10 ms·

Why doesn't Microsoft understand tablets?

21 points by rpsubhub 16y ago

beaumartinez 16y ago
Microsoft simply doesn't need to "understand tablets", at least not right now. Microsoft's key products, Windows and Office, are the de facto standards of the office. Tablets won't change that.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  - beaumartinez 16y ago
    Hence why I say "at least not right now". I have no doubt that Microsoft's days in the office are numbered, but I think the change is something that'll happen later rather than sooner. As you've mentioned, there still isn't a viable competitor to Office. Also, what momentum is there for change? Companies would have to retrain workforces on how to use completely different software and hardware. Windows and Office are the baseline in their fields: anybody that can use any other software suite can use those. I'm betting that in 20 years time our children are still taught how to use Microsoft Word and Excel, that recruitment agencies still ask for your CV/resume in .doc format, and that Windows is still the most popular operating system. Although I'm sure that tablets will replace desktops in some areas in due time, in the office, Windows and Office are here to stay.
- ralx 16y ago
  True, but I'm not sure about your last sentence, I think that there's a possibility that Tablets could change that.
iwwr 16y ago
It would be nice if tablets could interface with printers and other peripherals and come with a functioning Office suite. Flash and copy/paste won't hurt either.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  "Functioning" can be a tricky word when it comes to Office suites. I don't think Microsoft Office is particularly "functioning" and consider mandating the use of Outlook (not to say Exchange) for office communication a form of sadistic punishment imposed by clueless corporate IT drones. BTW, the iPad has copy/paste since ever, as does every Android device. Most newer Androids also support Flash. At home, I print about a page per month on average. Do you need printing so much? What do you intend to do with the printout? Fax it? Are you using something derived from Windows Phone 7? Last time I heard, it didn't support either.
  - maguay 16y ago
    And, actually, printing from iPad works great now, too. There are ways to get AirPrint working with any Windows or Mac shared printer, so even if you don't have a newer wireless printer, you can still use it. As far as Office suites go, the iWork apps on iPad definitely cover everything most users need. I've had no problems creating documents in Pages on iPad and submitting them to my college which requires everything in Word format. The first couple times, I doubled checked and made sure the exported file looked fine on a computer, but now I just send them in directly from iPad. It's worked great for me, and I think it'd cover what most need from home and even business use of Office. The iWork apps are easily some of the most feature-rich on iPad.
    - JonoW 16y ago
      > There are ways to get AirPrint working with any Windows or Mac shared printer This is my main beef with the current tablets; it can't be your only computer, you have to have another to update it from/print from (if you don't have a wireless printer) etc. I would love a tablet that was powerful enough to run a full blown OS, be it Windows or OSX, but run with a tablet specific skin over the top. 95% of the time I would use it just as one would use an iPad now, but in those 5% of times allow me to use the full OS, load up Word and edit a document, run some random Windows program, connect to a VPN etc.
      - 16y ago
dwc 16y ago
Read the top two answers (Bill Bliss, Robert Scoble), and it seems they're missing what I see as the most obvious and comprehensive answer. Bliss touches on it in passing, but not as a main theme... The real reason MS doesn't get tablets is that it's a new product category, and MS pretty much always thinks in terms of how to extend who they are (Desktop) into any new market. XBox hardly counts; while it's a great product they did not have to define the market in any way, they moved in and made a solid product in a well defined market. With Kinect they really did something outrageously cool, but this isn't usual for them. Apple, on the other hand, has shown the ability to look at niche markets and see the bigger picture, turning it mainstream. iPod, iPhone, iPad: all of these areas had existing companies with somewhat successful products, but definitely niche. Sometimes MS reminds me of Xerox's lack of foresight with PARC.
- allenp 16y ago
  I agree with your assessment of MS extending who they are in the marketplace but they did push the market on the Xbox, specifically with the Xbox Live service. Neither Sony or Nintendo have made significant strides in this area and Live has been on the Xbox since 2002.
  - jordanroher 16y ago
    True, though you could say the Dreamcast first put a toe in that water with its modem and Phantasy Star Online. But the original Xbox was a great step forward for gaming consoles: built-in hard drive, Ethernet port, dual analog sticks in the proper position for 3D gaming... uh, and the hilariously oversized controller: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/8/29/ http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/8/29/
    - allenp 16y ago
      Phantasy Star Online was so far ahead of its time - a good lesson about market timing there for sure.
    - jokermatt999 16y ago
      Just a minor nitpick, although I agree with everything else. dual analog sticks in the proper position for 3D gaming Wasn't this done back with the early PS2/late PS1 controllers with analog sticks? I don't see how they're all that different from the first XBOX controller in terms of placement. I tend to prefer the PS controllers, so there may be some bias.
Sherlock 16y ago
