

Microsoft and Ballmer not getting the iPad - CoryOndrejka
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/07/ballmer-and-microsoft-still-doesnt-get-the-ipad.ars

======
todayiamme
This is slightly off topic, but Ballmer has to be crazy to overlook the
strengths they have. Microsoft owns Amalga (see:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Amalga>) which is an information
retrieval tool for hospitals that ER doctors to reduce the time spent on
searching for information.

Now let's take a step back and see what it is.

It's a tool which has the ability to manage _40 TB_ of data in _real time_ and
provide more than _12000_ pieces of data for each patient. Can you imagine how
rich a resource that is?

Let's say that microsoft invests considerably in a centralized server and
continuously mines the data coming in and strips patient data live to the bare
minimum the ER doctor needs to see. Moreover, what if they see trends in what
is happening in an entire city, before people even realize it and alert the
authorities to prepare before some wave hits. Imagine if they could work with
people to reduce costs by mining this truckloads of data in real time. Why are
they aping Apple? Why?

Microsoft had IBM's "A Smarter Planet" initiative before the latter even
dreamed of it, but did they even know about it?

It's the proverbial story; don't look where you can't go or you'll miss the
riches below. They have some absolutely amazing gems locked up in the research
labs that can change entire industries if leveraged in the right way.
Moreover, Microsoft has the might to do it.

They don't need an iPad killer they need a Microsoft Executive Killer(tm).

~~~
angstrom
They have a nice system, unfortunately, the health information system
landscape is a horrid mess of multiple proprietary data stores. Yes, I know
there's DICOM, HL7, etc. The problem is that those standards don't preclude
the difficulties of converting the TBs of proprietary niches behind them. This
is going to be a multi-year endeavor; a marathon due the glacial pace of
healthcare reform. It can take months to convert just one site. The
tablet/slate/ipad war is a sprint. Otherwise, I agree, the potential profits
Microsoft can reap from the healthcare vertical are enormous.

------
extension
The iPad is not a computer. The iPad is not a computer. Say it with me,
Microsoft. Join in, half the tech industry.

Nobody framed it better than Apple themselves at the iPad launch. On the big
screen was an iPhone, a MacBook, and in between them, an iPad. Steve called it
a new category, and that wasn't just marketing speak. It really is a new kind
of gadget, designed to make you do things that you previously did not do. This
is why everybody says they have no use for it.. because they truly don't,
until they have one in their hands.

With that in mind, Microsoft and the rest of the tablet me-too wave, probably
don't appreciate what they are up against. There is no tablet market, there is
an iPad market. Microsoft's best shot would be an X-Pad. Everyone else should
get behind Google. But really, I think Apple is going to own this category for
a good decade.

~~~
felixmar
One thing that surprised me after using an iPad for a while is that the web is
starting to feel old. I now see bloated web pages everywhere. Unnecessary
widgets, links, icons, useless side columns, actual content making up a
quarter of the screen. Information overload. I am now regularly imagining how
a site i visit would be better as an iPad app. Applications like Flipboard
have created new expectations how content could be consumed.

~~~
acon
I have also feel that the web has become bloated and overloaded. I don't see
what this has to do with the iPad. What I would like to see is a revival of
the web with structural markup, fluid layouts and a minimum of distractions.

Is there anything about what you need to do which can only be done on an iPad?
Such a revival is easier on a new platform where you don't know what to expect
yet. However, I don't see anything which would prevent someone bold enough
from cleaning up their part of the web.

~~~
msy
No, but the recent spate of apps that take user experience when accessing
third party content very seriously shows how utterly painful most of the
normal web is. I think with first-party content providers it's also that if
they're getting paid, they at the very least cut the ads down from eye-gouge
to simply irritating, which helps as well.

I think maybe the point is that while there's nothing technically special
about the platform, at the high end its developers are in a league of their
own when it comes to UI. This is of course a distilled version of the entire
Apple developer culture, which has always taken this stuff more seriously than
Windows and certainly *nix.

------
junklight
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 financial space to do something radical and
disruptive to themselves and jump on that if it pans out.

Either that or just get some strong with real vision at the helm who is
capable of turning it around.

Perhaps its much the same thing

~~~
pavs
> Microsoft has all the pieces - money , good engineers, marketing etc.

They don't have the most important thing. Leadership. Everything about Ballmer
reminds me of a salesperson who is trying over-hype a product in to selling it
to you. With very little knowledge as to what the product actually does.

Like Ballmer, Steve Jobs is also not a tech nerd (in the sense that they are
not developers/programmers or engineers), but Steve always seems to have a
more in-depth knowledge about Apple products and knows it inside out.

On the other hand the top three guys at Google are hackers.

Leadership matters.

~~~
wazoox
> Like Ballmer, Steve Jobs is also not a tech nerd

Though Jobs isn't a certified engineer, he did wrote code, soldered chips on
motherboards, etc. He certainly knows what parts a computer is made of, how
software works, etc.

~~~
sprout
>he did wrote code

It's 'did write.' Just FYI, in case you're not native and that wasn't just an
auto-complete gaffe.

------
Flemlord
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 Office and other applications
I need for my workflow.

I think MS Office is much better positioned for tablets than most people
realize. Ribbon strips provide friendly finger-sized buttons that are
perfectly sized for tablets. If they can add media center and some sort of
X-Box gaming they'll have a killer device. Granted, Apple will still own the
"consumption device" market but there is a big need for "business tablets".

~~~
shortformblog
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
architecture? Sometimes, an interface reboot is downright necessary. The Xbox
360, I'd argue, is the most successful non-Windows-related product they sell
because it's clear that the interface design was tailored for the product.

