6 ms·

I'm reading this and thinking about the history of the iPhone. Starting with no copy/paste (something even available in elementary school) thru to maps. How is

I'm reading this and thinking about the history of the iPhone. Starting with no copy/paste (something even available in elementary school) thru to maps. How is Apple's track record different to Microsoft/Surface? [Edit] My intent is not to be facetious. What I'm seeing (and I may well be wrong, it wouldn't be the first time) is consistency bias - our compulsive desire to be consistent with past decisions. If I have an iPad then the iPad must be good and the Surface must be bad.

georgemcbay 12y ago
"Starting with no copy/paste thru to maps." Not to mention the original intent to not support native 3rd party apps at all. Having said that, Microsoft really did fuck up with the Metro (or whatever it is called now) rollout in stupidly trying to apply the same basic UI to everything despite the fact that it only works really well on touch-centric devices. And they've been stumbling a bit with hardware.. I'm not a Surface user but I do have an Xbox One and it is pretty disappointing compared to the PS4 (YMMV if you care about the live tv stuff, but as a "cord-cutter" I don't). These slips really fucked up the user experience on desktops, laptops (via Windows 8) and consoles (the Xbox One console UX is in quite a lot of ways vastly inferior to the UX on the Xbox 360 and the primary reason seems to be to allow it to be yet another Metro platform). However, there are pretty strong signals that the new leadership realizes this was a mistake and they are now attempting to fix it. It is way too soon to write Microsoft off as a major platform player.
- pohl 12y ago
  Not to mention the original intent to not support native 3rd party apps at all. Is there any support for this claim? The original developer story was to write web apps, sure, but how are we to know what the original intent was? It seems more likely that they were keeping their cards close to their chest while quietly polishing the SDK into a shippable condition.
  - mhurron 12y ago
    Apologists are only bad if they're MS apologists apparently. http://9to5mac.com/2011/10/21/jobs-original-vision-for-the-iphone-no-third-party-native-apps/ http://9to5mac.com/2011/10/21/jobs-original-vision-for-the-i...
    - sjwright 12y ago
      It has been Steve's modus operandi since the early eighties to make such statements in public and in private to stop customers and employees focusing on matters they shouldn't be. It was the right move to focus on releasing the iPhone without an SDK, and to distract the issue with the webkit "solution". It will have gotten the product out the door much, much faster than if they made it battle-hardened against third parties from day one. It's worth noting that the SDK was released just nine months after product launch and the full app store experience came within twelve months of launch. For a 1.0 release, the SDK was quite polished and surprisingly well documented -- hardly the product of a last minute change of heart.
      - sjwright 12y ago
        Downvoted, huh. For future reference: Hacker News is only for the Android fanboys.
deleted 12y ago
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reboog711 12y ago
I think Apple has had an uncanny ability to build excitement around their products. It is something MS does not traditionally have. I think the Surface sounds great personally; and it has a very good shot at being my next laptop.
Zarel 12y ago
Isn't that rayiner's point, though? rayiner argues that Microsoft should have shipped without a feature at all, rather than shipping with a broken feature (e.g. shipping Surface RT without Office rather than with broken Office), which is what Apple did with the copy/paste feature on the iPhone.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  He says it shouldn't have shipped with a buggy Office. It may not be correct to infer from that it should have shipped with no Office, it is just as consistent with a preference that the Surface line shipped without Surface RT. Or at least that, given a commitment to Surface RT, making Office work properly on it was treated as a prerequisite for launch. Its also worth noting, with regard to the Apple comparison, that "copy/paste" wasn't a central selling feature of iPhone, whereas "it runs Office" was a central selling feature of Surface, including RT.
MBCook 12y ago
It's quite possible to use a phone without copy & paste (even if it's not optimal), and at the time most people were coming from feature phones that didn't have the feature. On the other hand Office was basically the reason to buy an MS tablet; and they didn't have it ready.
- gabriel34 12y ago
  No, having a tablet was the reason to buy a MS tablet Office was their main differentiator in your eyes, other people might have different priorities to which the designers must also cater. Keep in your mind they had to get right on the first try everything their concurrents developed throughout years (including copy/paste), the sole fact they did this to some degree is an example of competency. The pen/x86 processor were, to me, the main selling points of surface pro. I did not see any reason to own a RT. Later I bought a Samsung Note that, although wasn't everything I wanted, was at the right price range for what it offered.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    There was no compelling reason to buy Surface RT besides office. That was the killer app that differentiated it from iOS and Android tablets that were either same price with better specs, or cheaper with similar specs. Office was the lynchpin and they flubbed it.
AnthonyMouse 12y ago
> I'm reading this and thinking about the history of the iPhone. Starting with no copy/paste (something even available in elementary school) thru to maps. How is Apple's track record different to Microsoft/Surface? The difference is that Microsoft is late to the game. Surface isn't trying to compete with the 2006 iPhone that has no copy/paste. It's trying to compete with 2014 Apple and Android devices whose historical flaws have already had time to be polished out.
- theg2 12y ago
  They're in entirely different markets. The Surface is an ultra portable laptop that can act as a tablet or also do desktop things while the iPad is a tablet and can only do tablet things.
CamperBob2 12y ago
At the time, a lot of people accurately pointed out that the first iPhone wasn't really a "smartphone" at all. It was missing too many features like a real keyboard, copy/paste, and GPS. But those commenters were so busy being Right On The Internet that they missed the larger point: it wasn't a smartphone, but it wasn't a conventional phone or feature phone, either. It was something else, a product category unto itself. Just like the peanut gallery on Slashdot, most of the industry heavyweights didn't understand that fact until it was way too late. That is why Steve Ballmer is sitting at home twiddling his thumbs right now instead of running Microsoft. The new Surface is being introduced into a very different market. Is it a new type of product altogether, like the first rudimentary iPhones were? If so, it had better be able to fulfill a lot of unsatisfied market demand, like the iPhone did, or it will languish forever in its niche. If not -- if we're supposed to judge it as a replacement for existing laptops, tablets, or both -- then the required features and performance characteristics are very well understood, and Microsoft has no excuses if they fail to meet those requirements. Their failure to engage with graphic artists and other key users at the design phase was clearly a bad move.

