Microsoft slashes Surface production.

[Hugo Drax]

What happened to all the visionaries at Microsoft? Seems like ego clashes over there with no singularity to the voices.

The failures at Microsoft almost seem like huge blows to the affordable non-proprietary PC. Good luck catching Apple now.

Microsoft is following in the footsteps of Wang Laboratories

 

[0roo0roo]

Many years too late to the punch.

Horrid OS

Apple like pricing without ANY hype or hipster following

How can Microsoft not see this failure coming?

Making PC OS into tablet/phone OS like is a final straw IMO. They have really done it to themselves.

yup windows 8, a botched abortion..

 

[MichaelD]

Yeah, it's only 1024x600 with 2GB of RAM. But I've got an SSD in it and it runs everything I need it to for when I'm on the road. Powerpoint, Word and Excel for work. Flash (within IE) when I need the entertainments.

Surface Pro piques my interest, but not at that price. How about $500? I would do $500.

And BTW, MS is FAR from "failing", "aborting" or "going tits up." For every Apple-product-toting-Hipster out there, MS is being paid for a thousand XP/Vista/W7/Office corporate licenses at 6+ figures a pop. People like to compare "two giants" but aside from the XBox, MS is radically different from Apple. MS OWNS the corporate space and that's all they really need to own in order to make way more money than Apple.

/thread

 

[Wreckem]

Yeah, it's only 1024x600 with 2GB of RAM. But I've got an SSD in it and it runs everything I need it to for when I'm on the road. Powerpoint, Word and Excel for work. Flash (within IE) when I need the entertainments.

Surface Pro piques my interest, but not at that price. How about $500? I would do $500.

And BTW, MS is FAR from "failing", "aborting" or "going tits up." For every Apple-product-toting-Hipster out there, MS is being paid for a thousand XP/Vista/W7/Office corporate licenses at 6+ figures a pop. People like to compare "two giants" but aside from the XBox, MS is radically different from Apple. MS OWNS the corporate space and that's all they really need to own in order to make way more money than Apple.

/thread

Ummm. You must not keep up to date.

Apple has a single product line(the iphone) that generates more revenue and profit than MS as a whole.

The ipad also generates about half as much as MS as a whole.

Add on everything else and Apple generally generates twice the revenue and twice the profits as MS in any given quarter.

 

[Farang]

I'm a Windows 8 desktop user. It is a great 'do everything' product that makes a lot of sense, Microsoft is leveraging their desktop superiority to get a foothold in tablets/mobile. It is a great business decision IMO. The desktop hate is way, way, overblown.

Haven't used Surface but by most accounts it seems like they failed on the hardware side. Windows 8 is perfect for a machine like Surface, though.

 

[phucheneh]

Microsoft has become friggin' pathetic.

Whoever came up with the whole 'copy Apple = win!' strategy needs to be taken out back and shot. Find someone with a couple IQ points they can rub together and create this genius spark: Copying another company's consumer rape, a solid 5+ years behind the rape curve, is not a successful strategy.

Rather, try to expose said company for the rapist savant they are. Instead of:

'Hey! That iPad thing you have! We made one too!'

Try:

'Hey! That iPad thing that costs four times what it's worth and locks you into buying one company's catalog of shitty shit? We built something better for half as much!'

But oh noes, that would be less profitable per unit. Therefore we could go bankrupt selling a million of them. Rather, we should sell seven of them at increased markup. Brilliant!

 

[MichaelD]

Microsoft has become friggin' pathetic.

Whoever came up with the whole 'copy Apple = win!' strategy needs to be taken out back and shot. Find someone with a couple IQ points they can rub together and create this genius spark: Copying another company's consumer rape, a solid 5+ years behind the rape curve, is not a successful strategy.

Rather, try to expose said company for the rapist savant they are. Instead of:

'Hey! That iPad thing you have! We made one too!'

Try:

'Hey! That iPad thing that costs four times what it's worth and locks you into buying one company's catalog of shitty shit? We built something better for half as much!'

