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Microsoft just cut in half its orders to suppliers for the Surface RT tablet

qz.com

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Re: Microsoft just cut in half its orders to suppliers for the Surface RT tablet

#41

Post by sharms »

nailer wrote: post #8
RawData wrote: post #6

Everyone is waiting for the pro version to come out...why buy this one?

It's lighter. And I suspect it's not unconfortably hot either like a lot of Intel kit.

I am not so sure that the Pro tablet, given the current Intel stack, will be much better than what is available today. They are going to get a lot more heat pushing 1920x1080 and running an Intel chip instead of the Surface's ARM processor, and it will also require a larger battery.

Fitting that into a Surface like size will not be easy unless we see a component or platform that is yet to be introduced.

Re: Microsoft just cut in half its orders to suppliers for the Surface RT tablet

#42

Post by kalid »

pekk wrote: post #18
Tichy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many companies just do cargo culting when they imitate Apple without understanding :-(

When Apple makes a white and slightly rounded version of something that others made years ago, it actually turns out that they are inventing it for the first time. It doesn't exist until Apple makes it.

Competition from companies who continue to think Apple just took an existing phone, and made it slightly rounder, or took existing tablets, and made them slightly thinner, or took existing laptop designs, and made them slightly sleeker, is why Apple mercilessly dominates those industries.

Re: Microsoft just cut in half its orders to suppliers for the Surface RT tablet

#43

Post by danso »

mgkimsal wrote: post #24
macca321 wrote: post #16

Perhaps they should cut the price in half. And double the screen resolution.

at least cut the price. I don't get why companies are keen to dump hundreds of millions in development, but don't want to cut price on something because they'll "lose money" on the product. There's probably more accounting issues and 'predatory pricing' arguments and such that could be made, but at the end of the day, they've already spent the money on all the development of the mobile/surface/phone stuff. If more pe…

Cutting the initial price near rollout sets a bar for every future iteration of that product. Just like how every iOS game has to grapple with the fact that Angry Birds is only 99 cents, and a load of other very popular games are "free". There are ways for higher-priced products to prevail against the expected price, but it's not easy.

Re: Microsoft just cut in half its orders to suppliers for the Surface RT tablet

#44

Post by kalid »

RawData wrote: post #6

Everyone is waiting for the pro version to come out...why buy this one?

How many people know the difference between Pro and RT? You should see the confusion in the comment threads (on hacker news, of all places!) when the original Surface came out.

Re: Microsoft just cut in half its orders to suppliers for the Surface RT tablet

#45

Post by yajoe »

danso wrote: post #40
pixelbath wrote: post #38

Totally offtopic, but please don't set the navigation on your website up like this. Scrolling to the top of the story begins loading other stories, and the navigation really seems to have a mind of its own. I'm sure it's great for mobile, but on a desktop this site is nearly unusable.

This particular complaint seems always to be one of the top voted whenever a QZ story makes it to HN. It's certainly a breakaway from traditional nav and I understand its motivations...I wonder if it truly is a bad direction to go, or if it's a "you don't know that you want this yet" feature and if so, if it's just the kind of thing that the typical HN reader will never like (our moms and dads, however...)

The site looks gorgeous. Very pleasing.

However, on my computer I often scroll up and down with flicks just as often as I highlight text to focus. It's usually when I'm skimming.

Boy was I surprised when the article disappeared because I scrolled too far and there wasn't an obvious way to get it back. The subtle cues on the left side nav are not in my line of focus and I missed them, so the first time it happened I was really confused.

Scrolling doesn't seem like the right event to trigger the next article here. I don't want this feature.

Re: Microsoft just cut in half its orders to suppliers for the Surface RT tablet

#47

Post by Surio »

Sumaso wrote: post #10

"As a result, pundits are already declaring this the beginning of (or an important milestone in) Microsoft’s death spiral." Really? So much of their business is relying on the Surface RT that it will spell doom for the entire company? Highly unlikely.

Pay no heed. There's no dearth of "The end is nigh" board carriers in these matters.

Re: Microsoft just cut in half its orders to suppliers for the Surface RT tablet

#48

Post by noinput »

glesica wrote: post #15
noinput wrote: post #12

Semi-unrelated, but I really enjoyed the mobile optimized version of quartz. Intuitive nav header based on scroll gesture & pull to refresh and get a new article were a nice touch.

