Two more obituaries for Windows Surface, RT
First, John Kirk over at TechPinions uses a great joke to explain why, in his opinion, the Surface is doomed:
On a Saturday morning, three boys come down to the kitchen and sit around the breakfast table. Their mother asks the oldest boy what he’d like to eat. “I’ll have some firetruckin’ French toast,” he says. The mother is outraged at his crude language. She hits him and sends him upstairs.
When she calms down, she asks the middle child what he wants. “Well, I guess that leaves more firetruckin’ French toast for me,” he says. The mom is livid. She smacks him and sends him away.
Finally, she looks at the youngest son and asks him what he wants for breakfast. “I don’t know,” he says meekly, “but I definitely don’t want the firetruckin’ French toast!”
Kirk’s point is that Microsoft mistakenly thinks that the problem lies with Windows 8/RT, when in face the problem lies with the assumption that people want a tablet that’s a PC running Windows — and (in his opinion), they don’t. In my opinion, he understates the resistance to Windows 8 (and especially Windows RT), but his analysis is worth considering. Go read the whole thing.
Second, and speaking of Windows RT, Matt Burns over at TechCrunch has a short piece on Microsoft’s unwillingness to admit RT is dead (or, at least, pining for the fjords):
Windows RT was a dog from the start. And now that Asus pulled back from the market, the little brother to Windows 8 will quickly fade into irrelevance. With Asus out, just Dell and Microsoft remain as the only Windows RT hardware providers. Samsung, HTC, HP, and Lenovo previously pulled plans for a Windows RT tablet.
“It’s not only our opinion,” CEO Jerry Shen remarked to the Wall Street Journal. “The industry sentiment is also that Windows RT has not been successful.”
Now, here’s a big difference between Microsoft and Apple: Microsoft tends to hang on to unsuccessful product lines (witness how long the Zune stayed around), whereas Apple (while under Jobs at least) has been pretty ruthless about killing off products. It will be interesting to trace the trajectory going forward for both Windows RT and the MS Surface. ..bruce..
About the Author (Author Profile)
Webster is Principal and Founder at Bruce F. Webster & Associates, as well as an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at Brigham Young University. He works with organizations to help them with troubled or failed information technology (IT) projects. He has also worked in several dozen legal cases as a consultant and as a testifying expert, both in the United States and Japan. He can be reached at bwebster@bfwa.com, or you can follow him on Twitter as @bfwebster.Subscribe
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