Microsoft to Manufacturers: Its your fault Windows 8 crash landed!

[Bateluer]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/24/windows_8_blame_game/

Microsoft blames PC makers for underwhelming Windows 8 sales over Christmas, The Register has learned. The software giant accused manufacturers of not building enough attractive Win 8-powered touchscreen tablets.

But the computer makers are fighting back: they claimed that if they’d followed Microsoft’s hardware requirements and ramped up production, they'd have ended up building a lot of high-end expensive slabs that consumers didn’t understand nor want.

Of course, it has nothing to do with the OS itself being garbage.

 

[Mem]

Thread over at OcUK about this,

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18482507


Some of the blame is due to Microsoft IMHO especially with their small tablet range being released late and pricing,hard to compete with awesome Android tablet pricing etc...


As to Win8 sales still early days,some will wait until last minute before buying ie end of this week before price goes back up,however Win9 looks like its going to be same as Win8 ie Metro(improved however) ,no Aero or Start button.


Btw I would not say its garbage,hard for me to say that when its fast,rock stable,runs all my games I have thrown at it and no issues with drivers or my software plus everything within one or two clicks max, even Shut Down,Reboot is only one click ,got to call it as I use it ,I look forward to Win9 as well .

 

[BrightCandle]

W8 hasn't crash landed, Windows RT is what crashed and burned. W8 is selling decently its just the Arm based tablet hybrid isn't doing well. Its so restricted I am not surprised its selling poorly, you can't introduce such a restricted environment on Windows, compatibility and massive lists of capabilities is its greatest asset. Windows 8 however is far from a flop product in terms of sales, its selling in truly massive numbers.

I wouldn't call Windows 8 thrash at all. The desktop is smoother in its movement and the only problem I really have with it after a day is the NVidia surround support, which is more NVidia's fault than Microsoft's. I actually don't mind the full screen start menu, the search and load application is just as many key strokes as W7 so its no less efficient. Took a lot less time to get installed and working than W7 so I am pretty happy with it. I just don't use the New UI apps at all.

A lot of enthusiasts don't like the new UI and I understand that. But its not like the OS is useless, its actually better than Windows 7 in almost everything else. You just ignore the start menu and its different paradigm, which you can do without resorting to start8 and like and use app launchers on your task bar and 99.9999% of your activities are unaffected by anything but the small improvements made in the OS. Some of which benefit gamers.

 

[dagamer34]

If you go to Best Buy or your favorite computer store and take a look at the laptop selection they have, even if Windows 7 were installed, are there any laptops you'd really want to buy there? They have terrible 1366x768 TN screens, chunky build quality, poor keyboards, and terrible battery life. And tablets are certainly having an effect on PC sales, where a person might keep a laptop a year or two longer since they spend a lot of time on their tablet doing 90% of what they need to.

I just consider Windows 8 to be ahead of the hardware people will be buying 1-2 years from now, because when you've got the power of a Core i5 in the thinness of an iPad, everything you buy will be a tablet. And Microsoft needed to prepare for that future.

As for people complaining about Windows 8 on a desktop, Windows 7 works fine?

 

[Zaap]

If you go to Best Buy or your favorite computer store and take a look at the laptop selection they have, even if Windows 7 were installed, are there any laptops you'd really want to buy there? They have terrible 1366x768 TN screens, chunky build quality, poor keyboards, and terrible battery life.

Depends on what price range you're looking at. $199-$500? Then what you say is true- though not always. $600-$1000+? Then you can easily find a high quality laptop at BB or anywhere else that has decent specs, great build quality, 1080p screen, and features like touch screens, dedicated graphics, etc.

I just consider Windows 8 to be ahead of the hardware people will be buying 1-2 years from now, because when you've got the power of a Core i5 in the thinness of an iPad, everything you buy will be a tablet. And Microsoft needed to prepare for that future.

Well they aren't doing a very good job of it. The makers with actual tablet experience are already moving their thought process beyond the first generation of tablets to the *ACTUAL* future where a tablet experience will have to be more a replacement for desktop functionality. MS is still in pre-first gen thinking, doing it backwards, thinking they need to make the desktop experience as compromised as first-gen tablet interfaces.

