Microsoft in pursuit (2)

Surface tension

The tech giant’s decision to make its own tablet computer is a bold gamble

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Readers' comments



I'd rather said not a a bold gamble, but a good initiative of MS to take a small part of the market, very profitable market.


Steve Jobs used to say the problem with Microsoft was that they made crappie products and had no sense of taste. I totally agreed with him until now. With windows 8, wp8, metro and the surface Microsoft is now beating Apple in Apple's own game.
In my opinion Metro is awesome and it is an aesthetic revolution in Microsoft that is changing the entire company, from hardware to software, sites and communication (still waiting for a Metro inspired XBOX hardware though).
The problem, some people say, is that it took Microsoft so long that users are now too familiar with iOS products to change. Some people even say a lack of apps for Windows 8 tablets would be a problem.
True but less true when you are talking about business users. Here and there you see business people taking their Ipads to meetings, but they can't really be productive with them. They can get a report through e-mail or intranet but there is still no app that will allow them to fill a travel expense form directly to their companies ERPs.
Most IT departments and small software companies still rely on Microsoft tools to deliver this kind of apps (LOB-Line of business apps), and they are looking forward to see a Microsoft solution that will allow them to produce lob applications to tablets and phones with the same rich user experience and productivity they had on the desktop.
Now that the solution is on the horizon we can expect a huge amount of business apps in the near future tilting the app balance in Microsoft favor.

V3w79vgN38 in reply to MRCL

Spoken by someone paid by Microsoft.

"With windows 8... the [S]urface Microsoft is now beating Apple in Apple's own game". Well, those two products have not been launced yet, so it is a bit soon to say how superior they are!

"Metro... aesthetic revolution... changing the entire company": What?

BoboMoreno in reply to MRCL

If you can use the words 'Metro' and 'taste' in the same sentence with a straight face you may be colour blind...

Steve Jobs was not just right on the taste issue, but also on the fact that touch and portable are totally different markets and portable needs to be separate from the desktop experience. Though Mac OS X and iOS share underlying code (very clever design), the user experience is completely different for both form factors. There is a very good reason for that, Apple understands user needs like no other.

This latest MS move smacks of the total desperation they must be feeling, they don't 'get' why the iPad/iPhone/iPod are so successful (less is more) and are trying to cram everything into one package (more must be better...)

Even if it is successful (there are always corporate buyers who are just as incompetent) they will feel very serious revenue pressure. They probably need to sell these tablets under cost price to shift any significant numbers and no software licence revenue if they make their own. They may even have to thrown in Office for free to get this moving, again reducing revenue. Other OEMs will only pay very small licence fees for this software as otherwise they can't compete with Android or iOS.

MRCL in reply to MRCL

I use an Iphone, Ipad, Imac, MB Air, Apple TV, the whole Apple ecosystem. The reason is simple. Superior hardware and software, except for business apps.
Surface and Windows 8 replaces both my Ipad an MB Air and solves the business app problem. The world changes, I change too.

greg_not_so in reply to MRCL


"They can get a report through e-mail or intranet but there is still no app that will allow them to fill a travel expense form directly to their companies ERPs. Most IT departments and small software companies still rely on Microsoft"

i agree and i recommend this statement. for all the hoopla around Apple, its ease of use and the wowed consumer, they still have to enter the minds of actual business users. going to meetings with iPads is more of a power/fashion statement than actual productive IT application. network security and latency prevents most users from accessing the actual transactional systems in any reasonable way and i don't see how bringing a keyboard makes an iPad all that different from a small laptop.

having said that, i don't think Microsoft will have many opportunities to get it right, just look how long it took to make a dent in google's search with its bing engine.

MRCL in reply to Jeff English

Jeff, if you google Steve Jobs Microsoft no taste
and then Steve Jobs Microsoft crappy products you will find many references to Jobs statements.
It is better than taking my word on it.

