8 ms·

Microsoft and Ballmer not getting the iPad

61 points by CoryOndrejka 16y ago

jim_h 16y ago
Microsoft should bring life back to the Courier. I'd buy that.
- fuzzythinker 16y ago
  I bet they would, but most likely a tiny feature from it a bit at a time. I'll say they canceled it not because they didn't like it, but because it would take too long to finish. They felt Apple would have too much head start if they didn't produce _anything_ in the mean time. This rush is pretty much confirmed by their actions and this interview.
  - commandar 16y ago
    >I bet they would I kind of doubt it given J Allard was forced out of the company over the Courier.[1] Frankly, I think that's one of the single most boneheaded moves Ballmer's made -- Allard is largely responsible for reviving Microsoft's brand image with the under 30 crowd heading up Xbox and Zune development. A decade ago, nobody would have described Microsoft as a cool brand, but flash forward today every frat boy in the country owns an Xbox 360. Robbie Bach, head of the E&D division, went out at the same time. Then again, E&D was largely dysfunctional because there's been an odd combination of failing to leverage MS technology when it would make sense while trying to shoehorn MS techs into places where they just didn't work. See buying Danger and then pretty much scrapping their technology to build the Kin as a prime example. It pretty well illustrates the institutional schizophrenia the company shows to the world. [1] http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/05/25/microsoft.overhauls.devices.group.to.face.iphone/ http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/05/25/microsoft.over...
    - fuzzythinker 16y ago
      Same feeling here. Not sure if Allard has any credits for the Kinect, but it's pretty much the only thing that wowed me from MS since win95. Seems like they really thought outside the box even though the aim was to copy the wii. Makes me want to get the xbox just for it.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      > A decade ago, nobody would have described Microsoft as a cool brand I am not sure many people describe it that way now.
      - commandar 16y ago
        Then rephrase it as how many "cool" products existed under the Microsoft brand.
        rbanffy 16y ago
        Cool as in "geek cool" or as in "general cool"? As in "geek cool", there were many. Even Windows for Workgroups was cool because it offered Mac-like networking for PCs. MS Access was cool. Even VB was cool (before it a Windows hello world was 100+ lines). My Softcard was cool - it allowed my Apple II to run CP/M programs. Microsoft's mice, keyboards and joysticks were always top-notch. As in "general cool", I can't remember a single one. Perhaps the Xbox 360 makes the cut, but only in the 25+ gamer scene. There would also be some "fashion-victim cool": those who just need the latest shiny toy. Those were the ones who jumped into Vista, Office 2007 and then to 7 and 2010 just because there is a newer version, disregarding whatever feature they needed. Obviously, they are not restricted to the Microsoft space - and I have pushed my PPC iMac well beyond its last supported OSX version (the G3 runs 10.4, but is not very snappy). These people also swap hardware like crazy, often having 8-core, 64-bit desktops where they check their hotmail accounts and zip through Facebook at speeds unheard of.
- Qz 16y ago
  Hell yes, I want it so bad.
- JMiao 16y ago
  so you'd buy a concept video.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  I would prefer Apple's Knowledge Navigator (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5144094928842683632# http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5144094928842683632...) or a Sun Starfire (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKJNxgZyVo0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKJNxgZyVo0). Product for product, they are as real as the Courier.
jsz0 16y ago
The best thing Microsoft could do at this point is put together a Metro style touch-centric UI that is the default for Windows tablets. Give developers a quick & dirty way to port their existing applications to a touch-centric UI. It wouldn't be the most elegant solution but it would be closer to what people seem to want in a tablet.
- glhaynes 16y ago
  Put an app store on and require it. Don't approve apps that don't roughly fit touch guidelines and "feel good": be strict, perhaps capriciously, making examples of some — or, rather, letting them make examples of themselves through their public complaining. This will scare developers into making their apps seem as non-desktop-Windowsish as possible in hopes of being approved. Out Apple Apple.
- j053003 16y ago
  Personally, I hope it looks like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIPjJElVx0U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIPjJElVx0U One can dream, right?
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    I'd be happy with something like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPDT21oEhW0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPDT21oEhW0
- rbritton 16y ago
  The best thing Microsoft could do is to innovate and do something no one's done. Everything they've done of late is in markets where someone has already done very well in, and they've done such a half-assed job of it that it's a guaranteed fail. Think what you want of Apple, but their products have been things largely not done before. Microsoft is copying the wrong half -- the product ideas themselves -- they should be copying the act of innovating.
  - berntb 16y ago
