

Commentary on Microsoft's stand that Tablets are a passing fad - raganesh
http://www.mondaynote.com/2011/04/03/microsoft-tablets-are-a-passing-fad/

======
rbarooah
One explanation is that Microsoft is just trying to distract people. I'm not
sure why they bother since it just draws attention to the fact they are
struggling to keep up.

The other explanation is that not enough senior people have spent any time
figuring out for themselves what potential the iPad has. _Maybe they genuinely
don't get it._

I actually think the second explanation is more likely. It's also much worse
for them. It's easy to take a first glance at the iPad and see it as a media
player and games console with a browser built in - i.e. A big iPod touch.

Paradoxically this makes it easier for them to brush off. "We all know that
iPods are successful. Hats off to Apple, the iPod company - the iPad is the
new iPod." Which neatly rationalizes away the success of the iPad in a way
that's not threatening to the PC business.

Analysts, always eager to sell people what they want, are colluding with this
by calling the iPad a media tablet.

The one thing none of these people are doing (unlike iPad customers) is trying
to use them for real work, and discovering where they are strong and where
they are weak.

I now use my iPad 2 as my only computer at home. This means I often try to
push it into doing real work. I've been surprised to find that for some tasks
which are very important to me, it's _a lot better_ than a laptop.

Specifically, I now use the OmniGraffle on the iPad to do all my
brainstorming, _and_ technical diagramming.

I'm a long time user of the desktop version and bought the iPad version when
it first came out. The combination of the relatively slow iPad 1, and the
immature OmniGraffle, made it little more than an expensive curiosity.

Over the course of the year, Omni have worked diligently at improving the UI,
understanding how to make good use of multi-touch, and improving performance.
It was getting pretty good even on the old iPad, but on the iPad 2 it flies.

For the first time in my life, I feel as though I have a computer that can
really replace a paper notebook for capturing ideas. I can be in the middle of
making breakfast, and suddenly a design solution will pop into my head, and I
can instantly open OmniGraffle and make a diagram capturing the details -
better than I could with paper.

It's so good that I'll pick up the iPad to do this even when I'm sitting in
front of my top of the range iMac.

Anyway - raving about OmniGraffle is really just by way of example. The real
point is that step by step, application authors will figure out how to make
their iPad versions better than their desktop versions.

This process won't take long, and it will establish tablets as the primary
computer.

I tried similar experiments with Tablet PC's over the years, including using
Motion Computing tablet with separate keyboard (i.e. Like a big iPad). It just
didn't work, because of the software and the stylus - simple as that.

~~~
mattbriggs
I bought one for pair programming (which was a great idea and way better then
a laptop), but have been amazed at how much I ended up using it for other
things. The big thing I wasn't expecting was how much it took away from how
much I use my iphone, which I use now just for phone/music/text messages, and
which I used to use for _way_ more.

~~~
evangineer
I'm curious about your use of the iPad for pair programming. Have you written
that up anywhere?

~~~
mattbriggs
Not really. I wrote a web app for navigating /searching the code base, and
serving up syntax highlighted code. That with issh and safari give me
everything I would want while pairing. On top of that, the form factor is very
small, the viewing angle is excellent (which makes it simple to share what I
find with my pair), battery life is great, and the one app at a time thing is
actually a plus (I would probably be too distracted with a full laptop). Might
be a YMMV thing, but for me it's pretty much the perfect pairing device

~~~
evangineer
So this is the sort of thing that you could do with say Cloud 9?

------
donnyg107
Like any strong company, Microsoft needs to acknowledge and act upon new
trends, not theorize and hope that markets will adjust and have a space open
for their Oldies-but-goodies products. If Microsoft wants to stay relevant,
they need to have an organized structure of market research, design, and
innovation through all levels of the company. If Microsoft continues treading
tech water, they will be nothing more than a giant software library,
skittishly sucking up new ideas and hoping for the best. Innovation on a broad
scale is not easy, but it would keep microsoft in the forefront of the tech
industry and set it ahead of their trendy competitors. Acknowledgment of
mediocrity is the big first step, and a culture of innovation and design will
follow.

~~~
pohl
_Acknowledgment of mediocrity is the big first step, and a culture of
innovation and design will follow._

That is an enormous first step for an organization whose most prominent trait
is arrogance. I'd like to see them come around, though, and provide some
competition.

~~~
evangineer
I remember the halcyon days of Microsoft. Despite the odd anti-competitive
dirty trick on their part, their real edge boiled down to being able to out-
strategize and out-execute the competition.

