Opinion: RT was an interesting strategy and most people in Steve Ballmer's shoes would have taken the same bet. It came at a time when Microsoft didn't have a tablet to compete with iPad. So, what did they do? They converted their existing Start interface to occupy the entire desktop into Metro Mode. If you think about it, the desktop was always a huge waste of space. After they converted, Microsoft had couple of major issues - if they allowed for tablets running legacy apps or forced x86 on tablets, people would ignore the new interface and continue building legacy apps. The new metro was going to be used by their phones and game consoles in a one screen, 3 devices policy and in case they didn't have metro apps, their phones and consoles would suffer. Windows was always the driver - it had to be. So, they decoupled desktop from their new interface and put it in a new set of devices supporting low powered ARMs.
And as such, current Office is never really meant for Touch. So, I am guessing they were forced to bundle a pseudo-desktop along with RT to support Office which is also a cash cow. Would they have loved to remove Desktop completely? I would bet so.
Maybe Microsoft foresaw that x86 prices would fall, power would increase and battery life would increase etc., but they had to continue down this road and take a hit because they needed metro apps. My bet is that they were willing to take the hit. I don't think anyone in Microsoft had the impression that RT would come save the day. It is a necessity because of their new direction. If RT designs in app interest being generated, I would say that it did it's job to some extent. Of course, I don't know how this will play out but according to me, these are some very daring decisions being played out at MSFT and I would say better than Google.
Well, I used it in a casual way for making it seem like an obvious decision - the perception having been part of my opinion.
Please allow me to correct myself - Most people wouldn't have taken the bet nor have the insight to do so. Steve Ballmer or maybe Steve Sinofsky or someone did. And they are not most people.
It's hard for me to see Microsoft's whole mobile strategy as anything other than a massive debacle (other than the Metro UI itself).
First WP 7 doesn't get upgraded to WP 8. Then you get a third OS for tablets. Then all they can come up with as a value proposition over iOS/Googdroid/AmazonDroid is Excel and a keyboard that makes a satisfying click.
MS certainly wasn't in the best position but they have many thigns they could take advantage of: huge cash stream, relationships with developers, relationships with OEMs, relationships in retail, relationships with corporate buyers, X-box live, Skype, Bing, etc. Despite all that they've managed to have little in the way of apps, installed base, mindshare, etc to show for the last 5 years in mobile. If this was all part of their master plan they need to be taken out back and shot in the dead of night.
The problem with Microsoft (since it's inception) is a complete lack of originality. The company is based upon intellectual theft and dominant business strategies. It worked for years and years but the ecosystem has evolved now.
Microsoft has been chasing Apple since they released the Zune with some vague hope of success. The sad thing is there are a number of exceedingly talented individuals working at the company, it just sounds like innovation was strangled by corporate culture years ago (if it ever existed there).
I saw my first Microsoft store a month ago. It looked exactly like the Apple Store I just came out of - except the tables had a different shade, and there was nothing comparable to the XBox360+Kinect station in the Apple store.
They've been copying "things that work" for so long, and up until a few years ago, it just worked. And now that it doesn't, it seems that they have no idea what to do.
You actually bring up the one exception that I failed to mention. The XBox was a pretty idea by Microsoft and it's implementation was fantastic (it's revenues a drop in the bucket compared to other departments but still). Kinect, while a blatant response to the Nintendo Wii's accelerometers has opened up some very interesting possibilities that were previously only limited to academic level research...
In that regard I think that the XBox team is probably the only well-ran unit in the firm.
The first XBox was basically a PC with an exact spec. The 360 was plagued by RRODs. I know 5 people who own XBox 360, and every single one of them was either on the 2nd or 3rd console due to malfunction.
The Kinect was not developed at Microsoft - the camera and original skeletal modeling is from PrimeSense (although later MS took over the software part, at least). It was a marketing response to the Wii, true - but it's a third party product they bought.
"Only limited to academic level research"? I had a chance to play with the commercial ZCam almost two years before the Kinect came out; And ZCam wasn't the first product.
> In that regard I think that the XBox team is probably the only well-ran unit in the firm.
Have they turned a profit yet? I suppose they have by now, but they went through at least 4BN in funding before they did (if they have indeed). It might be well-run, but without real evidence I can't assume that.
If all the decisions were based on users, the company will never be able to define the future. I think we clearly see that in product failures/criticisms - even the new Xbox backlash for MSFT. Consumers are fickle. They never like drastic changes. And consumers always choose near term interests than long term benefits.
