus relentlessly on delivering delightful, seamless experiences across hardware, software and services.' That meant Surface (then on the cusp of release) was clearly a harbinger of the company's future direction — and canceling the project after the first generation would have been a stinging refutation of Ballmer's strategy. By spending the money and resources on a second device generation, Microsoft manages to save a little bit of face, albeit at considerable cost. But imagine the hilarity that'll ensue if this second generation goes down in a huge ball of flames like the first."
beat, beat, beat that dead horse!
they're the standard setters! Everyone else will fall in line.
Find a chair to throw!
The XBOX 1 lost 4 billion dollars. It's now a solid market that Microsoft dominates. Why would they not use that same strategy here?
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
If you don't consider yourself to be in the software business, don't be surprised if your software sucks. Since the only thing that really differentiates devices these days is the software inside of them, I'd say it's a pretty poor business decision.
You see small businesses make this mistake all the time: "If we only double down, and do what is NOT working HARDER..."
Then, they go under. If M$ does not shed the Ballmer curse soon, Apple will BUY them.
What other choice does Microsoft have? It can't get back in the game if it gives up trying.
Yesterday when the announcement was made [ http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/13/09/23/197258/microsoft-takes-another-stab-at-tablets-unveils-surface-2-surface-2-pro ] several responders here identified reasons why they'd go once more into the breech of a sinking ship. Which mostly boiled down to: because you don't learn anything the second time the mule kicks you.
Also, let's think about Ballmer for a moment -- he was at or near the helm when Microsoft was not a devices company, a move he has publicly kicked himself over because MSFT missed an opportunity. He won't let that happen again, even though that ship he's trying to hop has already pulled from the dock and in his first leap he landed in the drink.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Historically, Microsoft has only succeeded with version 3 of ANYTHING. All of their biggest failures are V1 or V2.
They really need to kill the Surface and properly market the Surface Pro. They completely failed to aware the public last round what the Pro was and that it was actually good.
Because they can
I'm seriously considering buying one, now that it has 8GB of RAM and up to 512GB HD. That means I can virtualize. My only sticking points are a lack of LTE and Thunderbolt. Oh, and the battery life is way better.
I'm waiting on the new Acer Iconia, if it ever comes, and the Dell XPS 11. If they're no better, I'll get the Surface 2.
I agree about the ARM version. And I know how great it is to bash Microsoft in absolutely every thread their name appears..
However, the Surface Pro 2 looks very attractive. I am buying one.
The articles I'm seeing so far seem to boil down to "yeah, it's an improvement, but I still don't want one".
Microsoft is so focused on Office and Outlook that they seem to forget that the huge consumer market for tablets isn't being driven by these features. When everything you do is geared to a corporate environment, people not using it in a corporate environment don't look at your product.
It just often seems like Microsoft is doing it's usual "this is what the market wants", and not actually looking at what people do want.
And, quite frankly, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint slides, and connecting to a corporate Exchange server with Outlook .. that's not what the vast majority of people buying tablets use them for. It's like they're stuck in that "I'm a PC" mindset from those Apple commercials where the Mac is talking about having fun, and the PC is talking about making charts and saying those are fun.
Tablets are (from what I can see) used as infotainment devices with the ability to send some emails and surf the web. But somehow Microsoft, as ever, is looking at the business use case -- and I am pretty sure that the business use case is a much smaller chunk of the market.
So in terms of what is going to make people choose the Microsoft tablet over an Android tablet, it seems like a much smaller group is going to be looking for that.
Whether this is a product Microsoft keeps losing money on until they get any meaningful market share (like they did with the XBox), or the product starts gaining traction ... I have no idea. But looking at what I use my tablet for, Microsoft seems to be missing the point.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Most VCs would pull the plug in a year or two. It refreshing to see some companies think long term.
MS has been a copycat for decades. Now they are copying the KLF .
There is a war going on for your mind.
Why *wouldn't* they keep trying to break into the tablet market?
Actually, as a tablet device, they aren't awful. When you judge them on an analogy basis, "Surface is to a Windows 7 laptop as an iPad is to a MacBook", they do what they're supposed to do.
One big problem is nobody cares. Anybody with money who wanted a tablet or a smartphone already bought an iPad or an iPhone and got sucked into the Apple ecosystem. They now have built dependencies on Apple apps. Changing over completely is expensive, and gains you not enough extra to make it worthwhile. (For example, until Windows phone 8 came out, many of the Microsofties I know had iPhones and Androids, because not even threats from their boss could get them to use WinCE phones.)
Another problem is that they're trying to be full-purpose computing devices. People accept the limitations of an iPad (compared to the MacBook) because they understand it's a limited system. Microsoft is trying to say "hey, look, it's not just a tablet but a whole computer", but the touch-oriented user interface sucks for non-touch-oriented applications.
