Have you tried it yet? What do you think?
Today, a single Apple product — the iPhone — generates more revenue than all of Microsoft’s wares combined.Vanity Fair • In a blog post previewing Kurt Eichenwald’s upcoming piece on the downfall of Microsoft, which has seen better days. Despite being years ahead on many technologies, including smartphones, e-readers and tablets, a bureaucratic culture often at odds with innovations cost them this lead. The company also rejected ideas which became bigger deals years later: For example, when a status-update feature was pitched for MSN Messenger years before Twitter and Facebook became huge, the idea was rejected out of hand. Now it’s 2012 and Microsoft is trying to right the ship. Can they?
In case you were wondering, Microsoft hasn’t given up on the original Surface product — which is a giant iPad-like table they released back in 2007. They’ve just renamed it to PixelSense, which makes less sense, but at least they didn’t kill the product entirely. Surface is a good name, but does it really work better for their new tablet than this?
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled a suite of Microsoft Surface products, including a signature tablet. The 9.3 mm Microsoft Surface tablet, powered by Windows 8, is a hair thinner than the 9.4 mm iPad 3, and its 10.6-inch display has a full inch on the iPad’s. The Surface’s two standout features are a full-sized, multitouch keyboard with trackpad that also doubles as the device’s case, and a built-in kickstand for hands-free use. It also includes a magnetized stylus that uses digital ink and a full-sized USB 2 port.
A little torn on this. Granted, we tend to be reflexively anti-Microsoft at times, but this probably is the most-aggressive attempt to take on Apple we’ve seen yet, and it’s worth taking seriously. They took Apple’s biggest iPad weakness — the lack of physical keyboard — and banked the entire device on it. It’s a smart approach, but you know, it’s one that seems like it’d be simple for a Kickstarter to copy completely. It’ll be interesting to see how this affects third-party vendors, too. Either way, this seems like an attempt to take out the netbook — if they price it right, at least.
Copyright 2009-2013 Ernie Smith • Ask us stuff! • E-mail us • Follow us on Twitter • Follow us on Facebook