    >>The best thing Microsoft could do is to innovate and do something no one's done. Everything they've done of late is in markets where someone has already done very well in But that is what Microsoft has done historically. The old solution was to use profits from already owned market segments to invest much more in other market segments, until they own those too. I don't know either why it stopped working. Could the problem be a lack of a monopoly leverage? They can't threaten hardware/software makers anymore? Or maybe the problem is just leadership, as others wrote? Or maybe they have just screwed over too many people (to paraphrase an old Netscape executive, too many people has woken up with a bloody computer monitors in bed)?
dotcoma 16y ago
it doesn't come as a surprise, given that they didn't get neither the iPod nor the iPhone...
- sprout 16y ago
  Actually, from the two people I know who actually owned a Zune (and from Jerry Holkins: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2009/5/15/ http://www.penny-arcade.com/2009/5/15/), Microsoft did in fact 'get' the iPod, and outdid it in a lot of ways. Microsoft just has shitty marketing. But maybe that's what you meant.
  - mishmash 16y ago
    > Microsoft did in fact 'get' the iPod, and outdid it in a lot of ways. Microsoft was over 5 years (1848 days) later than Apple to "get" what an MP3 player was. During that five years, Microsoft had a total R&D budget of over $25 billion, or $13,698,630/calendar day. Of course we don't know how much of that budget was allocated for the Zune, but one could easily imagine it being in the hundreds of millions. You say they got the MP3 player, I say if you throw enough money at a problem, eventually, no matter how hard you try to ignore it, the solution will present itself. And in this case, it was simply to copy their competitors. edit: typo
    - sprout 16y ago
      Hardly. They offered a very solid competing vision for what an MP3 player should be. It was a risky vision, involving a subscription and the innovative ability to share songs you haven't bought legally, wirelessly with the person standing next to you. I really think the failure was purely marketing, judging by the accounts of people who used the service, that and people's assumption that anything from Microsoft cannot be innovative or interesting - it's a self-fulfilling prophecy in a lot of ways. Microsoft could have released the iPad, and it probably would have been a total flop, even if it had all the hallmarks of the iPad ecosystem. (There are a few things that could stand-in for the iPhone's app store like Flash and WinMO apps.)
junklight 16y ago
What I don't get is why a company like Microsoft - rich and no longer in the lead doesn't setup a couple of well funded skunk works companies. Drop the baggage (ie don't force them to use windows and allow a new culture to emerge) and give each one a target - touch computing or something else and let 'em go. Microsoft has all the pieces - money , good engineers, marketing etc. but it's not working. They have the financial space to do something radical and disruptive to themselves and jump on that if it pans out. Either that or just get some strong with real vision at the helm who is capable of turning it around. Perhaps its much the same thing
- pavs 16y ago
  > Microsoft has all the pieces - money , good engineers, marketing etc. They don't have the most important thing. Leadership. Everything about Ballmer reminds me of a salesperson who is trying over-hype a product in to selling it to you. With very little knowledge as to what the product actually does. Like Ballmer, Steve Jobs is also not a tech nerd (in the sense that they are not developers/programmers or engineers), but Steve always seems to have a more in-depth knowledge about Apple products and knows it inside out. On the other hand the top three guys at Google are hackers. Leadership matters.
  - junklight 16y ago
    heh heh - that was what I was trying to say. I think I need more coffee this morning....
  - wazoox 16y ago
    > Like Ballmer, Steve Jobs is also not a tech nerd Though Jobs isn't a certified engineer, he did wrote code, soldered chips on motherboards, etc. He certainly knows what parts a computer is made of, how software works, etc.
    - sprout 16y ago
      >he did wrote code It's 'did write.' Just FYI, in case you're not native and that wasn't just an auto-complete gaffe.
todayiamme 16y ago
This is slightly off topic, but Ballmer has to be crazy to overlook the strengths they have. Microsoft owns Amalga (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Amalga http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Amalga) which is an information retrieval tool for hospitals that ER doctors to reduce the time spent on searching for information. Now let's take a step back and see what it is. It's a tool which has the ability to manage 40 TB of data in real time and provide more than 12000 pieces of data for each patient. Can you imagine how rich a resource that is? Let's say that microsoft invests considerably in a centralized server and continuously mines the data coming in and strips patient data live to the bare minimum the ER doctor needs to see. Moreover, what if they see trends in what is happening in an entire city, before people even realize it and alert the authorities to prepare before some wave hits. Imagine if they could work with people to reduce costs by mining this truckloads of data in real time. Why are they aping Apple? Why? Microsoft had IBM's "A Smarter Planet" initiative before the latter even dreamed of it, but did they even know about it? It's the proverbial story; don't look where you can't go or you'll miss the riches below. They have some absolutely amazing gems locked up in the research labs that can change entire industries if leveraged in the right way. Moreover, Microsoft has the might to do it. They don't need an iPad killer they need a Microsoft Executive Killer(tm).
- angstrom 16y ago
  They have a nice system, unfortunately, the health information system landscape is a horrid mess of multiple proprietary data stores. Yes, I know there's DICOM, HL7, etc. The problem is that those standards don't preclude the difficulties of converting the TBs of proprietary niches behind them. This is going to be a multi-year endeavor; a marathon due the glacial pace of healthcare reform. It can take months to convert just one site. The tablet/slate/ipad war is a sprint. Otherwise, I agree, the potential profits Microsoft can reap from the healthcare vertical are enormous.
