How the tech press reacted to Microsoft Surface
Summary: If Microsoft's goal with its surprise announcement on Monday, June 18, was to get the attention of the press, consider it mission accomplished. The company's controversial announcement was scrutinized, analyzed, dissected, and critiqued by just about every slice of the tech press. Even the business press got in on the act.Here's a summary of the week's coverage.
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Microsoft announced on Monday that it will bring out its own line of Windows 8 PCs, a tablet/notebook hybrid called Surface. The reaction from the business and tech press was all over the map. Here's a summary of the week's coverage.
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Talkback
mag vaporware
I thought the same thing as the writer
(See http://i.techrepublic.com.com/blogs/surface_exploded_01.jpg ) What with the size of that thing, it looks like a table sized device (which they have produced and no one wants one) and not a tablet. Renaming this tablet they'll never produce for something in production that no one wants, is, in my opinion, a bad move.
My first thought was, here goes the Courier tablet all over again: (April, 2010)
"Microsoft has unceremoniously cancelled development of its folding, two-screen prototype tablet known as Courier...." At the time, Engadget's Joshua Topolsky noted it was "hard to kill something" that never lived.
Now, who wouldn't think this thing will never see the light of production?
Paul is full of vapor
Irony...
Paul thinks this is vaporware?
Yes, there are limits. This has made news now.
This actually has made some news. Everything in life has its limits, for Microsoft to turn this into vaporware it would have to be for some reasoning not of their fault or they would be at best a laughing stock. How would they ever get the press excited about anything again.
There are great limitations on promoting vaporware, this crosses the limit and I have to believe its going to be nothing like vaporware.
Some around here may or may not recall when AMD was kicking Intel's butt before the Conroe chips came out, and then the first talk of what the Conroe chips were and what they could do began and many loud and proud AMD fans called vaporware on that, I just could never believe that Intel would be allowed to cross the vaporware line and ever live it down, I had to believe Conroe would soon see the full light of day. It did.
Mind you, even when the first Conroe chips were released for some public testing there where still a lot of the same goofs still crying "vaporware!!".
Just because you have some self interested squabble about a specific company its hardly worth your while to make ludicrous claims like "vaporware" when common sense reality tells you that not likely thee case at all given the circumstances.
Don't trust Paul Thurrott anymore
Perhaps I don't see things the way pundits do
1) Why name it Surface?
- Well, the original Surface was all multi-touchy, etc and set the bar for an innovative touch-based user interface. However, no one outside the tech industry knows that. What was more important is that Microsoft owns the Surface name and didn't need to file any paperwork before the big reveal to use it.
2) Microsoft producing hardware and getting supply-chain, learning curve costs, etc just right? Impossible
- Huh? Microsoft has been producing mice and keyboards forever (take a look at some of their new mice, they are both beautiful and amazing to look at). They've also been producing XBoxes for nearly a decade. The initial XBox was pretty much a white-label PC squished into a black box. But the XBox 360 was engineered/designed/etc. Over the years, the design team has gone through a steep hardware "learning curve" sucking costs out of that box. More importantly, MSFT screwed the pooch with the RRoD debacle - Microsoft is *really* good at learning from mistakes. Expect much better execution with this.
3) Competing with your best customers is weird.
- Yup. And Microsoft works hard to coddle its OEMs - MSFT knows where the money comes from. That said, Microsoft is very good competing with its customers; it does it all the time. Think about it, just about every one of its main competitors (except Apple) is a Microsoft customer or partner (remember Google's phishing issues in China - they were running XP and IE6 on PCs (why I don't know)). When I worked at Microsoft, I spent a week at Oracle once talking to their db engine team about how the .NET Framework worked internally (this was while the SQL team was working to embed the framework in SQL Server) - that was very weird, but MSFT does it all the time.
4) They should have pulled an Apple - had the big announcement and then "oh, and one more thing, it goes on sale on July 1st"
- Huh? The iPad was announced in January 2010 and shipped in April - but by that time, Apple had their manufacturing and channel chops all polished up from the iPod and iPhone. The original iPhone was announced at the beginning of January 2007 and shipped at the very end of June. You can't keep absolute secrecy around a brand new product (and, in the case of Surface and the iPhone, a new product category) and ship the very next day. Someone needs to get IP filings done, build a whole bunch of them, negociate with the channel, stock the channel, and create an advertising campaign, etc. Do you really think that Microsoft could have been talking to Best Buy or Target and kept this a secret.