Their current approach to extracting intellectual property rents via patent
licensing isn't the Road Ahead, it's the Road to Obscurity!

~~~
rbanffy
It's less a road than a well...

Good riddance.

------
saurik
_In 2007, we have Steve Ballmer’s infamous “It’s a passing fad” reply when
asked about the iPhone._

 _Bill Gates himself made a lofty prediction: “The tablet takes cutting-edge
PC technology and makes it available whenever you want it…It’s a PC that is
virtually without limits — and within five years I predict it will be the most
popular form of PC sold in America.”_

As much as people like to stretch the word "tablet", applying statements made
about the "iPhone" to "tablets" is simply going too far. Yes: the article's
title says "Microsoft: Tablets are a passing fad", but the article doesn't
claim this is Microsoft's "stance" (you don't mean "stand"), so frankly this
HN post comes off as link-bait.

~~~
pohl
You are stretching what the author wrote, rather than the author stretching
the word "tablet".

If you read the essay, the author begins by describing IBM's strategies for
responding to new competition, and how Microsoft learned from them. The
prediction by Gates about the iPhone is a mere illustration of this. It could
have been any example of similar posturing and have been relevant. That it is
about the iPhone is incidental. This particular illustration was probably
picked only for how it juxtaposes nicely against Mundie's similar posture
about the iPad last week.

~~~
saurik
Again, I specifically am speaking of the HN post and the link-bait title. I
did not make any moment on the article: you made that part up (like rbarooah).

~~~
pohl
I see. Your comment at the end about the link-bait title seemed out of place
with the rest of your post. If that was your main point, then the irrelevant
bit about the iPhone and the blurring with tablets really distracted from it.

Perhaps you thought the word 'fad' in the headline was drawn from the 2007
Bill Gates quotation? I didn't read it that way at all.

Rather, to me it came off as a shorter Mundie, and an entirely uncontroversial
paraphrase of what he said. He was savvy enough to avoid the word 'fad' in his
statement, but he casted enough doubt on the longevity of tablets to invoke
the spectre of the 2007 quotation by Gates.

 _Edit: I like the distillation of your point below, and find it vote-worthy.
+1_

~~~
saurik
The user who posted this to HN decided to use the title "Commentary on
Microsoft's stand that Tablets are a passing fad"; this is an importantly
different connotation than "Microsoft: Tablets are a passing fad", which was
the actual title of the article being linked to.

The former's usage of the word "stance" is much more direct: it implies that
Microsoft has officially made firm statements on this matter. Instead, you get
to the article and read commentary (no matter how well informed or
interesting; I do not wish to comment on that) about "mixed messages" from the
guy who runs Microsoft Research.

------
pohl
I remember loving to read Jean-Louis back in the heady days of Be. He still
has a gift:

 _Chef Jobs, in one stroke of his whisk, got the tablet mayonnaise to take,
after three decades of clotted failures by the best and the brightest in the
computer industry, Apple included._

------
makecheck
I think of Microsoft like a talking head on TV; they may be interesting or
entertaining if I am bored, but they are just spewing opinions and are not
directly involved in the topics they opine about. Microsoft has not taken
actions proving that it knows anything about how to market a tablet, so its
opinion has only entertainment value.

~~~
evangineer
+1 All MS's rhetoric on this subject is a useless distraction. What matters is
whether they are shipping competitive mobile products that consumers want to
buy and developers want to develop for. By those benchmarks, they have failed
and are continuing to fail.

The Nokia partnership is clearly a desperate attempt to resuscitate their
mobile strategy. Given the ground that Nokia has ceded at the high end of the
mobile market to Apple and Google it is far from certain, that this move will
succeed.

What might be interesting is to leverage Nokia's production & distribution
power to push WP7 into mid-range devices & featurephones. MicroNokia need to
move fast though, the likes of ZTE are already targeting the mid-range with
cheaper Android devices and are growing fast as a result.

------
ck2
Microsoft (Bill Gates specifically) also thought the internet was a fad.

~~~
shadowfox
And yet we find ourselves cribbing about how IE has dominated the browser
market for a long time

~~~
rbanffy
When you consider all sorts of dirty tricks that were employed, along with the
stupid - in retrospect - blunders the competition made, it becomes much less
than a surprise.

I can be outnumbered 10 to 1 against a stupid enemy and still have a fighting
chance. I can't say the same with I am outnumbered 100 to 1.

------
rbanffy
Come on... Microsoft is just a passing fad. ;-)

~~~
shadowfox
It has been taking quite a long while to pass :P

~~~
rbanffy
Boringly so. ;-)

OTOH, life is just a passing fad. Give the Universe a couple hundred billion
years and it may be completely free of it.

