After reading the news and watching the keynote on the new tablets released by Microsoft yesterday, I can say that I am both impressed and worried about the software giant. Microsoft Surface is a great product with unfortunately, a severely misguided strategy.
On a product level, I am impressed by the company’s newfound focus on design and user experience. The tablets are simply a beauty to behold, with the gorgeous screen and the polished magnesium casing setting a grand stage for Windows 8. Even more impressive are the keyboard covers. How were they able to cram that technology into 3 mm? With this announcement, Microsoft is showing the world that it is one of the big design and engineering powerhouses of the world.
On a strategy level though, I’m extremely worried for Microsoft. Foremost is the fact that they’re dumping this totally new user interface on users who have known no paradigm other than the desktop environment. In spite of Microsoft’s efforts to veer away from their biggest rival, Apple’s fingerprints can be seen all over the announcement. Throughout the show, Microsoft executives were repeatedly gushing about hardware-software integration and caring about design perfection. These were elements never before seen in Microsoft before. These are worthy ideals which are unfortunately inconsistent and even hypocritical to the company’s brand image of productivity, compatibility, and ubiquity.
From the presentation, we can see that Microsoft’s vision is dangerously fragmented. It had four presenters of varying levels and no buildup whatsoever. It did not release any details on pricing and distribution. It hardly makes any effort to differentiate between two nearly identical products which in reality, should cater to two totally different market segments and use cases. It’s akin to Apple releasing an iPad together with a heavier iPad Pro that is three times the price and with the Mac OS hidden as an app. How absurd would that be? But Microsoft goes even further than that. Microsoft is betting the farm on a design that consumers haven’t warmed up to. It has no app ecosystem to speak of. It alienates many of its OEM partners who are stuck with little choice.
The Microsoft Surface’s biggest draw - the convergence of tablet and laptop - could also be its biggest flaw. The software maker is taking the hard, fast, one-size-fits-all, shove-it-to-your-mouth approach. Apple, on the other hand, is taking an opposite approach through a gradual and possibly asymptotal road to desktop and mobile integration. It understands that a tablet has to be light, fast, and long-lasting while a laptop has to be powerful, precise and comprehensive. When IOS was first released, it at least had some common design elements with Mac OS. Windows 7 and 8, separated only by a number, have virtually none. Even worse, the vastly different use cases of tablets and computers are only separated by two meaningless letters: RT.
This is bound to cause a lot of confusion for customers, who will probably wonder why they have to pay double the price for a tablet which is heavier and has less battery life. Less savvy buyers will wonder why they cannot launch full desktop applications on their RT tablets. And what about the desktop and corporate users which have been the bread and butter of Microsoft for all these years? At its core, what is Windows? What does it stand for, really?
With this announcement, Microsoft has sold its soul. With one fell swoop, Microsoft has compromised everything it has stood for in the last thirty years.
It will be interesting to see how this unfolds.
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