Making matters worse was the stupid decision to put Metro on the desktop OS. Now everyone sees how it sucks on a laptop and translates that to their imagined impact on their tablets or phones. I wouldn't buy a Surface if I thought it would suck as much as Windows 8 on a PC.
John
MS has been doing this for decades. They use the "full court press" strategy against any potential future competitor. They get in the market and challenge them, throw a ton of cash at whatever will prevent the insurgents from creating a monopoly, and if they don't bury them, try to buy them. Hell, there have been times MS just issued a press release *talking* about creating a competitor product and that was enough to kill a project. The only shock is that MS isn't the gorilla with unlimited cash reserves anymore that can go full throttle at anyone and everyone.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Which mostly boiled down to: because you don't learn anything the second time the mule kicks you.
That's one way of looking at it.
Here's another - long term thinking.
Back in the day, the Japanese industries would do things like this. Enter a market, fail, return again, fail again, and eventually crush everyone.
MS wants to have a platform that runs on all devices. And I like that idea.
For one, if you have a system today, you have to develop for the desktop/server and for the various mobile devices out there.
With MS - if their plan comes to light - will require just one code base with maybe some extra modules for the desktop (You don't want to be limited to handheld devices' limitations.)
And then there's the interoperability issues. Having one platform with will make integration much easier, one would think. But then again, MS may fuck that up.
MS has cash to burn and sees the writing on the wall for its current business lines - it MUST make changes to survive.
At some point the investment might pay off. There's always a market for something like this - the question is "how big."
What might be more important is that MS gets experience building things like a tablet. Even if Surface never takes off, it might make a good basis for industrial control panels, etc.
and canceling the project after the first generation would have been a stinging refutation of Ballmer's strategy
Then what was the Kin? It was barely on the market for 60 days when it was killed. The only difference I can see was the Kin was horribly buggy and maybe it was a side project. Ballmer seems to think that the future is devices which MS has not been doing well considering a decade of Windows Tablets and the death of Windows Mobile.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Seems like that's all Steve Ballmer will leave to his heir at Microsoft
Though I'm used to the default MS bashing here -- I have to wonder have many people have actually USED a Surface (esp the Pro) for more than 5 min in a MS store or at a friend's house?
Any issues I have with it are really Win8 GUI related, not device related. I have an iPad, and while yes it's cheaper, it's functionality is a joke compared to what I can do on the S-Pro. Since it's a full-fledged O/S, I can run all the development tools I want/need, and it's great for a contractor like myself who needs something with real functionality, performance and mobility. My wife, who is not particularly technical loves it, and prefers it over the iPad now -- she's impatient as h*ll, and the iPad is a lot slower, and while I know some people won't believe it -- it crashes a frickin' lot. Sure, they're pretty user-friendly crashes (browser just shuts down with ZERO explanation), but crashed nonetheless. And I think it's insane they STILL don't have a #@$! USB port on iPads, wtf?
Now, I think the RT isn't as useful (personally, but I want more than a tablet for mail/surfing), but the Pro is great imo -- the iPad is now is basically just my daughter's toy.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
Government needs those snooping devices everywhere. Microsoft would get help from them with money, laws, international treaties, media control and anything in their reach to make even Windows RT to succeed.
Better Skype surveillance.... you DO want to prove you are not a terrorist, citizen? Well Surface 2 now has extra snoopware.
Free cloud storage, store your private sensitive documents where's its safe, well erm, where its "not specifically targetted into an NSA database"
Removes that annoying black strip Android devices like Transformer infinity have. You know, those extra 120 pixels that a 1920x1200 has when playing 1080p movies. Man that bugs, and now you can lose those pixels.
Battery life almost at the level of the crapper Android tablets! Yeh! Now the secret feature to turn on the camera for the NSA can run longer! Cool!
There are several cheap android tablets that support 3G ((4G, LTE, you get the point), so, what would be the excuse for not supporting 3g without the need of awful USB dongles?
I mean, real mobility should mean the ability to stay connected even in rural areas where no wifi is near, isn't it? for such expensive tablets, isn't it absurd not to have 3G ?
Thanks in advance for any explanation.
The Surface 2 makes no sense, but the Surface 2 Pro, it could be the sleeper device of the year if Microsoft can market it correctly, and get some good software on it.
I went to a local Microsoft store and they demoed the Surface Pro to me, and I thought, oh that's nice, but its kind of a too thick and heavy to be a great tablet, and too small and quirky to be a great laptop. Then the salesman brought out the pen. "What? This thing has a pressure sensitive pen? That is amazing! Why didn't I know that?".
