If you didn’t know that Microsoft was finished as a consumer company before last night, watching Steve Ballmer’s Keynote at CES would convince you.
Not that this pitiful display of ineptitude was anything new. Microsoft has been “faking it” for years now at CES, responding to whatever Apple announced at Macworld a week earlier with a concept of some future product that never really ships. (Remember the Surface? Know anyone who’s bought one?) The big difference this year, of course, is that Macworld didn’t come in January, and Steve’s big tablet announcement is happening AFTER CES. This presented Microsoft with its first opportunity in years to demonstrate something on its own, something that didn’t look like a “me-too” device. Something that was truly innovative and forward-thinking.And what did Ballmer announce? A “slate PC” running Windows 7. Rather than copying a newly announced Apple product, they copied a rumored Apple product. And because they know as little about that rumored product as the rest of us, they couldn’t even make a good copy. All they could do was steal the rumored name “slate” and stick it on a product that already exists.
This is yet again more evidence that Microsoft’s answer to everything is a box that runs Windows. Not some breakthrough new UI that adds to the functionality of Windows and changes the world. It’s literally just another box that runs Windows. Only it’s more expensive and doesn’t have a keyboard. If you ever needed an argument for why Apple’s new tablet shouldn’t run the full OS X, Ballmer demonstrated it last night. Desktop UIs designed for mouse and keyboard input don’t work with your fingers. They just don’t. And by the way, hasn’t Microsoft been selling tablets for years now? The innovation of Apple’s new product won’t be that it’s a tablet. Microsoft has actually been failing in that enterprise since before the iPhone. The innovation will come from the fact that Apple’s tablet won’t simply be a computer without a keyboard. It will be an entirely new category of web-enabled devices. In other words, Microsoft’s failure with the tablet has been due to lack of vision, not technology. You can’t just spec something out and sell it on features; the product needs a reason to exist. It needs to serve a real purpose for real people. And the purpose of a keynote is to demonstrate that product and share the vision of that product’s purpose with the world.So Ballmer’s failure last night was threefold. First, it was only a rehash of a product that already exists and has never sold well. Second, it was the lamest attempt yet to copy Apple. And third, and most importantly, it was a HUGE wasted opportunity to utilize this chance to say something meaningful for once. To shock the world with something truly amazing.
Sandwiched between Google’s Nexus One announcements and Apple’s Special Event at the end of the month, you can’t help but notice that the tech world is moving ahead without Microsoft. Old MS is simply not a factor anymore.
I know what some of you are thinking. What about Project Natal? What about it? Can anyone even describe to me in three sentences what it is, or how it’s going to be useful to me in any way? Can you even tell me when any of the Natal Project’s innovations are going to make it into a real product? They say the XBox will bear the first fruit by the end of the year. If you believe that, I have a giant bathtub computer to sell you.
So at best, Natal is pre-natal. If Apple announced at the end of January that it wouldn’t ship a tablet until late 2010, and didn’t even have a tablet design to show off, the press would jump all over it. At least with the original iPhone, Jobs had a tangible product to demo, a clear vision of what the iPhone was for and what it did, and a solid target release timeframe, though it was six months away. Natal is more like “We hired a bunch of really smart people, and they’re working on some cool things that we’ll probably ship around Christmas. More details later.”
As it stands, the only press I’m seeing this morning about Microsoft is about the lame tablet. I’m convinced they can’t write about Natal because they don’t know what it is.So it’ll take a few years, but Microsoft is on its way to becoming the next IBM. Still a giant behemoth of a company, of course, but one that will only be of importance to businesses, IT people, tech nerds, etc. If the XBox survives thanks to some major breakthrough in Natal, I’ll be surprised. I’ll be surprised if the concept of a standalone game console makes it another decade, to tell you the truth.
It’s not about who sells the most computers today; it’s about momentum. And right now, all the momentum is working against Microsoft making any sort of mark on the consumer tech world ever again.