It's sad to me when I've been to retail stores and see the Surface and various Windows 8 tablets sitting around completely unnoticed by anyone. There is no buzz or excitement about them. The full x86 tablets have stupid prices in the $800 range that make people's eyes glaze over.

From a purely aesthetic standpoint, the flat dull childish colors of Windows 8 looks lifeless next to a modern Android tablet that's half the cost. (For example at Frys they have ALL tablets other than iPads grouped together).

The average non-tech consumer just sees the Win8 tablet as "Why does this iPad wanna-be cost so damn much? And it doesn't even look as cool as this other tablet at half the price sitting right next to it." MS in it's wanna-be mode did a good job of making some people equate Windows 8 with iOS or Android... but then didn't stop for a second to think iOS or Android devices don't cost a bloody fortune in comparison to laptops/desktops. To me, this was pretty obvious all along- if you want people to think your OS is now a $199-$299 Kindle Fire/Nook/Nexus/Whatever competitor- then welcome to selling people $199-$299 consumption devices, not $800+! And if you want to take on the iPad, you can't cost more than a freakin' iPad while looking like a childs toy next to one.

The PC makers are exactly right- if they had focused their efforts on making $400 laptops into $800 tablet-wanna-bes, they'd all be stuck with warehouses full of unsold units costing them even more of a fortune.

 

[Mixolydian]

Microsoft to Manufacturers: Its your fault Windows 8 crash landed!

 

[Lonyo]

It's true in the UK.
I was expecting to be able to buy on release a 1080p Core i5 tablet.

I ended up buying a Samsung 700T after waiting about 2 months, since nothing else was available on the market. I had earmarked an Acer W700, but last time I checked, it was still awaiting availability in the UK. Currently showing as 25th Feb 2013.
When I first placed my order, I think it was around mid-November, so that's a THREE MONTH delay. And it was already nearly a month after Win 8 launch anyway.

There were hardly any products available on launch, a few trickled out afterwards.
There were no Core based Windows 8 tablets that were properly "there", even though we already have such things before Windows 8 was even announced!
Oh, and it was (AFAIK) available in other countries... or at leas the US, just not where I was...

Some manufacturers also did manage to increase sales both in 2012 overall, and in 2012 Q4 vs 2011 Q4. The ones who didn't (Acer) have just been VERY vocal about it.

http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2301715

21.6% drop in sales in Q4 2012 vs Q4 2011 for Acer in the US. And they blame Windows 8, even though Lenovo and HP managed 9.7% and 12.6% increases.

 

[lakedude]

Yep, I'd much rather have a $400 laptop over any touch screen just for the keyboard if nothing else.

I wouldn't pay over $200 for a tablet no matter how cool it was and even then I might rather have a ChromeBook for $199. The tablet form factor is just not practical for anything I need a computer to do.

If I ever did buy a tablet it would need an external keyboard/mouse. The clam-shell design of a laptop is superior because the screen and keyboard are protected.

Lets look at some common tasks, you tell me which tasks a tablet is better suited for:

1) Home gaming: Currently on 27" monitor with back-lit keyboard and gaming mouse.
2) Away gaming: Currently on 17" laptop with back-lit keyboard and dark-field mouse or phone.
3) Home movies: Currently on HTPC and 40" or 50" TV with wireless combo keyboard.
4) Away video: Currently on 17" laptop or phone
5) Home typing: Currently on 27" monitor with back-lit keyboard and mouse.
6) Away typing: Currently on 17" laptop with back-lit keyboard and dark-field mouse or phone.
etc.

The list could go on but I just can't imagine a time when a tablet would be better than what I already have except maybe on an airplane when something thin and light might be handy and I've got a Kindle for that sort of thing...

 

[Pardus]

..

 

[PliotronX]

Perhaps the lackluster sales has to do with a poorly designed product? I suppose it is difficult to follow W7 and improve it enough to make it a worthy upgrade but taking watercolor themes from 2001 and slapping the worst way of organizing programs and removing keystrokes from windows explorer making file navigation more difficult are just a couple reasons why I feel I even wasted my time messing with it.