Imagine a tablet that can run Photoshop. Real Photoshop, not some express version. A tablet where I can do real work on serious projects using serious software as easily as I can just flip through web pages. A tablet where I can switch between touch, pen, keyboard, and mouse easily, using the mode that is best for me to get my work done. A tablet that is not just a device to consume content, but to create it.
That 6x video streaming demo and DJ pad shows that Microsoft is starting to get it. The Surface Pro is a device for creative professionals, and those who want to be one. While Apple has always been for that crowd, they haven't been paying attention to their needs quite so well lately. You have to use esoteric things like Thunderbolt. There are no tablets, or touch screens, or pen screens, and its all rather expensive. Plus, the surface actually looks cool.
So Apple, a high end company, became a device company and its been pulling them down to the lowest common denominator. Microsoft, which was the lowest common denominator, becomes a device company and its pushing them toward the high end. Its interesting how changes of fortune have reversed their roles.
Anyhow, I'm a Linux guy so I probably won't be buying one, but I am glad someone other than Apple is finally paying serious attention to the market for creative professionals.
One could easily have said the same thing about Microsoft Word. It was a copycat and it sucked compared to Word Perfect when it first came out. But slowly they kept making it better and it won the market. One could have said the same thing about the early DOS, then the early Windows 2.0. Even windows 95. All those eventually won the markets that others owned. Moreover the same conditions exist now. It's not a saturated market; it's a growing market size.
Microsoft has followed this same pattern with all their incremental advances as well. All their new product revision completely stink at first. then they settle in and make them workable. Indeed things like Xune and PlaysForSure are outliers in that Microsoft didn't just bear down for the long haul.
Microsoft knows that embrace and extend works over time because it always has. Given they have a positive cash flow it makes even more sense since there's no ticking clock.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The reason they lost mony on the Surface is that they built too many units. If they take the sales data from 1.0 and only create enough units to meet demand then there is a low risk of loosing money. 2.0 is only a money sink if they go in believing it will be a hit.
We just got done saying GTA V's cool $1 Billion was awesome, so why is this judged by a different standard? $150 Million can't mean that much.
Though, I was hoping for the removal of Surface RT and having all devices be "Pro". That would have them devastate the market, but they won't seem to do it.
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
This article is horribly misleading. Releasing the surface 2 as a second try isn't a terrible idea. All they have to do is make like 10x less inventory than the original to reflect accurate sales projections. Then they'll actually turn a profit on them while at the same time staying in the device market. Yes, they should have made it vastly better or something but whatever, it's better than pulling out of a market segment that's not going away.
But simultaneously they damn well better work on releasing a Windows 9 that isn't a piece of crap.
Microsoft lost my business years ago. There are alternatives that are more open, interoperate with my other toys/computers and don't cost as much.
See the problem? ... er ... and Apple, Oracle, Adobe, BMC, .... you get the idea.
* too expensive
* too closed
* Corporate history has taught me to avoid Microsoft
Yes, I'm a Linux fan-boy. Last weekend I helped 30 people convert/try Linux on their equipment. It isn't much in the grand scheme, but every little bit helps. I expect 50% of those trial users will end up back running OSX or Microsoft-something. 4 of the people were so fed up with Apple and Microsoft they wanted fairly new systems completely wiped and loaded with a Linux desktop.
Linux runs on older hardware quite nicely. It screams on a C2D or better ... well ... as long as Unity or Gnome3 aren't involved. ;)
Well, time to go format a hand-me-down Core i7 with 60G for Win7 Pro and 900G for Linux. About 3 days a month, I still need Windows for _something_, but the rest of the time, it is Linux for me, my kids, wife, and more and more of my extended family. My 82 yr old Mother runs LXDE-Linux. My brother in laws (3 of them) run XBMC/Linux home theatre PCs.
Of course, Apple has been taking over a few families too. Another B-i-L got frustrated with Amazon Streaming breaking for Linux and he'd already gotten a MacBook Pro, so A-TV was selected. The entire 6 person family alrady had iPhones, so Apple has been sucking more and more of their content $$$ the last few years. Now, it is too late for them to switch and flush all that away ... at least in their minds.
Yep, best to avoid closed systems from the start.
The human propensity to justify bad decisions is explained in terms of basic psychologic theory here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistakes_Were_Made_(But_Not_by_Me)
But imagine the hilarity that'll ensue if this second generation goes down in a huge ball of flames like the first.
Imagine??
I guess they don't realize that the move to mobile was as fragile as the "move" to netbooks, which of course collapsed. Using the internet on a tablet or phone is a gimmick and it dies very quickly when the user types a paragraph of text into a facebook text. That 5 minutes of frustration will drive anyone back to a real computer. However, MS themselves, anticipation this fake trend, made Windows 8 awful and caused vastly lower PC and laptop sales, thus causing people to jump to mobile and other OSes, and causing their fake reality to come true.
