Ever wondered what Microsoft really thought about the iPad? Ex-Windows boss spills beans Former Windows chief Steven Sinofsky has spoken his mind about the launch of Apple's iPad (now celebrating 10 years) and its impact on Microsoft. Sinofsky said that Microsoft was "blinded" as to where Apple was heading, and was expecting a "pen computer based on Mac". "The iPad and iPhone were soundly existential threats to …
"Sinofsky said that Microsoft was "blinded" as to where Apple was heading, and was expecting a "pen computer based on Mac"."
What? From what I recall every idiot on the planet knew it was going to be an iPhone (iOS) with a big screen. What were Microsoft smoking to think otherwise? No wonder they lost that particular race, they were at the wrong sports event.
>They didn't even bring a knife to a gun fight, they brought a banana and a small box of aubergines.
Based on previous exploits, MS came the the fight with a powerpoint presentation big on how good the gun they were developing would be, in the expectation that everyone would wait for them to deliver... a popgun...
I was led to believe that the iPad started off as development prototypes for iPhone, pre shrinking?
That the developers quite liked using them, and someone saw a niche for it?
Bit like the iMac losing the floppy drive, I didn't see the need for a keyboardless device. How would anyone get proper work done?
I didn't realise that for some computer users, using them for social media and casual gaming, they were ideal.
Microsoft's problem in consumer space was that it couldn't make up it's mind whether it wanted to be Apple or Google so tried to take the worst of both viewed through Microsoft tinted glasses and just ended up fucking up royally and burning a lot of cash in the process.
The just never got passed Win 95 and how that worked for them.
> "Microsoft was a tablet pioneer. The company released Windows XP Tablet Edition in 2003 – seven years before the iPad"
I've still got a Toshiba T200 running Windows for Pen Computing 3.1, from about 10 years before that. Battery even still holds a charge. Back in the day, I had it up and running with a Raytheon Aviator wireless card and Mosaic 2.0.0b4.
In a similar vein, I've still got a pair of Apple Newtons from the first half of the 90s as well, although maybe the less said about the Newton the better.
Which reminds me of my all-time favourite joke: "How many Newton engineers does it take to change a lightbulb? Foo! Therefore to and eat fish."
(The youngsters here won't get it).
:-)
A friend of mine won a Newton at its launch in London many years ago.
In the office the following day everyone is having a play and writing their name and seeing what comes up.
One member of our team was called Nick O’Brien. The Newton called him Slicko Berlin.
So that became his new name.
Yes, Doonesbury pretty much marked the Newton handwriting recognition for all time. :-)
To give it it's due by the time Steve Jobs killed the Newton when he returned to Apple they had improved on the infamous recognition a lot and it functioned really well. The last model, the MessagePad 2000/2100 was a really good product only (plus ca change) way too expensive and niche for the time. Powered by ARM cpus as well so a harbinger of the future in one way.
I had a Fujitsu ST5010 Tablet PC, basically it was just a screen and a pen. I needed a laptop at work, this was just on the shelf gathering dust so I grabbed it. It was bought for some special project, but the user turned their nose up at it and demanded a proper laptop.
It came with a case and a shoulder strap so I carry other stuff, VGA, network, modem and USB sockets so I could use it to test various things. If I was walking down the corridor, I could access it straight away with having to get out of the case or open it up like a laptop.
Handwriting recognition could be a bit iffy, once I wrote "lights on the front" (of the printer), and noticed that it came back as "lights on the trout". Could never reproduce that.
Had for about a couple of years, no comment, but when Apple released the iPad all of a sudden it was "You got an iPad?!" In the end I put a sticker on the case saying "Not an iPad". If it could be upgraded to Win 7, I'll still be using it.
>> "Microsoft was a tablet pioneer. The company released Windows XP Tablet Edition in 2003 – seven years before the iPad"
They also could be considered a handheld/pocket/smartphone pioneer with the various WinCE devices that were released in the years prior to the iPhone.
So it would be nature to assume that they knew quite a lot about the pocket/phone environment and the stupidity of trying to cram and access a full Windows desktop into a tablet or pocket format device.
Yet TPTB in MS deemed it was for the best to axe WinCE/mobile development and have one universal OS across all platforms and form factors developed by the desktop bloatware experts, shows just how far removed from reality TPTB in MS were at this time.
