With Surface Tablet, Microsoft Takes On Apple but Mimics Google

“Virtually everything about the Surface tablet is bizarre, even its name, which was previously used for a lumbering series of smart tables—yes, tables, not tablets—that have been unceremoniously recast as PixelSense. But what many on-site reports from the day of the launch didn’t care to mention is perhaps the most bizarre bit of all: The Surface tablet doesn’t even exist. It’s vaporware.

The devices that Microsoft showed off earlier this week weren’t real; they were simply prototypes. And anyone claiming to have gotten ‘hands-on’ time with a Surface tablet was exaggerating, at best: No one was allowed to touch a working prototype, so those typing videos occurred on dead pieces of hardware without a working screen.”

Paul Thurrot

Interesting that this comes from one of Microsoft’s staunchest defenders.

Lumia 900 won’t be sold by T-Mobile in Germany due to lack of WP8 upgrade path

” A member of T-Mobile’s support team in Germany has revealed, after asking around inside the company, that the reason the Lumia 900 won’t be making an appearance on the company’s shelves has to do with Windows Phone 8 — specifically, the fact that this new phone won’t be upgradeable to the upcoming OS version. As she tells it, T-Mobile opted not to incur the wrath of its users by selling them a new Lumia 900 today and denying them an upgrade to the very latest Microsoft mobile operating system a few months down the line.”

The Verge

NewImage

As i already said here this obsession of tying everything to “big” Windows is not only nonsense but a giant liability waiting to drag Microsoft to the end.

Can’t we somehow stage an intervention, “How I met your mother” style?

Heart and Soul

“We’ve ushered in a new era of cloud computing, embraced mobility, are attempting to transform entertainment, and Windows is the heart and soul of Microsoft”

Steve Ballmer

This explains why Microsoft is in a downwards spiral (and until further details from Surface are provided i don’t think that will save it either). Windows should never have become “heart and soul” of Microsoft. Office is what people really need/want, Windows is just a tool to an end, or a tool for the use of another tool. And not a really good one.

As long as you can do your Office work, in a compatible and “usual” way, it really doesn’t matter if you have Windows, Linux, Mac or some other OS. Focusing on Windows instead of Office will be the key event of Microsoft downfall.

Three to Six Months

I don’t get this. Microsoft announces in June that they will ship a tablet somewhere around Fall, with a undisclosed price! Does this makes any sense?

If it would ship today, then many people would probably buy it as a impulse purchase and this single momentum alone could probably make sure that the product “sticked” to the market and kept on selling. After an initial run of several hundred thousand sales, is probably difficult to just ignore a product all together.

But making everyone wait for three to six months? First, the only way the “regular Joe” will have access to the Surface experience is through journalists and commenters and regular “tech pundits”. But what if those folks, which are usually hyper-critical and always have an axe to grind or an angle to the story, slander it? What if they say that the battery sucks or the keyboard-cover is useless or it gets too hot? With the iPad there was a deluge of bloggers and regular folks saying that the whole “warmgate” was an absurd and exaggeration from Consumer Reports. Mouth to mouth communication helps a lot spreading the “good news” of a product and fighting doubts and confusion. Regular, intermediated, press on the other hand is always a risk and usually tend to focus on the defects.

As usual Microsoft seems to try to take a step forward that then translates into a risky movement and ends in two steps towards oblivion. Until the Fall, Surface can either disappear in the wind or surge again with bad reviews. But it won’t stay on the news with praises and excited covers and reviews for four or six months that’s for sure. Maybe i’m wrong, but this has pretty much been the pattern in the last years.

The De-Obfusc8r: Windows 8 Mail App

“Surprising revelation: While Mail only supports Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) accounts today, it will support ‘other protocols,’ including IMAP, in the future. I do not personally expect Mail to support POP3-type accounts, but I suppose anything is possible.”

Paul Thurrot – Winsupersite.com

Following RIMM footsteps and their tablet computer for enterprise users that didn’t had an email application, Microsoft releases an email application that doesn’t support the single most used email standard in the world. ((IMAP. I see POP as mainly legacy users or applications))

Where do they get these people?

