Why doesn't Microsoft understand tablets?
quora.com
quora.com
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.
MS is a bunch of different businesses (Windows, Office, etc). all operating at arms length (more or less). With that sort of structure, there's no room for revolutionary products, just incremental improvements on the existing business lines.
OK, there's great research being done on the monopoly products. Monopolies always do great research. But the company is not going to throw its weight behind new product lines.
IIRC, Apple is a lot more mobile, internally. It's nowhere near as polished as Microsoft (yeah, OSX looks better, but that's just a matter of aesthetic taste - something Apple has and MS doesn't), but it's much better at wild innovation.
Apple has security flaws, a lack of backward compatibility, slow drivers, and so on. People in the know seem to say that Microsoft is streets ahead on engineering. But Apple picks their battles better, so their products always look solid.
I'm not in the know, but people say Apple is a lot more like a start-up. People will be yanked from one part of the company to another, to try and get new products off the ground. Resources get allocated by strategic goals (and executive whim), not left in productive (but possibly stale) areas.
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.
Your hands want to be vertically aligned, and with the PlayStation's left analog stick being lower, it makes FPS games and platformers more awkward to play. Even racing games feel harder on Sony platforms. The only games where their layout is superior are the Katamari Damacy games, where you only use the dual sticks.
Would love to see some research on this.
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/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/H...]
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.
Deleted comment
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.
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.
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-...
I think this is precisely the logic behind most of the Apple hate you see online. What these people (ones who dislike Apple for this reason) don't realize is that there are so many advanced users (content production, education, science) for whom OS X is essential that it is never going away, and that Apple understands that.
If you need OSX to make iOS apps, then you better not gimp OSX. Or all the indy devs will look at Android.
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.
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.
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.
Tangent:
Of course I say that, yet I've seen plenty of Linux-based consumer grade routers fuck up printer sharing despite using CUPS. I suspect most of the usual suspects (router makers) won't get in there before Apple. (plus they'll completely fail at marketing that aspect if they do)
I often wonder if there would be a sufficient market for a "better Timp Capsule", i.e. a well-done, pimped-out NAS/Wifi AP/router/printserver, specifically targeted at iPad/Smartphone users (but which works fine for other computers as well). The user experience of all the devices out there (apart from Apple's) is absolute shite, and Apple's are kind of limited.