But then MS have form for missing tech trends - they were late to the Internet for example.
I can't believe it's only been 10 years.
That said, I used to see a lot of iPad's in corporate environment. Mostly for email and note taking. Now it's all Surface Pro and skinny laptops (mostly Apple oddly).
It's as though iPad has just become a consumer product rather than business. Not sure how deep that goes though. My Father-in-law's iPad 2 no longer supports a decent email client. Given the choice of buying another iPad or just having a Kindle Fire, he went straight for the Fire. Does what he needs for £100.
I'd be interesting to hear about where other people are seeing them though.
What are you talking about? Surface is quite a bit more expensive than iPad.
The reason you see Surface in business is because it can run full Windows. I've seen plenty of Surface use in the business world and they are almost never used as tablets. If its tablet capability was removed I don't think it would lose even 10% of its sales.
@AMBxx - I've got a mini and a pro (both a few years old) and neither gets much use. I bought the Pro cos I thought I'd be able to use it and the Pencil for taking notes - I don't get on with screen keyboards - but the paucity of apps or Apple support for handwriting recognition means it isn't practically possible.
The other problem (for me - not necessarily for everyone) is that the OS's between iPad, iPhone and Mac get out of track, so that some apps, especially on the iPads, no longer play nicely with their Mac versions and I can't/won't update the Mac to keep them working. Net result is I tend to do everything (work and leisure) on a MBA and my phone is only really used for calls, mail, text, music and solving the occasional pub argument.
I can't remember the last time I turned either of the iPads on and I'd have to turn the house upside down to find the Apple pencil. I sometimes take one on holiday instead of the MBA when all I'll need is mail and some browsing for booking hotels, flights, etc. I don't see iPads as business machines in any respect, mainly because of the clunky interface (cutting, pasting, using more than one app at a time), memory (getting stuff on and off them) and keyboard and battery life - but again, that might be more about how I work than a fundamental iPad problem. I don't know anyone else who's got one and I don't see my clients using them at all - as you say it's Macbooks or (less usual) Surfaces.
>The other problem ... is that the OS's between iPad, iPhone and Mac get out of track...
Yes, that's an OEM QA issue, remember for many years MS couldn't keep Office on PC and Mac in sync. and so play nicely with each other...
>I can't remember the last time I turned either of the iPads on
Funny that, in my house the iPads are always being used, albeit mostly for content consumption and social media, with the PC's getting used for serious work ie. content creation (primarily for the user interaction reasons you list, but also because office and other content creation applications on PC are so much better).
Mine's in constant use, both as a consumer and as a dev/support guy. I've worked very hard to find apps that really work (mainly network utilities, SSH, SFTP etc) and Pythonista is a great help. Battery life is great and these things seem to last forever. I gave my old iPad to the missus for music/reading etc as there weren't any more OS updates.
> That said, I used to see a lot of iPad's in corporate environment. Mostly for email and note taking. Now it's all Surface Pro and skinny laptops (mostly Apple oddly).
I always marvel when I see statements like this. I don't doubt them at all, but they are at extreme odds with my personal experience in corporate environments. My experience is that iPads, iPhones, Surfaces, and Apple laptops are rare and mostly limited to use by executives.
I suspect that how prevalent they are is more dependent on local culture than on actual utility.
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Surfaces ... are rare and mostly limited to use by executives
Think again young padawan. Here in Arsetrailer, the NSW government has decreed that we have Surface only. Surface Pro (think underpowered tablet with a rubber & cardboard clip on keyboard) for general users, and bloody Surface sodding Books for anyone who needs serious grunt (ie might occasionally need to browse FaceBook while simultaneously reading their email - not a task you could entrust to a Surface Pro).
Until you've tried to develop and debug a complex Delphi application on one of these useless little shitboxes, you can never know the meaning of true misery.
No wonder they're reserved for executives in sensible places!
Tablets are a HORRIBLE form factor for most everything, only games and a bit of book-reading benefit from the form factor. Their popularity was just trendy and people too foolish to realize otherwise.
For serious work, you need a keyboard, and a stand. Plus, the limitations of the low-end and low-power CPU, and very limited software selection really hobble its utility even in the best case.
