11:18 am
Sat October 27, 2012

Week In Tech: Microsoft's Big Gamble



Big week for Microsoft. The company introduced Windows 8, its new operating system, and entered the ever-expanding tablet market. These are major steps for a company that has been perceived as lagging behind Apple and Google in innovation. We're joined now by NPR's Steve Henn in Silicon Valley.

Steve, thanks for being with us.

STEVE HENN, BYLINE: Oh, my pleasure.

SIMON: Why is Windows 8 considered such a defining moment for Microsoft?

HENN: Well, this operating system is really very different from anything else Windows users have seen before. It doesn't look or feel like the operating system that most of us use at work. The other thing that's really important for the company, is this is Microsoft's attempt to move into the tablet market and move into this era of mobile computing, which has really left them behind. It's been almost three years since Apple introduced the iPad and Microsoft is, just now, finally introducing software that will really work with tablets.

SIMON: Now, the company on Friday introduced its Surface tablet. What was the impression?

HENN: The Surface tablet is a beautifully designed machine. There's a lot of attention to detail. It's sort of Apple-esque in that way. There's a really neat cover that folds down and actually works as a keyboard. So a lot of the hardware was very, very well thought out, and works really nicely, which is unusual, because Microsoft is really a software company.

The thing that could be problematic is that it uses a different kind of chip. Because of that, a lot of the software you'd expect to run on a Microsoft machine won't work. And even some websites you'd expect to work, don't. And so many people I've talked to are expecting consumers to be somewhat unsatisfied when they get this home and take it out of the box.

SIMON: Since you've been the one man I know who's been able to use them both, what about the iPad mini, which came out this week?

HENN: Well, you know, the iPad mini is thin and light. My colleague Laura Sydell described it as a wafer-thin mint, which I think is, kind of, great. And it is designed to work with all of the apps that have already been built for the bigger iPads. So it has a huge library of content that already exists.

What's interesting about the iPad mini to me, is that this device was really designed by Apple in response to its competition, building something to compete with Amazon's HD Fire tablet and a tablet put out by Google called the Google Nexus 7, which are both smaller. In many ways, it's smaller, it's thinner, it's lighter, it has a bigger screen. It's better.

But the one thing Apple wasn't able to compete on was price. The iPad mini starts at more than $300. The other two competitors cost less than $200. And so, you know, Wall Street and financial analysts are a little concerned that it's not going to sell that well. That may be one of the reasons that Apple's stock fell below 600 for the first time, I think, since July.

SIMON: NPR's Steve Henn. Thanks so much.

HENN: Oh, thank you.