5) It will only be sold in Microsoft stores and in Microsoft's on-line store
- Again, that comes back to secrecy. The only stores that Microsoft has talked to are those run by folks with that carry a Microsoft blue badge and can be sworn to secrecy. Now that the name and the specs have been released, I expect Microsoft to be talking to its regular hardware channel partners (BBuy, Frys, Target, Walmart, etc) about getting a wide channel ready for launch.
Finally,... Everyone says "Oh, even Sinofsky had to deal with a Surface crashing during his demo". I played and replayed that portion of the video over and over. It looks to me like he had a flakely driver (and/or piece of hardware) that prevented him from swiping in the charms. It was pre-release software, running on early drivers and engineering sample hardware. Stuff happens.
hmmm.
Point 4... But they couldn't because it is not ready. The only reason for them to do this was an attempt to spoil whatever Google have coming next week.
Point 5... If they were going to open up distribution then they would have said so. At the moment it looks like they are aiming low and trying to build some kind of Apple-like buzz with queues by having it only available in a small number of outlets.
Your Final point. The point is that the show was under-rehearsed to the point of madness. Ever seen an Apple presentation from the last 15 years that used an Autocue? Ever seen a presentation from any company that was just reiterating the talking points from an Apple launch? Did Microsoft really think that no one had actually seen Apple's iPad launch?
Sure, but
On Point 5: (which is related to point 4). If they wanted to have absolute secrecy, they couldn't be talking to retail partners. Those folks are all sales and marketing folks and impossible to keep quiet. I suppose they could have said something like "we expect many of our existing retail partners will be selling this", but they couldn't name any - the president of Best Buy would be a little pissed off if the first he had heard of this was that he was going to be selling it.
There was more secrecy around this than there was around the iPhone when it was announced. I remember the run-up to that announcement. Everyone seemed to know it was a phone, but there was a huge number of rumors as to what it would look like, what it would do, etc. And, then, it took Apple nearly 6 months to get it to retail.
The demo gods are not kind. Demo-ing anything can be tricky. Demo-ing prerelease stuff requires a steely nerver. Sinofsky did a fairly good job of recovering. However, if he hadn't seemed so rushed, and he said something light like "I think this other one will do a better job at showing this", it wouldn't have been such a big thing. Stuff happens
Point 4
Better Keyboard?
Desapointing comment from Paul Thurott :/
pathetic writers
Mind as well say the book catcher in the rye is about the bread industry. Book cover, judging, you get my drift. Good job.
Loving your devices from one manufacturer does not mean you are require to hate another in delirious fashion.
Take OSS Revenge Lenovo!
Sparking debate is good!
People are passionate about tech, and that's a good thing. The world, at large, doesn't always know how to interpret an event, hardware, or software and its impact on our daily lives. I, myself, have been intimately involved in the tech industry for thirty-plus years, and my predictions have often missed the mark completely on more than one occasion.
Still, give the consumer some credit. They will wade through the bullshit quite handily in the end, voting with their wallet. If the "Surface" has deficits, they will most certainly be revealed in good time. Even Microsoft can't afford too many debacles, such as Windows Vista! And as pointed out in an earlier post, they do tend to learn the hard lessons from history.
I think MS is also firing a warning shot across the bow...
I honestly think Microsoft has looked at the landscape of the computing marketplace lately and asked themselves why doesn't the public at large understand Windows importance in computing generally as they seem to understand Apples importance in the gadget industry. The OEM's dont do a whole lot to promote Windows itself, they mostly slap the Windows sticker on the front and mention Windows as a blurb in a commercial for their products...if they make a commercial. It seems like Apple is the only one advertising high tech devices over the last couple years.
Further, Microsoft could not afford the OEM's to take the same kind of half baked approach to Windows 8 and tablets they have taken in the past with other things. It may not actually bee "now or never", but its absolutly "now or a completly blown oppertunity" and thats at least the situation.
The Surface is a good iidea for Microsoft generally, and if the OEM's understand the writing on the wall they will perhaps pull to attention a little better and get with the game plan that will in the long run probably attract more customers who may be ready to continue on for years to come with Windows instead of considering the alternatives that will become ever more present.
Thurott is getting more bizarre by the day
Thanks, Ed... well done
In light of Tech Radar's hands-on review, we can readily dismiss all the Appleites who suggest vaporware (http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/tablets/microsoft-surface-tablet-1085839/review), and, instead, can read the opinions of reviewers who take the time to look beyond petty loyalties.
I realize you might be a bit pro-Windows/MSoft, but, what the hell, MSoft owns the market and those who thought they are just lumbering bunch of boobs can now take notice and watch the next few months unfurl.
It's definitely going to be exciting.