I don't understand why HN Users need to single out MSFT/Steve Ballmer as making mistakes all the time. They have made mistakes but my point is - RT wasn't one of them. It's cool to analyze strategies without associated fanboyisms/ individual hatred.
If all the decisions were based on users, the company will never be able to define the future. I think we clearly see that in product failures/criticisms - even the new Xbox backlash for MSFT. Consumers are fickle. They never like drastic changes.
Would you have said all of this about Apple around the time of the iPhone launch?
What you said is true for almost all products - however, figures on Apple's boxes actually tend to match common usage, and have since at least 2007 when I started paying attention.
I agree with everything you say ! I am no fanboi, I use whatever works for me best, I own an iPod touch (for the music), the galaxy s4 (running touchwhiz flavor of jelly bean v4.2.2) , own the xbox360 and a win 8 desktop PC, New Lumia phones and win 8 pro tablets have impressed me.I think the new xbox and how surface pro and rt have seen Microsoft going for those 3 segments and almost inevitably converging to a single os that runs them all !
I wouldn't be surprised if windows 9 or 10 perhaps would have you writing code once and deploy them to your new xbox, new PC, new surface, new Lumia and new smartwatch and who knows maybe even some sort of kinectified glass you wear all the time, Imagine the big win for hitting so many screen sizes with one codebase.
Their is no 'RT' strategy to speak of. Microsoft decided to use a desktop operating system in tablet devices instead of using a mobile os like everyone else.
So instead of having to make a single adjustment for applications(larger screen) microsoft built an entirely new interface and APIs to support that interface. New applications built for that interface are designed to replace traditional desktop applications and work well a variety of screensizes and both with and without touch input. The motivation behind this decision was to leverage windows' market penetration to build momentum for their mobile strategy. This isn't so much a strategy as an overwhelming desire to always leverage windows when entering a new market segment. It is a crutch that makes true innovation impossible.
The problem is that this 'strategy' is impossible. There is no such thing as a magical toolkit that can do what Microsoft wants. Instead, you have massive consumer confusion and applications that don't work well on non-touchscreen devices. Now Microsoft has to support new 'Modern/Metro' applications going forward on Windows for the foreseeable future. It takes resources away from the traditional desktop experience.
Imagine if Microsoft had simply taken Windows Phone and adapted it to a larger screen size. It would have used the same API and provided a considerably better experience for consumers(without any confusion) at virtually new development cost or adoption of a new toolkit/application experience for the desktop. The only thing microsoft would have lost was the ability to run mobile applications on the desktop. A dubious benefit to say the least.
RT was an interesting strategy and most people in Steve Ballmer's shoes would have taken the same bet.
I strongly disagree as I know many other people did as well.
Daring or repeating history? Windows NT was ported to a host of platforms -- DEC Alpha, MIPS, PowerPC, and Itanium. None have gained substantial traction.
Had they been daring, the desktop would have been removed. Instead, Metro feels like a reincarnation of Apple's At Ease.
RT could have had a chance, but beyond the crayon colors, I believe the root cause was the bland, simple Metro interface. The textures, shadows and other elements of iOS 1 - 6 are engaging in a way that the flat interface is not. Side-by-side I'm always more compelled to pick up my iOS 6 phone over the iOS 7 phone. Or the flat-before-it-was-cool Blackberry.
When I visit a museum, people spend less time at simple modern art pieces. When I turn on pop radio, heavy layered beats dominate.
I might have bought an RT tablet if didn't feel like the Ikea of tablets.
Microsoft and everybody else has been waiting for years for Intel to reduce the power consumption of x86, so long that ARM has caught up from an CPU appropriate for mobile devices to an serious competitor to the dominant platform.
Intel has done everything they can to "prove" that their chips are ready, but they've done the same thing before. They partnered with Nokia and rebuilt their system for internet tablets into a general purpose system for mobile devices (including netbooks), then automotive systems. They released a chip for smart TVs and set-top boxes, then abandoned the entire line, leaving devices without firmware updates in certain devices (like Boxee). They've gone to great lengths to target smartphones and smaller tablets where the larger footprint would be a serious downside.
I will admit that intel has finally delivered a chip that is competitive with ARM on smartphones and smaller tablets.
I will agree with another commenter (either here or on the other story) that it is too early for the RT to be introduced as a product category. But I also believe that Microsoft has to succeed in getting a Windows product on ARM based on the NT kernel if they want to maintain their long-term dominance in personal computing, particularly for businesses.