Maybe they should all get together, create a fake reality where Windows 9 is the best product ever and everyone hops back on desktops and laptops and then accidentally make that one come true too.
"imagine the hilarity"
What? Sounds like the submitter has a petty vendetta. Less competition in the market is no cause for hilarity regardless of what you think of the company or it's outgoing CEO. I don't see myself using either, but I know some that have one and love it for their workflows. One size does not fit all and thankfully there are choices and room for numerous players to come and go as we all benefit, even from things we would never use out of need or emotional reasons.
Sell me a 2560 x 1600 screen and I'd fucking buy one! I don't care what OS it is really. I open up another program and work with that. Os Vs Os is company marketing crap that is a non issue.
I'm in the market for a laptop and there is nothing I want.
NO matter how good the 16:9 screens get, No matter how high the resolution 2k,4k,6k I just don't want a stumpy screen. What about films?? On a 13" screen? It doesn't really matter!
I have no plans to buy a Surface, but if my company issues Surfaces at the next laptop refresh I would certainly use it.
With all the money they make with the legal scare tactics they force on companies that use Android, they can burn some. They better burn it quick before the B&N legal battle starts up again, they are scared they may lose.
The Surface Pro is a great PC and I love mine. Its a tablet with all the power of a laptop. It has a power Intel CPU, lots of RAM and a fast SSD. It runs Windows 8 Pro and all the programs that go along with it. Its the first tablet that can replace your laptop or desktop. It has all the size of a tablet but all the power of a laptop. Business executives (because it aint cheap) love it for its combination of size and power.
What they need to do is Fire Sale the Existing Surface Tablets. It would get Surfaces into the hands of consumers and developers as well as clear off the old stagnating inventory off their books.
It didn't do well for HP, primarily because it was blatantly obvious they wanted nothing to do with WebOS. Since MS has shown no signs of dropping RT It might succeed where HP and Sales Failed.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
http://allaboutfrogs.org/stories/scorpion.html
If I can install linux or Android on it.
Honestly their tablet hardware is fantastic, it just has an incredibly crappy OS with almost no apps for it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
More fodder for the nSSa, MS is the official leak-sink-hole-go-to-tell-allow-to-spy-for-3-letter-fiend.
Ok, just kidding, but, then why?
An ARM version of Windows is a good idea.
A touch version of Windows is a good idea.
An x86 tablet running Windows is a good idea.
Microsoft trying to sell their own hardware and software through their own distribution chains is the bad idea.
Hardware, and IT partnerships are what made Microsoft successful. Balmer's big mistake is he's a sales guy. His visions for the company are shallow, short term, and narrow, as is his strategy to just plagiarize the Apple playbook. Apple has a niche consumer market. Microsoft is a corporate titan, with a near monopoly in business. Balmer needs to stop letting go of the bird in hand because he's sees two in the bush.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Well, all I know is that I have brought two notebooks and my Surface Pro with me to Toronto, and have only turned on either of the other notebooks on for playing WoW, and all other times for this last month, I've been exclusively on my Surface. I like it. The other technicians here like it, and one of them is now planning to buy one. So, all I can say is that perhaps a lot of people who have negative comments haven't really tried to use one much, if at all. I quite like it, and only wish that I had the battery life that the new one is bringing.
Both of my other notebooks were more expensive than this tablet. So, I'm not saying people are wrong. I'm saying that I very much like mine, and everyone who gets to see or try it out are also quite pleased.
Microsoft's biggest problem in this area is that they don't know how to be the underdog. They are so drunk on their own KoolAid that they don't realize why the first generation of Surfaces failed, so they continue to make the same mistakes. They are used to a culture of domination on the desktop in which developers have to make apps for their platforms because everyone uses them and everyone continues to use Windows because it has great application support. However, this culture doesn't translate well to a platform which is dominated by two other ecosystems. Microsoft came late to the party and offered little of interest while charging premium prices. And as nice as a 10" tablet that can run all Windows programs seems, there's no way in hell I would pay $900 for it, especially when its flagship feature, the keyboard cover, will cost an extra $100. Microsoft, you're on the brink of pulling a Zune here. You need to move hardware at a break-even point or even a loss in order to break into this market. If you don't, nobody will ever think of you when it comes to tablets.
Microsoft's biggest challenge at this point is perception.
Apple screws up and the "tech" press focuses on the positives and finds a way to spin the negatives into a positive.