But oh noes, that would be less profitable per unit. Therefore we could go bankrupt selling a million of them. Rather, we should sell seven of them at increased markup. Brilliant!

I gotta admit, that is damn funny! MS has always been all about the profit and trying to gain an edge. (IE lawsuit debacle, anyone?) I'm too tired to run numbers, but there's no way Apple makes more than MS does. Unless I've been that asleep for the past three years...which I guess IS possible...they don't let me outside much...:ninja:

 

[Arkaign]

Ummm. You must not keep up to date.

Apple has a single product line(the iphone) that generates more revenue and profit than MS as a whole.

The ipad also generates about half as much as MS as a whole.

Add on everything else and Apple generally generates twice the revenue and twice the profits as MS in any given quarter.

Hmm? Have things drastically changed recently? Quick googling found this :

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2011/oct11/10-20fy12Q1earningsPR.aspx

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/10/18Apple-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-Results.html

Looks like Microsoft quarterly net income was ~5.74B, Apple was 6.6B.

Maybe newer numbers show something different, that was just lazy quick search for top google results for 'apple profits' and 'microsoft profits'.

This doesn't add up to what either of you are saying. The guy you were replying to was falsely claiming that Microsoft was somehow massively more profitable. Is apple really double Microsoft in profit each quarter now?

Microsoft will be shrinking imho though, Windows 8 is just ridiculous, there is no way for them to compete realistically with Apple and Google in mobile, it's idiotic of them to even try. Hamstringing desktop and corporate users who overwhelmingly don't have touchscreens with a touchscreen-centric interface is asinine.

It's not all roses for Apple though either. People are realizing all the time that it's not necessarily the best idea to spend hideous amounts of money on tablets and phones when the cheapies are getting better and better. The economy isn't exactly great, and nothing is 'hip' forever. It's likely that sometime in the next decade or so, a lot of our current tech will look as dated as bell bottoms, so if Apple doesn't keep finding new things to do, it's just going to be an inexorable slide. Look at iPod sales now, it's all moved to phones. Now with phones, what happens when a $99 phone is as good as what Apple wants $400-$800 for with most people's uses.

 

[0roo0roo]

Yeah, it's only 1024x600 with 2GB of RAM. But I've got an SSD in it and it runs everything I need it to for when I'm on the road. Powerpoint, Word and Excel for work. Flash (within IE) when I need the entertainments.

Surface Pro piques my interest, but not at that price. How about $500? I would do $500.

And BTW, MS is FAR from "failing", "aborting" or "going tits up." For every Apple-product-toting-Hipster out there, MS is being paid for a thousand XP/Vista/W7/Office corporate licenses at 6+ figures a pop. People like to compare "two giants" but aside from the XBox, MS is radically different from Apple. MS OWNS the corporate space and that's all they really need to own in order to make way more money than Apple.

/thread

no one said ms is losing money, ms can put out botched o/s ..look at windows vista/me and coast on the fact that the os market is not a competitive market at all, they are a defacto monopoly pretty much, but it doesn't make those os any good at all. corporate adoption of win8? i doubt it, i think most enterprise will drag their feet on 8 if only because retraining costs for that stupid ui alone would make it pointless, they'll hold on to win7 as long as they can and hope win 9 isn't as stupid.

 

[phucheneh]

All of my asshole cynicism aside: please tell me there's not a Windows 9 in the works yet?

Has Windows 7 even seen widespread consumer adoption yet? Corporate/business customers, who I would assume have to be an enormous chunk of their business, are still overwhelmingly on 'Windows 5' (aka XP).

Quite honestly, the sarcastic asshole mini-rant I posted above really does seem to apply to everything they're doing. Apple charges a hundred bucks for constant mini-revisions of its OS? Welp, I guess we should do that, too.

I've backed off my Apple hatred; I mean, I still hate them and all, but what I'm expressing is less about Apple hate and more about how I'm completely and utterly dumbfounded by MS's seemingly complete inability to think independently. IMO, they have an ENORMOUS opportunity to capture market share in multiple segments by offering cheaper, more versatile alternatives to what Apple is currently selling. Instead, they're offering what might as well be cheap inferior knockoffs at Apple prices.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Microsoft has become friggin' pathetic.