extension 16y ago
The iPad is not a computer. The iPad is not a computer. Say it with me, Microsoft. Join in, half the tech industry. Nobody framed it better than Apple themselves at the iPad launch. On the big screen was an iPhone, a MacBook, and in between them, an iPad. Steve called it a new category, and that wasn't just marketing speak. It really is a new kind of gadget, designed to make you do things that you previously did not do. This is why everybody says they have no use for it.. because they truly don't, until they have one in their hands. With that in mind, Microsoft and the rest of the tablet me-too wave, probably don't appreciate what they are up against. There is no tablet market, there is an iPad market. Microsoft's best shot would be an X-Pad. Everyone else should get behind Google. But really, I think Apple is going to own this category for a good decade.
- TotlolRon 16y ago
  The iPad IS a computer. It is at the time when the definition of a word changes that the greatest oppertunities present themselves. There is no iPad market, there is no tablet market - there is a computer market. This is what MS is up against... [Sent from my iPod touch]
  - extension 16y ago
    We're going to need a new word because I don't think the computer is going anywhere, and neither does Apple. I think Steve was spot on with his car vs truck analogy: the iPad will be like a car, which everyone will have, and the computer will be like a truck, which people only have for special purposes. That's what computers used to be anyway, and I think it will be fantastic to have them back in their niche again, instead of trying to please everyone.
  - Tamerlin 16y ago
    No, it isn't -- it's by design not capable of running enough applications to be a standalone computer. In terms of niches, it's more like the XTerms of yesteryear. The terminals weren't much for horsepower; they were basically UI's that allowed you to work more or less transparently with whatever machine you wanted to, like that Cray Y-MP or SP2 cluster in the data center next door, or the SGI Indigo down the hall. Snip the wires, shrink it down, modernize the internals and put a slick visual UI on it, and you have an iPad. Well, conceptually, that is. This is what the iPad was made to do, and IMO is one of the reasons that it's successful -- it isn't pretending to be something that it isn't.
Flemlord 16y ago
This is crazy talk. Microsoft needs a Windows compatible OS so they can leverage the millions of windows applications already written. To start from scratch would give up one of their main advantages. Best to stick with Windows, and focus on optimizing Windows 8 and Office 2012 for the tablet form factor. I love my iPad but I'd be willing to take a half-step back to a Windows tablet if it meant I could run Microsoft Office and other applications I need for my workflow. I think MS Office is much better positioned for tablets than most people realize. Ribbon strips provide friendly finger-sized buttons that are perfectly sized for tablets. If they can add media center and some sort of X-Box gaming they'll have a killer device. Granted, Apple will still own the "consumption device" market but there is a big need for "business tablets".
- shortformblog 16y ago
  Their history with Windows is not an advantage if the design of it is cumbersome and full of compromises. Which, more than anything, is what the point of the article is getting at. Microsoft has had a decade of chances in this market to pull off the "business tablet" market you're suggesting. And, well, they just haven't done it yet. If this is such a competitive advantage, why wasn't the iPad put on a Mac OSX architecture? Sometimes, an interface reboot is downright necessary. The Xbox 360, I'd argue, is the most successful non-Windows-related product they sell because it's clear that the interface design was tailored for the product. That's their problem. They don't know when to let go of their legacy and start fresh.
  - andrewf 16y ago
    That Apple pulled off the interface reboot is, I think, the most astounding thing about the iOS devices. You can't beat the PC for breadth, depth, and availability of specialised apps. They've been evolving for 30 years now. But when the iPhone SDK became available there were 0 applications, and in less than 30 months the industry's grown an entire replacement software ecosystem that covers a great deal of what users want to do.
  - contextfree 16y ago
    You could have made the same argument in 1989 about MSFT attempting to graft a GUI on top of the PC and DOS, though. They tried it a couple times with Windows 1 and 2 and largely failed, meanwhile Apple made a fresh start with the Mac and has been exciting everyone for five years, clearly MSFT's approach is inherently doomed to failure and they should either develop a brand-new HW/SW system from scratch or give up on GUI OS development and focus on Mac applications.
megaman821 16y ago
The weird thing is that Microsoft seems to have all the pieces necessary. If they just make a new shell the multi-touch, gestures, system-wide search, etc, etc is already there. WPF apps are probably easy ports since they are coded in a pretty semantic way. How hard could be to make a shell inspired by the Metro UI scheme?
city41 16y ago
The sad thing is Microsoft could succeed so wonderfully here, but the reality is almost certainly they won't. Create a stripped down, simple OS based on Windows (even iOS is derived from OSX), create a compelling app store, and a framework for writing apps for it based on Silverlight. Bam! Very compelling piece of hardware. Not only that but these type of apps are what Silverlight was destined for. I'd much rather write these types of apps in Silverlight than Cocoa Touch.