They may have the wrong idea with trying to build a media consumption tablet built around applications in the same device as they have with Windows RT. I would suggest they take the opportunity with the 8.1 upgrade to support arbitrary compiled Windows applications, starting with Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. (Both would likely be ported if that was possible.) That they embrace developers using Visual Studio 2012 to build applications on the device, not just for the device. I would suggest that they use Microsoft Installer (MSI) to hide the fact that the applications are compiled for ARM, call them "Universal Windows Applications" if they must.
I considered the Surface RT before getting my Samsung Chromebook (ARM) and went for the latter of both price and lack of support for Windows (Win32) applications on the RT.
The Surface RT experience was summed up best for me by the wife of a Microsoft employee and friend of mine: "it makes me feel stupid". I guess she'll be sticking with her iPad.
Me, I didn't think it was that bad. Though I, too, wondered "why wouldn't I just buy and iPad?" Seems that's a question everyone else asked themselves.
My wife got one, and the first week she had it she was surfing forums and mucking around with the task monitor and RegEdit (!) in order to deal with some runaway process caused by an errant app. Maybe a game. We never found out. It's supposed to be designed so it can't go haywire that way, but it does. Fail.
Never heard of such a problem on an iPad.
The Windows division might think it knows how to deliver a tablet-friendly OS, but really, it doesn't. It's clownville; they don't understand how to do box-level security (as on consoles) and they don't know how to do stability at the level required by a "mom" consumer product. (The Xbox group took Win8 and had to do extensive modifications in order to make it play well -- the original mandate from the execs were "run Win8 without any changes" and /that/ would have been a fucking disaster).
If Microsoft is serious about putting a real "tabletized" version of Win8 in consumer hands, they need to do a bunch of housecleaning and internal education. It's a mess.
My iPad has now reached the point where, if I don't carefully set it into Airplane mode, Battery drains in 24 hours, even when asleep. I don't know if it's my mail client, or a background task being woke up by a geofence, or one of the GPS/WiFi radios - but I can't reliably leave it sitting around for several days anymore.
So, now I get into the game of "Disable Location Services for All applications, Disable Notification Services for All Applications, Turn off all Radios - NOW, turn on a small handful of services, and observe for a week - if everything looks good, turn on some more - keep doing so until the battery starts draining in 24 hours, and then try and identify the errant applications"
My #1 gripe about the iPad continues to be battery draining because of background tasks. If I could only "Force" the iPad into NO MULTITASKING, Single Damn Application at a time and NOTHING else mode, Don't Check Email, Don't Check GPS, Don't play music, Don't Download - I'd be happy. The only reliable way I've found of guranteeing this is to power it down - but it takes a long time (90+ seconds) to power it up each time I want to use it, which kind of detracts from the device...
So, no - iPad is not perfect. I would say 50% of my time this trip, when I went to use it, battery was completely dead so I ended up with my MacBook Air sitting on my chest to do reading.
The hardware is fine - if I put it in Airplane mode, or, carefully disable every single background process, then it can sit in sleep mode with little battery loss, for a week.
I guess another way of double checking this, is just reinstalling the Operating System from scratch at the Genius Bar.
It's not possible for software to misbehave on iOS. The system is ridiculously strict and "background processes" are basically faked and can only run for 10 minutes before they're killed.
That's not clear at all because he states that the battery works fine when he runs it in airplane mode.
If anything is clear it's that he uses a setting that activates the radios too often or an app that spams notifications. Without knowing anything else about his setup I'd implicate a busy push email.
Or you know you could reinstall iOS via iTunes pretty easily. Why do you need a genius bar?
And by carefully disabling every background process - what exactly do you mean? Other than mail checking - what user controllable background processes are there?
Closing Apps in the multi-tasking switcher has been the only way, on both the iPhone and iPad, to save your battery when apps on iOS run out of control.
I certain I'm not the only person who has felt their iPhone get hot, and shut down everything in the switcher to recover the and stop the battery from draining?
Likewise with the iPad, making sure every music, every voip, every downloading, every geo-fence, every GPS, every-single-app is shut down is the only way I can keep my iPad Battery from draining after running a good handful of apps.
That, or just powering it down - which, as I said earlier, kind of defeats the purpose....
if you run an app and switch out then it can perform a network operation or a few other very specific tasks but they're all killed after 10 minutes anyway.
The whole multitasking part of iOS is basically smoke and mirrors. Manually quitting tasks is pretty much voodoo at this point
There's exactly one answer to that question: office. 9 hours of office in a device the size of a pad of paper.