The article also has something factually wrong (attributed to MS): in the corporate world, the Ipad is useful for discussing documents o presentations around a table, between two or three people, when undocking a notebook takes way more than the time you need to set up an Ipad. I also made that mistake in the begining, I had to see the Ipad in action to valuate it as the right tool for that job.
bluekeybox 16y ago
A great quote from Robert Scoble: "I remember talking with [Microsoft executives] on the mobile team when I worked there in 2005. They said they were going after enterprises only and didn't care about consumers. Apple knew that wouldn't work. Enterprises don't like new things. Consumers do."
- kenjackson 16y ago
  The mobile team was right... in 2005. In 2005 even subsidized smartphones were at $399 and capacitive displays were still a tad too expensive. Even in 2007 when Apple shipped the iPhone, MS probably couldn't do the same thing with the exact same device. Apple was buoyed by their consumer hardcore base, which MS doesn't really have. And given that MS already had another mobile OS that seemed more feature-rich, I think the msPhone would have had trouble in the marketplace. The thing that Jobs has seemed to have nailed is timing. Maybe his experience with Newton left a great impression on him, but he seems much more cautious in bringing things to market (I know that it almost seems like the opposite). He put the iPad on hold and moved it to a phone form factor. That was genius. An iPad in 2007 flops. In iPad, after 3 years of the iPhone, redefines the market (in part because the phone requires you to make a consumption device -- which then feeds into your tablet strategy). I don't think this is so much a question of what did MS miss, but rather what did Apple get right. Because frankly, no one else other than Apple got it right either.
cletus 16y ago
When talking about Microsoft and tablets, two other companies spring to mind: Apple (of course) and Amazon. I'm reminded of the command, infantry and police quote (via [1]). Small startups are typically nimble. They're commandos. At some point the beachhead is established and you need an army. Once you've won the war you need the police. At some point in a company's history it will switch from an attacking posture to a defensive posture. Microsoft has almost all of the desktop OS and office software market. There's nothing really left to attack there. So now they're chasing shadows, afraid of the golden goose dying. Everything is seen as either a threat to Windows/Office or a means to sell more licenses. Microsoft bought the (then very successful) Sidekick, tried to do a followup, for political reasons had the entire thing rewritten in a Windows OS (that delayed things 2 years) and you ended up with the Kin. Windows/Office are so big (in terms of MS revenue) that nothing else matters. Ultimately Microsoft is about selling Windows/Office licenses to large enterprises and OEMs. Everything else is a distraction (including the consumer). Now compare this to (the quite brilliant) Jeff Bezos. When he came out with the Kindle I was rather surprised to see two teams working on this: the software team and the hardware team. This entered the public eye really with the iPhone/iPad when the software was ported there. At first I thought "that's going to kill the Kindle hardware" and it might, but that's kind of the point. If the Kindle hardware is good enough to stand up on it's own merits then it will survive. If not, Amazon is already invested in the tablet/smartphone segment. So both teams are motivated to succeed. This is an object lesson in having the right incentives. Apple springs to mind for the obvious reasons: they completely reinvented the phone and now the tablet. Now every phone looks like an iPhone and every tablet looks like the iPad. Apple, unlike Microsoft, are a consumer hardware and digital content company. Their OS exists to sell hardware. A lot of people see iOS and think that OS X is doomed and eventually all Apple hardware will be in Apple's walled garden. This is a very Microsoft way of thinking. Under the covers there are a lot of similarities between iOS and OS X but iOS is still very different. Where Microsoft simply tried (and continues to try) to sell Windows computers in the form of tablets, Apple made the right tool for the job. What that does to the future of OS X, if anything, is irrelevant. The experience is what matters. Oh and for the record, I don't think OS X is doomed. It's probably not as important as it once was but it will still power the "trucks" Steve Jobs talked about last year. If anything, OS X will simply be made to look more like iOS and you see this in the Lion developer preview. The problem with Microsoft is they have a business wonk as a leader (who is no visionary of any kind) and they have no courage for the kind of risky decisions they'd need to make to reinvent themselves. [1]: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/06/commandos-infantry-and-police.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/06/commandos-infantry-...
brudgers 16y ago
>"While the iPad is selling like multi-touch hotcakes, Microsoft is significantly lagging behind with its tablet offerings" There is a category mistake underlying the article. Microsoft does not sell tablets. Furthermore, their operating systems have dominated the tablet segment for more than a decade and been the OS of choice for leading tablet manufacturer's such as Fujitsu for nearly 20 years.[http://www.fpc.fujitsu.com/www/content/products/Tablet-PCS/History/tablet-pc-history_07.php http://www.fpc.fujitsu.com/www/content/products/Tablet-PCS/H...] The iPad is successful mainly because of Apple's ability to market it to consumers rather than the businesses which have traditionally used tablets and are always the centerline of Microsoft's roadmap. But the tablet market did not spring into being last April - NASA put tablets running Windows 95 in orbit aboard the Space Shuttle in 1997. [http://www.fpc.fujitsu.com/www/content/products/Tablet-PCS/History/tablet-pc-history_09.php http://www.fpc.fujitsu.com/www/content/products/Tablet-PCS/H...]

