Microsoft's Surface sales figures are in, and they're hideous
theregister.co.uk
theregister.co.uk
It's interesting that PA's Mike "Gabe" Krahulik had a better pitch than MS themselves.
http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/microsoft-is-killing-...
Surface Pro is quite a different beast from Surface RT. I think Gabe was just in love with the Waccom stylus, which is not really unique to the Pro (other tablets have this also).
The real problem with Surface is that it's a crappy overall device. The two keyboard options both suck. Microsoft is hopeless at managing screen real estate so the serious applications such as office are weak.
Yes, it's a great portable sketchpad, so Gabe is sold.
I posted a blog entry on it: http://loewald.com/blog/?p=5274
Nutshell is the tablet is good but the software kind of sucks. I can only use the tablet in mirrored mode because the tablet driver maps the surface to the combined screen, and I need to use a third party app to run the tablet at native resolution. If I were a pro, I'd probably spring for a Cintiq, but for a hobbyist it's wonderful value.
Well, visual artists at least. No existing audio software runs on it, and it doesn't even support playback of MIDI files. I remain somewhat interested in a Surface Pro, but (like Google, and like MS themselves on Windows for years) the Surface is only useful to musicians for checking email.
Just look at the ribbon, toolbar, status bar, etc. Not only does this waste screen real estate, it wastes vertical space which is at a premium on widescreen displays. On a widescreen monitor, Pages minimizes this cruft or puts it in palettes and sidebars.
When you've got a document loaded up in a word processor, you're not just trying to read static content; you're working on that content, and the application you're using is a tool for editing and manipulating it. Hiding the chrome in order to show more of the document emphasises the document content as it is in the immediate instant, rather than the potential things you can do with that content, and makes it harder to locate the tools and functions for manipulating the document.
Minimal chrome might make sense in a web browser or PDF reader (at least to the extent that there's a smaller set of functionality necessary for reading documents, but hiding searching/bookmarking/referencing tools is just as bad) but in a word processor, it's much more necessary to have the application's own functional interface exposed.
Re: Surface RT, Microsoft launched at the same price point as the iPad 4, but substantially later, with a last-generation CPU/GPU, non-Retina screen, and a buggy, slow, pre-release version of Office RT. That last point was inexcusable, a product management fuck up of Apple Maps proportions. The whole point of Surface RT was Office, and every review of the device said "Office RT is slow and buggy." The overwhelming feeling with Surface RT is that "I'm really going to be kicking myself in 6 months when they release the next version with flagship specs to match the flagship price."
Re: Surface Pro, Microsoft launched at a Macbook Air 11" price point, without the Air's great keyboard and with substantially weaker battery life (in Engadget's test, half the battery life of the comparably-sized Acer W700). The overwhelming feeling with Surface Pro was "I'm really going to be kicking myself when they release the next iteration with Haswell and usable battery life."
On top of all that, the segmentation was arbitrary and capricious. What's the difference between Surface RT and Surface Pro? It's an explanation that probably makes sense to a marketing guy somewhere trying to differentiate SKUs, but not one that I think resonated with consumers. Nexus 7 versus Nexus 10, iPad versus iPad Mini. That's how to do product differentiation--in a way that's immediately obvious to the consumer.
There was also some weird design choices. Why the extreme wide-format screen? Did anybody even try reading a Word document in portrait mode on the thing? I can understand the format for consumer-oriented tablets, but Surface was supposed to be a "real work" office machine! Why are there two ways to manage settings, one set in Metro and another set in the Desktop? Why do so many things require going into the Desktop anyway? Who thought it was even a good idea to expose the user to two completely different UI's in the same device?
plus the reduced price should help make it attractive. It's one very functional device though. Just today I read an article of how it was perfect for a student. Will update with a link if I find it.
It really isn't. Nearly every review mentioned that it felt a little slow. Anand Tech mentioned it was "almost" as smooth as an iPad, but felt slower starting apps. Tech Radar said its graphics performance was "sluggish." Ars mentioned apps starting slower than they would like. I had a Surface RT for several weeks, and that was exactly my impression: it felt just a step slower than my wife's iPad, and that wasn't an admirable quality in a $500+$100 tablet. If Surface RT had started at $350, people would have perceived it as an acceptable compromise.
> Although office was updated a month or two after the release and fixed the performance issues in time.
It doesn't matter what happens "a month or two" after all the reviews are written. Nobody who wasn't hoping for the Surface RT to succeed bothered to go back a couple of months later to check for updates.
What I find so odd about the RT was that the desktop only existed for two reasons: Office and settings. If it wasn't for Office they could have fixed the settings that were missing in the Metro interface and the thing wouldn't have felt slightly Jekyll & Hyde. Instead it looked more like the Office team didn't believe in the product (or wasn't given enough time) and it seemed half-assed.
I have a friend who has a 64gb RT and loves it, but he bought it for $50 after the original owner wanted to get rid of it. I doubt he would have paid the $450 for it though.
Did you see the commercial? It actually is easy to blame marketing. The surface commercial was easily the worst commercial I've seen in my life. Wasn't entertaining, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the product. Even worse was the mini-documentary Microsoft released afterwards that bragged about how awesome every aspect of the commercial was.