61 points by CoryOndrejka 16y ago

jim_h 16y ago

Microsoft should bring life back to the Courier. I'd buy that.

fuzzythinker 16y ago
I bet they would, but most likely a tiny feature from it a bit at a time. I'll say they canceled it not because they didn't like it, but because it would take too long to finish. They felt Apple would have too much head start if they didn't produce _anything_ in the mean time. This rush is pretty much confirmed by their actions and this interview.
- commandar 16y ago
  >I bet they would I kind of doubt it given J Allard was forced out of the company over the Courier.[1] Frankly, I think that's one of the single most boneheaded moves Ballmer's made -- Allard is largely responsible for reviving Microsoft's brand image with the under 30 crowd heading up Xbox and Zune development. A decade ago, nobody would have described Microsoft as a cool brand, but flash forward today every frat boy in the country owns an Xbox 360. Robbie Bach, head of the E&D division, went out at the same time. Then again, E&D was largely dysfunctional because there's been an odd combination of failing to leverage MS technology when it would make sense while trying to shoehorn MS techs into places where they just didn't work. See buying Danger and then pretty much scrapping their technology to build the Kin as a prime example. It pretty well illustrates the institutional schizophrenia the company shows to the world. [1] http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/05/25/microsoft.overhauls.devices.group.to.face.iphone/ http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/05/25/microsoft.over...
  - fuzzythinker 16y ago
    Same feeling here. Not sure if Allard has any credits for the Kinect, but it's pretty much the only thing that wowed me from MS since win95. Seems like they really thought outside the box even though the aim was to copy the wii. Makes me want to get the xbox just for it.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    > A decade ago, nobody would have described Microsoft as a cool brand I am not sure many people describe it that way now.
    - commandar 16y ago
      Then rephrase it as how many "cool" products existed under the Microsoft brand.
      - rbanffy 16y ago
        Cool as in "geek cool" or as in "general cool"? As in "geek cool", there were many. Even Windows for Workgroups was cool because it offered Mac-like networking for PCs. MS Access was cool. Even VB was cool (before it a Windows hello world was 100+ lines). My Softcard was cool - it allowed my Apple II to run CP/M programs. Microsoft's mice, keyboards and joysticks were always top-notch. As in "general cool", I can't remember a single one. Perhaps the Xbox 360 makes the cut, but only in the 25+ gamer scene. There would also be some "fashion-victim cool": those who just need the latest shiny toy. Those were the ones who jumped into Vista, Office 2007 and then to 7 and 2010 just because there is a newer version, disregarding whatever feature they needed. Obviously, they are not restricted to the Microsoft space - and I have pushed my PPC iMac well beyond its last supported OSX version (the G3 runs 10.4, but is not very snappy). These people also swap hardware like crazy, often having 8-core, 64-bit desktops where they check their hotmail accounts and zip through Facebook at speeds unheard of.
Qz 16y ago
Hell yes, I want it so bad.
JMiao 16y ago
so you'd buy a concept video.
rbanffy 16y ago
I would prefer Apple's Knowledge Navigator (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5144094928842683632# http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5144094928842683632...) or a Sun Starfire (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKJNxgZyVo0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKJNxgZyVo0). Product for product, they are as real as the Courier.

