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Comment by fjarlq | Hacker News Reader

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fjarlq

Care to list some examples? (Not that I disagree)

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1. Project Natal/Kinect

2. Surface Table

Both are good innovations, on which media would go over gaga, had they come from Apple/Google.

The media did go "gaga" over those, even despite the fact that 99.99% of people will never see a Surface.

How was Surface a success where Wave wasn't?

We can't really talk about the sucess or failure of Surface, actually. Microsoft sold a few of them at $12,000 each to hotels, luxury stores, etc... but never intended to make it a mass-consumer product.

which was a failure - a failure to commercialize a technology that we all wanted. Apple later delivered the iPad, and the rest is history.

Kinect was on the top of my list. When I used Kinect, it seemed quite magical (and I'm jaded enough that few pieces of tech makes me go that way). I really suspect a Kinect from Apple would have been handled differently.

You're probably right. But you've got to admit that Apple itself makes its products seem much more magical than Microsoft does. They do such a good job that it's really easy for the media to pick it up and run with it.

Nearly all of Microsoft's own promotional stuff is extraordinarily bad, especially in comparison to Apple.

A big problem Microsoft has is their pre-announcements.

They will announce stuff before it's ready so when it does arrive there's no buzz about it. BUT it's a necessary culture for them because of the way their business interdepends upon their partners.

I think the bigger problem that Microsoft faces is their tarnished past image. Whatever they make, no matter how innovative or well made it is, people's perception towards the product changes immediately when the word Microsoft is attached to it. This I think is the major PR and marketing challenge faced by Microsoft today. People need to move on and have a broader outlook. People will still bring up IE6 to support their anti-MS arguments.

Kinect is a game changer, but most of its credit should be given to the company MS obtained the technology from.

From an academic point of view, perhaps. Bit from a business point of view, the credit goes to Microsoft for recognizing a hot piece of technology, acquiring it and launching it as a cool product. Each one of those things are more difficult than you seem to give them credit for.

Yes, but both of those are (I believe) technologies developed outside of Microsoft that were then purchased.

While Google and Apple do also purchase technologies, they seem to produce more interesting in-house products than Microsoft. At least in my perception.

I can't recall the last time that Microsoft actually developed internally and rolled out a significant "game changer" device or software.

Your perception of Microsoft may be correct, but it alsao applied to the others. Apple didn't invent multi-touch either. Google didn't do Android inhouse it was an acquisition (at least at first).

No, but I would credit Apple with "inventing" the iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air. Even though all of those products likely have core pieces that were from acquisitions, it seems like Apple executed the grand vision of bringing it together.

Same thing with Google, though they appear to buy several things that they don't fully roll out (Dodgeball, etc.). Android may have originally been an acquisition, again it feels like Google made it into a finished product far beyond what they acquired.

Microsoft appears to have bought the Kinect technology/product and done little more than change the logo on the device. The surface table also hasn't been productized into anything revolutionary or different.

xbox, bing

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