Microsoft and Ballmer not getting the iPad • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft and Ballmer not getting the iPad

#41

Post by sprout » Sat, Jul 31, 2010, 5:07 PM UTC

mishmash wrote: post #36

sprout wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, from the two people I know who actually owned a Zune (and from Jerry Holkins: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2009/5/15/ ), Microsoft did in fact 'get' the iPod, and outdid it in a lot of ways. Microsoft just has shitty marketing. But maybe that's what you meant.

> Microsoft did in fact 'get' the iPod, and outdid it in a lot of ways. Microsoft was over 5 years (1848 days) later than Apple to "get" what an MP3 player was. During that five years, Microsoft had a total R&D budget of over $25 billion, or $13,698,630/calendar day. Of course we don't know how much of that budget was allocated for the Zune, but one could easily imagine it being in the hundreds of millions. You say t…

Hardly. They offered a very solid competing vision for what an MP3 player should be. It was a risky vision, involving a subscription and the innovative ability to share songs you haven't bought legally, wirelessly with the person standing next to you.

I really think the failure was purely marketing, judging by the accounts of people who used the service, that and people's assumption that anything from Microsoft cannot be innovative or interesting - it's a self-fulfilling prophecy in a lot of ways. Microsoft could have released the iPad, and it probably would have been a total flop, even if it had all the hallmarks of the iPad ecosystem. (There are a few things that could stand-in for the iPhone's app store like Flash and WinMO apps.)

Re: Microsoft and Ballmer not getting the iPad

#42

Post by protomyth » Sat, Jul 31, 2010, 5:08 PM UTC

Herring wrote: post #20

junklight wrote: post #11

What I don't get is why a company like Microsoft - rich and no longer in the lead doesn't setup a couple of well funded skunk works companies. Drop the baggage (ie don't force them to use windows and allow a new culture to emerge) and give each one a target - touch computing or something else and let 'em go. Microsoft has all the pieces - money , good engineers, marketing etc. but it's not working. They have the fina…

They're probably getting way too much money to risk killing windows. The last thing they want is a viable alternative.

eat your own lunch before someone else eats it

Look at Apple, they are not afraid of killing the iPod market with the iPhone.

edit: s/no/not/

Re: Microsoft and Ballmer not getting the iPad

#43

Post by commandar » Sat, Jul 31, 2010, 5:12 PM UTC

fuzzythinker wrote: post #8

jim_h wrote: post #2

Microsoft should bring life back to the Courier. I'd buy that.

I bet they would, but most likely a tiny feature from it a bit at a time. I'll say they canceled it not because they didn't like it, but because it would take too long to finish. They felt Apple would have too much head start if they didn't produce _anything_ in the mean time. This rush is pretty much confirmed by their actions and this interview.

>I bet they would

I kind of doubt it given J Allard was forced out of the company over the Courier.[1] Frankly, I think that's one of the single most boneheaded moves Ballmer's made -- Allard is largely responsible for reviving Microsoft's brand image with the under 30 crowd heading up Xbox and Zune development.

A decade ago, nobody would have described Microsoft as a cool brand, but flash forward today every frat boy in the country owns an Xbox 360.

Robbie Bach, head of the E&D division, went out at the same time. Then again, E&D was largely dysfunctional because there's been an odd combination of failing to leverage MS technology when it would make sense while trying to shoehorn MS techs into places where they just didn't work. See buying Danger and then pretty much scrapping their technology to build the Kin as a prime example. It pretty well illustrates the institutional schizophrenia the company shows to the world.

[1] http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/05/25/microsoft.over...

Re: Microsoft and Ballmer not getting the iPad

#44

Post by andrewf » Sat, Jul 31, 2010, 5:14 PM UTC

shortformblog wrote: post #39

Flemlord wrote: post #38

This is crazy talk. Microsoft needs a Windows compatible OS so they can leverage the millions of windows applications already written. To start from scratch would give up one of their main advantages. Best to stick with Windows, and focus on optimizing Windows 8 and Office 2012 for the tablet form factor. I love my iPad but I'd be willing to take a half-step back to a Windows tablet if it meant I could run Microsoft…

Their history with Windows is not an advantage if the design of it is cumbersome and full of compromises. Which, more than anything, is what the point of the article is getting at. Microsoft has had a decade of chances in this market to pull off the "business tablet" market you're suggesting. And, well, they just haven't done it yet. If this is such a competitive advantage, why wasn't the iPad put on a Mac OSX archit…

That Apple pulled off the interface reboot is, I think, the most astounding thing about the iOS devices.

You can't beat the PC for breadth, depth, and availability of specialised apps. They've been evolving for 30 years now. But when the iPhone SDK became available there were 0 applications, and in less than 30 months the industry's grown an entire replacement software ecosystem that covers a great deal of what users want to do.

Re: Microsoft and Ballmer not getting the iPad

#45

Post by city41 » Sat, Jul 31, 2010, 5:19 PM UTC

The sad thing is Microsoft could succeed so wonderfully here, but the reality is almost certainly they won't.

