“We fought hard for iPad,” a pilot working for the airline told AppleInsider. He described the Delta deal as being about money, travel contracts, and Delta’s Information Technology staff historically being “in bed” with Microsoft.
Why would Delta want to listen to the people actually using the devices at 30,000 feet in the air.
Paul Thurrott:
A proposed class action lawsuit has been filed against Microsoft on behalf of its shareholders, alleging that the firm lied about the financial performance of its Surface RT tablet. The surprise revelation that sales were much less than expected came months later than required by law, the suit says, and immediately “eviscerated” $34 billion of Microsoft’s market value, materially impacting shareholders.
The suit names Microsoft as well as Steve Ballmer, Peter Klein, Frank Brod and Tami Reller as defendants.
The news for Microsoft and the Surface RT just keeps getting worse.
“We built a few more devices than we could sell,” admitted Ballmer when referring to the slow Surface RT sales. Microsoft recently cut the price of its Surface RT tablets by 30 percent worldwide, and Ballmer and Turner reiterated in the internal meeting that the huge writedown was a price adjustment that was necessary to sell Surface RT devices. While Ballmer didn’t provide a sneak peek at the next Surface, we’re told he confirmed new devices are currently being tested with incremental improvements.
So Microsoft took a $900 million writedown because the Surface sucks balls and in response the next version of the Surface will have “incremental improvements.” Perfect.
Rene Ritchie:
With these latest commercials, Microsoft shows they’re no closer to learning that lesson today than they were back with Bill Gates and the Tablet PC. They’re still mired in Windows and in Office. They’re so afraid of letting go of past success that they’ll take future failure instead. They’ll refuse to compromise on anything other than making the user experience horribly, needlessly, compromised.
That pretty much says it all.
Honestly, I’m not surprised. In the mobile market, Microsoft has proven over the years that it doesn’t know what customers want.
Jun Dong-soo, president of Samsung’s memory chip division:
“The global PC industry is steadily shrinking despite the launch of Windows 8,” Jun said. “I think the Windows 8 system is no better than the previous Windows Vista platform.”
And, as if that wasn’t enough:
“[Microsoft’s] rollout of its Windows Surface tablet is seeing lackluster demand,” he said. “Meanwhile, previous vigorous pitches by Intel and MS for thinner ultra-books simply failed and I believe that’s mostly because of the less-competitive Windows platform.”
But the Surface makes you dance.
Given Microsoft’s lack of success so far, he was asked if there was an alternative strategy or ‘Plan B’ in reserve.
“It’s less ‘Plan B’ than how you execute on the current plan,” said Klein. “We aim to evolve this generation of Windows to make sure we have the right set of experiences at the right price points for all customers.”
I have a lot of respect for a company that is so confident in its product line that it goes all in. Having a “plan B” means that in some way you aren’t fully committed to the future of the product.
Of course, if you do that, you better be right. In this case, I’m not sure Microsoft is right.
So, with the Surface Pro you can… dance?
Paul Thurrott suggests that at least one Microsoft Store and other retailers are sold out of the Surface Pro 128GB model. He also said that Microsoft’s online store is sold out of that model.
This is great news for Microsoft, but I’ll wait until I hear exactly how many were sold before I congratulate the company too much.
Ed Bott clearly did a lot of work on this article comparing the disk space of the Surface Pro and the MacBook Air, but I’ll tell you this — I’d put the MacBook Air up against the Surface Pro anytime, anywhere.
John Gruber rounds up some of the Surface Pro reviews and adds some of his smart commentary. Mac Rumors also posted a few links to reviews.
None of them seem to be particularly good.
Clearly, Microsoft doesn’t want to be in business any longer.
If Microsoft is being coy about revealing Surface sales data, it may be for good reason. Early demand for the company’s first tablet is lousy. How lousy? Put it this way: If Microsoft really did manufacture three million to five million Surface tablets to sell in the fourth quarter, it’s going to have between two million and four million left over at quarter’s end.
Estimates from the analyst are 500,000-600,000 for the quarter.
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the Microsoft Surface over the past few weeks, in an effort to figure out what the company is trying to accomplish. While I have given Microsoft kudos for not blindly copying Apple’s tablet strategy, what they released doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. […]
In hindsight, I now see why Microsoft did not want me to review the Surface. That was probably the right call from a PR perspective. It’s simply not a good product.
After using it for over a week now, it’s hard to come up with a lot of nice things to say about the Surface. Don’t get me wrong, there are some solid things here. But by and large, it’s a strange, buggy, and clunky product that I simply can’t imagine many people buying after the initial hype wears off.
That’s near the beginning of the review. It gets worse.
He discovered that a significant portion of the 32 GB storage space was being used by the operating system and pre-installed apps such as Word and Excel. Only 16 GB was available for him to use.
Seriously, 16GB for the operating system and apps is a bit much.
Todd Bradley, the head of HP’s PC business:
“I’d hardly call Surface competition,” Bradley said in an interview with IDG Enterprise. He listed several reasons, “One, very limited distribution. It tends to be slow and a little kludgey as you use it …. It’s expensive. Holistically, the press has made a bigger deal out of Surface than what the world has chosen to believe.”
This coming from one of Microsoft’s partners.
Rob Pegoraro has both devices and is deciding which one he’ll return.
This is what Microsoft was telling people at a Windows Conference in the UK yesterday. It’s almost like they believe this shit or something.
Hilarious. […]
Farhad Manjoo:
But it didn’t take me a week and a half to decide whether the Surface is better than the iPad. At most it took a couple days, and that’s being generous. You’d likely arrive at the same conclusion after playing with the Surface for just a few minutes in a Microsoft Store. That’s because the new tablet’s flaws are glaring.
Farhad is definitely not a fan.
Microsoft has revealed exactly how much free space new Surface owners are left with after taking into account Windows RT and system-related files. For the 32GB version of the new tablet, users have access to only 16GB of storage, with the remaining half taken up by Windows recovery tools, Windows RT, Microsoft Office, and built-in apps.
Seriously Microsoft, WTF?
The first paragraph alone is worth the read. Great article from Crosby Churchil.
There are two sides to every story. This Microsoft retail experience wasn’t so bad.
The moral of the story is that you should go to a store and try out a Surface if it is something that interests you. Don’t listen to other people’s views and opinions. You might hate it. You might like it. Everyone’s needs and expectations are different. I came away impressed and pleased with the experience and the Surface.
I do agree with this completely. You should try out everything and use what is best for you.
You have to feel bad for this poor guy.
Exactly.
So what I get from this ad is that the Surface will make a clicking sound when you connect the keyboard; I will be able to dance; other people will join me dancing; I will kiss someone; and if I throw the Surface in the air someone will catch it.
But what does it actually do? I guess they forgot that part. […]
Anil Dash:
If anyone questioned whether Microsoft could get back in the fight once the cuffs finally came off, Surface should put those doubts to rest. The gorgeous PC/tablet hybrid is the only example in recent memory of a company clearly and emphatically going toe to toe with Apple on the industrial design front. The iPad will have to improve. Android tablets will have to improve. Surface isn’t another me-too device—it moves the entire category forward.
Incredibly kind words for a product that nobody has even used yet. “Moves an entire category forward”? Bullshit.
Acer CEO JT Wang:
“We have said think it over. Think twice,” Wang is quoted as saying. “It will create a huge negative impact for the ecosystem and other brands may take a negative reaction. It is not something you are good at so please think twice.”
There’s trouble in them there hills.
Which raises a very difficult question: What will happen if Apple, which can prove it came up with this idea some time ago, actually wins this patent?
Oh Microsoft.