But the problem is, the exact people who would buy RT for that reason cannot use it or would not want it for a range of other factors (for example, it cannot join a domain).
And now with the new Intel chips there is no reason at all, because you can get 9 hours of office from a full Win8 tablet.
Right now, tablets may be seen as toys. But, who says they can not be used for work. At first cell phones were just for calls and sms. Then some had browsers, they were seen as unnecessary, at the time...
My Macbook died a few months back, I tried the Surface RT a few days as a replacement. At first, it was strange, and my work flow suffered. But, alas, after a week, I was back to normal productivity.
It has been several months now, of treating the Surface RT as my main machine. I mostly work out of the desktop IE. Sometimes I will snap Netflix or Hulu on the side. I take the device to work, and not need to charge it (awesome). If I need to show the team something, I snap of the keyboard, and pass it around. Microsoft Office is great on the tablet. Since, it is my lady's, skydrive is not useful for me. But, it is for her. Her phone uploads everything to skydrive, and she can access the skydrive files, on the Surface. The Surface treats skydrive, like a normal drive. So, if she wants to upload a picture on Facebook (in the browser). She can select any file on the Surface or the skydrive.
Most recently, I updated it to the 8.1 Preview. Now that I have outlook, its been even better! The Surface has had constant updates from Microsoft. The first month we had the tablet, it was sluggish and IE, was not ideal. But, it did act as a full fledge browser.
This might sound like a glowing review, and it is, but the device is definitely first gen. Besides a few hiccups here and there I am still amazed at how much the RT can handle. At home, I hook it up to a monitor and work of both screens. The type keyboard is great. And, my lady and I will often watch a movie in bed or play some Wordament.
Microsoft did a terrible job of communicating what the Surface tablets do.
This is coming from a person who grew up using Mac OS. I only used PC's in my last few years of high school, then went back to Macs.
One exception to that rule would be students. It's not exactly "office productivity", but OneNote with a stylus is heavenly for taking notes in-class. It's a shame the RT didn't have stylus support, or I'd be all over it.
Strictly speaking, does the ipad have stylus support either? I'm under the impression all styluses there are 3rd party ones designed to work on capacitive screens in general.
I think he meant compared to Surface PRO / Samsung Series 7 / etc, which have Wacom screens with remote-sensitivity, precise styluses and 32 pressure levels.
But nobody does this. Classrooms are still full of MacBooks and iPads. It is an assumption that sounds good on paper, but never materialized. If I had to guess why it is because generally your computer you're taking notes on is also a personal machine at college in the sense that you want to have fun with it. So when it comes down to fun with a little awkward notes or good note taking with awkward everything else the Mac products still win out.
Classrooms are still full of MacBooks and iPads because the first modern tablets with active stylus support came out after the fall semester of last year started (meaning the yearly push for students to buy new computers hasn't happened yet) and Microsoft has done a completely terrible job of marketing them.
Also, at least at my college, effectively no one takes notes with their laptops or iPads anyway. If they're out in class, it's for Facebook or something else totally unrelated to the class itself. Notes are still written down on good ol' paper.
two of my journalists friends came visit and the first thing they bought in the US was a RT. I tried to convince the to at least get the pro because i'm a sucker for what microsoft did with the wacom hardware price (i think wacom is the only company that profits more per device than apple)... but they all wanted 9h of office and the portability. nothing else.
i personally rather write in vim and output to latex... but to each it's own. I would have got a modern netbook with an extended battery and have 12hours of battery for writting on a decent keyboard.
But it wasn't optimized for tablets. It's the same experience you would've gotten with Office ten years ago on "tablet PC's". And why would you want real Office on a tablet anyway? Fost most of the stuff you'd be doing on a tablet, you're probably better off with a free/much cheaper Office alternative that's also touch-optimized.
Why is this a bad thing? I want the experience I have 10 years ago with tablet PCs. I want to be able to open up Word or Excel when I'm at the airport - without having to lug around a 10" laptop.
Office was the only reason to buy one, and MS screwed that up completely by not making a tablet version of Office. Instead the Surface team bent over for the Office team and included the desktop mode as a crutch to purely run Office.
I own a Surface RT and don't particular like it. I could list all of the reasons (it's slow, most of the software is bad, the corners are sharp, etc) but I don't think they have anything to with why it didn't sell well.
Probably price is the only thing that matters here. Price and exposure. You can't compete with name brand -- no matter the merit -- if you can't beat them in price.