jsz0 16y ago

The best thing Microsoft could do at this point is put together a Metro style touch-centric UI that is the default for Windows tablets. Give developers a quick & dirty way to port their existing applications to a touch-centric UI. It wouldn't be the most elegant solution but it would be closer to what people seem to want in a tablet.

glhaynes 16y ago
Put an app store on and require it. Don't approve apps that don't roughly fit touch guidelines and "feel good": be strict, perhaps capriciously, making examples of some — or, rather, letting them make examples of themselves through their public complaining. This will scare developers into making their apps seem as non-desktop-Windowsish as possible in hopes of being approved. Out Apple Apple.
j053003 16y ago
Personally, I hope it looks like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIPjJElVx0U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIPjJElVx0U One can dream, right?
- rbanffy 16y ago
  I'd be happy with something like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPDT21oEhW0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPDT21oEhW0
rbritton 16y ago
The best thing Microsoft could do is to innovate and do something no one's done. Everything they've done of late is in markets where someone has already done very well in, and they've done such a half-assed job of it that it's a guaranteed fail. Think what you want of Apple, but their products have been things largely not done before. Microsoft is copying the wrong half -- the product ideas themselves -- they should be copying the act of innovating.
- berntb 16y ago
  >>The best thing Microsoft could do is to innovate and do something no one's done. Everything they've done of late is in markets where someone has already done very well in But that is what Microsoft has done historically. The old solution was to use profits from already owned market segments to invest much more in other market segments, until they own those too. I don't know either why it stopped working. Could the problem be a lack of a monopoly leverage? They can't threaten hardware/software makers anymore? Or maybe the problem is just leadership, as others wrote? Or maybe they have just screwed over too many people (to paraphrase an old Netscape executive, too many people has woken up with a bloody computer monitors in bed)?

dotcoma 16y ago

it doesn't come as a surprise, given that they didn't get neither the iPod nor the iPhone...

sprout 16y ago
Actually, from the two people I know who actually owned a Zune (and from Jerry Holkins: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2009/5/15/ http://www.penny-arcade.com/2009/5/15/), Microsoft did in fact 'get' the iPod, and outdid it in a lot of ways. Microsoft just has shitty marketing. But maybe that's what you meant.
- mishmash 16y ago
  > Microsoft did in fact 'get' the iPod, and outdid it in a lot of ways. Microsoft was over 5 years (1848 days) later than Apple to "get" what an MP3 player was. During that five years, Microsoft had a total R&D budget of over $25 billion, or $13,698,630/calendar day. Of course we don't know how much of that budget was allocated for the Zune, but one could easily imagine it being in the hundreds of millions. You say they got the MP3 player, I say if you throw enough money at a problem, eventually, no matter how hard you try to ignore it, the solution will present itself. And in this case, it was simply to copy their competitors. edit: typo
  - sprout 16y ago
    Hardly. They offered a very solid competing vision for what an MP3 player should be. It was a risky vision, involving a subscription and the innovative ability to share songs you haven't bought legally, wirelessly with the person standing next to you. I really think the failure was purely marketing, judging by the accounts of people who used the service, that and people's assumption that anything from Microsoft cannot be innovative or interesting - it's a self-fulfilling prophecy in a lot of ways. Microsoft could have released the iPad, and it probably would have been a total flop, even if it had all the hallmarks of the iPad ecosystem. (There are a few things that could stand-in for the iPhone's app store like Flash and WinMO apps.)