Microsoft suffers from the complete opposite in the press. We've talked many times about corporate America's fixation on quarterly profits at the expense of long term goals. Microsoft is doing what we've argued companies should be doing, and they're being mocked! The first Surface was a perfectly good machine, it's biggest failing was that it had a Microsoft logo. The Surface 2 addresses most complaints people might have had, down to the keyboard cover and people continue giving them shit.
Honestly, I have no clue how Microsoft can overcome this image problem. Consumers seem to have been able to disassociate the Xbox from the rest of the company but the future of the Xbox One is uncertain. Given that both Google and Apple have proven to be no different than anyone else in their business practices I'm not sure why people continue to be fixated on Microsoft as the villain.
While I like my iPad and Nexus tablets, there is a lot of room for improvement, especially on the user input side. I like the idea of a premium tablet that can work with a keyboard, mouse and pressure sensitive stylus. As a bridge device the surface could allow me to deal with the old stuff that is too expensive to modernize but too useful to dump while enjoying the advantages of portability. Surface RT was a waste of time for me, but a perfected surface pro with great battery life could be a useful tool.
Greed is the root of all evil.
Microsoft will succeed riding off the coat-tails of Intel's great new processors, and by making Windows 8.1 good-enough to keep people from defecting.
Microsoft has been making tablets since 2001, how long do they have to iterate?
I read these things and I don't get the Surface (RT) hate, nor the Surface Pro love. For some reason, there are plenty of Slashdotters believing that once iPad reached its market leadership, nobody else can have a worthwhile presence in the new market segment of tablets. I reiterate new market segment, because that's what it still is. A high growth market, because a LOT of people both in rich and medium-rich countries decided they can have a tablet to carry around and as a 2nd screen next to the one where they watch TV. What has this 2nd screen done? 3 things I can think of:
1) It postponed upgrades and replacement of conventional Wintel PCs
2) it highlighted that a whole generation of buyers is not valuing familiarity with Windows as much as previous generations
3) it opened up a new market where every little app can be sold rather than offered as freeware
The first 2 are seriously bad news for a late entrant Microsoft. The upside is that BYOD has more than one meaning: on one hand, conventional Wintel machines are seen as too complex to be practical when compared to ARM tablets; on the other it means that keyboards and work apps are not optional for a lot of people.
Should Microsoft quit or believe that a high growth market can accommodate more than one player and more than one form factor? Slashdot says QUIT, but that might be more wishful thinking than business sense.
So, back to Surface (RT). Hated by many because it doesn't run desktop applications. It does run Windows 8, hated by many because of the tablet-centric start screen. What do people not hate? Surface Pro, because it allows people to spend 2x as the price of the iPad to run desktop applications on a machine built for touch UI. WTF.
The other day, an article about Windows (RT) being useless because Haswell is good enough to run "proper" Windows x86 rather than having to rework everything to work on ARM. So where we're getting is to a state of affairs where x86 improves its efficiency so much faster than ARM that it is conceivable that machines of every size, shape and price can run x86 Windows (or Linux). Just my opinion: I find that hard to believe.
Clearly Microsoft needs the Surface to work. Both to dilute the difference between the conventional PCs and Tablets so that the 2 cash cows don't die and also to have some sort of presence in this new market that sells hardware + cloud services + music&film subscriptions. Should they just drop Surface to cut their losses? only if MS is OK with becoming an Enterprise-only company and risking that the definition of Enterprise services, software and devices changes so much that their slice of that cake becomes unbearably small.
Would I buy a Surface Pro? More likely for me to continue buying low-mid range laptops. A Surface RT? when my Nexus 7 dies I'll think about it.
What part of more than three-quarters of a billion dollars is "pitiful"?
Sure 2.0 seems like a total waste of money, but if history is any indication, Surface 3.1 will completely revolutionize computing, giving time back to users by crashing repeatedly and needing several minutes to reboot and run chkdsk.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Microsoft's biggest enemy is Ballmer's ego.
A thousand MBA theses will be written on the back of this.
They also announced an add-on keyboard aimed at the production and playing of music for wannabe house DJs. Niche, yes, but nobody was expecting something actually interesting from Microsoft - though I bet the creators had to hide it from a phalanx of Redmond middlemen and bean counters whiter than their printer paper.
Stop it. Neither microsoft nor apple nor google can afford to fragment their markets.
Apple understands this which is why the new iOS is 64 bit. They're moving iOS closer to their desktop OS.
These systems need to not just be close but interchangeable.
Existing tablets and smart phones are fully capable of running desktop operating systems.
Obviously the interfaces and GUIs need to be tailored to those devices however there is no reason why I shouldn't be able to run legacy software for a desktop on a modern tablet.
Now someone is going to tell me that there is a difference between x86 processors and whatever the tablets are running. I get that. However, worst case you're looking at some emulation which wouldn't be a huge deal especially if performance weren't a critical factor. What's more, if you designed the OS to make use of that sort of thing from the ground up the efficiency hit might not be so bad.
