Microsoft to cut its Surface orders in half (2 millions units instead of 4 millions)

[GlenBarrington]

I still have serious doubts about using the tablet form factor for anything but media consumption. As a photographer, I produce media and none of the tablets out there will run Photoshop or Lightroom. Maybe that $900 MS Surface tablet will, but can I put 16 gig of Ram in one? Big photos need big ram. Is the display capable of color calibration?

For the time being, I'm sticking with Win 7 and my 2 desktops and 2 Laptops. I'll let the early adopters figure it out!

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by kevinp

I don't believe they've sold 40 million licenses to Win8. Says who? Someone from inside Microsoft? Of course they're going to say "we've sold tons, people love it, come get yours!".

I think they would be too wary of stock market manipulation charges to out and out lie. Instead they tell a truth that means a little less than it seems:

It's not clear how many people are using Windows 8, because the licences may be sold to PC makers and not yet in use.

The real experts when it comes to playing with sales statistics are at Amazon.

I am using Windows 8 while writing this post.

[xendula]

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

I still have serious doubts about using the tablet form factor for anything but media consumption. As a photographer, I produce media and none of the tablets out there will run Photoshop or Lightroom. Maybe that $900 MS Surface tablet will, but can I put 16 gig of Ram in one? Big photos need big ram. Is the display capable of color calibration?

For the time being, I'm sticking with Win 7 and my 2 desktops and 2 Laptops. I'll let the early adopters figure it out!

I think the answer to all your questions is yes, which is part of the reason why I want one.

[kevinp]

I agree with Glen. There's too many things I can't do on a tablet, so for me it's just for fun. I write computer programs in Visual Basic, C# and Java. I couldn't imagine working without a mouse.

[xendula]

The Windows Pro ones are real computers, just that you can use them with AND without a keyboard or mouse. I am totally installing Adobe CS on mine.

[kevinp]

I don't have $900 to spend on one.

[frahse]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

I think they would be too wary of stock market manipulation charges to out and out lie. Instead they tell a truth that means a little less than it seems:

It's not clear how many people are using Windows 8, because the licences may be sold to PC makers and not yet in use.

The real experts when it comes to playing with sales statistics are at Amazon.

I am using Windows 8 while writing this post.

I remember going to Atlanta once for the consumer electronics show. Word Perfect and Lotus Notes were at their peak, and Microsoft was challenging but still not there. You got a really nice umbrella for attending the Word Perfect Show.

That was maybe 20 years ago and they were selling the same things then, that they are selling today as far as group think, group do and group know.

Microsoft always is going to do this and that so great and always just hangs on longer than the rest of the folks partly because they persuade customers they have something special and just wait for MS and don't buy the other guy who then bites the dust.

I think it works because they have a knack of promising what people want to hear and seem willing to match customers expectations.

I think at this point that my hopes for W8 and especially their tablet have been dashed. MS again like with Vista and many other things tried to do too much and promised too much in order to satisfy their management and attract the public's attention.

[Nathanael]

Originally Posted by Top100EbooksRank

Says DigiTimes, "sources from the upstream supply chain believe [Windows 8] may not perform as well as expected in the market."

Expected by whom, I wonder. Outside of its two core products -- Windows and Office -- the number of successful products MS has ever had rounds off to as nearly zero as no matter.

Every time MS tries to do hardware (Zune, anyone? Kin Phone? Slate? Windows Home Server? Tablet PC? SmartWatch? WebTV?) or simply break out of the desktop, it fails miserably (well, OK, X-Box is starting to pull in some serious cash, after a decade as a monetary sinkhole).

Note that Surface is Redmond's *third* attempt to do a tablet. The only surprise will be if they actually succeed this time 'round. MS's track record suggests it has never understood mobile. Maybe never will.

Windows 8 is a decent product -- for mobile devices (I wouldn't want Metro on my desktop). But it's just MS playing catch-up in a market that has at least a three-year head start. Fortunately, Microsoft has piles of money it can burn through as it waits for traction.

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by Nathanael

Expected by whom, I wonder. Outside of its two core products -- Windows and Office -- the number of successful products MS has ever had rounds off to as nearly zero as no matter.

Yes, apart from two of the most profitable products of all time Microsoft's record is woeful

[SeaKing]

I was told once by someone who keeps more track of these things that Microsoft always has 3 or so failures before they succeed, if then.

Windows was one example
(I hated the first Windows, slow, clunky, etc.)

[Nathanael]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

Yes, apart from two of the most profitable products of all time Microsoft's record is woeful

Pretty much. I'm not denying the phenomenal success of Windows and Office, I'm simply making the point that *beyond* Windows and Office Microsoft has pretty much nothing -- and that's the way it's been for the past twenty years. You can look through MS's SEC filings yourself. Microsoft has them online going back to '94.