That, as you mentioned, is only part of the problem. RT is a disaster. The person who conceived the idea should have known that it would never succeed, because never before in the history of the world has there ever been a product that the public so obviously didn't want.
No one ever said, "I want a Windows device, but make sure it isn't capable of running Windows software."
I've been a happy Windows user since 95, but I'm starting to lose faith in Microsoft.
Products don't become bad just because they're advertised poorly.
The surface commercial was easily the worst commercial I've seen in my life
Either you watch a staggeringly small amount of television or this is hyperbole.
The Dell commercials that are running now showing how it's better than an iPad are a model of clarity by comparison. I had absolutely no idea from the breakdancing commercials what the device was capable of.
I am not a big fan of TV but I have been a creative lead for a commercial series that won a Clio award, for what that's worth.
I am not a big fan of TV but I have been a creative lead for a commercial series that won a Clio award, for what that's worth.
That's honestly really cool. I wouldn't have expected a lot of advertising people on HN.
And you're right, it's not the worst commercial ever. But considering teh staekes I thought it was pretty bad, and surprising considering how good MS marketing usually.
Agreed, but bad advertising can definitely stop a great product from selling. Good advertising, on the other hand, can help a bad product sell. Just look at how much revenue the original Blair Witch Project generated. Microsoft created a mediocre product with the Surface RT. In a market crowded with absolutely excellent devices, there is simply no room left for mediocrity.
Furthermore, Microsoft didn't only fail to illustrate the few redeeming qualities of the Surface to consumers, it didn't even begin to try. A commercial is supposed to be a form of communication between the company and its potential customers. A commercial that doesn't communicate the product's value to it's potential customers is a waste of time and money.
>Either you watch a staggeringly small amount of television, or this is hyperbole.
I admit, it's a little of both.
It does nothing to explain what the product is, let alone why you'd want one. It doesn't offer any abstract brand associations for people to connect to Microsoft. It's just a short video of bunch of people dancing frenetically around a courtyard, and if you blink, you could miss that it's got anything to do with MS at all.
The only thing it seems to actually tell you about the product, if you're paying very close attention, is that there's a flip-up stand built into the back of it. They were using that stand clicking into place as the source of the percussion for the music track. That's it - if you pay close attention and consciously look for the product they're selling, you discover that it's a commercial for a plastic stand.
MS was like "Whoa we are giving you the tablet with office 'cause you ever dreamed a tablet with office and you totally hate a tablet without office". Ballmer almost said something totally equal to it
Problem is, in the last year, market has showed that no one need a tablet with office and that office is not more a killer feature, mainly for the common users market (it has still sense in corporation market).
So they pushed and pushed on this feature when it was practically useless to convince anyone to buy an rt. This is another reason to blame failure ALSO on the marketing part of MS.
Surface RT I can't really see a market for. But Surface Pro is perfectly OK, competitive with laptops, some advantages (touch screen and stylus are nice), good screen with support for second screen, easy switch between laptop and tablet mode, some disadvantages but nothing too bad - keyboard just OK, battery just OK, only one USB port on the machine, etc. All in all next version will be nicer I'm sure, but I have one and I'm pretty happy with it and am not too worried about getting the next iteration - it works fine for me as is.
Microsoft isn't cool, and that's okay. Microsoft is the boring boyfriend you know is always there and will always load Office documents easily (see 'rayiner below). It's not sexy but it doesn't have to be.
Once the need for Office goes any, then any operating system will work for many people. Linux has finally won in the consumer space in the form of Android. Hopefully, we'll see a huge flood of "desktop/notebook" Android/Chromebook devices. Get "Office" in the cloud and the 90% desktop monopoly that Microsoft has had for two decades finally goes away. Don't get me wrong... This isn't Microsoft being the wrong company to have a monopoly, it's just silly that any company has a 90% market share. We don't buy 90% of our cars from General Motors.
Let's get a little more innovation in the consumer space. Google, Apple, Microsoft, and maybe even... Ubuntu dividing up the market will be better for everyone.
Office is completely bug-ridden and unstable, and always has been.
I haven't opened up Office since 2009. And the only reason that I opened it then is that I was getting attachments from Office docs from users who used it to communicate stuff with me that could have been more effectively communicated in plain text emails.
OEM preloads (look up the Novell / DR DOS lawsuits for specifics, there's some wonderful quotes), and destroying WordPerfect and Lotus 123 through a combination of a bundled, inexpensive suite and killing both competing products in the DOS -> Windows conversion were key.
You neglected to mention file formats, the Outlook-Exchange hegemony, Active Directory, and various proprietary integration tools (Visual Basic, OLE, C#, SharePoint).
And it's probably worth noting that Microsoft did cultivate and create a vast ISV ecosystem with a huge list of titles serving a vast array of business needs. If the OS and Office ubiquity established its dominance, this cemented it.