junklight 16y ago

What I don't get is why a company like Microsoft - rich and no longer in the lead doesn't setup a couple of well funded skunk works companies. Drop the baggage (ie don't force them to use windows and allow a new culture to emerge) and give each one a target - touch computing or something else and let 'em go. Microsoft has all the pieces - money , good engineers, marketing etc. but it's not working. They have the financial space to do something radical and disruptive to themselves and jump on that if it pans out. Either that or just get some strong with real vision at the helm who is capable of turning it around. Perhaps its much the same thing

pavs 16y ago
> Microsoft has all the pieces - money , good engineers, marketing etc. They don't have the most important thing. Leadership. Everything about Ballmer reminds me of a salesperson who is trying over-hype a product in to selling it to you. With very little knowledge as to what the product actually does. Like Ballmer, Steve Jobs is also not a tech nerd (in the sense that they are not developers/programmers or engineers), but Steve always seems to have a more in-depth knowledge about Apple products and knows it inside out. On the other hand the top three guys at Google are hackers. Leadership matters.
- junklight 16y ago
  heh heh - that was what I was trying to say. I think I need more coffee this morning....
- wazoox 16y ago
  > Like Ballmer, Steve Jobs is also not a tech nerd Though Jobs isn't a certified engineer, he did wrote code, soldered chips on motherboards, etc. He certainly knows what parts a computer is made of, how software works, etc.
  - sprout 16y ago
    >he did wrote code It's 'did write.' Just FYI, in case you're not native and that wasn't just an auto-complete gaffe.

todayiamme 16y ago

This is slightly off topic, but Ballmer has to be crazy to overlook the strengths they have. Microsoft owns Amalga (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Amalga http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Amalga) which is an information retrieval tool for hospitals that ER doctors to reduce the time spent on searching for information. Now let's take a step back and see what it is. It's a tool which has the ability to manage 40 TB of data in real time and provide more than 12000 pieces of data for each patient. Can you imagine how rich a resource that is? Let's say that microsoft invests considerably in a centralized server and continuously mines the data coming in and strips patient data live to the bare minimum the ER doctor needs to see. Moreover, what if they see trends in what is happening in an entire city, before people even realize it and alert the authorities to prepare before some wave hits. Imagine if they could work with people to reduce costs by mining this truckloads of data in real time. Why are they aping Apple? Why? Microsoft had IBM's "A Smarter Planet" initiative before the latter even dreamed of it, but did they even know about it? It's the proverbial story; don't look where you can't go or you'll miss the riches below. They have some absolutely amazing gems locked up in the research labs that can change entire industries if leveraged in the right way. Moreover, Microsoft has the might to do it. They don't need an iPad killer they need a Microsoft Executive Killer(tm).

angstrom 16y ago
They have a nice system, unfortunately, the health information system landscape is a horrid mess of multiple proprietary data stores. Yes, I know there's DICOM, HL7, etc. The problem is that those standards don't preclude the difficulties of converting the TBs of proprietary niches behind them. This is going to be a multi-year endeavor; a marathon due the glacial pace of healthcare reform. It can take months to convert just one site. The tablet/slate/ipad war is a sprint. Otherwise, I agree, the potential profits Microsoft can reap from the healthcare vertical are enormous.

extension 16y ago

The iPad is not a computer. The iPad is not a computer. Say it with me, Microsoft. Join in, half the tech industry. Nobody framed it better than Apple themselves at the iPad launch. On the big screen was an iPhone, a MacBook, and in between them, an iPad. Steve called it a new category, and that wasn't just marketing speak. It really is a new kind of gadget, designed to make you do things that you previously did not do. This is why everybody says they have no use for it.. because they truly don't, until they have one in their hands. With that in mind, Microsoft and the rest of the tablet me-too wave, probably don't appreciate what they are up against. There is no tablet market, there is an iPad market. Microsoft's best shot would be an X-Pad. Everyone else should get behind Google. But really, I think Apple is going to own this category for a good decade.

