Time to Slate Microsoft
Steve Balmer's CES keynote speech this week proved once again that
nobody at Microsoft quite gets it. They're a large company. They have
lots of smart people. Gates seemed to grasp the future of computing
years ago if you read his books. Unfortunately they seem to have it
stuck in their head that the future of computing has to run Windows.
Their announcement this week of "slate" PC's, a naming move so
blatantly linked to Apple's iSlate rumours it's almost comical
somebody there thought it was a good idea, was them deciding that
nobody wanted full size laptops with the keyboards chopped off, what
they really wanted was netbooks with the keyboard chopped off.
Netbooks are popular, therefore these will be popular. Genius! Windows is a user experience designed around the keyboard and mouse,
so the idea that you can just remove those two elements and everything
will still be OK is exactly the reason why their tablet idea keeps
failing. You can't train your users to use your software in a certain
way and then take away what they used to interact with it. Nobody
would think to release a car that had everything except the steering
wheel and then ask you to just drive with your feet. This is exactly why I said the Apple tablet would be something
completely new, why I think it will be nothing like a laptop, nothing
like a PC or Mac experience. If you wanted that, you'd go buy a
netbook, you'd buy a laptop. A tablet has to be something different,
otherwise, why am I buying it? What exactly is the benefit of
Microsoft's slate computer? Why would anyone want to give up the
convenience of the keyboard and mouse in order to use software that
was designed precisely for those two input methods?
nobody at Microsoft quite gets it. They're a large company. They have
lots of smart people. Gates seemed to grasp the future of computing
years ago if you read his books. Unfortunately they seem to have it
stuck in their head that the future of computing has to run Windows.
Their announcement this week of "slate" PC's, a naming move so
blatantly linked to Apple's iSlate rumours it's almost comical
somebody there thought it was a good idea, was them deciding that
nobody wanted full size laptops with the keyboards chopped off, what
they really wanted was netbooks with the keyboard chopped off.
Netbooks are popular, therefore these will be popular. Genius! Windows is a user experience designed around the keyboard and mouse,
so the idea that you can just remove those two elements and everything
will still be OK is exactly the reason why their tablet idea keeps
failing. You can't train your users to use your software in a certain
way and then take away what they used to interact with it. Nobody
would think to release a car that had everything except the steering
wheel and then ask you to just drive with your feet. This is exactly why I said the Apple tablet would be something
completely new, why I think it will be nothing like a laptop, nothing
like a PC or Mac experience. If you wanted that, you'd go buy a
netbook, you'd buy a laptop. A tablet has to be something different,
otherwise, why am I buying it? What exactly is the benefit of
Microsoft's slate computer? Why would anyone want to give up the
convenience of the keyboard and mouse in order to use software that
was designed precisely for those two input methods?