But since 2005 the cracks have been growing visible wider. Starting then, execs at most firms I've worked for or with had Apple laptops, not Windows systems. In some cases, the CFO/bookkeeper's Quickbooks workstation was the only Windows machine in the office, in others some nontechnical staff used Windows but all of engineering and many others were on either Mac (mostly) or Linux (some). And application use is moving increasingly toward SAAS offerings, especially for engineering and project management (wikis, bugtracking, project management and planning tools, etc.), but also increasingly for office tasks (documents, spreadsheets, presentations).
The one and only version of MS Office I've ever owned was Office 97, and for the most part I've avoided having to use it for more than very incidental tasks either personally or for work ever since.
Most of my text processing is in vim. After far too long playing with it, I've finally started picking up LaTeX (it's pretty amazing, largely straightforward, and the results are fantastic). 'awk' is my go-to "spreadsheet" tool (I prefer code/data separation), though Gnumeric and LibreOffice offer very nearly anything Excel can do (I can understand how an Excel jockey might not care to make the switch, but the tools are largely as capable and interchangeable).
Isn't that pretty much the attitude that RIM had as well? This is not a successful strategy when you have to compete with a new class of devices.
PCs and mobile devices have overlapping functionality, but the use cases and contexts in which that functionality is applied are very different.
By conflating the two markets together, and allowing (poorly-conceived, IMO) product strategies for mobile devices to spill over into their flagship PC software products, MS has made a very serious error.
You see Android running the same apps on multiple mobile device architectures using Java and the Dalvik VM. That's a technology you had since 13 years ago with NETCF.
Hmmm. What to do? What to do? I KNOW: Let's segment the market by blowing off compatibility with a gazillion apps my enterprise customers have written and use and let's use Surface RT to go for a Quixotic attempt to beat Apple and Google with Modern apps which are over-sandboxed and can't talk to .NET apps.
That comes off as derisive, but how do you say it nicer? They lost a billion dollars in a write-down - not a write-off - doing that, and not one word about "Gee, can we fix the product formulation?"
Well, at least they didn't buy Motorola. That's going to be a write-down that leaves a mark.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/26/4271432/does-anyone-know-w...
I love how people keep trotting this number out. Nevermind the fact that Moto had $3 billion in cash[1], which immediately became Google's cash when the purchase went through, so the real price was closer to 9.5 billion. Motorola also had 24,500 patents in its portfolio[2]. Apple, MS, and RIM paid 4.5 billion for 6,000 Nortel patents not long before the Moto sale.
[1] http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/whats-behind-the-heft...
[2] http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/08/valuing-paten...
Motorola, acquired by Google in 2012, racked up a loss of $218 million before items, more than four times the $49 million it lost a year earlier.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/07/19/google-earnings-ad-ra...
There is a reason why no one messes with IBM with a patent war. The counter punch would murder anyone who'd try. Maybe Google now has enough patents to deter most of the absurd threats, and given their cash flow, even the huge cost of the Motorola acquisition may be "worth it" as a contingency plan and a risk hedge.
I'm sure that's what Google was hoping for.
But it appears the 12 billion paid for those patents don't seem to be offering too much in the way of protection, as they keep losing in the courts.
http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/04/april-was-disastrous-for-...
Add to that, the additional Motorola restructuring costs and Motorola’s inability to make a profit, it's starting to look like the purchase won’t be far off from a total right down.
During its Q2 earnings conference call Motorola hinted that it is ready to join Android patent racket, and start demanding licensing fees for its IP from other Android manufacturers.
This week Motorola’s CEO Sanjay Jha reiterated this message, and made it even more clear – they do indeed have plans to start collecting IP royalties from other Android makers.
http://www.unwiredview.com/2011/08/11/motorolas-sanjay-jha-o...
To find out, I guess we'll have to wait a few decades for the book?
Merck had nearly $7 billion in operating losses last year on $48 billion in revenue. Microsoft had $22 billion in net revenue on $78 billion in income. The write down affected profits by less than 5%.
Surface is a research project - like Kin before it. Microsoft put several million Windows RT devices in the field in less than nine months. They will probably put another several million in the field in the next few.
That's a lot of stinking data, a lot cheaper than clinical development of a new new drug, and almost certain to be repaid over the long term because they've got Windows running on ARM and while there's the normal calls for Ballmer - Microsoft's second largest stockholder after his college buddy Gates - to fire himself, there are not widespread reports of technical failure from the field. On top of all that, every device they sell recoups part of their sunk cost in R&D.
Microsoft built a reference device for a new operating system. They have collected data to help their hardware partners develop more devices. They have collected data upon which to build a roadmap for Windows on ARM. Microsoft does not live and die quarter to quarter with Wall Street because the founder and first Business Manager still hold enough stock to call the shots.
They also realized well over a billion dollars of wealth apiece last year from Microsoft's operations. Both the numbers and the standard journalistic refrain that Microsoft is failing are pretty much the same as last year and the year before etc. It's just another news cycle.
Surface RT I don't consider competitive. But the Pro is the reference device for Windows 8 and nobody was doing it as well when I looked. They should have a market position there at least.
I think Windows 8 is a bit misguided in design - it's a step backwards not being able to resize apps on a laptop resolution screen, but using it as traditional windows works fine.
