Microsoft To PC and Tablet Makers: You're Not Our Future

snydeq writes "Microsoft's plan to build its own Windows 8 tablets puts longtime allies in peril — and it may be the right thing to do. 'In announcing the Surface tablets, due to be released this fall, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer cited Apple's advantage (without mentioning Apple) of integrated software and hardware. "Things work better when hardware and software are considered together," he said. "We control it all, we design it all, and we manufacture it all ourselves." ... Like Apple, Microsoft will hire a few PC makers to do the actual production work. But the need for 20 brands of me-too laptops, tablets, and convertibles is low. Manufacturing sophisticated electronics is a skill requiring manufacturing innovation. But all those branded-but-otherwise-undifferentiated PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones just aren't needed in the vision Ballmer sketched out yesterday.'"

Re:Commodity hardware isn't going anywhere

[Tridus]

If the stories about WinRT costing $90 per copy for OEMs are true, they're not going to be undercutting anything unless Microsoft charges a ton for Surface. You can't make a cheap tablet when the OS costs that much.

Re:Not a threat, a counter offer

[Captain Hook]

Being able to run the same apps on your phone, tablet and PC is an awesome feature.

Lets hope no one buys the WinRT version then.

Re:Damn right, on some of it...

[funkylovemonkey]

That's not exactly true. Since ICS has been released with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, there have only been a few major releases of phones. And while Motorola Razr did not come with ICS, they are slated to have it by the end of this month. HTC One, Incredible 4G and the newest Samsung Galaxy III come with ICS (and those are the major releases from those manufacturers in the seven months since ICS was released, they have really stopped saturating the market with phone after phone). Really only the Razr and it's various iterations have lagged behind on the ICS release. And in the next several months the HTC Rezound, Thunderbolt, Rhyme, the Motorola Razr, Droid 4 and Bionic are all scheduled to receive updates, not next year. I agree it's taking them far too long, but in the case of the Galaxy Nexus, which is supposed to be a pure Android experience and updated by Google, the update from 4.02 to 4.04 took months longer because of Verizon. In fact Google actually leaked a working version of the 4.04 update months before it was released on Verizon and most rooted phones were using it.

Re:And, best of all...

[Joce640k]

The "MCPC" thing isn't a cute meme, it's spam.

They're trying to Google to rank them higher by getting as many mentions of their product as possible on high profile websites like /.

You're not helping.

Re:year of the?

[Goaway]

The Raspberry Pi is a desktop machine. It costs $35.

Re:year of the?

[XxtraLarGe]

We're moving from a culture that encourages individual learning/mastery/understanding of the things used in life, to one of apathetic dependence on convenient 'service'. This is intellectually stunting, which causes all kinds of other problems.

And yet, there's this [udacity.com].

Re:Make sense

[UnknowingFool]

Marketing wasn't the only problem. The Zune was the best PMP on the market beating the iPod Classic. The problem was that Apple moved the goal posts and the iPod Touch wasn't a PMP. It was a portable computing device that functioned as a PMP, a PDA, internet browser, email application, gaming device, etc. The Zune was always behind Apple on this. If all you wanted was a PMP, the Zune was your best bet. If you wanted more, the iPod Touch was it. And many people wanted an iPhone without the phone part because of the 3rd party applications.

Re:Make sense

[DarwinSurvivor]

when Apple releases a product, it's fully baked and ready to go.

As long as you hold it right

Re:Make sense

[Zenin]

For-profit corporations as a rule do have a singular motivation; Make more profit for their shareholders.

It's not just a motivation it's a legal requirement to maximize shareholder financial value in every (legal) way possible. They can do something else as well, but if it interferes with maximizing returns the board can be held legally liable.

So corporations are not intrinsically evil, no. What they do have is an obligation to not allow the intrinsic goodness or evilness of an action prevent them from choosing it if it maximizes value for their shareholders. And lets face it, evil choices are on the whole much more profitable then good choices, making corporate leaders legally obligated to take evil actions even if they nor their company are evil or have evil motives.

So the question is which defines a person as evil: Their actions or their motivations?