What is more, Intel is offering increasingly competitive processors that use roughly the same amount of power as the common tablet CPU while being fully compatible with the conventional desktop architecture.
Will this be a big project? Sure.
But the first major OS that offers a reasonably priced phone/tablet with a reasonable GUI that can run desktop applications wins.
MS should have won this a long time ago. They had everything in their court to do it. They've dropped the ball repeatedly.
Surface needs to be a GUI but the underlying guts of the OS needs to be windows.... or give up. I need to be able to transfer a common windows application to my surface tablet without having it recoded by a team of programmers and have it just run... Ideally natively. Worst case, with some emulation that is reasonably efficient.
How many operating systems do we need here?
We have a windows desktop OS.
Apple desktop OS.
Google Chrome book.
At least three to four flavors of windows moble OS.
At least two flavors of apple mobile OS.
At least two flavors of Android OS.
And of course the endless sea of linux distros that I frankly don't know enough about to have a meaningful opinion.
At the very least, both apple and MS need to unify their operating systems.
Even the xbox should do this by unifying with windows.
By all means, have the xbox, smart phone, tablet, and laptop all have unique GUIs tailored for the input environment. If they're touch or controller or remote or keyboard and mouse... whatever. Give them the GUI that they need. But the underlying OS can be the desktop OS.
If I want to install power point on my xbox.. why not? If I want to play an xbox game on my tablet... why not? There's no reason to make all of these bits of software exclusive to these bits of hardware when the hardware technically could run a unitary OS that was inter-compatible with everything.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
software and services..."
Now who's got the reality distortion field?
Pitiful. $853 million.
How much you think it cost, total, to develop the Surface? Maybe their income tax return shows a loss on the Surface (or not), but I'll bet they made a little bit of money on the deal overall. And the people who bought Surface Pro tablets tend to like them.
Let's look at Microsoft's stock chart in the past year. Look at what happens since the Surface Pro started selling last November. $26 bucks to $33 on an average volume of about 40-50million shares:
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=msft+Interactive#symbol=msft;range=1y;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;
OK, now let's look at Apple's stock chart for approximately the same period. $650 to $460 on an average volume of 10-20 million shares:
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=msft+Interactive#symbol=msft;range=1y;compare=;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;
The day the Surface Pro was first available, would you have been better off investing $100,000 in MSFT or AAPL?
Where's your Yahweh now, fanbois?
You are welcome on my lawn.
if that really matters....
one note for ipad
A lot of the problem is the price. The Surface RT could have been a decent low-end tablet, but NOT at iPad prices. The Pro sounds like a good machine, but way too expensive. If they'd priced RT to compete with the cheap Androids, and the Pro where they priced RT, they might have had some decent tablets.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer have publicly stated they do not allow their children to use the competitions products so Microsoft must make a tablet so their family members can use tablets. Simple.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I would guess Google is also not making enormous money on various Nexus devices, but they give developers an up to date platform without third party tweaks and provides licensees with some guidance on how the OS vendor envisions its product being used. There are tons of non-Microsoft Win8 tablets that are inspired of Surface, including its collection of touch/type covers.
As for WinRT, well maybe the time will come when Intel catches in mobile to the degree that ARM can be ignored, but till then its wise to have at least some chips in ARM game as an answer to Android and iOS.
If they could release just the Surface Pro and market it as a touch pad that ran all Windows software that could dock to a keyboard +/- mouse and secondary screen for "real" work, I think they would have a real hit on their hands. Why get a desktop at all if you could carry it along wish you and just dock as needed?
Unfortunately, they are causing confusion in their target market by having two products with very similar names that are not software compatible with each other.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Winter is coming.
... doesn't mean you don't rebuild it!! http://youtu.be/g3YiPC91QUk?t=23s
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
because they dont know what else to do. the new one's will do as well as the first. the rt because its a stupid idea, badly carried out and the pro's are just too pricey, their not far of apple prices, and for the same kind of price you can buy very good laptops or netbooks. ms still have'nt a clue outside of x-box, 8/8.1 are turning into a bit of a disaster, most folk i know are retro gradeing to win 7. i still say that if ms want to win some customers and possibly some friends, extend / bring back support for xp for another year and do a proper cheap deal for those moving on from xp, how about win 7 for £50 if you prove your xp is legal, or win 7 pro/ultimate for £75.
I meant "moat", obviously - don't know why the title got cutoff.
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
Ok, if I were to look at how to make this win, I'd say
Step 1 is to make a cheap device a lot of people will buy
Step 2 get a lot of apps into the store where you can make a profit on each one
Step 3 get more people to buy the device... possibly at a loss on the hardware
Step 4 sell music, apps, videos, etc... and collect the profits.