The Kin's desktop software was widely praised by reviewers as a great way to organize things. But when the pricing put it in iPhone range instead of feature phone range, it had no chance.
I don't think you have provided a persuasive argument (or any argument actually) for the contention that Microsoft's performance has a relation to the performance of a pharmaceutical company.
Drug development is hit-or-miss like software development. But that's about it.
Unlike drug development, software development often involves creating and maintaining a platform that will give you profits for years to come - or failing miserably and spectacularly. Microsoft's recent performance has been beyond abysmal and they've only only survived on the profits from their previous successes at building a platform - many people are still forced to use Windows. But everyone is looking around and the prospects look, uh, dim.
Sure, Microsoft doesn't live quarter to quarter. Which is why it's death is not yet finished but that's about it.
They made more money in the last 3 months than any tech company on earth save for Apple and you're writing as though they are an almost dead, twitching patient in a hospice.
For a group of smart people who at least consider themselves open-minded and objective, an astonishing amount of stupidly closed-minded things are said about Microsoft.
completely agree. My question to everybody who's out there with their knives and fork is this, so microsoft's surface tablets lost a lot of money and did not sell , you think companies like microsoft and google should quit trying to compete with apple for gaining tablet market share ? I believe the next iteration would fare much better and win 8.1 or maybe even win 9 could be when we begin to see microsoft gaining market share in mobile device sales.
No other platform is even remotely ready for corporate environment. Not by a long shot. The billions invested in Windows software by every company on the planet means incredible vendor lock and the momentum required to move past that is so immense that is just not possible.
Any possibility of their "death" is ridiculous. This is just a slight bump in the road for them, they'll shift strategy and lather, rinse, repeat.
MS is in fine shape for a decade or two to come, if not more. But an MS that's still based on Office in 2030 will be irrelevant, no matter how profitable. And they can't milk that forever.
17 years is such a distant time in the future as to be meaningless for short-term tech prognostication.
17 years is indeed a distant time. But Microsoft's business 17 years ago was basically the same as it was today. Microsoft in 1996 was built around Office just like it is now. Meanwhile Apple's core business has changed two or three times in that same period.
MS has been stuck with the same major product for decades, and they show no signs of that changing.
I don't mean to directly compare Windows RT with the Xbox, the point I'm making is that Microsoft is used to sustaining huge losses for long time periods until they finally capture the market they want.
[1] http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/02/wii-u-has-historically...
Another difference: the ecosystems of iOS and Android dwarf that of the games market, making playing catch up much harder (when will Nokia catch up to Samsung?)
Can MS become a viable tablet option? Absolutely. MS has limitless pocket. Will it be focused and nimble enough to do it? That's still an open question. Meanwhile, the competition doesn't stand still.
But the Surface is defensive. They made fun of the iPad as worthless but the truth is that it (and other tablets and smartphones) are eating away at what used to be a very secure customer base.
1. they actually had the time to let brute force work
2. it was well isolated from their main business - no matter how badly they failed each year, it did not, for example, take away office or windows sales.
But the tablet space is different. There are already enough iPads in workplaces now that people are re-thinking their dependence on MS office since they can't get anything with full compatibility. Android tablets are only just starting to impinge there but they will eventually as well. People are already talking about Android PCs too. The OEM partners are all shipping Win8 tablets but they are also shipping Android tablets and they have very little allegiance or dependence on MS in the tablet space. So MS has to anticipate they will not be able to charge high prices for Windows on cheap consumer laptops and tablets forever. Those days are over. The only way MS can be sure to maintain their margins is if they get a high margin hardware business going like Apple has.
So I would argue that Surface is a very key part of Microsoft's bid to stay relevant and it directly ties to their core business rather than being a parallel venture like Xbox was.
Surface is an attempt to stop the losses to other tablets and smartphones. If they don't fix the problem, they won't have years of extra profits to wait for the Surface to gain a footing and shore things up.
This page suggest XBox still has accumulated losses of 3 billion:
http://www.neowin.net/news/report-microsofts-xbox-division-h...
But I agree with you. Because these are strategic decision with long term agendas, to know if they succeed or fail will take many years if not decades.
I mean, Microsoft has huge resources, and presumably does testing with focus groups, etc. They must test these devices with potential consumers, and it's not rocket science to do some sampling to determine how many units will sell, to get a very rough ballpark figure.
How could Microsoft mis-estimate the market on a scale of this magnitude? This isn't just a random extra camera or cellphone model that maybe doesn't sell so well. I honestly don't understand how a company this large, could get it this wrong.
Also he was totally confident of success of windows 8, and with that success it was confident in the metro ui and then in the ease of switching to a rt tablet.
If you see these as a chain of events, the conclusion is really simple.
The logic was: - Windows automatically gets a shitload of installs a year (from new PC sales) - Devs will flock to the platform because of the install numbers - Users will buy Win8 tablets because of vibrant app ecosystem.
The issue is that despite the revamped start screen, win8 has not led to massive demand for modern apps. So they've stalled on step 2.
Make no mistake though, Win8 is still being sold on a lot of machines. At some point the majority of PCs will have access to the Windows store.