Here's the revenue stream by division for June '11 - June '12, just for example:

Business Division (MS Office): $15.7 billion
Windows Division: $11.5 billion
Server and Tools Division (Windows): $7.4 billion
Entertainment and Devices (X-Box; Windows Phone): $364 million
Online Services: -$8 billion (loss)

And that picture (with the exception of X-Box's recent turn toward minor profitability after a decade of losses) hasn't changed for MS since at least the days of Windows '95. Microsoft has *tried* many other things. It has made money at *none* of them.

We're in the midst of a sea change in computer technology. Microsoft's revenue stream is tied to a declining PC market (IDC called 2011 the second worst year for PC sales ever; 2012 to date hasn't been much better) as the entire industry goes mobile.

The poster child of the new era is Apple, which a year ago for the first time posted larger quarterly revenues than Redmond, and became the world's most valuable company. In fact, forget the Mac and iPad. The iPhone alone generates more money than Windows, Office and X-Box combined. And Apple's revenues are expected to to grow again next year while Microsoft's continue to decline.

Microsoft isn't going away any time soon. But if it doesn't figure out how to catch the mobile wave (and it doesn't have a promising track record), it's looking at a long, slow decline into irrelevancy.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by Nathanael

Pretty much. I'm not denying the phenomenal success of Windows and Office, I'm simply making the point that *beyond* Windows and Office Microsoft has pretty much nothing -- and that's the way it's been for the past twenty years. You can look through MS's SEC filings yourself. Microsoft has them online going back to '94.

Skype is doing well.

[holymadness]

Skype's profits, before it was bought by Microsoft, were ~$250 million per year. Microsoft paid $8.5 billion to acquire it.

Usage is up since last year, but they are deep, deep in the hole on that one.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Nathanael

Microsoft isn't going away any time soon. But if it doesn't figure out how to catch the mobile wave (and it doesn't have a promising track record), it's looking at a long, slow decline into irrelevancy.

Typing on a tablet is just plain slower than typing on a keyboard. And, for most people, voice recognition errors are still much too frustrating. So there is a limit how far the shift from desktop to laptop to tablet will go.

Twenty years from now, I predict that tablets will be a low-end dollar store item, while the PC, probably mouse-less, is still going strong. If you say no one can predict the future like I just did, I can't much argue. But it's at least as good as any prediction based on taking current trends and projecting them into the future.


_____________________
* This is from a highly positive Surface review:
Within an hour or so I was hitting 80% of my regular typing speed on it, and it's firm enough to be used on a lap without too much loss of accuracy. In other words, Surface reduced his data entry speed 20 percent. And isn't the iPad even worse there?

[Nathanael]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Typing on a tablet is just plain slower than typing on a keyboard. And, for most people, voice recognition errors are still much too frustrating. So there is a limit how far the shift from desktop to laptop to tablet will go.

I agree about the typing thing -- I type 70wpm on a keyboard, perhaps 20 on the virtual keyboard. Which is why I have a a portable bluetooth keyboard I carry with my iPad for heavy-duty typing chores. However, I note there are a few million people out there who seem to be more than content typing with their thumbs. And there are tablets that come with keyboards.

But you're assuming the deficiencies of tablets won't improve in the future. Sure voice recognition is still far from ideal. But compared to where it was fifteen years ago it's coming along pretty well.

I don't doubt that desktop computers will continue to exist twenty years from now for things that can't be easily done on tablets (someone mentioned software development upthread, for example). But the things tablets can't do will be increasingly relegated to niche markets, while the things the vast majority of users do -- watch movies, listen to music, surf the net, text and chat, and of course read ebooks -- are done much more easily and conveniently on mobile devices.

Heck, more than ten percent of all Internet browsing is now done from mobile devices. That's a huge change from five years ago. As I mentioned above, IDC numbers show that 2011 was an abysmal year for PC sales, partly due to surging mobile sales.

And anecdotally, I haven't fired up my own laptop since the day I got my iPad over a year ago. The stuff I can't easily do on my iPad now generally waits until I get home to my desktop. (Or not. Using TeamViewer, I can log in to my desktop remotely and do my desktop work from my iPad.)

Sure, you and I still need a desktop for some tasks. But by the end of the decade I suspect we'll be far outnumbered by those who don't. My own prediction is that we're going to start seeing a decline in the number of households with PCs. In my house we have nine devices connected to our wifi network; only one of them is a PC, and I'm the only one who uses it.