If you were a consumer (and I’m guessing you are) how would you know which one to buy? Can’t anyone other than Apple come up with a simple set of products with clear purposes anymore?
I think the problem with many of these companies (Google and Microsoft included) is lack of vision. They can’t seem to make the hard choices about what NOT to include in their products, and they seem to lack the conviction to follow through on their decisions once they do create a product. So their products tend to contradict one another, rather than support one another.
Why should consumers, or developers, want to commit to such companies?
When people complained about no hardware keyboard on the iPhone, Apple didn’t cave in and put a keyboard on the next iPhone. It stuck to its guns and made a tablet with no keyboard. When people complained that the App Store was a walled garden, Apple took steps to make it MORE of a walled garden.
Google: stick to one OS strategy. Make phones, tablets, and netbooks, all running the same OS. Enforce some restrictions on features, so that developers aren’t contending with constant moving spec targets. Find good ways to differentiate yourself from Apple’s products, but start copying the general strategy, because copying Microsoft isn’t helping you any.
And P.S.: If you were developing a product in “stealth mode” I wouldn’t be reading about it.