21 points by rpsubhub 16y ago

Microsoft simply doesn't need to "understand tablets", at least not right now. Microsoft's key products, Windows and Office, are the de facto standards of the office. Tablets won't change that.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- beaumartinez 16y ago
  Hence why I say "at least not right now". I have no doubt that Microsoft's days in the office are numbered, but I think the change is something that'll happen later rather than sooner. As you've mentioned, there still isn't a viable competitor to Office. Also, what momentum is there for change? Companies would have to retrain workforces on how to use completely different software and hardware. Windows and Office are the baseline in their fields: anybody that can use any other software suite can use those. I'm betting that in 20 years time our children are still taught how to use Microsoft Word and Excel, that recruitment agencies still ask for your CV/resume in .doc format, and that Windows is still the most popular operating system. Although I'm sure that tablets will replace desktops in some areas in due time, in the office, Windows and Office are here to stay.
ralx 16y ago
True, but I'm not sure about your last sentence, I think that there's a possibility that Tablets could change that.

iwwr 16y ago

It would be nice if tablets could interface with printers and other peripherals and come with a functioning Office suite. Flash and copy/paste won't hurt either.

rbanffy 16y ago
"Functioning" can be a tricky word when it comes to Office suites. I don't think Microsoft Office is particularly "functioning" and consider mandating the use of Outlook (not to say Exchange) for office communication a form of sadistic punishment imposed by clueless corporate IT drones. BTW, the iPad has copy/paste since ever, as does every Android device. Most newer Androids also support Flash. At home, I print about a page per month on average. Do you need printing so much? What do you intend to do with the printout? Fax it? Are you using something derived from Windows Phone 7? Last time I heard, it didn't support either.
- maguay 16y ago
  And, actually, printing from iPad works great now, too. There are ways to get AirPrint working with any Windows or Mac shared printer, so even if you don't have a newer wireless printer, you can still use it. As far as Office suites go, the iWork apps on iPad definitely cover everything most users need. I've had no problems creating documents in Pages on iPad and submitting them to my college which requires everything in Word format. The first couple times, I doubled checked and made sure the exported file looked fine on a computer, but now I just send them in directly from iPad. It's worked great for me, and I think it'd cover what most need from home and even business use of Office. The iWork apps are easily some of the most feature-rich on iPad.
  - JonoW 16y ago
    > There are ways to get AirPrint working with any Windows or Mac shared printer This is my main beef with the current tablets; it can't be your only computer, you have to have another to update it from/print from (if you don't have a wireless printer) etc. I would love a tablet that was powerful enough to run a full blown OS, be it Windows or OSX, but run with a tablet specific skin over the top. 95% of the time I would use it just as one would use an iPad now, but in those 5% of times allow me to use the full OS, load up Word and edit a document, run some random Windows program, connect to a VPN etc.
    - 16y ago

dwc 16y ago