That's their problem. They don't know when to let go of their legacy and start
fresh.

~~~
contextfree
You could have made the same argument in 1989 about MSFT attempting to graft a
GUI on top of the PC and DOS, though. They tried it a couple times with
Windows 1 and 2 and largely failed, meanwhile Apple made a fresh start with
the Mac and has been exciting everyone for five years, clearly MSFT's approach
is inherently doomed to failure and they should either develop a brand-new
HW/SW system from scratch or give up on GUI OS development and focus on Mac
applications.

~~~
CamperBob
That's a really important point, I think. Looking back over the past 25 years,
what has Apple consistently done better than any other technology company?
Snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. What has Microsoft consistently done?
Just as you say, they consistently deliver a couple of turkey drops, and then
start to get it right in version 3.

It's not clear what "version 3" of MS's tablet strategy really is, or whether
their product-development effort has reached that level yet. But if history is
any guide, we'll know it when they ship it. Most likely, it will happen around
the same time that Apple's proprietary, grasping nature starts to become self-
defeating.

------
megaman821
The weird thing is that Microsoft seems to have all the pieces necessary. If
they just make a new shell the multi-touch, gestures, system-wide search, etc,
etc is already there. WPF apps are probably easy ports since they are coded in
a pretty semantic way. How hard could be to make a shell inspired by the Metro
UI scheme?

------
jsz0
The best thing Microsoft could do at this point is put together a Metro style
touch-centric UI that is the default for Windows tablets. Give developers a
quick & dirty way to port their existing applications to a touch-centric UI.
It wouldn't be the most elegant solution but it would be closer to what people
seem to want in a tablet.

~~~
rbritton
The best thing Microsoft could do is to innovate and do something no one's
done. Everything they've done of late is in markets where someone has already
done very well in, and they've done such a half-assed job of it that it's a
guaranteed fail. Think what you want of Apple, but their products have been
things largely not done before. Microsoft is copying the wrong half -- the
product ideas themselves -- they should be copying the act of innovating.

~~~
wazoox
> 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 clone of CP/M
      * Xenix, an AT&T licensed Unix
      * Windows, a pale copy of existing GUIs of the time
      * Word, a Wordstar rip-off
      * Multiplan, a VisiCalc rip-off
      * Excel, a Lotus 1-2-3 rip-off
      <snip some years>
      * C# and .Net, an enhanced java
    

The list goes on and on. I really can't see any innovating product ever coming
from Microsoft (there are excellent products, but these are incremental
enhancements). Apple, on the contrary, has a long history of earth-shaking
innovations (brought to the masses the personal computer, the GUI, the graphic
printer, the IDE, the mp3 player, the touchscreen devices...) . It's simply
not comparable.

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
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).

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

~~~
arethuza
Only if you can work out a really slick way to take screenshots from a web
application.

~~~
epochwolf
ActiveX! (If it can hijack a computer, it can surely take a screenshot)

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

~~~
fuzzythinker
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.

~~~
commandar
>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...](http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/05/25/microsoft.overhauls.devices.group.to.face.iphone/)

~~~
rbanffy
> A decade ago, nobody would have described Microsoft as a cool brand

I am not sure many people describe it that way now.

~~~
commandar
Then rephrase it as how many "cool" products existed under the Microsoft
brand.

~~~
rbanffy
Cool as in "geek cool" or as in "general cool"? As in "geek cool", there were
many. Even Windows for Workgroups was cool because it offered Mac-like
networking for PCs. MS Access was cool. Even VB was cool (before it a Windows
hello world was 100+ lines). My Softcard was cool - it allowed my Apple II to
run CP/M programs. Microsoft's mice, keyboards and joysticks were always top-
notch.

As in "general cool", I can't remember a single one. Perhaps the Xbox 360
makes the cut, but only in the 25+ gamer scene.

There would also be some "fashion-victim cool": those who just need the latest
shiny toy. Those were the ones who jumped into Vista, Office 2007 and then to
7 and 2010 just because there is a newer version, disregarding whatever
feature they needed. Obviously, they are not restricted to the Microsoft space
- and I have pushed my PPC iMac well beyond its last supported OSX version
(the G3 runs 10.4, but is not very snappy). These people also swap hardware
like crazy, often having 8-core, 64-bit desktops where they check their
hotmail accounts and zip through Facebook at speeds unheard of.

------
city41
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.

------
dotcoma
it doesn't come as a surprise, given that they didn't get neither the iPod nor
the iPhone...

~~~
sprout
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.

~~~
mishmash
> 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 they got the MP3 player, I say if you throw enough money at a problem,
eventually, no matter how hard you try to ignore it, the solution will present
itself. And in this case, it was simply to copy their competitors.

edit: typo

~~~
sprout
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.)

~~~
mishmash
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.

~~~
sprout
>They made consumers re-purchase music

How many people actually bought PlaysForSure music? I don't really see how
that's a huge deal. You could still use all of your existing MP3s, DRM-free
AAC music from iTunes, and WMA files from Windows.

>it was widely considered to be hobbled with DRM.

Here I definitely think that's the anti-Microsoft spin machine at work. The
problem with the beaming feature is that no one owned a Zune, so it was
useless. If it had more market penetration, it could get really interesting.
But people don't _want_ to believe that anything coming out of Microsoft can
get better, so the reviews said it sucked.

>it's reported that the entire iPod development process ... only took 18
months

Pro-Apple spin machine at work.

~~~
mishmash
>> it's reported that the entire iPod development process ... only took 18
months

> Pro-Apple spin machine at work.

WikiPedia reports 12 months of development for the iPod. IIRC I read the 18
month figure in Leander Kahney's Inside Steve's Brain but can't seem to find
it now.

[http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Steves-Brain-Leander-
Kahney/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Steves-Brain-Leander-
Kahney/dp/1591841984)