As of a couple days ago, and you're choosing to ignore the true entry level device in the iPad line, the iPad mini which can't match on specs but does beat it on price, portability and form factor.
I can't think of a single person I've talked to about purchasing a tablet that considers specs except for myself so that's hardly the motivator some would make it out to be.
They should have launched Surface as it sown OS instead of trying to be Windows. I actually want an Intel Windows tablet because there's a bunch of audio software I'd use that will never be available on the iPad and it would be great to have a touch interface for my-obscure-applications. but Windows RT was the worst of both worlds - since it doesn't do anything in particular, I might as well just buy an iPad (if I want groovy, albeit somewhat limited, apps) or a Kindle Fire (if I just want to surf the web and consume content).
Correct, the iPad apparently does not make her feel stupid. Hence my following comment about how she'll probably be keeping her iPad. It would seem my wording made the answer obvious, but I'm open to suggestions on how it could have been more clear.
The iPad interface makes me feel like the general public is stupid. It is so terribly inefficient and dumbed down in so many ways that I have a huge incentive to use anything else.
The surface was always destined to fail. People tolerate Microsoft because it's been the de-facto standard for so long, Apple hardware and Google services are what people enjoy.
For higher end tablets the iPad is the winner, for the lower end the Nexus 7. For open-source junkies the only real choice is Google, regular consumers can use either (based on the popularity of Android).
Where does MS fit in? From their lousy image, to their WTF? commercials, their archaic business model and poor services, no one wants an MS product.
To each his own, but I just bought a Surface Pro and love it. It replaces a laptop and tablet and more, it's my main (and only) device from now on. Windows 8 makes total sense for a tablet, and is not in the way when I'm coding (hooked into a real keyboard/mouse/display). The killer feature for me though is the Wacom pen which is absolutely fabulous. I have like 10 notebooks spread out at work and at home with my notes, thoughts, diagrams, illustrations etc. Writing notes and todos in a text-editor feels like a straight jacket, but with the Surface it's even better than paper. I have an infinite drawing surface, I can zoom in and out, move stuff around, mix drawing with typing, draw diagram boxes, circles, insert images, copy and paste, undo, erase, share digitally etc. Now I can keep my notes all in one place, backed up and searchable. Writing with it even feels better than paper for me (not sure if being left-handed has anything to do with it), it's very responsive, has a sharp tip (unlike any pen you'll find on capacitive screens like the iPad). It just all fits together very nicely. This is the new PC, this is the productivity device I've always wanted. Being the Surface 1.0, it's not perfect, so I'll be transitioning to the Surface 2.0 when it comes out so that I'll get 9-10 hours of battery life instead of 5-7 now.
Would also like to clarify that the Surface RT is as useless as the iPad, if not more because of the lack of apps. Having Office on it might make it worth it for some people though.
What software do you use for note-taking? I also have a surface pro and am also very happy with it despite a few minor problems. For me there is occasional poor response to multitouch scrolling on the touchpad, and sometimes the cursor stops responding to the touchpad until I press escape. Also no middle click on the touchpad is annoying, no right ctrl bugs me, and not having separate pgup, home etc. keys is not convenient. Nowhere to put the pen when charging either. I hope at least some of these problems will be resolved by driver updates, e.g. nothing to stop Fn+F acting as Ctrl+F.
Despite the above, the specs, design and portability of the surface pro were better than anything I found when buying it . I get a tablet while still being able to work, which for me requires access to MS software including office. It's comparable with ultrabooks but with the stylus support and detachable keyboard it's just about in a league of its own, though some products are close nothing seemed as well designed, featureful or portable at the price.
I prefer the desktop version of OneNote, the app store version is neat, but missing some essential features. The type cover is not that great, but mostly I'm "docked", so it's not that big of a problem.
1. Nobody cares about handwriting all day long, quite a niche use (the same as for Tablet PC 8 years ago).
2. Nobody cares about MS Office anymore. There are alternatives (and free) for regular folks.
3. There is no new PC coming and MS learnt that today.
4. I have a feeling that this post is a well prepared marketing pitch...
Might be a niche usage, that's true. I don't care about MS Office either, except for OneNote which is great for taking notes with a stylus. I don't do much word processing beyond that, so it's not much use to me. It's certainly your right to be suspicious of anonymous comments, but perhaps your disbelief of any positive coverage for a Microsoft product is more telling of yourself. I use the best solution out there for me, right now that happens to be a Surface Pro. If Apple comes out with an equivalent device not based on iOS, so that I can do real work on it, then I'd consider switching.