Whoever came up with the whole 'copy Apple = win!' strategy needs to be taken out back and shot. Find someone with a couple IQ points they can rub together and create this genius spark: Copying another company's consumer rape, a solid 5+ years behind the rape curve, is not a successful strategy.

Rather, try to expose said company for the rapist savant they are. Instead of:

'Hey! That iPad thing you have! We made one too!'

Try:

'Hey! That iPad thing that costs four times what it's worth and locks you into buying one company's catalog of shitty shit? We built something better for half as much!'

But oh noes, that would be less profitable per unit. Therefore we could go bankrupt selling a million of them. Rather, we should sell seven of them at increased markup. Brilliant!

LOL. MS was born from doing this...you know that right? Not only that MS owns a good portion of Apple. They've never been overly original, they were just always good at marketing other peoples ideas as their own and sometimes even if it was worse, they still became the "standard"

 

[phucheneh]

The difference is that when Windows came out, no one was saying 'LOL this is dumb, all the cool people are buying their operating systems from Apple (or Xerox).'

MS is in a vastly changing consumer market and seems to not realize it. I really don't want to go beyond that statement, as I'll get way too far(ther) into biased, opinionated commentary on how fucking stupid our current society is.

 

[dmcowen674]

Surface Pro starts at $899:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33642_7-57556219-292/surface-pro-price-tag-$899/

What happened to all the rich in America.

Why are they not buying these things up like lines on the table?

 

[BladeVenom]

All of my asshole cynicism aside: please tell me there's not a Windows 9 in the works yet?

Of course there's a Windows 9 already in the works. They have to come out with it soon as a fix to Windows 8.

 

[Sa7aN]

Of course there's a Windows 9 already in the works. They have to come out with it soon as a fix to Windows 8.

i see absolutely nothing wrong with windows 8... but only because ever since win98 only every other version seems to be worth a shit, so this is just the stepping stone to a decent version lol.

98? yes!
me/2000 no!
xp? yes!
vista? no!
7? yes!
8? no.....

 

[Wreckem]

Hmm? Have things drastically changed recently? Quick googling found this :

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2011/oct11/10-20fy12Q1earningsPR.aspx

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/10/18Apple-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-Results.html

Looks like Microsoft quarterly net income was ~5.74B, Apple was 6.6B.

Maybe newer numbers show something different, that was just lazy quick search for top google results for 'apple profits' and 'microsoft profits'.

This doesn't add up to what either of you are saying. The guy you were replying to was falsely claiming that Microsoft was somehow massively more profitable. Is apple really double Microsoft in profit each quarter now?

Microsoft will be shrinking imho though, Windows 8 is just ridiculous, there is no way for them to compete realistically with Apple and Google in mobile, it's idiotic of them to even try. Hamstringing desktop and corporate users who overwhelmingly don't have touchscreens with a touchscreen-centric interface is asinine.

It's not all roses for Apple though either. People are realizing all the time that it's not necessarily the best idea to spend hideous amounts of money on tablets and phones when the cheapies are getting better and better. The economy isn't exactly great, and nothing is 'hip' forever. It's likely that sometime in the next decade or so, a lot of our current tech will look as dated as bell bottoms, so if Apple doesn't keep finding new things to do, it's just going to be an inexorable slide. Look at iPod sales now, it's all moved to phones. Now with phones, what happens when a $99 phone is as good as what Apple wants $400-$800 for with most people's uses.

I said generally. Lets look at the past year.

Oct - Dec 2011
Apple $13.06billion net income
MS $6.62billion net income

Jan - March 2012
Apple $11.6billion net income
MS $5.11billion net income

April - June 2012
Apple $8.8billion net income
MS (-$492million) net income

July - Sept 2012
Apple $6.2billion net income
MS $4.47billion net income

So yeah Apple, for 3 out of the last 4 quarters has more than doubled Microsoft's profits. Historically, July-Sept is Apples weakest quarter since moving the Iphone launch date back a quarter.