Read the top two answers (Bill Bliss, Robert Scoble), and it seems they're missing what I see as the most obvious and comprehensive answer. Bliss touches on it in passing, but not as a main theme... The real reason MS doesn't get tablets is that it's a new product category, and MS pretty much always thinks in terms of how to extend who they are (Desktop) into any new market. XBox hardly counts; while it's a great product they did not have to define the market in any way, they moved in and made a solid product in a well defined market. With Kinect they really did something outrageously cool, but this isn't usual for them. Apple, on the other hand, has shown the ability to look at niche markets and see the bigger picture, turning it mainstream. iPod, iPhone, iPad: all of these areas had existing companies with somewhat successful products, but definitely niche. Sometimes MS reminds me of Xerox's lack of foresight with PARC.

allenp 16y ago
I agree with your assessment of MS extending who they are in the marketplace but they did push the market on the Xbox, specifically with the Xbox Live service. Neither Sony or Nintendo have made significant strides in this area and Live has been on the Xbox since 2002.
- jordanroher 16y ago
  True, though you could say the Dreamcast first put a toe in that water with its modem and Phantasy Star Online. But the original Xbox was a great step forward for gaming consoles: built-in hard drive, Ethernet port, dual analog sticks in the proper position for 3D gaming... uh, and the hilariously oversized controller: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/8/29/ http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/8/29/
  - allenp 16y ago
    Phantasy Star Online was so far ahead of its time - a good lesson about market timing there for sure.
  - jokermatt999 16y ago
    Just a minor nitpick, although I agree with everything else. dual analog sticks in the proper position for 3D gaming Wasn't this done back with the early PS2/late PS1 controllers with analog sticks? I don't see how they're all that different from the first XBOX controller in terms of placement. I tend to prefer the PS controllers, so there may be some bias.

Sherlock 16y ago

The article also has something factually wrong (attributed to MS): in the corporate world, the Ipad is useful for discussing documents o presentations around a table, between two or three people, when undocking a notebook takes way more than the time you need to set up an Ipad. I also made that mistake in the begining, I had to see the Ipad in action to valuate it as the right tool for that job.

bluekeybox 16y ago

A great quote from Robert Scoble: "I remember talking with [Microsoft executives] on the mobile team when I worked there in 2005. They said they were going after enterprises only and didn't care about consumers. Apple knew that wouldn't work. Enterprises don't like new things. Consumers do."

kenjackson 16y ago
The mobile team was right... in 2005. In 2005 even subsidized smartphones were at $399 and capacitive displays were still a tad too expensive. Even in 2007 when Apple shipped the iPhone, MS probably couldn't do the same thing with the exact same device. Apple was buoyed by their consumer hardcore base, which MS doesn't really have. And given that MS already had another mobile OS that seemed more feature-rich, I think the msPhone would have had trouble in the marketplace. The thing that Jobs has seemed to have nailed is timing. Maybe his experience with Newton left a great impression on him, but he seems much more cautious in bringing things to market (I know that it almost seems like the opposite). He put the iPad on hold and moved it to a phone form factor. That was genius. An iPad in 2007 flops. In iPad, after 3 years of the iPhone, redefines the market (in part because the phone requires you to make a consumption device -- which then feeds into your tablet strategy). I don't think this is so much a question of what did MS miss, but rather what did Apple get right. Because frankly, no one else other than Apple got it right either.

