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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."
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
What other choice does Microsoft have? It can't get back in the game if it gives up trying.
Yes. It's called "Escalation of Commitment", and it happens in larger firms, too, and Government. Also with individuals. A good counter-example is HP ditching WebOS and now selling Android tablets.
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.
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
the issue to me is an RT tablet is pretty much useless and the pro is just to expensive. especially after you include a 130-200$ cover to it. Make me a sub 500$ pro and id be all over it
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
in most marriages, that's called children.
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.
Except the data from Democratic presidencies doesn't support that stereotype. But obviously you're already facts impaired so why continue to argue?
Stock car crashes often send debris hurtling down the track in the right direction, too. The car's still screwed.
Personally, I think PowerShell is departing further from any UNIX ideals. Part of what makes UNIX ideal is that (almost) everything is plain text. Data passed between components should be serialized into a human-readable form, or at least something a human can easily understand with a hex editor. That means that replacing components is possible and fairly straightforward, and your debugger can be a plain text editor.
PowerShell is different. It's the bastard child of COM objects and batch files, raised by .NET, with occasional visits from Crazy Uncle BASIC. Everything is a binary object, except for parameters being passed, which are strings, except for arrays which are neither strings nor regular objects, unless they're an object pretending to be an array... but either way, arrays being passed as parameters are subject to unpacking to become strings. Want to inspect any of this? Your tool is Microsoft's documentation. Since all of PowerShell's actual function comes from compiled libraries, you can only use what the vendor tells you to use, and good luck figuring out what exactly it's doing.
In other words, now batch files can suffer from inaccessible code, too!
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.