I found the desktop version of the site nearly unusable. While I was waiting for the Javascript mess to render the actual content I hit the scroll wheel, the screen flickered a bunch of times, and I ended up one a completely random article somehow. Horrible. Edit: Scrolling up at the "top" of the page should do nothing, not go to some other page.

Fun juxtaposition of experience. Looks like the site is simply responsive, and I agree with you that the desktop version is too greedy with the actions that play in the favor of mobile.

Re: Microsoft just cut in half its orders to suppliers for the Surface RT tablet

#49

Post by roc »

douglasisshiny wrote: post #31
roc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they piss off their OEMs with a little surprise, like the Surface was, there's more at stake than just whether that particular hardware succeeds.

I never bought into this. When the chief of Acer (was it Acer?) made veiled threats, I couldn't help but think, "What are you going to do?" Are they going to abandon Windows? No. The only position they're really in is to make even crappier products.

Abandon, no. But they can be expected to push back a bit more on decrees and pressure from Redmond that they not push Linux/Android as equal citizens.

Acer probably has less lattitude in this regard, but HP and Dell have non-trivial inroads to Microsoft's (very profitable) enterprise customers. And if they start building and shipping Linux-based servers that plug into the MS infrastructure they're already supplying, at massively less cost [1], Microsoft's entire fallback plan of milking the enterprise into the sunset (going IBM) is under threat.

[1] Consider an opensource Sharepoint replacement that has all the Exchange/Office/Active Directory integration. HP has the staff and resources to make that happen, given that they can deliver any and all windows plugins necessary to support the edge cases. Or even linux-based web and database servers that play well with an otherwise-MS enterprise.

Re: Microsoft just cut in half its orders to suppliers for the Surface RT tablet

#50

Post by ConceptJunkie »

roc wrote: post #23
brudgers wrote: post #11

If Microsoft is netting $200 per unit, this represents only $400,000,000 of some net revenue projection (assuming the report is correct). Yes, it's more than a rounding error. But it's not going to have much impact on the bottom line. Deathspiral? Microsoft isn't betting the farm on becoming a hardware company.

When they piss off their OEMs with a little surprise, like the Surface was, there's more at stake than just whether that particular hardware succeeds.

Windows 8 is an enormous gamble and the firesale upgrade price reflects that MS sees it that way. They are all but bribing users to upgrade, and if you want the Windows improvements from the last 3 years, this is your only route. This is the first time there has been a serious discount for an upgrade license for Windows ever. (Although maybe the Win 3.1 upgrade might have been only $50... I don't recall any more, but in that case it was well worth it).

With Windows 8 Microsoft is foisting a whole new UI paradigm on desktop users who didn't ask for it and mostly don't want it. Yes, you can still use the desktop mode, but I'm betting a lot of non-techie users will just suffer with Metro because they have been conditioned to unquestioningly accept arbitrary awfulness from computer software. I doubt 95% of computer users ever go outside of the web browser and Office applications... and no matter how awful the Metro implementations of these apps are (I imagine IE in Metro isn't much different, but other apps?) they'll just deal with it. After all, they learned how to use Word, one of the most arbitrary and capricious pieces of software this side of Lotus Notes.

I've seen it in person too many times to believe that most non-technical people don't realize software could be a lot better and that it doesn't have to be the way it is. And in a lot of corporate environments, even if they know, they can't do anything about it.

And the only reason MS is pushing Metro on non-portable device users is to jump-start their own app store, because I'm sure they are drooling over the idea of taking a significant cut out of every software sale like Apple does. They are drooling so much that they are willing to risk antagonizing desktop users in order to get it, understanding that a lot of people will just think "this is the new normal" and go along with it, because they don't have the knowledge or experience to realize they have some say in the matter.

This is not a bash on users... a user should not have to be an expert unless he wants to be, but Microsoft is counting on being able to strongarm these users to suit Microsoft's needs, not the users'.

MS is years behind in the tablet and phone markets and Surface doesn't look like the iPad-killer it needs to be to give them a foothold in a market where they are currently all but irrelevant. Ditto phones. MS can't coast on the biennial desktop/laptop upgrade cycle the way they used to because a huge chunk of money spent on computing devices is going to devices where MS doesn't (currently) have a decent entry.

Meanwhile, a lot of users will needlessly suffer with the angry fruit-salad of Metro and hate it, but just take it as the new "normal". If that weren't true, Office would have actually gotten better over the last 15 years.

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