TotlolRon 16y ago
The iPad IS a computer. It is at the time when the definition of a word changes that the greatest oppertunities present themselves. There is no iPad market, there is no tablet market - there is a computer market. This is what MS is up against... [Sent from my iPod touch]
- extension 16y ago
  We're going to need a new word because I don't think the computer is going anywhere, and neither does Apple. I think Steve was spot on with his car vs truck analogy: the iPad will be like a car, which everyone will have, and the computer will be like a truck, which people only have for special purposes. That's what computers used to be anyway, and I think it will be fantastic to have them back in their niche again, instead of trying to please everyone.
- Tamerlin 16y ago
  No, it isn't -- it's by design not capable of running enough applications to be a standalone computer. In terms of niches, it's more like the XTerms of yesteryear. The terminals weren't much for horsepower; they were basically UI's that allowed you to work more or less transparently with whatever machine you wanted to, like that Cray Y-MP or SP2 cluster in the data center next door, or the SGI Indigo down the hall. Snip the wires, shrink it down, modernize the internals and put a slick visual UI on it, and you have an iPad. Well, conceptually, that is. This is what the iPad was made to do, and IMO is one of the reasons that it's successful -- it isn't pretending to be something that it isn't.

Flemlord 16y ago

This is crazy talk. Microsoft needs a Windows compatible OS so they can leverage the millions of windows applications already written. To start from scratch would give up one of their main advantages. Best to stick with Windows, and focus on optimizing Windows 8 and Office 2012 for the tablet form factor. I love my iPad but I'd be willing to take a half-step back to a Windows tablet if it meant I could run Microsoft Office and other applications I need for my workflow. I think MS Office is much better positioned for tablets than most people realize. Ribbon strips provide friendly finger-sized buttons that are perfectly sized for tablets. If they can add media center and some sort of X-Box gaming they'll have a killer device. Granted, Apple will still own the "consumption device" market but there is a big need for "business tablets".

shortformblog 16y ago
Their history with Windows is not an advantage if the design of it is cumbersome and full of compromises. Which, more than anything, is what the point of the article is getting at. Microsoft has had a decade of chances in this market to pull off the "business tablet" market you're suggesting. And, well, they just haven't done it yet. If this is such a competitive advantage, why wasn't the iPad put on a Mac OSX architecture? Sometimes, an interface reboot is downright necessary. The Xbox 360, I'd argue, is the most successful non-Windows-related product they sell because it's clear that the interface design was tailored for the product. That's their problem. They don't know when to let go of their legacy and start fresh.
- andrewf 16y ago
  That Apple pulled off the interface reboot is, I think, the most astounding thing about the iOS devices. You can't beat the PC for breadth, depth, and availability of specialised apps. They've been evolving for 30 years now. But when the iPhone SDK became available there were 0 applications, and in less than 30 months the industry's grown an entire replacement software ecosystem that covers a great deal of what users want to do.
- contextfree 16y ago
  You could have made the same argument in 1989 about MSFT attempting to graft a GUI on top of the PC and DOS, though. They tried it a couple times with Windows 1 and 2 and largely failed, meanwhile Apple made a fresh start with the Mac and has been exciting everyone for five years, clearly MSFT's approach is inherently doomed to failure and they should either develop a brand-new HW/SW system from scratch or give up on GUI OS development and focus on Mac applications.

megaman821 16y ago

The weird thing is that Microsoft seems to have all the pieces necessary. If they just make a new shell the multi-touch, gestures, system-wide search, etc, etc is already there. WPF apps are probably easy ports since they are coded in a pretty semantic way. How hard could be to make a shell inspired by the Metro UI scheme?

city41 16y ago

The sad thing is Microsoft could succeed so wonderfully here, but the reality is almost certainly they won't. Create a stripped down, simple OS based on Windows (even iOS is derived from OSX), create a compelling app store, and a framework for writing apps for it based on Silverlight. Bam! Very compelling piece of hardware. Not only that but these type of apps are what Silverlight was destined for. I'd much rather write these types of apps in Silverlight than Cocoa Touch.