Smartphones work nicely. One-handed operation. Ability to quickly look-up some info. But nobody would claim they can do their work productively on those. So if your smartphone isn't able to do it, you upgrade to a full computer (or laptop).
The in-between size of a tablet, with most of the same limitations as a smartphone, just makes no sense for almost anybody.
"Tablets are a HORRIBLE form factor for most everything, only games and a bit of book-reading benefit from the form factor. Their popularity was just trendy and people too foolish to realize otherwise."
While I myself can't work on a tablet form factor, I'll have to disagree with your statement.
I've seen plenty of (young) organisations use tablets for all their work ...
I use a phone tablet, laptop and full desktop experience every day.
Whee I work and my home office both use laptops with docking stations and dual screen set ups.
A home I have a wireless mouse and keyboard plugged into the docking station for that lovely clean desk experience.
I use a tablet for casual browsing, ebaying / internet shopping so I can actually see what I'm buying if I need to do anything more than type a few lines I'll fire up a laptop. Now I've upgraded to a full ssd version it starts in under 20 seconds, the same as the tablet. I use the phone as a phone, twitter and Facebook reader camera etc.
was the beginning of the end for me and Microsoft. IMHO, it was worse than Vista.
I started weaning my personal computing needs off of Windows about the time that Sinofski left MS.
I use an iPad (bought secondhand for £130 over two years ago) for a lot of things. One day, Apple will stop supporting it but that won't be for a while yet if recent rumors about IOS 14 are to be believed.
Touch has its place but I don't think that the Surface gets anywhere near as close as Apple does. The surface has always seen to me to be a bit of a half arsed compromise.
If MS were really, really, really serious about it being the way of the future then they could have made it a much better competitor for the Apple infrastructure.
Windows 8 UI worked very well on the Surface. It's UI and applications for a 10" tablet are far better than Windows 10 and its utterly dumber down apps (Windows 8 mail application is usable, Windows 10 is not).
Surfaces do work well and can fully replace a tablet/laptop combination, and Apple too had to admit a real digitizer (the high-precision pen) is very useful for this kind of devices.
But Window 8 native UI was totally inadequate for desktops that moreover started to have bigger and bigger screens - and the flat desktop UI looks outdated, childish and is far less comfortable to use.
I can't understand why MS can't design a OS that can work in both ways depending on the device and user needs. IMHO, had MS delivered such an OS, would have had a winner and maybe even more traction for Windows Phone.
"...overseeing the introduction of the controversial Ribbon UI in Office 2007 – a strategic move to distinguish it from rivals like OpenOffice as well as making features more discoverable."
More like *less* discoverable. I sometimes find myself having to use search to find the feature that I need - features that I used to be able to navigate to easily from the old-school menu system.
Glad you said that.
Making the Office suite different was clearly the main purpose. Change for its own ( or marketing) purpose.
The ribbon does not make finding items more transparent. Locating stuff you don't use regularly is much less intuitive, grouping items that you use together in a work related menu rather than a structural one and hiding stuff you'll never use ( so that it's easier to search for stuff you use occasionally ) is now so close to impossible it almost doesn't exist.
The Ribbon on its own I could have been fairly happy with. The prevention of editing menus according to user need (without creating whole new menus and hiding the original ones) isn't. But part of this era of Microsoft has been about forcing users to work the way that Microsoft want them to. As the piece says the Win 8 desktop forced users into it. And they're still playing silly buggers with the Start menu - Editing programmes into grouped folders being a fiddle being the most obvious and most recently the list of "apps" vanishes before your very eyes after about 5 seconds.
> He pulled off the Office Ribbon UI
You mean he successfully forced it down people's throat. Stalin also "pulled off" many things, you know.
> and Windows 7 was a triumph
It's all about managing the expectations. When you start from low...
> Windows 8 failed. Sinofsky left Microsoft in November 2012,
> just over three months after its August launch.
I see honor.
> Windows 10 is now well enough liked by business users
I'm sorry, well liked?!?! Business users: People who don't have a say at what's going on, with dumb PHBs deciding on the tech in front of you.