Maybe they are being too visionary sort of how the tablet PC seemed back in the day then Apple came along an almost swept the entire tech planet with the iPad but I would advise anyone who likes 7 on their desktop to stay far away from 8.

 

[Nothinman]

Or if Win8 ends up doing decently history may show that AOL was ahead of their time. It's all perspective and dependent on who ends up writing the history books.

 

[cboath]

It's true in the UK.
I was expecting to be able to buy on release a 1080p Core i5 tablet.

I ended up buying a Samsung 700T after waiting about 2 months, since nothing else was available on the market. I had earmarked an Acer W700, but last time I checked, it was still awaiting availability in the UK. Currently showing as 25th Feb 2013.
When I first placed my order, I think it was around mid-November, so that's a THREE MONTH delay. And it was already nearly a month after Win 8 launch anyway.

There were hardly any products available on launch, a few trickled out afterwards.
There were no Core based Windows 8 tablets that were properly "there", even though we already have such things before Windows 8 was even announced!
Oh, and it was (AFAIK) available in other countries... or at leas the US, just not where I was...

Some manufacturers also did manage to increase sales both in 2012 overall, and in 2012 Q4 vs 2011 Q4. The ones who didn't (Acer) have just been VERY vocal about it.

http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2301715

21.6% drop in sales in Q4 2012 vs Q4 2011 for Acer in the US. And they blame Windows 8, even though Lenovo and HP managed 9.7% and 12.6% increases.

I5 tablets weren't delayed. MS isn't releasing them until this weekend - surface pro. There were no RT's with 1080p either.

FWIW as well, the Surface RT's are priced a bit lower than the equivalent Ipads as well. Surface RT 64GB with the keyboard cover is 649, 64GB ipad without cover or cell service is 699, with cell service is like 829. I know there are android tablets out there that are cheaper and i'd guess that has something (not everything) to do with google not charging for use of android.

As for usage, I've got a surface and android phone. I actually really like how the surface works as a touch tablet. A lot. I don't need to run full on applications on my tablet. If I need to take a device to a customer meeting or something I can use a laptop. When actually working, i'd clearly rather be on my 24" screen than a 10" tablet.

 

[jiffylube1024]

I can see that how from Microsoft's perspective, 3rd party vendors didn't design uber awesome touch capable, forward thinking next-gen hardware to showcase Windows 8. However, this view is extremely narrow, fantasy-land thinking. It's Microsoft wearing rose coloured glasses to their clout, how innovated Windows 8 is, and their influence in the PC industry.
---------

Windows 8, except for tablet usage, is an unnecessary OS update. Windows XP had a useful life of almost a decade; Windows 7, which is basically just a cleaned up, faster, sleeker Vista by the way, is only 3 1/2 years old (from RTM). Operating systems, when well maintained like Microsoft does with security updates, just don't need to be updated that often anymore. Windows 7 is smooth, stable and capable.

Windows 8 adds a new, often unwanted interface and coat of paint onto that. For non-touch screens, I'd argue that Windows 8 is almost pointless. It's the first new Windows OS that I didn't immediately take a liking to since Windows ME. Even Vista when it launched, aside from its stability issues and long boot times, was a big update over XP in terms of OS useability. Once the stability issues got ironed out, Vista became a very solid OS. Windows 7 smoothed out the rough edges of Vista - long boot times, clunky RAM usage, etc. Windows 7 essentially is the "new XP" - the productivity workhorse. It includes jump lists, snap-to full and 1/2 full screen, and other great useful features.

Windows 8 doesn't improve the core useability of the OS, but instead simply exchanges the Start menu for a Start screen. It's a pain for productivity too, because you need to navigate away from your work in order to see the start screen, unless you're using pinned applications at the bottom of the screen, which were a part of Windows 7 already.

 

[Lonyo]

I5 tablets weren't delayed. MS isn't releasing them until this weekend - surface pro. There were no RT's with 1080p either.