Jeff English in reply to MRCL

Yes, you are right: he did say that although the youtube snatch is a bit out of context. Certainly Apple products are beautiful and easy to use. Apple led the way in the 1980's with user-friendly machines. At that time, all other desktop machines were mimics of large computers. By the late 80's early 90's MS came in with Windows that makes any computer easy to use and almost wiped Apple off the face of the earth. At that time, I converted to Windows and still use it for the greater flexibility that I need for high end computing at my company in Singapore. I suspect that it was during Apple's dark days that Steve made that statement about MS. After Steve returned to Apple he took the company back to their strengths of small, beautiful and easy to use. MS has a different model and caters for a different market. Steve always reminded us that a success business is built on products that people want to buy not on products that you want to make. But Apple's two major periods of success have been built on innovation and that may be short-lived. But I agree Apple produces great products and beauty has never been the MS strong suit; in fact some of their stuff is at best clumsy. Its worth also watching
To see Steve in a more conciliatory mood.

Damn Dirty Ape

I recently switched my phone and home computer over to apple after many years of just getting the cheapest laptop available (and using a blackberry, which is rightfully headed to the scrap heap of history). My thoughts: you can do just about the same tasks on either brand. On a microsoft device, it is very utilitarian and has no style whatsoever. On a MAC, it is beautiful and has lots of intuitive, easy to use controls. The Retina display is very beautiful and the laptop (MBP-R) is incredibly fast. The obvious down-side of apple products is the price. I can pick up a $400 laptop that is capable of handling any work tasks and can get me on the internet. I think that one of the reasons that iphone sales are flagging is the price point, despite being infinitely cooler than the competition.
I think if MS were smart, they would throw almost everything into their xbox community. Young people that I know, deprived of the joys of Playstation, have embraced the xbox and use it for far more than games. Conference calling, music enjoyment, netflix use, etc. These are the company's future, they should be leveraging xbox to the hilt. Many of those folks can't afford to make the jump to apple. They would be crazy not to take advantage of that.
So, having shelled out more cash than I am used to parting with, I am happy with my purchase but I also feel that I should take up a hobby such as photography or video editing to really get the most out of the computer. We shall see if I stay loyal to the brand. For now, the apple is just so much nicer, when I'm not thinking about the price.

labenne in reply to Damn Dirty Ape

the 'price factor' is a good point, but allow me to relate my experiences.....I have a 2008 MacPro, I bought it on ebay for £1200, I upgraded the RAM and the video card, this summer it will sell to a video editor friend for £1500. OK there's inflation to account for, but this selling price allows me to buy an iMac that will perform all the software and do it quicker in most cases.
I have always found that Apple computers have a high resale value.


The surface is a beautiful device, and it has a sleek interface, great software, and excellent keyboard. Too bad it is 1 year late to the party. It will be launched in October, and soon will fade to memory. If MS is serious abut denting iPads lead, it should take a lesson from Googles Android book and push for a host of applications to work on the surface, while in parallel forcing its OEM's to come up with perpetually better devices.

ASUS is making the surface for MS, yet it is also a major component supplier to apple. Will Asus come up with its own version of surface, with higher resolution screen, better specifications and a cheaper price, or will it be just happy to fill orders for MS and Apple. Selling apple its best components and selling MS its second best components.

If MS was serious to compete w iPad, it would have priced the surface at 299 and 399 for a 32 and 64 gig model, and come out fighting. It would have also put up 1000 bucks for any app developer who ported their iPhone app to Win8

Without a massive user base and without a large application eco system, no one is going to buy a surface over an iPad.


But I didn't see anywhere here what MS said about it being a "productivity" item. As opposed to what AP reported as one of the few criticisms of the iPad - "more for consuming content than creating it"...

I think that the iPad is a marvel of hardware and software, but with any Apple product you feel restricted to what Apple understands as to what their costumer base wants - the end.

also_jkimball in reply to Jaggie

Yes the iPad is for consuming, so it will only ever be as successful as newspapers, radio and television that preceeded it. How sad.
Microsoft copied Apple with a splashy release announcement, but they forgot two things Apple Always does. name the price, and "available in stores now". Apple has never debuted a device that wasn't available in stores within 30days or less.
Microsoft got a ton of press out of this (and their equally vaporious WinPhone8 annoucement) but color me skeptical until - some 3-6 months from now - we actually see something available. This FUD used to work, now it just makes them look silly. Full speed ahead for iPad.

also_jkimball in reply to native gks

Every article I have read about the Surface annoucement commented on the striking similarities betwween the MSFT Surface announcement and past APPL product announcments.