cletus 16y ago

When talking about Microsoft and tablets, two other companies spring to mind: Apple (of course) and Amazon. I'm reminded of the command, infantry and police quote (via [1]). Small startups are typically nimble. They're commandos. At some point the beachhead is established and you need an army. Once you've won the war you need the police. At some point in a company's history it will switch from an attacking posture to a defensive posture. Microsoft has almost all of the desktop OS and office software market. There's nothing really left to attack there. So now they're chasing shadows, afraid of the golden goose dying. Everything is seen as either a threat to Windows/Office or a means to sell more licenses. Microsoft bought the (then very successful) Sidekick, tried to do a followup, for political reasons had the entire thing rewritten in a Windows OS (that delayed things 2 years) and you ended up with the Kin. Windows/Office are so big (in terms of MS revenue) that nothing else matters. Ultimately Microsoft is about selling Windows/Office licenses to large enterprises and OEMs. Everything else is a distraction (including the consumer). Now compare this to (the quite brilliant) Jeff Bezos. When he came out with the Kindle I was rather surprised to see two teams working on this: the software team and the hardware team. This entered the public eye really with the iPhone/iPad when the software was ported there. At first I thought "that's going to kill the Kindle hardware" and it might, but that's kind of the point. If the Kindle hardware is good enough to stand up on it's own merits then it will survive. If not, Amazon is already invested in the tablet/smartphone segment. So both teams are motivated to succeed. This is an object lesson in having the right incentives. Apple springs to mind for the obvious reasons: they completely reinvented the phone and now the tablet. Now every phone looks like an iPhone and every tablet looks like the iPad. Apple, unlike Microsoft, are a consumer hardware and digital content company. Their OS exists to sell hardware. A lot of people see iOS and think that OS X is doomed and eventually all Apple hardware will be in Apple's walled garden. This is a very Microsoft way of thinking. Under the covers there are a lot of similarities between iOS and OS X but iOS is still very different. Where Microsoft simply tried (and continues to try) to sell Windows computers in the form of tablets, Apple made the right tool for the job. What that does to the future of OS X, if anything, is irrelevant. The experience is what matters. Oh and for the record, I don't think OS X is doomed. It's probably not as important as it once was but it will still power the "trucks" Steve Jobs talked about last year. If anything, OS X will simply be made to look more like iOS and you see this in the Lion developer preview. The problem with Microsoft is they have a business wonk as a leader (who is no visionary of any kind) and they have no courage for the kind of risky decisions they'd need to make to reinvent themselves. [1]: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/06/commandos-infantry-and-police.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/06/commandos-infantry-...

brudgers 16y ago

>"While the iPad is selling like multi-touch hotcakes, Microsoft is significantly lagging behind with its tablet offerings" There is a category mistake underlying the article. Microsoft does not sell tablets. Furthermore, their operating systems have dominated the tablet segment for more than a decade and been the OS of choice for leading tablet manufacturer's such as Fujitsu for nearly 20 years.[http://www.fpc.fujitsu.com/www/content/products/Tablet-PCS/History/tablet-pc-history_07.php http://www.fpc.fujitsu.com/www/content/products/Tablet-PCS/H...] The iPad is successful mainly because of Apple's ability to market it to consumers rather than the businesses which have traditionally used tablets and are always the centerline of Microsoft's roadmap. But the tablet market did not spring into being last April - NASA put tablets running Windows 95 in orbit aboard the Space Shuttle in 1997. [http://www.fpc.fujitsu.com/www/content/products/Tablet-PCS/History/tablet-pc-history_09.php http://www.fpc.fujitsu.com/www/content/products/Tablet-PCS/H...]