This is why for microsoft was really important to get marketshare in the tablet market. Now they seriously risk to be stalled in step2 for a long time cause:
1 - no one is using winRT or willing to use it
2 - no one who is using win8 use mainly the metro ui or will to have a system in which that is the main ui
3 - for reason 1 and 2 the developers are not going to spend their time in making app for that ecosystem, preferring still win32 and the desktop/web functionalities or other os more strong in the tablet market (ios and android atm).
Also the fact that windows phone is using another group of libraries and the market is totally independent in relation of winRT is another problem.
It's like for the first time microsoft failed each important decision they had to make
Microsoft did very badly. But this kind of thing is hard to do and is not a one product or an incremental-product-improvements affair.
When Microsoft was fighting for it desktop monopoly, it did a good job of leveraging it's strengths to produce products that were "bad" by many measures but which satisfied a lot of user requirements and offered the end user good value. Surface is a logical product in this long lineage (and in answer to the parent's question, you can't create a Frankenstein product like Surface with focus group because Surface had to be a "quantum leap", an ad-hoc product of bucket chemistry). The problem is that apparently either the tablet market is not fluid enough that a product can win by just being a bucket of feature or Google already muscled into the feature-side and Microsoft isn't getting that part.
And equally, until now, Microsoft didn't actually sh-t all over their basic UI. But the approach of removing the start button subtracted more existing users than "Metro" could hope to gain.
You could frame this affair by saying that not only did MS' greed not abate over the years, it grew large enough to strangle the beast. Couldn't have happened to nicer people.
But now with windows 8 and metro ui with winRT(/JS) it seems the problem is mainly that, simply, the are not developers who want to join the ship. I personally do not know any company or indipendent developer who is betting himself in it or even just exploring it. Anyone! And, infact, if you look at the win8 market (that is also the RT market and only way to get apps for that os) is almost empty or, if you want to see it differently, full of crap-copy-useless-apps.
At least with windows phone 8 the situation is a bit different, but here who we have to thank? Microsoft or Nokia? I bet in the second one.
When Windows-on-ARM was demoed running full Windows 7 with all the fixings I was really interested. But then they crippled it.
There isn't anything wrong with Metro. Having a single OS across every platform is good too. But sacrificing the desktop for WinRT/Metro is the opposite of leveraging their monopoly.
If I was in charge of Microsoft, I'd put the Windows 7 start menu back in Win8. I'd make it so metro applications (and settings) could run windowed in the desktop. I'd focus on simplifying the desktop experience to make it more metro-like without forcing people to switch modes. Windows RT would run all ARM Win32 apps unrestricted.
Remember how awful Vista was? How did needing to confirm your WiFi password ever get through any kind of review process?
I'm pretty much Microsoft's target demographic with Surface: I use Office all day at work, and often need to work on the go because things pop up. I might say I want Windows on a tablet, but that's not really what I want. I want perfect office document compatibility, so I can review markups and changes on the go. I want to be able to log into my company's domain and browse my company's DMS. But that's what I really want, even if I say I want Windows on a tablet. I don't really mean I want full-blown Windows with its mouse-and-keyboard centric UI on a tablet...
In an industrial/manufacturing setting, this might work because the people doing the work isn't doing anything creative (just labour). In a research and development setting, this cannot work because a decision needs to be made using information obtained from "the trenches", and management often are not in the trenches.
This is why small startups are always more agile and moves fast, can come up with products that suite their target better than a corp. I dont think this can change, unless the corp change their method of operation from a hierarchical one to a very flat, self-managed groups of small people, and trim the fat out. This has to start with "trust", and now-a-days, trust is hard to come by.
I'm sure they do, and I'm sure they focus-grouped the tablets extensively.
But it's very hard to convince someone of something that they really, really don't want to be true. There's a Dilbert cartoon (http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2012-11-06/) where the Ugly Truth is that there's nothing Microsoft can do to stop its decline into irrelevance and that producing a tablet is their attempt to hide that truth from themselves.
And maybe Microsoft's internal culture makes it hard for underlings to tell their bosses bad news, so any bad news gets a layer of amelioration and obfuscation for every layer of management.
Put all that together and its easy to see how a big failure could happen.
First is that they have drifted away from a basic principle that made Bill Gates a billionaire -- backwards compatibility, or at least when backwards compatibility had to be broken there was clear benefits and an upgrade or conversion path to ease the pain. Surface RT, Surface Pro, Win8, etc are just confusing choices to any customers thinking of a purchase. I'd rather just buy an iPad, quite frankly.
Secondly, Microsoft is still bitter and stinging over the old "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials. Those were epic, hilarious commercials that stuck a cord with users and that MS never countered. They should have blasted back with the truth -- yeah, Macs are cool but when you want to get real work done you use Windows. Instead they were silently stewing with resentment. Surface and the Surface marketing campaign can be summed up as MS's attempt to show the world that they are "cool" too just like Apple. But as most people know, trying to be cool is uncool and everyone laughs at the attempt. MS needs to embrace and be proud of their identity and stop trying to me-too Apple and just build products that work and run the world.
You have a funny definition of truth.