They are currently projected to more than double Microsoft's revenue and profits for the current quarter, Apples largest quarter every year.

 

[Vdubchaos]

Show me a laptop with a 1080p IPS screen for $450 with an ivy bridge quad core and 128gb SSD, twice the specs of surface with an equal screen.

First off, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Detailed specs are not out yet and MS idea of detailed spec is "I5". That doesn't mean Quad Core.

Second, I didn't know MS is making a laptop without a keyboard (my bad on that). Or add on keyboard.

So it will basically be a tablet with low end/mid range laptop specs.

Also I will hold my breath until I see the battery life on these things. PC CPU architecture is quite a bit different from Tablet CPU. There is a reason for that.

So let's say that you can do office on these things. Great, but why in the world would anyone want to do that on a tablet. And once you add a keyboard you basically have a laptop anyways (thing is as thick as your average laptop).

All Microsoft did here was move the hardware from under the keyboard to under the screen. I'm not impressed and I will take a $500 laptop over this hype any day of the week and twice on sunday.

Will it sell? sure.

 

[Vdubchaos]

no one said ms is losing money, ms can put out botched o/s ..look at windows vista/me and coast on the fact that the os market is not a competitive market at all, they are a defacto monopoly pretty much, but it doesn't make those os any good at all. corporate adoption of win8? i doubt it, i think most enterprise will drag their feet on 8 if only because retraining costs for that stupid ui alone would make it pointless, they'll hold on to win7 as long as they can and hope win 9 isn't as stupid.

Yep, and business is not upgrading Monitors to touchscreens.

Keyboard and mouse is NOT going away.

 

[Gibsons]

i see absolutely nothing wrong with windows 8... but only because ever since win98 only every other version seems to be worth a shit, so this is just the stepping stone to a decent version lol.

98? yes!
me/2000 no!
xp? yes!
vista? no!
7? yes!
8? no.....

2k pro was awesome

 

[darkewaffle]

Tech threads in OT are painful to read.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

First off, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Detailed specs are not out yet and MS idea of detailed spec is "I5". That doesn't mean Quad Core.

Second, I didn't know MS is making a laptop without a keyboard (my bad on that). Or add on keyboard.

So it will basically be a tablet with low end/mid range laptop specs.

Also I will hold my breath until I see the battery life on these things. PC CPU architecture is quite a bit different from Tablet CPU. There is a reason for that.

So let's say that you can do office on these things. Great, but why in the world would anyone want to do that on a tablet. And once you add a keyboard you basically have a laptop anyways (thing is as thick as your average laptop).

All Microsoft did here was move the hardware from under the keyboard to under the screen. I'm not impressed and I will take a $500 laptop over this hype any day of the week and twice on sunday.

Will it sell? sure.

You claimed you could get a laptop with 2x Surfaces specs for half the price, that would be quad core ivy bridge since surface has a dual, a 128gb ssd since surface is 64gb and a equal screen for $450.

Not only can you not get that you can't even get a laptop with equal specs to surface for $450.

 

[Vdubchaos]

You claimed you could get a laptop with 2x Surfaces specs for half the price, that would be quad core ivy bridge since surface has a dual, a 128gb ssd since surface is 64gb and a equal screen for $450.

Not only can you not get that you can't even get a laptop with equal specs to surface for $450.

I was wrong, I didn't know that Surface pro was a laptop with no keyboard and hardware under the monitor.

 

[Franz316]

I guess even Americans have limits in how many electronic gadgets they want. Really, how did they expect to impact an area that is already overly saturated with handheld devices?

Apple and Samsung beat them to the punch and now it is too late.

 

[ixelion]

Tech threads in OT are painful to read.

you got that right, someone let loose all the special ed kids on this thread

 

[The Boston Dangler]

a surface would go great with my zune and my kin. hahahaha who buys this crap?