georgemcbay 12y ago

"Starting with no copy/paste thru to maps." Not to mention the original intent to not support native 3rd party apps at all. Having said that, Microsoft really did fuck up with the Metro (or whatever it is called now) rollout in stupidly trying to apply the same basic UI to everything despite the fact that it only works really well on touch-centric devices. And they've been stumbling a bit with hardware.. I'm not a Surface user but I do have an Xbox One and it is pretty disappointing compared to the PS4 (YMMV if you care about the live tv stuff, but as a "cord-cutter" I don't). These slips really fucked up the user experience on desktops, laptops (via Windows 8) and consoles (the Xbox One console UX is in quite a lot of ways vastly inferior to the UX on the Xbox 360 and the primary reason seems to be to allow it to be yet another Metro platform). However, there are pretty strong signals that the new leadership realizes this was a mistake and they are now attempting to fix it. It is way too soon to write Microsoft off as a major platform player.

pohl 12y ago
Not to mention the original intent to not support native 3rd party apps at all. Is there any support for this claim? The original developer story was to write web apps, sure, but how are we to know what the original intent was? It seems more likely that they were keeping their cards close to their chest while quietly polishing the SDK into a shippable condition.
- mhurron 12y ago
  Apologists are only bad if they're MS apologists apparently. http://9to5mac.com/2011/10/21/jobs-original-vision-for-the-iphone-no-third-party-native-apps/ http://9to5mac.com/2011/10/21/jobs-original-vision-for-the-i...
  - sjwright 12y ago
    It has been Steve's modus operandi since the early eighties to make such statements in public and in private to stop customers and employees focusing on matters they shouldn't be. It was the right move to focus on releasing the iPhone without an SDK, and to distract the issue with the webkit "solution". It will have gotten the product out the door much, much faster than if they made it battle-hardened against third parties from day one. It's worth noting that the SDK was released just nine months after product launch and the full app store experience came within twelve months of launch. For a 1.0 release, the SDK was quite polished and surprisingly well documented -- hardly the product of a last minute change of heart.
    - sjwright 12y ago
      Downvoted, huh. For future reference: Hacker News is only for the Android fanboys.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