So msft copies appl is geneerally agreed upon.

The problem is they forgot the fundamental piece Appl excels at: Delivery. You know, getting the actual product into actual consumers hands?

Apple doesnt sell iPads because they have flashy presentations. They sell iPads because people find them useful and they are actully on store shelves.

Any MBA program will be full of business cases (look up the Continental airlines vs southhwest one if you have time) of competitors trying to mimic their more succeful peers, but missing the key reason the peers were more succesful.

Microsoft has a long history of promising fantastic futures and not delivering. Apple has a shorter history of not saying a single word, and then delivering pretty cool stuff.

native gks in reply to also_jkimball

In "Fooled by Randomness", I read that, to keep yourself honest, you need to perform thought experiments.

Compare all the hw specs such as i/o ports, input options, cameras, etc. Think about what apps you have purchased, or might want to purchase in the future. etc.

(slogan 1): "At Apple, we make a high quality products that just work effortlessly."
(slogan 2): "At Apple, we make overpriced products for the technically illiterate.

Both slogans are only words.
Yet, were Apple to market itself with slogan #2, would you still want an iPad?

also_jkimball in reply to native gks

So we are in agreement that MSFT missed the key item that makes apple succesful (the actual delivery) and now you would like to discuss their marketing efforts in general?

And you start with a very subjective 'overpriced' example. Sorry it doesn't appear to me that their products are over priced. They aren't even that expensive anymore. Their products are priced competitivley with Ultrabooks, Android phone and android tablets.

But even if they were more expensive, would a technically illiterate pay for that? Yes, yes they would. Automatic drive trains in automobiles cost more, perform worse, yet just about everyone buys them. 99% of the planet is technically illiterate. So that's a decent size market Apple is after.

(slogan 0): "At Apple, for the technically illiterate we make a expensive, high quality products for that just work effortlessly."

That pretty much sums it up.The 'dumb, technical illterate' counts keep going up and up - 40M iPhones 12M ipads, 7.7M ipods, 4M macs last quarter alone. Those poor fools - if only they knew thee was cheaper, better performing alternatives out there like...?..well coming soon! The Next version of Adnroid, thats the killer, or if they had just waited until late this fall when Surface comes out. They will all be really sorry when they see how amazing Surface is!

Nice segue back to the article, don't you think? Over promise, under deliver. Get all the techies excited about USB ports on a tablet, when the rest of the world doesn't care.

native gks in reply to also_jkimball

Technically literate people do not buy Apple. We don't.
Yes, there are millions of very smart, but technically illiterate, people.

I am feeling a little schadenfreude for iPhone devotees. To enhance the "photo sharing experience", iOS will have embedded facial recognition and close integration with Facebook. Take a photo, you have the option to "tag" the faces, then the pic is automatically uploaded to Facebook.

Apple did that and people still worship. I just don't want to be in any pictures taken with an iPhone. The resolution is too good. :-)

Dwrig in reply to also_jkimball

I haven't read all the banter between yourself and native gks, but I agree with your timing assessment. I'm in the mobile phone sector, three months is a long time, six months a life time!

Made the annoucement? Gotta launch the product.

I hope they can do it, the Surface looks like a good option to me.

labenne in reply to native gks

Oh Dear... I took the bait.....technically illiterate folk do not buy Apple. Well call me stupid if you like, but since using Macs since 1998 I have been a video editor in the UK TV industry. The stuff I do with my machine would surprise you in it's technicalities, so much so that you would no doubt need education from me to perform these tasks...
Then again have a look around NASA launch facilities on their videos, a heck of a lot of Macs being used by a lot of clearly illiterate men and women.
Airline pilots, another technically illiterate bunch, use iPads for inflight manuals.
I am sure the list just goes on and on.
Maybe the smart "technically illiterate" folk just prefer a system that 'just work's'....

native gks in reply to labenne

I agree completely.
If I had the government or corporations buying my hardware, I would certainly chose a Mac. But, I don't understand how tech-savy consumers rationalize the expense of Macs. Anyway, I cannot wait for the Intel based Surface.


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