Is this really a bad idea?
Windows 1 and 2 were flops ...
I actually have and use a Surface Pro, and it's a pretty nice machine. It's not a replacement for my Xoom but it is a better netbook than any netbook I've ever used. The only real issue, and it's huge, is the price. No way in hell it's worth what they are asking for it, I got "mine" at //build so I love it but I would NEVER pay $1100 or whatever they want tof the thing + the KB (seperate, really?) + the case thinger I put on it.
I like where you're coming from, and I agree that small businesses do this, but this has *absolutely* nothing to do with what we see happening with Surface 2 and M$
Surface 2 was too far in the development pipeline to stop. Microsoft couldn't stop it if it tried...
Large corporations *cannot* just put the kibosh on a multi-year multi-million product roll out.
It's because of scale, marketing, & stupidity...
Product development today in America is a Kafkaesque nightmare...today's business strategy puts decision makers so far from the product it's like being on the moon. The development cycle takes so long and has so many moving parts where workers try to put their special 'finger print' on the product as it passes by...nothing can get changed.
M$ had the Surface 2 designed concurrently with the Surface...distribution...ad buys...they all are in a giant 'plan'
In the end, you can of course find a similarity between M$ and a failing small business...but you're really under the wrong impression of you think M$ did this b/c of hubris...**they had no choice because they boxed themselves in a corner with dumb product development tactics**
Thank you Dave Raggett
| The answer could be outgoing Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who late last year released a memo suggesting that Microsoft was evolving into a 'devices and services' company.
This is today's innovation: reorganizing the company around its core incompetencies.
Has anybody there asked why Microsoft wants to do this? I have a different suggestion for Microsoft's board and next CEO: how about "business software?" They make tons of money from Office and are pretty good at writing desktop software and OK at web-interfaced server software.
Now that I work in a medium-sized conventional business I see a substantial pile of really execrable junk which makes Office and Windows seem like they were architected by Michelangelo. Why haven't they massively expanded their scope of business software beyond Office, and make this the primary focus of their company? They a few things, but why not a dozen?
Why did Ballmer have such Apple envy? Why didn't they do something Apple could never be successful at?
Why fight in the trenches vs Apple and Google and Sony? How about picking on some easier targets in profitable markets. Oracle (outside its database) has mediocre products selling at a very high price to disgruntled customers. Many other similar examples.
Windows RT suffers from an expectation problem. It looks and feelsl like windows 8, however you can only run software purchased from the App Store. While this is the same scenario with Apple and Android, the result is a feeling of supreme disapointment when this is found out, and leading to dissastisfaction with the platform. The only solution is to bitethe bullet and make it straight up compatible with windows, and they better do it immediatly or they are finished.
This sorta reminds me of the Beltway elites' response to Obama getting everything everybody wanted and more in Syria but still getting hoots of derision from the Kool Kidz at Politico.com. What was Surface missing, style points? Even the slowest, cheapest version of the Surface is more of a real computer than any iPad, thanks to Microsoft Office and the USB port. Mine works just fine and I got it for the bargain basement price of $299 when Microsoft opened its store in Troy, Mich.
The MS Surface Pro is actually a great piece of hardware - I have one. Windows 8 is awful, but with the Pro, you can disable secure boot and install whatever you want on it. I'm a longtime redhat/fedora user, and I long ago decided never to give another dollar to MS... but I had to buy a Surface pro when my old HP Touchscreen laptop died. The install process was a beast (including recompiling a kernel - I haven't done that in years), but it works flawlessly now (with the possible exception of not reading the accelerometer).
As a teacher I get extensive use out of using the pen to write on the tablet while it is connected to a projector. I could have done this with windows 8, but it annoyed the heck out of me that simple jobs (like rebooting from a flash drive) were so much work in windows (HW shortcut - hold volume up if secureboot is disabled)
My requirements were simple - x86 (to install linus) and inductive pen. I think it's the best (maybe only) one out there now.
Of course, the RT is a POS....
Mickeysoft has gazillions of bucks to burn! Light 'em up!!
Any issues I have with it are really Win8 GUI related, not device related.
Too bad you can't separate one from the other.
Perhaps people with slow brains just dont mind the lag on these crap tablets.
Basically, it's Hubris.
They can't admit that Ballmer and the key execs they are giving retention bonuses to are worthless and acting as lead weights on a carbon fiber high tech catamaran, placed at the top of the thin polymer sail where they will flip over the yacht and crush the crew.