FWIW as well, the Surface RT's are priced a bit lower than the equivalent Ipads as well. Surface RT 64GB with the keyboard cover is 649, 64GB ipad without cover or cell service is 699, with cell service is like 829. I know there are android tablets out there that are cheaper and i'd guess that has something (not everything) to do with google not charging for use of android.

As for usage, I've got a surface and android phone. I actually really like how the surface works as a touch tablet. A lot. I don't need to run full on applications on my tablet. If I need to take a device to a customer meeting or something I can use a laptop. When actually working, i'd clearly rather be on my 24" screen than a 10" tablet.

You do realise there are more i5 tablets than Surface Pro, right?
Like the Acer W700, which is the tablet I was talking about, which is available in the US but not the UK.
I personally have a Samsung Ativ Pro, also i5 based.

Just because Surface Pro isn't out doesn't have anything to do with manufacturers being crap at getting THEIR products out the door.

The W700 IS delayed in the UK, because it is ALREADY AVAILABLE elsewhere, and has had its shipping date slip 3 months for the UK.

 

[VivienM]

I can see that how from Microsoft's perspective, 3rd party vendors didn't design uber awesome touch capable, forward thinking next-gen hardware to showcase Windows 8. However, this view is extremely narrow, fantasy-land thinking. It's Microsoft wearing rose coloured glasses to their clout, how innovated Windows 8 is, and their influence in the PC industry.

In a way, it reminds me of Itanium. Same sort of 'on Day X, we will push the magic button, and from this point forward, the Old Stuff will be gone and replaced by the New Stuff' mindset.

Apple can pull that kind of thing off (see: transition to PowerPC, transition to Mac OS X, transition to Intel). Intel, Microsoft, etc. can't. Every transition in PC land (DOS to Windows, 16 to 32-bit, 32-bit to 64-bit, Win9X to NT, ISA to PCI, PCI to PCI-E, etc) involved some new thing coming along that delivered more than Good Enough compatibility with the existing stuff, and over time the new features started to get used and the old stuff drifts away (how many Athlon 64s never ran a single line of x64 code in their life? but yet, after a few years, enough x64-capable machines were out in the wild that people switched to x64).

Walk into a Microsoft Store, and you see their vision. Every system, including the one midtower (a Dell), has a touch screen. But the rest of the universe does not give a damn about touch on a productivity PC. If, as you say, they thought they could magically make the rest of the universe start giving a damn about touch on Win8 launch day, they were idiotically arrogant.

 

[lifeblood]

I can see that how from Microsoft's perspective, 3rd party vendors didn't design uber awesome touch capable, forward thinking next-gen hardware to showcase Windows 8. However, this view is extremely narrow, fantasy-land thinking. It's Microsoft wearing rose coloured glasses to their clout, how innovated Windows 8 is, and their influence in the PC industry.

You mean Ballmers willingness to take a big risk didn't mean the rest of the industry was willing to take a big risk? I'm shocked...

...or not.

 

[sm625]

It's microsoft's fault for having a kernel and basic services that are so frickin bloated that an atom cannot run it without choking. I mean, really, have you ever seen how many times HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet gets accessed? How many "RegQueryValue"s, "RegOpenKey"s, and "RegCloseKey"s does it take to read one byte from the registry? At least a dozen. Why? The value is already stored in memory anyway. (The registry is memory. For frack sakes how dumb is it to copy from one memory location to another in the first place?)

And of course it is also microsoft's fault for becoming so dependent on such a piss poor piece of adobe trash software. Why didnt microsoft purchase a developmental license, and put flash into the kernel and make it run faster? Why instead of working with adobe, they just made their own even slower competitor, silverlight?? VLC player can decode 10 times the quality of video for half the cpu cycles. Microsoft and adobe are both a joke. The incompetence is in fact so high that you cant help but logically conclude that the bloat is intentional. If it is intentional bloat then all I got to say is "you guys frickin deserve what you got, cuz it all comes back to that."

