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June 26, 2012
Microsoft's entry into tablet hardware a result of partner failure?
Ever since Microsoft provided a glimpse at a couple of "Surface" tablet hardware prototypes, some in the media are describing Microsoft's apparent entry into the hardware market as a result of Microsoft hardware partner failure. As if, somehow, the combined might of the world's computer manufacturers failed to come up with tablet hardware good enough to do Windows justice.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
The reason why Windows-based tablets never were a major commercial success lies squarely in Microsoft's corner, and not in that of the hardware partners. For stating the very obvious: Windows has never been a tablet operating system. It was designed for use with a keyboard and a mouse. It does not work well with touch, and it did not work well with pens.
If anything, hardware partners went out of their way with innovative ideas and products to make Windows work in Microsoft-mandated tablets. And let's not forget that it was Microsoft itself that, well into the lead-up to the 2002 Tablet PC introduction, began pushing convertible notebooks rather than tablets. Apparently, the company had so little faith in its own Tablet PC project that it seemed safer to introduce the Tablet PC Edition of Windows XP on a notebook with a digitizer screen rather than a true tablet. That of course, made tablet PCs bigger and bulkier and more expensive.
Let's also not forget that Microsoft mandated an active digitizer for the 2002 Tablet PC because active pens better emulated the way a mouse (and with it, Windows) worked. Touch was definitely not part of the Tablet PC.
Microsoft's hardware partners did the absolute best they could within the great constraints of the Windows OS. In the 1990s, companies like GRiD, Fujitsu, Toshiba, NEC, IBM, Samsung, Compaq and many others came up with numerous tablet computer solutions trying to somehow make Windows work in smaller, lighter, handier platforms without physical keyboards. In the 2000s, a whole roster of hardware partners came up with tablet and tablet convertible hardware when Bill Gates proclaimed that by 2006, tablets would be the most popular form of PCs in America. They (Motion Computing, Fujitsu, Acer, Toshiba, Panasonic, etc.) invested the money and they carried the risk, not Microsoft.
Add to that the unsung heroes of the tablet computer form factors, the companies that made all those vertical market tablets for applications where it simply wasn't feasible to carry around a big laptop. They made do with what they had on the operating system side. And they did a remarkable job.
To now complain about "partner failures" is simply asinine. And given that even now, hardware partners will have to decide whether to bet on x86 Windows 8 or ARM Windows RT, will they again be blamed if one or both flavors of Windows 8 fail to make inroads against the iPad and Android tablets?
Posted by conradb212 at 10:47 PM
June 21, 2012
Windows Phone 8...
Sometimes I wish I could be a fly on the wall to listen in when Microsoft's mobile folks make their decisions.
I mean, a few years ago they found themselves in a position where, against all odds, their erstwhile omnipotent foe Palm collapsed and left Windows Mobile as the heir apparent. So did Microsoft take advantage of that? Nope. Instead, they failed to improve their mobile OS in any meaningful way, all the while confusing customers by endlessly renaming the thing. And handing leadership over to the phone companies.
Then Apple comes along and shows the world how smartphones are supposed to be. Well, apart from grafting a Zune-like home screen, Microsoft did virtually nothing to advance Windows CE from its mid-1990s roots. Then they come up with Windows Phone 7, which is a whole lot better, but completely incompatible with any earlier Windows CE/Windows Mobile devices and software.
While Phone 7 and the Phone 7.5 update were billed as the future, apparently they weren't as now there will be Windows Phone 8, which is.... completely incompatible with Phone 7/7.5. And why? Because Phone 8 will supposedly share the same Windows kernel that "real" Windows has (though presumably not the ARM versions). So if Windows 7/7.5 still had Windows CE underpinnings, why were those versions not compatible at all with earlier Windows CE/Windows Mobile versions? It's just all so confusing.
And about the shared Windows kernel: Wasn't the very idea of Windows everywhere why Windows failed in so many areas that were not desktop or laptop?
In this industry, one absolutely never knows what's going to happen. Palm was considered invincible, Transmeta was supposed to succeed, Linux was to be the next big thing, the iPhone and then iPad were widely derided as lacking and a fad when they were first introduced, and Android was certain to quickly challenge iOS in tablets. So perhaps Windows Phone 8 will somehow become a success, but then why baffle the public with Windows 8 for the desktop, Windows RT, which isn't quite Windows, for ARM tablets, two versions of "Surface" tablets, and then Windows Phone 8 devices that share the Windows kernel but are somehow separate anyway?
Go figure.
Posted by conradb212 at 8:19 PM