reboog711 12y ago

I think Apple has had an uncanny ability to build excitement around their products. It is something MS does not traditionally have. I think the Surface sounds great personally; and it has a very good shot at being my next laptop.

Zarel 12y ago

Isn't that rayiner's point, though? rayiner argues that Microsoft should have shipped without a feature at all, rather than shipping with a broken feature (e.g. shipping Surface RT without Office rather than with broken Office), which is what Apple did with the copy/paste feature on the iPhone.

dragonwriter 12y ago
He says it shouldn't have shipped with a buggy Office. It may not be correct to infer from that it should have shipped with no Office, it is just as consistent with a preference that the Surface line shipped without Surface RT. Or at least that, given a commitment to Surface RT, making Office work properly on it was treated as a prerequisite for launch. Its also worth noting, with regard to the Apple comparison, that "copy/paste" wasn't a central selling feature of iPhone, whereas "it runs Office" was a central selling feature of Surface, including RT.

MBCook 12y ago

It's quite possible to use a phone without copy & paste (even if it's not optimal), and at the time most people were coming from feature phones that didn't have the feature. On the other hand Office was basically the reason to buy an MS tablet; and they didn't have it ready.

gabriel34 12y ago
No, having a tablet was the reason to buy a MS tablet Office was their main differentiator in your eyes, other people might have different priorities to which the designers must also cater. Keep in your mind they had to get right on the first try everything their concurrents developed throughout years (including copy/paste), the sole fact they did this to some degree is an example of competency. The pen/x86 processor were, to me, the main selling points of surface pro. I did not see any reason to own a RT. Later I bought a Samsung Note that, although wasn't everything I wanted, was at the right price range for what it offered.
- rayiner 12y ago
  There was no compelling reason to buy Surface RT besides office. That was the killer app that differentiated it from iOS and Android tablets that were either same price with better specs, or cheaper with similar specs. Office was the lynchpin and they flubbed it.

AnthonyMouse 12y ago

> I'm reading this and thinking about the history of the iPhone. Starting with no copy/paste (something even available in elementary school) thru to maps. How is Apple's track record different to Microsoft/Surface? The difference is that Microsoft is late to the game. Surface isn't trying to compete with the 2006 iPhone that has no copy/paste. It's trying to compete with 2014 Apple and Android devices whose historical flaws have already had time to be polished out.

theg2 12y ago
They're in entirely different markets. The Surface is an ultra portable laptop that can act as a tablet or also do desktop things while the iPad is a tablet and can only do tablet things.

CamperBob2 12y ago

At the time, a lot of people accurately pointed out that the first iPhone wasn't really a "smartphone" at all. It was missing too many features like a real keyboard, copy/paste, and GPS. But those commenters were so busy being Right On The Internet that they missed the larger point: it wasn't a smartphone, but it wasn't a conventional phone or feature phone, either. It was something else, a product category unto itself. Just like the peanut gallery on Slashdot, most of the industry heavyweights didn't understand that fact until it was way too late. That is why Steve Ballmer is sitting at home twiddling his thumbs right now instead of running Microsoft. The new Surface is being introduced into a very different market. Is it a new type of product altogether, like the first rudimentary iPhones were? If so, it had better be able to fulfill a lot of unsatisfied market demand, like the iPhone did, or it will languish forever in its niche. If not -- if we're supposed to judge it as a replacement for existing laptops, tablets, or both -- then the required features and performance characteristics are very well understood, and Microsoft has no excuses if they fail to meet those requirements. Their failure to engage with graphic artists and other key users at the design phase was clearly a bad move.