Create a stripped down, simple OS based on Windows (even iOS is derived from OSX), create a compelling app store, and a framework for writing apps for it based on Silverlight. Bam! Very compelling piece of hardware. Not only that but these type of apps are what Silverlight was destined for. I'd much rather write these types of apps in Silverlight than Cocoa Touch.

Re: Microsoft and Ballmer not getting the iPad

#46

Post by Elepsis » Sat, Jul 31, 2010, 5:43 PM UTC

wazoox wrote: post #22

GiraffeNecktie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually they have done one excellent innovative product. It's called OneNote and it's the only reason I keep a Windows partition on my laptop. I take lots of meeting minutes and the ability to record audio that is in sync with my typing is a killer feature. Damn, I wish someone would do that in Linux (this feature doesn't work in Wine).

Interesting. Any pointer about this, a demonstration perhaps? Would it work as a web app?

Microsoft recently did release a OneNote Web App: http://office.live.com (full disclosure: I work on some of this.)

Re: Microsoft and Ballmer not getting the iPad

#47

Post by mishmash » Sat, Jul 31, 2010, 5:47 PM UTC

sprout wrote: post #41

mishmash wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft did in fact 'get' the iPod, and outdid it in a lot of ways. Microsoft was over 5 years (1848 days) later than Apple to "get" what an MP3 player was. During that five years, Microsoft had a total R&D budget of over $25 billion, or $13,698,630/calendar day. Of course we don't know how much of that budget was allocated for the Zune, but one could easily imagine it being in the hundreds of millions. You say t…

Hardly. They offered a very solid competing vision for what an MP3 player should be. It was a risky vision, involving a subscription and the innovative ability to share songs you haven't bought legally, wirelessly with the person standing next to you. I really think the failure was purely marketing, judging by the accounts of people who used the service, that and people's assumption that anything from Microsoft canno…

I see your point, but subscription-based music services had been around for five+ years before the Zune came out - and even so, all iTunes evidence pointed to a trend that users wanted to own their music.

And the beaming feature may have been nice in theory, it was widely considered to be hobbled with DRM.

Lastly, let's not forget the seemingly inane decision to bypass what little music people had from PlaysForSure campaign and re-implement a completely incompatible new format.

Marketing? Maybe, maybe not. To me it sounds like a severe lack of execution. They made consumers re-purchase music, didn't offer much differentiation from their competitors, and were five years late to the party.

In comparison, it's reported that the entire iPod development process, from the form factor, to the scrollwheel, FireWire, OS, and iTunes integration only took 18 months.

Re: Microsoft and Ballmer not getting the iPad

#48

Post by fuzzythinker » Sat, Jul 31, 2010, 5:53 PM UTC

commandar wrote: post #43

fuzzythinker wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet they would, but most likely a tiny feature from it a bit at a time. I'll say they canceled it not because they didn't like it, but because it would take too long to finish. They felt Apple would have too much head start if they didn't produce _anything_ in the mean time. This rush is pretty much confirmed by their actions and this interview.

>I bet they would I kind of doubt it given J Allard was forced out of the company over the Courier.[1] Frankly, I think that's one of the single most boneheaded moves Ballmer's made -- Allard is largely responsible for reviving Microsoft's brand image with the under 30 crowd heading up Xbox and Zune development. A decade ago, nobody would have described Microsoft as a cool brand, but flash forward today every frat bo…

Same feeling here. Not sure if Allard has any credits for the Kinect, but it's pretty much the only thing that wowed me from MS since win95. Seems like they really thought outside the box even though the aim was to copy the wii. Makes me want to get the xbox just for it.

Re: Microsoft and Ballmer not getting the iPad

#49

Post by MaysonL » Sat, Jul 31, 2010, 7:04 PM UTC

GiraffeNecktie wrote: post #21

wazoox wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The best thing Microsoft could do is to innovate and do something no one's done. The last time they did so was when Allen and Gates decided there must be a market for BASIC on Altair and microcomputers in general. Maybe Traf-o-matic was an innovation, too. However none of their significant products afterwards was anything new : * common programming languages for different systems * MS-DOS, built from a borrowed clo…

Actually they have done one excellent innovative product. It's called OneNote and it's the only reason I keep a Windows partition on my laptop. I take lots of meeting minutes and the ability to record audio that is in sync with my typing is a killer feature. Damn, I wish someone would do that in Linux (this feature doesn't work in Wine).

Get a livescribe pen http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/ and get rid of that Windows partition. :)

Re: Microsoft and Ballmer not getting the iPad

#50

Post by brown9-2 » Sat, Jul 31, 2010, 7:27 PM UTC

Herring wrote: post #20

junklight wrote: post #11

What I don't get is why a company like Microsoft - rich and no longer in the lead doesn't setup a couple of well funded skunk works companies. Drop the baggage (ie don't force them to use windows and allow a new culture to emerge) and give each one a target - touch computing or something else and let 'em go. Microsoft has all the pieces - money , good engineers, marketing etc. but it's not working. They have the fina…

They're probably getting way too much money to risk killing windows. The last thing they want is a viable alternative.

The last thing they want is a viable alternative.

A viable alternative made and sold by ... Microsoft? This wouldn't be taking away from Windows, it would be designing and selling the right tool for the job.