My company likes Windows 10. Then again, that could be because we're an IT services company and we make plenty of money by helping firms to plan, test and roll out the regular Win10 feature updates - money they didn't need to spend back when MS provided stable and long-term supported operating systems (and LTSC doesn't count as MS hobbles it so that O365 isn't supported).
Win 10 is a sod for businesses, so much so that many are turning to outside help for it...
AC for obvious reasons...
To quote that 100% reliable font of all knowledge, Wikipedia...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad#History
===============
Apple re-entered the mobile-computing markets in 2007 with the iPhone. Smaller than the iPad, but featuring a camera and mobile phone, it pioneered the multi-touch finger-sensitive touchscreen interface of Apple's iOS mobile operating system. By late 2009, the iPad's release had been rumored for several years. Such speculation mostly talked about "Apple's tablet"; specific names included iTablet and iSlate.
===============
If Microsoft were really completely blindsided by what Apple produced, then there should have been a full housecleaning of their strategists and espiona^H research agents.
Also....
> It was priced starting at $499, low for Apple hardware
It was still relatively expensive. For instance:
* Netbook: ASUS Eee PC 1005HA (1GB ram, Win XP, 160GB HDD) - launched in 2009 with MSRP of $389.99
* Laptop: Lenovo Thinkpad L412 (2GB, Win 7, 160GB HDD) - launched in 2010 with a MSRP of $599
* iPhone 4: released in 2010 with a MSRP of $199 (16GB) or $299 (32GB) - the same pricing as per the iPhone 3GS, released in 2009
Obviously, I've just pulled a couple of easy-to-find numbers off the interwebs, but the iPad was at the lower end of laptop price ranges at the time, and pretty much double the cost of an iPhone.
> Jobs dismissed Netbooks as "slow... low quality... just cheap laptops." History has proved him correct
I won't argue this one (much) - but at the same time, I'd note that they showed there was a demand for smaller, low-powered devices with limited capabilities. I'd be highly surprised if Apple didn't study this phenomena and factor it into their decision to launch the iPad
> Sinofsky said, "what it did, it did so much better. Not only did people prefer it but they changed what they did in order to use it
Did they? Really? Any citations for that?
iPad sales peaked in 2013, just three years after release, which is around the time iOS and Android devices started to hit the sweet spot in terms of processing power, capabilities and form factor, not least when it came to screen size. It's perhaps telling that Apple finally launched a 4.7" display in 2014 on the iPhone 6, to try and compete with Android manufacturers, some of who had already moved towards 6" screens a year or more earlier (e.g. HTC One Max).
If there were any shifts in how people did stuff, it was driven by the evolution of phone technology, not tablets.
Which isn't to say that tablets aren't good at some stuff - I've owned a mix of Android and Apple tablets since 2010, and for my needs (basic social media, reading, iPlayer, etc), they work more than well enough. But their use-cases are limited, and after the initial surge of interest, they've never set the world on fire...
Jobs dismissed Netbooks as "slow... low quality... just cheap laptops." History has proved him correct.
Cheap and yet far more useful than an iPad. Do I want to pay silly money for a slab that's a pain to hold, has minimal connectivity and whose functions are replicated by a mobile phone?
Or how about a cheap 11" laptop (netbook equivalent) with the full function of a PC and an open hardware platform on which I can choose to run Linux?
>I like ten better than seven.
Once you get under hood a bit, I would agree with you, but the UI/UX is p*ss poor; although in saying that, given the changes over the releases, I would not be surprised if within a couple of releases the last vestiges of TIFKAM disappear leaving something that is more akin to its Win7 heritage.
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And, yet, 10 years later, after the tablet fad is mostly gone, iPad is nothing more than the ultimate technological failure. A solution still looking for a problem, even more so than it did when it was first introduced. There's nothing a tablet is good at that other kinds of devices would be better at. Then again, isn't this the very definition of virtually every Apple device ever?
“ Despite these missteps, Windows 8 was not all bad.”
Really? It was a big mess. So much so that I ended up replacing my Windows laptop with a Macbook. I’ve now come to appreciate some aspects of the Macbook and may even replace it with another, even though I’m more comfortable with Windows 10. VMware fusion is finally good enough to give you a full Windows experience, so you get the best of both.
All because Windows 8 was so bad.
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