 

[wirednuts]

thank you. that is awesome. its almost funny at first, then you realize how scary it really is. people thought windows me was bad because it didnt even work. well, ms found a way to make a good working os insufferable...

 

[wirednuts]

It's microsoft's fault for having a kernel and basic services that are so frickin bloated that an atom cannot run it without choking. I mean, really, have you ever seen how many times HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet gets accessed? How many "RegQueryValue"s, "RegOpenKey"s, and "RegCloseKey"s does it take to read one byte from the registry? At least a dozen. Why? The value is already stored in memory anyway. (The registry is memory. For frack sakes how dumb is it to copy from one memory location to another in the first place?)

And of course it is also microsoft's fault for becoming so dependent on such a piss poor piece of adobe trash software. Why didnt microsoft purchase a developmental license, and put flash into the kernel and make it run faster? Why instead of working with adobe, they just made their own even slower competitor, silverlight?? VLC player can decode 10 times the quality of video for half the cpu cycles. Microsoft and adobe are both a joke. The incompetence is in fact so high that you cant help but logically conclude that the bloat is intentional. If it is intentional bloat then all I got to say is "you guys frickin deserve what you got, cuz it all comes back to that."

i think its getting harder and harder to argue with these rants. back in the day, there wasnt anything close to the functionality of windows, so it was hard to argue that it was bloated even though it seemed like it.

these days though, fricken android isnt too far off from a full operating system. and it runs hundreds of times more efficiently. im sure google will continue to push for a rival to desktop windows, and something tells me they have a real good chance at competing.

 

[funboy6942]

I like my things simple. When I look at win 8 or their tablets I am overwhelmed. This from a guy who is bipolar and a skitzo (SP). All that flashing crap on the screen really scares the shit out of me. And henc why Ill never be able to use it.

 

[Dominato3r]

i think its getting harder and harder to argue with these rants. back in the day, there wasnt anything close to the functionality of windows, so it was hard to argue that it was bloated even though it seemed like it.

these days though, fricken android isnt too far off from a full operating system. and it runs hundreds of times more efficiently. im sure google will continue to push for a rival to desktop windows, and something tells me they have a real good chance at competing.

I really doubt android efficiency. Every release of Windows since Vista has been getting lighter and more efficient, where as my Nexus has gotten slower and clunkier with every update from Google. This is just what I'm seeing from my own devices.

 

[wirednuts]

I really doubt android efficiency. Every release of Windows since Vista has been getting lighter and more efficient, where as my Nexus has gotten slower and clunkier with every update from Google. This is just what I'm seeing from my own devices.

Asop android is getting much quicker. Oem roms aren't.

 

[Subyman]

Uhm, no source, no exact quotes, nothing. What a waste of time article.

 

[VirtualLarry]

There is a company, that tried changing their formula from something that was a long-time best seller, just like Microsoft did with Windows 8.

That product was called "New Coke".

And we all know how that turned out, didn't we?

Edit: More in line with the topic, that example would be if Coca-Cola blamed their retailers for a "not attractive enough display" for lack of sales of New Coke. Rather than admitting that they screwed up by changing their sucessful formula.

 

[Sleepingforest]

There is a company, that tried changing their formula from something that was a long-time best seller, just like Microsoft did with Windows 8.

That product was called "New Coke".

And we all know how that turned out, didn't we?

Edit: More in line with the topic, that example would be if Coca-Cola blamed their retailers for a "not attractive enough display" for lack of sales of New Coke. Rather than admitting that they screwed up by changing their sucessful formula.

Well, that's not quite accurate. The vast majority of the decision making process for "what drink to buy?" lies in the price, while the display area for the drink is pretty negligible. Meawhile in computers, a decent sized part of the decision making process is the hardware (and whether it can utilize all the software features).

I'm not saying Microsoft is perfect, but they weren't quite as bad as your analogy suggests (the OS isn't that bad in a single-monitor desktop setup. I even left Metro and Charms in). Do I still like Win7 more overall in terms of asthetics and UI? Yes. But the cheap upgrade from Win7 HP to Win8 Pro combined with discovering the search function in Metro persuaded me to upgrade.