They are basically giving these away at Microsoft conferences. The last three I attended had them for sale at:
RT w/ keyboard for $110 (retailed at $699)
Pro for $399 (retails at $999).
I tried picking up a couple to resell for profit but there is zero demand. Nobody responded to my ads on Craigslist, Facebook or Twitter. Ended up selling them for cost.
If they could sell them at those prices, because of course resellers would be quite unhappy, I could imagine just about anyone making an effort to integrate them into their workflow.
The surface would no longer be something to work into a routine because it was a big expensive toy but rather a system that has a genuine use case.
Hell, if they could get the worst rt into the ~300$-~350$ range Microsoft could compare an rt to a nexus 7 and that would be their best bet to get the most sales.
This is sort of beside the point, but I've realized who Steve Ballmer reminds me of; it's Gru in Despicable Me.
I feel like this might be part of Microsoft's problem; I definitely do not want to buy anything from that angry guy in the photo, even though I consider myself something of an MS fanboy.
Office 2013 (desktop mode in general) is most certainly not optimized for touch. Its touch targets in menus, dialog choices, radio buttons and ribbon items are teeny tiny on my Surface Pro.
I paid about $600 for a Samsung 500T and I think it's a great device, albeit for a small market. I bought it because it was effectively a 1kg netbook with a 10 hour battery and a stylus. It's not as good of a tablet as the iPad but it's a real computer, which makes it great for running office, gcc, CAD programs, and all that "on the go." When I need to do some reading I pick up my iPad, but as my super-portable meeting/lunch/whatever computer the 500T is a big winner. Given that an x86 processor (Atom) can get 10 hours in a tablet I'm not sure what the point of RT was though.
I wonder if such things should be evaluated in terms of the knowledge and experience they gained the company. I would say the Surface RT experience has reflected a lot on their experience and strategy developing Windows 8 and Phone. If (say) the experience is reflected in the level of success of Windows Phone 8, then may be overall it is a net success for Microsoft.
I think every company (like Microsoft, Apple, Google did) need to maintain software and hardware divisions, if only to get the feeling what are the software current needs in an evolving hardware profile.
Well the good news are that now we could get a SurfaceRT really cheap considering that sooner or later all the retailers would try to dump their stock.
Yeah they have 4.97M in large bold letters and then 4.97 billion shortly after. Also in the last paragraph they do it again with the $19x and $20x figures.
Commercials with dancing people might sell clothes and booze, but they don't work for technology. I could barely tell what the product was until the end. And I still don't know why a Surface is better than an iPad.
Acer just doesn't get tablets. I can't think of a single Acer tab worth owning, the entire Iconia series is a joke, cranked out to be $20 cheaper than the next guy at the expense of everything that matters. Screen quality, network connectivity, build quality, all complete crap.
Letting them launch the first diminutive Surface tablet and allowing that thing past Microsoft QA is a huge mistake on the part of Microsoft. I can't believe they allow their hardware partners to screw them that badly when they have facilities in place to stop it
They can't do much about some terrible laptop that shouldn't exist, but the licensing for RT is far stricter. How about using that ability and keep crap like this off the market.
Windows 8 Metro Apps on the desktop warned me off ever buying a tablet. The apps feel fisher/price, noddy apps and "good for demos" - not for getting stuff done.
If you don't believe me just start with a fundamental app like email.
Ill wait for you here with a box of tissues...
The RT was released very slightly cheaper than the iPad but the hardware specs were miles behind the iPad.
It's not a bad device, there's just no real reason to own one over the competition at that price.
If they'd thrown in the keyboard case AND Office for the price they launched at, I think they'd have got a lot of traction. Maybe also fixing VPN so it's useful for business users.
And as such, current Office is never really meant for Touch. So, I am guessing they were forced to bundle a pseudo-desktop along with RT to support Office which is also a cash cow. Would they have loved to remove Desktop completely? I would bet so.
Maybe Microsoft foresaw that x86 prices would fall, power would increase and battery life would increase etc., but they had to continue down this road and take a hit because they needed metro apps. My bet is that they were willing to take the hit. I don't think anyone in Microsoft had the impression that RT would come save the day. It is a necessity because of their new direction. If RT designs in app interest being generated, I would say that it did it's job to some extent. Of course, I don't know how this will play out but according to me, these are some very daring decisions being played out at MSFT and I would say better than Google.