The rumors of the death of the desktop have been greatly exaggerated. WinXP is (finally) reaching EOL and they can't run forever even if you don't care about security. Win8 is the new Vista and people are happy with Windows 7 for now.
The PC market can't grow forever, how close it is to saturation I don't know but there is still a lot of money to be made in mature markets like autos, etc. MS needs to get its act together and defend its market share or it might end up like GM.
I'm not speaking for MS, but I think they want to be seen as a growth company, not a stable, mature company. They want to maintain their market share, but the "opportunities" for new growth probably lay elsewhere, so you'll see investment away from PCs into areas where new money can be made (while still trying to preserve old money, of course). Even the car needs a new remake to create new market share and hence opportunity; e.g. Tesla and electric cars.
By the way, OSX is hitting 15% market share in the US.
Speaking as a Mac user (who considers what he does to be real work), I think it would be more cutting to play on the games aspect of Windows. That really is the One Thing™ Windows has over other OSs
I'd like to hear more about that. What was the product? Why did it lose?
I'd heard of Improv, but not Trapeze. It sounds like you were earlier. Did you see a lot of similarity when Improv (and later Quantrix) came out?
Also, why do you think that Excel users, even sophisticated ones, tend to stick to Excel instead of using higher-level modeling tools? Is it simply that Excel is entrenched, or are there conceptual reasons?
[1] http://basalgangster.macgui.com/RetroMacComputing/The_Long_V...
It depends on the mix, but is that something like 750K units of Surface RT and 200K units of Surface Pro? (Not ridiculously terrible for a first effort, but obviously disappointing given the marketing spend.) Why doesn't the article estimate the units?
Don't even get me started on what the Surface RT is supposed to be.
The RT was the subject of several lunch time discussions over my recent internship. I remember one dev recounting the nightmare of buying a video rental through the xbox video app I think it was. The nightmare hinged on several issues one of which being the lack of silverlight support. His surface was out of space so downloading did not work yet streaming required the not present silverlight. He had to clear out some files in the end.
Another dev used his as a picture frame. Beyond those two cases I only ever heard of the RT going unused. This despite an internal program one could use to unlock the surface. Once unlocked any developer could then recompile one of the windows binaries and generate a testing package which could be installed. In theory this means the devs could have full control of the device. In practice no one appeared to care.
Another fun fact I learned: the Apple store gives discounts on the iPad if you show them your microsoft badge while the Microsoft store does not.
Still far short of the "few million" they expected to sell, but a million seems respectable for the first year of a late entry in a hypercompetitive market, no?
As I see it almost everyone involved with the Surface ended up paying the Windows strategy tax. Microsoft should have released two separate OS's Surface for tablets and Windows 8 for the workstation market. But, they should not have done what they did; which is to create a confusing frankenstein of a UI that will drop you into the windows explorer when you were trying to open an app with your fingers.
This is a sterling example of how Ballmer's management team and the culture he has created have failed to understand both customers and markets. Too many agendas working at cross-purposes and no one who can outright say no to a bad idea coming from a powerful or connected source.
This was the fatal mistake IMO, and I don't know why it doesn't get more discussion. I think Metro is a great tablet interface, and I can imagine that a Surface just running Metro with just the app store would sell pretty ok. Instead its confusingly positioned as some sort of tablet hybrid that still runs the old windows, but with a new start menu or something.
And on the flip side, you have PCs running Metro, which not only absolutely sucks to use with a mouse and keyboard, the new interface puts off corporations from upgrading because they are worried about training costs etc.
Its like thinking, 'So, Excel sells pretty well, and Word does too. Therefore we should develop a hybrid Word processor-spreadsheet application'.
Incidentally, I don't know that Ballmer is totally to blame here. I strongly suspect that Sinsofsky pushed very hard to make sure every new operating system initiative would come under his division. I think this is why Windows Phone is called Windows Phone too, even though it would probably by much much easier to market under its own brand.
Problem is: the most of the people hate metro ui, the medium user can get the difference between w8 and wRT and really a incredible small part of the total windows developers joined the ship of winRT/JS and no one of the "main" contributors
Apple has been in the premium product game for their whole life and know how it work. Microsoft needs to stick with their strength and avoid their weakness.
Pricing it low initially gives value to the users and they would be more forgiving of its shortcomings. It at least creates market share and momentum.
Priced it high initially and then low it is the worse marketing approach. The initial high price kills market penetration, and the subsequent price slash creates a sense of desperation and signals something is wrong with the product.
If MS had the insane push of apps that iOS did your statement would not be an issue
In my honest opinion I perceive the desktop as a last-resort when "there's not an app for that", and considering that "there are not a lot of apps for that" in Windows RT, for me it's ridiculous that they didn't allow the ability to use the desktop the way we have been using it in the last 18 years.
If Microsoft were serious against the iPad they should have included the full Desktop experience in the first place.
I think the biggest problems (and likely the chief barriers to better sales) are the price and the short battery life when compared with other tablets.
There are a LOT of people who just want to get away from Windows. Macs still resemble Windows PCs so people expect crossover or compatibility somehow; tablets cross a psychological barrier helping people really leave the ecosystem.