Microsoft way of feedback

Microsoft feedback interface

Imagem from Paul Thurrot – Winsupersite.com

“Here’s Windows 8. It’s totally different from everything you’ve used before, we’re sticking it down your throat either you want it or not, but please provide us with your feedback so that we can improve.

Do you think we’re great, wonderful or just Einstein/Tesla type of genius?” (( This text was obviously imagined but if you look at the picture i dare you to think that this didn’t happened.))

Final thoughts on Windows 8: A design disaster

“I’ve been following Windows 8 closely over the past few months, spending a lot of time not only with the official releases but also with a number of leaked builds, and I’ve had the chance to install the operating system on a variety of hardware platforms, both old and new. However, since my primary working platform is a desktop system, this is where I’ve had the chance to spend the most time with Microsoft’s new operating system.

I’m now ready to sum up my Windows 8 experience with a single word: awful.

I could have chosen a number of other words — terrible, horrible, painful and execrable all spring to mind — but it doesn’t matter, the sentiment is the same.

And I don’t say this lightly. I want to like Windows 8. I really do. From a performance point of view, I’ve no complaints since it’s just as snappy and responsive as Windows 7, and will likely get a little better as drivers mature. Hardware support is also excellent; the platform able to handle effortlessly everything I threw at it.”

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes – ZDNet

SkyDrive: Service Update, Windows Application, Mobile Apps

“SkyDrive has offered tons of free storage for years, but it’s never provided a seamless or simple way to access it from the PCs and devices that people use so regularly. This was, believe it or, by design. In 2009, I was told that the company would never offer seamless, Explorer-based access to SkyDrive from Windows because people would actually use it. And that would require Microsoft to protect and replicate that data at great expense.

Paul Thurrot – Winsupersite.com

Apparently a leopard can’t change his spots. Every time i read something about a new Microsoft product that i actually consider using or trying out or even, god forbid, recommending to others, Microsoft just goes and shows its truly craptastic nature. It’s like somewhere down there they have this weird desire of being the cool kid and providing everyone with gifts and cool stuff so that they would be liked and popular but then they just can’t resist their lazy-cornercutting-ways and their obnoxious (( i could’t decide on what insult i wanted to insert here. I just went with obnoxious but please, choose your own from its synonyms: unpleasant, disagreeable, nasty, distasteful, offensive, objectionable, unsavory, unpalatable, off-putting, awful, terrible, dreadful, frightful, revolting, repulsive, repellent, repugnant, disgusting, odious, vile, foul, abhorrent, loathsome, nauseating, sickening, hateful, insufferable, intolerable, detestable, abominable, despicable, contemptible; informal horrible, horrid, ghastly, gross, putrid, yucky, godawful, beastly, skanky; literary noisome. )) nature and end up providing you with a cheap knockout of something that was popular 20 years ago, collect-on-delivery, at your expense. I really don’t understand why this hundred thousand employees company could get this distorted culture and modus operandi so deeply entrenched into everything they do.

And now, after this “anecdotal” warning i can’t possibly trust my data into Microsoft’s care because they will probably just screw it up. Or maybe they’re on their finest moment, which is usually followed and preceded by really long crappy ones. With MicroSoft there’s really no way of telling and so, as a precaution, i just try, each time harder, to avoid it all together.

Stardock 2011 Report

Other Platforms

Stardock expects to make some announcements later this year in this area.


Windows 8 concerns

Stardock remains concerned about the direction of Windows 8. Since we are not currently a crossplatform development shop, our success relies heavily on the success of Windows.

It is our projection that if Microsoft does not address the following items in Windows 8, then that version of the OS will be considered a general failure:

  1. Allowing desktop users to use Windows 8 entirely as a desktop OS. Specifically, interface and experience changes are necessary to prevent users from being shifted back and forth between the desktop and “Metro”.

  2. A realistic way to organize programs on Metro. Currently, Microsoft has termed “Groups” as being columns of tiles with a column label. Users are expected to either show a tile or hide it. If they are hidden, they can only be found through searching (typing). There is no folder concept in Metro as there is on the desktop, Android, Mac, or iOS.

  3. A migration away from mouse-over discovery of features back to visual discovery features. In the present consumer beta, Windows 8 requires the user to move the mouse around the screen to discover new elements, which work inconsistently depending on the context or the application.

[…]

Stardock Customer Report 2011

The times, they are changing…