One of the big things that came out of the ipads success is that tablets can be something that people want with out being general purpose computers. People are OK with a device that basically surfs the internet, checks email and face book. With a few fun games thrown in. The Microsoft tablets were trying to be latops without a keyboard and nobody has figured out how to do that well yet.
Frankly, to compete against the iPad, google needs to kick all third party hardware makers to the curb and market Android exclusively through Motorola Mobility. Microsoft needs to do the same. Purchase a hardware maker and have an exclusive product. If Microsoft decides to license out Win8, then it’s gonna go the same as Android tablets, which is nowhere.
Google can’t really do that. The android license says anybody can use the android software and whenever Google sells a device they have to include the source code that then anybody can take the code and use it.
I just wanted to highlight this because it struck me as quite comparable to all the suggestions in the 80s and 90s that Apple had to license out their OS in order to compete with Microsoft. Interesting how much the apparently “best” business model industry changes in a relatively short time.
For what it’s worth, I think Google and Microsoft will be able to compete with Apple without becoming full-stack exclusive hardware makers like Apple, although they’re certainly struggling at the moment.
Um…you don’t see a contradiction in your statements? “Windows tablets are worse than Apples, because windows has so many extra features that nobody wants…except that those supposedly unwanted features include things you yourself DO want, like browsing network shares, HDMI output, and a USB port.” And all those other features that you don’t care about are features that are vital to someone else.
I actually agree with you that it’s unlikely Windows tablets will succeed (“success” defined as greater than about 5-10% of tablet marketshare). But they won’t fail because they had “too many feature”. No software in history has ever failed because of THAT.
My personal opinion - Microsoft actually came very very close to inventing both the iphone and ipad long before Apple, but failed to make one key realization and that doomed them to playing catch up now.
Check out pictures of the first windows tablet –from back in 2000. Or the Windows PocketPC phone, also from around 2000.
Back in 2000, my boss had a Microsoft PocketPC phone that had all the feature of an iphone – a web browser, downloadable apps, email, play music, and even a touchscreen (though you had to use a stylus). Way back in 2000, I remember thinking it was cool when my boss checked a stock quote on his phone and then looked up the phone number of a restaurant. No GPS maps, but the web browser showed regular map directions from MapQuest. It had every feature the first Iphone had 7 years later. Obviously, it was slower and clunkier, but anyone today would clearly recognize it as an early iphone.
Similar story with Windows TabletPC. Those came around around 2000 or so, and way back then Bill Gates had some now embarassing quotes about how tablets were the future and how Microsoft would sell millions of them within three years, etc. They were definitely in the phone and tablet game early, and came SOOO close to getting there years before Apple.
The one conceptual hurdle that failed Microsoft was they kept thinking of phones and tablets as smaller PCs instead of a new category. That PocketPC phone had a screen only 2-3 inches across, but it still had a Windows “Start” button in the corner. You still launched apps by clicking on that Start button and then navigating a menu with your stylus, rather than just touching an icon on the main screen. This worked, but it was clunky, and using the PocketPC phone never felt natural the way the iphone did.
Same thing with the windows tablet when it came out – you had to use the stylus to touch things, but all the windows software was the same, so it was hard to hit the tiny buttons on the menus, etc. Theoretically, you could run Excel on your tablet, but since excel was designed for a mouse and keyboard, the tablet interface was painful.
Microsoft failed to make the conceptual leap to view the phone and tablet as not smaller PCs running the exact same Windows, but a new category that required a new custom interface. Why in the world did their phone waste precious screen real estate with a “Start” button, just because desktop Windows had one? Seems obvious now that was a mistake; but at the time, they couldn’t break that mindset. If only they had, they would have had an Iphone-like device years before Apple and tech history of the last five years would have been so different.
I’ve always seen Microsoft’s failure as something akin to failing to understand the audience. They saw the market for smartphones and tablets as people who already used PCs heavily and instinctively and wanted a tool to expand their PCs’ capabilities.
Apple saw the market of people who didn’t like PCs.
Microsoft has historically been stunningly late to the game, but with its huge reserves, has typically come from behind to become the dominant player.
See: internet (browsers specifically), gaming consoles, and (to a much lesser extent of success) internet search. I fully expect them, 2 or 3 years from now, to announce a huge new “social media” service that lets your friend people and share photos and links :rolleyes:
So I think Microsoft really did miss the boat on tablets and mobile, but I give them a good chance of getting into the game as a proper player.
I’ve run the Win 8 beta, and Metro is absolutely gorgeous and brilliant. There’s like what, one WinPhone on the market? If they can close the deal on Win 8 and get some phones and tablets out there, I might be persuaded to switch from Android.
I think the “wait, then get in late” model of doing business is really kind of played out for Microsoft going forward. Microsoft is no longer where the new action is, and they present no compelling reason for me to switch from my Android phone OS to theirs.
I’m typing this using a windows PC so i am well aware that they still have a HUGE money pump every time they decide to update the OS, but to be frank the notion of throwing several hundred dollars at MS every 2-3 years or so has gotten a little old. OS updates used to be a really big deal, now they really more just an accumulation of bug fixes and the competition (android) is giving the OS updates away for free.
If the Android OS ever decides to take the desktop net appliance market truly seriously and can mate it to decent cheap hardware Windows is in serious trouble.
point taken, but even had they made the leap then they would still not have caught up. their devices would still be huge and bulky; they would crash often; and there would be fewer, more expensive software that people would be willing to buy or download.
viruses, buggy software and clunky hardware would ensure that things simply wouldn’t work. it is too set in its ways to reinvent anything. what it can do is to swallow startups, stifle new ideas and churn out late versions of what should have been bigger successes.
sure, had no one else invented the ipad, they would have churned out its equivalent eventually. we would have had to however, endure at least a decade of beta hardware and software sold as a finished product before that happens.