I personally think Windows 8 is the core of all issues. Many hate the OS, justly or not, and that causes any device with Windows 8 on it to sell a lot less units. They're actually lucky selling as many Windows 8 licenses as they have, even I got two and use neither (they forced it down my throat while buying new hardware, even though the OEM license states that there must be a license return policy, which HP just violates).
The ads for the Surface are pretty neat I think, and others I heard about it thought the same, but meanwhile nobody is buying. Apple somehow got people to use iPad as synonym for the word tablet. Microsoft really has to show an advantage over the iPad or a laptop, but so far nobody has seen any.
>Could we please change the headline? No need to scream in HN headlines.
Don't blame the mirror when you see the reality of who you truly are.
a. I am an oddball (probably true).
b. Microsoft's marketing for the Surface sucks (generally accepted as objectively true).
c. The Surface was a weak attempt (A subjective matter. I like mine, but there is lot of room for improvement. Ask me if you want more details).
The pundits have said their pieces, and I have written my own thoughts/rant about Microsoft's current unenviable situation [1]. But as a user of a Surface Pro, I'll offer up some of my random thoughts here as well.
Hardware-wise, the Surface Pro is one generation too early; it needs a Haswell CPU in order to provide user-friendly battery life and perhaps shed some weight. To meet their launch timing objectives, Microsoft had no choice but to use Ivy Bridge. As it was, the Pro was disturbingly late to market compared to the RT. The RT's flailing in the market muted the thunder of the Pro release. The market's response to the lackluster RT had already set in, casting a long shadow over the Pro. When the Pro finally arrived, less technically-savvy consumers were already disinterested. Even us tech folks were lukewarm despite the Pro being quite nice even if you use it as merely an ultrabook.
If Surface 2 is entirely Haswell (that is, both entry-level and Pro-level are low-TDP x86), and nothing else changes, I think the hardware will be just shy of superb. As it is, the Surface Pro packs ultrabook performance in a tablet-like form factor. Browsing the web, writing code, working with e-mails, Twitter, IM, IRC, the works--it's all as fast and smooth as the workstation I have at the office (a first-generation i7). It makes conventional tablets seem alarmingly slow and limited.
On the other hand, because the Pro is heavy and encumbered by a hungry CPU, it's not as versatile as conventional tablets.
I think it is now evident to most that Windows RT should be unshackled. Microsoft was apparently worried about cannibalism, but that worry is overshadowed by an utter dearth of sales. Microsoft should strongly shun their baked-in culture of capriciously angering consumers. They know arbitrary software limitations will upset consumers but they do it anyway. Stop that.
Personally, my computing lifestyle is not especially amenable to "computing device addition," and yet I half-reluctantly acquired a Surface Pro because I wanted portable computing capability and had never owned a high-end laptop. My tablets left me wanting more, but laptops never quite fit my desires (too large, too low-DPI). Plus, I am a bit of a Microsoft fanboy, I'll admit it.
Rather than adding another computing device, I would prefer a model where all my applications run on a compute server I own and operate (my workstation at home would suffice), and all of my devices connect to views of those applications. Adding a Surface Pro gives me yet another first-class computing device to manage. So now I have all of the following devices in my life wanting me to manage applications, manage data, manage configuration, manage presence, manage and synchronize state: my home workstation, my office workstation, my media PC, my phone, my Surface Pro, and my other tablets.
It's frustrating to add another device to the pile with no change to the underlying model of working with devices. I feel Microsoft is fairly uniquely positioned to present a unified computing model to users that Google and Apple seem reluctant to provide due to cloud stickiness (that is, a desire to solve application continuity and data continuity by moving applications to their public cloud rather than user-owned/managed applications). Microsoft is chasing the Google and Apple model and so far they are failing. As a Surface Pro owner, and Windows user on my workstation, I'd like to see Microsoft change course to provide a unified computing model focused on my devices working in a master-slave configuration over (tunneled) private networks.
Frankly, I want my Surface Pro to be a touch and keyboard-enabled, high-DPI, remote terminal to responsive (in the web-app sense of the word) application instances running on my workstation. That way, it's not a first-class computing device with all of the encumbering nags that entails. I want a subservient tablet that is just one view, one set of input and output devices, for my singular computing.
Finally, as I included in the linked rant, I believe a massive problem for Microsoft is the insanity of MSDN pricing. I strongly believe that their pricing model is actively hostile to developers, especially in this time of indie-oriented application development. They may have all sorts of special business programs that provide exceptions to the standard pricing--I honestly don't know--but the standard pricing stares you in the face and says, "Go away, Windows development is not for you." That sucks.
I would prefer that the computing device on my network be a hard-wired, always-on, high-bandwidth, high-compute, high-storage device (a workstation in our contemporary lingo). I want my personal applications to act as my agent when I am not present, possibly doing non-trivial computation and serving on my behalf. I want my data to be shared and federated with friends/family/colleagues on my terms, from my network or a network of trusted peers.
I find it a little awkward to attempt to shoehorn all of that into a mobile device when I'd be just as happy--more happy in fact--for the compute power to be hard-wired and the mobile device to be just an input/output terminal to that compute power.