Think of it as Microsoft Bob, except the person who pushed that is not as cute as Bill's wife, and more resembles The Hulk (me smash chairs).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
DOT NET
When IBM couldn't compete in the PC arena, they abandoned it, and concentrated on services and heftier servers. They changed their market space, but in an intelligent way. Microsoft's attempt to be a devices company is doomed. Too little and way too late. They own the desktop space, where tablets will never reach. They should retain that focus. Their cloud offerings too, are viable. If they created an expanded virtualized application store for significant business apps like they do with office, opened it to all platforms (not just asp and wpf developers) and charged not too much for a monthly subscription (e.g. like Netflix), they might continue to dominate a significant part of the business software space.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Part of the problem with the first model was the awful advertising. People dancing around throwing their surface computer around clicking it told you nothing about the product and looked very silly. Who would want to be associated with that. The new advertising actually makes the surface look kinda cool. Has some neat features like a usb port and the keyboard. I might actually go take a look at one.
"Imagine the hilarity that'll ensue if this second generation goes down in a huge ball of flames like the first."
I don't need to. I can just wait and by this time next year, it will already be happening.
The Motorola Xoom sold about 250,000 Xoom tablets in the first quarter after they were released. The sales steadily declined since then. I think after 6 or 7 quarters, they had sold around 500,000 of them. Still, it is not like Motorola is exiting the tablet market. I think they will do better now that they are part of Google.
I don't know who you are that is questioning this decision, but I will suggest that Microsoft may have very good reasons. Here's a few that come to mind. They may be totally wrong.
Microsoft still DOMINATES the enterprise market. There is a HUGE demand signal for somebody to make a laptop-tablet hybrid that the business world can drag around with them instead of their laptop, but they need 8-hour battery life. BYOD is only a thing where enterprise management isn't one, and iOS/Android stuff simply doesn't do what this class of folks DO all day. Office365 is neat, but the adoption is slow and with all the security issues, it may not go anywhere.
What's the alternative? Give up? Throw in the towel on a whole market? Not a good business strategy. There is a VERY real chance that the consumer tablet market is simply saturated, but surface can offer them experience and capability to compete in whatever the next fad is. What about partners? Are you going to hang them out to dry? You build surface as the standard-bearer, and success is shared.
Maybe they figured out what they did wrong? The advertising was simply awful, but the device was actually REALLY good at doing things that people already had really good ways to do. Perhaps they have a new tack? A different target user base? Maybe some new differentiating technology? Maybe they drop the price?
Don't write them off just yet. Microsoft is REALLY smart, they do original research, and they have a persistence that usually pays off.
Because they have more money than god and they have shit for brains.
-- Fuck Beta
Does anyone else think we should be worried that businesses like Microsoft don't think making products just for business is a viable long-term strategy? Are we expecting most business will be out of business in the long term, or do we just think these businesses will be able to make do with much less expensive services from new entries into the market?
Compared to many of its competitors, Microsoft is know at least for their perseverance. When they start something, you don't have to be afraid that they will drop it like a brick the next year. That, at least for many people I know, is a large factor in deciding whether to join in or not. Compare this to Google, however great their "free" services, that drops products whenever they feel like it. I myself was pissed off to no end after Google discontinued Reader, iGoogle, Latitude, and crippled the Maps app on Android.
"We are all just prisoners here, of our own device"
Neither the XBone or PS4 are going to tank, they're both very capable machines with a strong following. They're profitable now (indeed, have been for 5 years)...
Neither machine has even been released yet. To be profitable that early in the game is a really neat trick.
Presumably you meant something else?
Assuming you meant that Sony's and Microsoft's respective gaming device divisions are profitable, I can't speak much to Sony's situation, but I'd point out that the XBox product line is still around $2-3 billion in the whole when considered cumulatively, starting from the beginning of the first-gen device. And given the RROD issues with the XBox 360, for which Microsoft took a roughly $1 billion hit, I would certainly want to wait and see evidence that the XBone is free of any similar defects before decreeing it a financial success.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Desktops aren't selling because a 3-4 year old laptop is still plenty for most people who aren't power users. Hobbyists who build PCs are largely using open source software. A lot of machines have been replaced by tablets of the iPad or Android flavor.
Microsoft can't compete in the tablet market because everything they have made for light weight hardware has sucked.
They are building the surface to create a market for a laptop replacement tablet because that's the only thing Windows 8 was designed for.
If no one else is going to make the hardware, they have to and like the X-box they will pour money at it until its a market that they own.
The alternative is to just keep selling less and less MS Office while they watch Android and Apple own the tablet world.
Hell, there are Linux desktops screwing up the distros because the developers want to feel relevant and do tablet stuff and that's all non-commercial open source stuff but they still can't resist.
Just wait, eventually MS will start making an energy drink to stay relevant, it will say no crash but that's a lie.