Tag Archives | Microsoft

Will — And Should — Microsoft Sell Its Own Tablet?

Posted by Ed Oswald on June 8, 2011 at 5:53 pm

Digitimes — a site with an erratic record record on scoops — is claiming that Microsoft may be in the process of considering marketing its own tablet that would launch sometime next year. This would be around the same time the company would be debuting its somewhat-tablet-centric Windows 8 operating system.

The Redmond company has supposedly called on Texas Instruments and several Taiwanese manufacturers to make the device a reality. And why not? What better way to market your brand new OS and highlight its features than your own device?

Now, is it a good idea for Microsoft? That’s up for debate. To date, the Xbox 360 is the only success that the company has had at retail outside of accessories such as mice and (of course) software. The Zune music player and the Microsoft Kin phone are two of its most notable failures.

If Digitimes’ rumor is the real deal, I think Microsoft should launch this device alongside Windows 8 to give it the most pop. Here’s my suggestion to Redmond: bring this device to Windows 8 launch events. The launch of the OS is going to be a big deal — akin to the 95 and XP launches — so make sure that Microsoft staffers are demonstrating the hot new  Windows 8 features on a Microsoft tablet. In other words, build buzz not only about the OS itself, but the product you created to show it off.

I think it’s a good idea, but it needs to be done right. Can Microsoft do it?

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Microsoft’s E3: A Bang for Kinect, a Whimper for Live TV

Posted by Jared Newman on June 6, 2011 at 2:35 pm

Good thing Microsoft had a packed line-up of Kinect games to show at its E3 press conference, because last week’s big rumor about live TV on the Xbox 360 turned out to be kind of a dud.

Kinect, the motion-sensing, audio-detecting Xbox 360 camera that launched last year, dominated the discussion at Microsoft’s press conference. I counted 15 announcements for games that will either support or require Kinect, plus a revamped console menu designed for gestures and voice.

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Windows 8: It’s the Applications, Stupid!

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 3, 2011 at 10:45 am

Word for Windows 1.0, 1989

In the end, operating systems are merely a means to an end. Nobody runs Windows to run Windows, or OS X to run OS X, or Linux to run Linux. They run them to get stuff done, and they get most of that stuff done in applications.

I’ve been pondering that fact as I’ve been processing the news about Windows 8, which Microsoft showed in public for the first time this week at the D9 conference. It’s got both a radically new touch-centric interface and the one I already am thinking of as “Windows Classic”–a duality that brings to mind the days when most people ran both DOS apps and Windows 3.x ones.

Windows 8 is a giant-sized, risky, fascinating bet–but in the end, it’s the apps that are going to matter.

During the D9 demo, both Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher brought up Office. Would it be reimagined for Windows’ new look?  Windows interface kingpin Julie Larson-Green, as you’d expect, didn’t confirm or deny anything. She said “They may do some things in the future.” and “I’m sure the Office team will look at what we’re doing.”

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Windows 8 is Windows 3.0, and Windows 7 is…DOS

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 2, 2011 at 12:37 am

Analyst John Pescatore: “Other thank cloud computing, what’s the riskiest bet you’re currently making?”

Steve Ballmer: “The next release of Windows.”

–exchange at Gartner conference, October 2010

Looks like Ballmer wasn’t just blustering. “Windows 8,” or whatever it ends up being called, has a radically new interface–a sleek, touch-centric look that draws more on Windows Phone 7 and general trends in phone and tablet design than it does on a quarter-century of Windows history. Anyone writing about the operating system at this point needs to insert a disclaimer that we’ve only seen bits and pieces of it in action for a few minutes; that’s way too little to come to any firm conclusions pro or con. But we do know that Microsoft is going to attempt something big here.

In my post yesterday evening, I said that Windows 8 looks like the most radical change in Windows’ interface since Windows 3.0. It’s possible that that’s understating matters. By providing both the new interface and apps to go with it, plus the old interface and apps, Microsoft is asking  users to live in two worlds in a way it’s never done before.

Except it has. This situation sounds a lot like the computing lifestyle that PC users lived with from 1990-1995 or thereabouts, when the commonplace state of affairs was to run Windows 3.x on top of DOS.

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Windows 8’s Look and Feel: It’s New. New, New, New, New, New!

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 1, 2011 at 5:41 pm

Well, gee whiz. At the D9 conference this afternoon, Windows honcho Steven Sinofsky presided over the first good look anyone outside of Redmond has gotten at “Windows 8.” And it turns out that it has a strikingly new user interface. Maybe the most strikingly new one it’s gotten since…well, Windows 3.0 back in 1990. (Windows has added plenty of new features over the past twenty years, but the basic metaphor has barely budged at all.)

In short, Windows now has a touch-first user interface that looks a lot like Windows Phone 7, which means that it draws on ideas that originated in the iPhone without mindlessly mimicking them. The Windows 7 keyboard-and-mouse world is still in there, but it’s subsidiary. That’s Microsoft’s apparent intent, anyhow.

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The Sidekick Story

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 30, 2011 at 8:05 pm

I never owned a T-Mobile Sidekick, but I always admired the device–enough so that I heartily endorsed our decision at PC World to name it as product of the year back in 2003. (It wasn’t the first smartphone, but you can make a good case that it was the first modern Webphone.) The history of the device turned out to be rather bittersweet–it didn’t really live up to its potential, and Microsoft’s acquisition of Danger, its creator, led mostly to the infamous Sidekick data outage and to the Kin. And now GeekWire’s Todd Bishop has put together a neat retrospective of the whole Sidekick saga.

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In the Tech Industry, Management Change Comes Slowly

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 30, 2011 at 11:12 am

Reuters’ Alastair Sharp has published a story saying that some investors are wondering whether it’s time for a change at the top of BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, which is led by Mike Lazaridis (who founded the company in 1984) and Jim Balsillie (who’s been co-CEO since 1992). Sharp’s piece follows a flurry of debate last week about the future of Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s president and CEO, who’s been with the company since 1980 and has been CEO since 2000.

I’m not making any predictions about what’s going to happen at either company–except to note that lack of change is usually a more likely outcome than change in these situations, at least in the short term. But the stories got me thinking about the durability of many of the top executives in tech companies. I decided to graph out the management of a few major corporations.

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Microsoft’s Mango Preview

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 27, 2011 at 1:29 pm

Here’s Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore demoing Mango, the next release of Windows Phone 7. Looks interesting–especially if the version of IE does indeed feel more like IE9 for Windows than it does like Windows Phone 7’s IE, which is one of the operating system’s weak spots.

As Jared wrote recently, Microsoft is moving Windows Phone in a contrarian direction, focusing less on apps and more on building features like search and social stuff directly into the OS. It could work–and at least it’ll give Windows Phone its own distinct personality. But it does multiply the number of things that Microsoft needs to nail to make the OS appealing.

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Analysts: Microsoft Not Tardy for the Tablet Party

Posted by Ed Oswald on May 27, 2011 at 1:08 pm

Steve Ballmer at CES 2010 with "Slate PCs"

Microsoft may still have time to make its mark in the tablet market, some analysts are saying. Although Apple still has the lion’s share of the business at the moment, it’s still so new that there’s plenty of room for growth.

Citigroup research analysts said in a recent note that it expected the next version of Windows to ship between January of next year and March 2013. It noted that Microsoft could ship the tablet version first, enabling it to garner significant share in 2013 and beyond.

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