As a final matter, I'd feel a little more confident with the physical security of my compute engine and data if it were in my house rather than on my person.
But yes, kudos to Ubuntu for concertedly attacking our present-day malaise of multiple first-class devices!
Are you suggesting that a cloud solution where you control who has access to your data is not an option for you? A cloud that could run your 'agents'?
As we go deeper and deeper into this paradigm, I'm realising how little we need more CPU. Even as a developer, I could be writing my code locally, but running it on a larger database and leveraging CPU which is not local.
For some reason, I still want CPU.
So having designed the device around a crappy keyboard cover, Microsoft painted itself into a corner. Is it a usable laptop replacement? No, it's not. So, how is it as a tablet? Well, no apps to speak of, heavy, and crappy battery life.
I agree about using a tablet as a remote access point for a desktop computer (or whatever). The iPad makes sense for that too (and third party tools make it quite functional in a pinch). A really well-thought-out implementation of this idea would be wonderful (and I hope Apple does this too).
I really liked the idea of the touch keypad, and as I write things for a living, I thought it might be a reason for me to get a surface.
I tried one at BestBuy, and it was so awful I assumed it was broken. Then I went to a MSFT store and tried 4 before I realized it was broken, but at a much deeper level than I had initially assumed.
The Type cover is usable, bit feels oh so cheap and breakable, out of character for the rest of the device's quite high build quality.
So you're stick with a keyboard that's broken by design, or one that feels like it will break at any second.
If they made a usable touch keypad, I'd buy a Surface.
They (Microsoft) realize what Apple and Google has obviously also realized, that in the 'future' we will likely 'all' be using a tablet style device which functions very much the way it does now when we are 'mobile', but also doubles as a work station by connecting it to a desktop screen and mouse/keyboard.
And when the dedicated desktop/laptop machine finally fades away into obscurity, Microsoft must atleast have positioned itself as one of the major competitors amongst the devices which will replace it.
Currently Apple and Android tablets are marketed and vastly used as devices purely for consuming content, so Microsoft see an opportunity to market itself as the pro-tablet, the one you can get work done with.
And this what the Surface Pro is supposed to be, and it makes sense from a marketing point as it can leverage the one big advantage Microsoft has over Apple and Google, the huge amount of professional/production software which exists for the Windows platform.
However the big blunder I see with Surface Pro is the pricing, if priced similarly I'd say 9.9 out of 10 people today will choose something like a macbook air over a Surface Pro any day of the week, because people know laptops, they know what they are getting, they will not be betting on a Tablet on which to do their work when they can get the safe option (laptop) for the same'ish money.
So what Microsoft should have done in my opinion, is to sell Surface Pro at cost in order to sway the laptop customers, heck even at a loss, this is about positioning themselves for the post-dedicated-desktop/laptop world which by all accounts is approaching rapidly.
Instead they waste 900 million on Surface RT which is a product I can't understand at all.
That said, as someone who is no fan of Microsoft products and in particular their desktop monopoly I'm not that sad to see them stumble as they do, but I still find it quite baffling.
Unshackled? What's the point of keeping it around at all? It was an attempted ARM OS (that shouldn't rightly be called "Windows"), but now that x86 architectures are poised to compete with ARM in power-efficiency, what's the point of having an ARM OS on a Microsoft product?
MS should be very, very wary about moving away from x86 platforms and the traditional Windows platform. They're an underdog in the mobile space right now, and even the slightest amount of friction for developers in getting their applications working on Microsoft's mobile offerings could lead them to prioritize other mobile platforms.
MS should be working diligently to defend the market position of x86 and to build comparatively open platforms that maintain continuity with their established markets, and which are attractive to hardware OEMs and to application developers. Instead, they're dabbling with strategies that will cause their competitors' dominance in other markets to backwash into their bread-and-butter business.
They need to kill Surface RT entirely, immediately abandon any ARM-based projects they've got going, repair their relationships with OEMs (treating the Surface Pro as a first-generation reference design, and droping their own attempts to sell hardware), build good APIs and tools for adding mobile UIs onto existing x86 Windows applications, and make no attempt to assert Apple-like direct control over the software distribution channel.
The Surface Pro is an excellent device let down only by battery life IMHO.
About seven months ago an Intel CPU architect/designer did a Q+A session on reddit, and here is a choice quote:
> For mobile, we have no choice but to become relevant. As for when, my personal prediction for substantial growth is Q1 2014, domination in 2015.
Source: http://r2.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15iaet/iama_cpu_archite...
For me Surface Pro with 6+ hours of battery life (which Haswell should give it) would be perfect.
http://septemberlove.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/turning-...
Big ships don't turn on a dime.
Last time I checked, Surface was supposed to be a tablet, to compete with iPad and all.
What were they thinking when they released it without offering a 3G option, even at a premium price ?
I expect v2 to be good and v3 to be pretty stellar. The question is time.
Off topic, does anyone have Chromebook Pixel sales figures yet?
I've heard this was because the COGs were quite high, because Apple had a bunch of the components market sewn up.
I think the base model RT might have had a chance at $350.
Ugh, I HATE this word. Why do people use it? To make themselves feel clever and superior?