Windows seems like it's heading toward being an indistinct blur.
There's Windows Phone 7, which was an innovative break from its WinCE-looking predecessors. Now we have Windows Phone 8, an evolution. Looks good. We also have Windows 8, with that same new formerly-known-as-Metro UI, which looks like the phone UI, all of which grow from the UI ground tilled with WP7.
But Windows 8 also lets you get the old, familiar Windows Desktop -- although not on the cheaper Surface. Oh, right, Surface: a highly unscientific survey of the three people within shouting range reveals they have learned that the Surface is "Microsoft's cool-looking colorful iPad thing with the click-on keyboard". A high quality, very interesting, promising product, except, well, there's the laptop-priced one, the RT, which has the "old" Windows available, sort of, and the iPad-priced one, which is the pure touch one, although it has Office, albeit not fully re-imagined for touch. Is it only Microsoft that makes Surfaces? What about Dell and Acer? And what about the beautiful, fluid-looking Windows we see on the commercials, with a little girl swiping through tiles on a giant touch screen, using a painting app -- which one is that, exactly? How and where would one go about buying that computer with that OS? And how does that relate to the colorful clicky tablets?
Yes, I know how to get the answers to those questions, but it's a confusing mishmash from the consumer perspective. You don't have a strategy if you never say "no", and at some point Microsoft should have said "no" to calling both its touch and non-touch products "Windows". They're creating genuine interest in these new things, but there's great uncertainty among the kind of people who don't read YC -- which is to say, 100 percent of the people they seek as customers, to a close approximation. They have some good new forward-looking products, and they're suffocating them in a scattered go-to-market strategy, and a miasma of confused branding, marketing, and advertising.
There's Windows Phone 7, which was an innovative break from its WinCE-looking predecessors. Now we have Windows Phone 8, an evolution. Looks good. We also have Windows 8, with that same new formerly-known-as-Metro UI, which looks like the phone UI, all of which grow from the UI ground tilled with WP7.
But Windows 8 also lets you get the old, familiar Windows Desktop -- although not on the cheaper Surface. Oh, right, Surface: a highly unscientific survey of the three people within shouting range reveals they have learned that the Surface is "Microsoft's cool-looking colorful iPad thing with the click-on keyboard". A high quality, very interesting, promising product, except, well, there's the laptop-priced one, the RT, which has the "old" Windows available, sort of, and the iPad-priced one, which is the pure touch one, although it has Office, albeit not fully re-imagined for touch. Is it only Microsoft that makes Surfaces? What about Dell and Acer? And what about the beautiful, fluid-looking Windows we see on the commercials, with a little girl swiping through tiles on a giant touch screen, using a painting app -- which one is that, exactly? How and where would one go about buying that computer with that OS? And how does that relate to the colorful clicky tablets?
Yes, I know how to get the answers to those questions, but it's a confusing mishmash from the consumer perspective. You don't have a strategy if you never say "no", and at some point Microsoft should have said "no" to calling both its touch and non-touch products "Windows". They're creating genuine interest in these new things, but there's great uncertainty among the kind of people who don't read YC -- which is to say, 100 percent of the people they seek as customers, to a close approximation. They have some good new forward-looking products, and they're suffocating them in a scattered go-to-market strategy, and a miasma of confused branding, marketing, and advertising.