Society and business in the 21st Century
At the time Microsoft launched the second version of its Surface tablet, I suggested the company was hobbled by its reputation for taking three attempts to get things right.
Yesterday, Microsoft launched its third version of the Surface.
We’ll now see how well they do.
One of the key planks of Microsoft meeting the challenge presented by online services like Google Docs is their cloud based Office365.
The success of Office365 is important as Microsoft Office makes up a large chunk of the 24 billion dollars in sales, and $15 billion dollar profit, the company books from its Business Division.
Coupled to this threat is also the move from personal computers to smartphones and tablet devices which Microsoft hope to meet with their Window 8 operating system, Surface tablet computer and Windows Phone.
As part of the Australian TechEd 2012 Conference, Microsoft gave a hands on preview of the Office 365 running on a Windows 8 tablet which was a good opportunity to see how both software packages worked.
Office365 is very similar in layout and function to Office 2010 – if you’re using earlier versions of Office, particularly Office 2003, then you may find the ribbon bar and changed menus hard to navigate at first.
Integration with Microsoft’s Skydrive is good and seamless. A nice feature in this is how a user can setup multiple Skydrive accounts as separate drives. How well this works while on the road will have to be tested away from a controlled environment like the one at the TechEd meeting rooms.
The touch screen functions are fairly hard to get used to and they don’t work particularly well with fat fingers which Microsoft attempts to overcome with providing a stylus.
Another complexity is that the menus and touch screen functions aren’t consistent across applications. The handy ‘pinch’ gesture to zoom on Windows 8 doesn’t work on the Office applications on the tablet which is a shame and is also a bit irritating for power users.
Office365 adds a range of other features like web publishing, video editing and IT management tools but the hands on demo didn’t give enough time to properly evaluate these aspects.
The first thing that jumps out with Windows 8 is the basic interface isn’t intuitive. The tile based system is difficult to use if you’re used to a keyboard and mouse or mobile systems like Apple iOS and Android.
Another worry is the Windows 8 interface – or “Metro” as it was known – uses different applications to the desktop version. The problem with this was illustrated when trying to run a video on the device as the Internet Explorer in the Windows 8 interface was a different version to that on the desktop so videos would run in one mode, but not on the other.
This confusion between software versions is a recipe for user confusion, lost data and possibly even a security weakness. It’s surprising that having effectively two operating systems running on the device was considered to be a good idea.
Looking under the hood at the Control Panel, the Windows NT heritage of Window 8 becomes apparent. Anybody used to tinkering with the settings on Windows XP, Vista or 7 systems will have no trouble finding their way around the new version.
Overall the performance of Windows 8 was impressive. It’s quite fast and responsive and this is something that Microsoft’s demonstrators are proud of.
The surprising thing was the Windows 8 system was running on a Samsung tablet with still no ship date for the Windows hardware.
With Christmas approaching, Microsoft are running out of time to compete in the tablet market and it seriously raises questions on whether the Surface tablets were prematurely announced.
The experience with Office365 on the Windows Tablet was satisfactory although the demonstration showed there’s some barriers to adopting tablets as the main work computers.
Office 365 shows the strengths Microsoft have in the market, if Microsoft can get their tablet strategy right then they have a good product to compete with Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.
Time will tell if they or their hardware partners can get products that customers want onto the market.
Paul travelled to TechEd and stayed at the Gold Coast as a guest of Microsoft Australia.
It’s official, Windows 8 has an October 6, 2012 release date.
For Microsoft, the pressure is now on. Not only does the desktop version have to be shipped but also the smartphone and tablet versions. Their cloud services are going to have to be flawless on the day Windows 8 goes live.
The tablet version is doubly important as Microsoft has to convince cynics like me that the Microsoft Surface is not vapourware. With the Surface RT scheduled for release with Windows 8, Microsoft are going to have to announcing pricing and final specifications very soon. Reports are that the Surface is beginning to appear on Amazon sites so release may not be far away.
Nokia too will now be under a lot of pressure as releasing credible Windows 8 are the only hope for the company’s future. As it is, the current range of Lumia phones are now dead in the water despite massive discounts.
As we’ve previously discussed, Windows 8 is essential to Microsoft’s market position and will define their future – a failure will almost certainly lock the once dominant software giant to a another lost decade.
We’ll see a lot advertising and PR hype around Windows over the next few months, the real test will come at the end of October and with the Christmas buying season.
By the middle of next year we’ll have a good idea of just how successful Windows 8 will be. Steve Ballmer’s future depends upon it.
In the early 1990s the term “vapourware” appeared, it was born out of big software vendors announcing mythical products with a whole new bunch of features which the opposition already had.
Usually that next great product never appeared; it was just a ploy to stop customers defecting to the competition’s superior product.
There were a number of ways to spot vapourware – the lack of a working prototype, vague release dates and no firm pricing being just three.
Earlier this week, Microsoft brought tears to the eyes of grizzled IT industry veterans who missed the days of regular vapourware announcements with the “launch” of their Surface tablet computer.
After springing the event at short notice on the tech media, forcing the poor petals to travel to Los Angeles rather than their usual haunts of Silicon Valley, Manhattan or Texas and then starting the event late, Microsoft added insult to injury by not even letting the journalists play with a working version of the Surface, let alone take one home to play with.
One of the impressive things about vapourware are the specifications and this is true with the Microsoft Surface. The specifications of the base model Windows RT are about the same as the base model iPad with the added benefit of a keyboard, USB and Micro SD ports.
Looking past the hype, it’s clear Microsoft are having trouble with their strategy of a unified operating system across smartphones, tablets and traditional PCs, which has forced them to announce two different versions of the Surface, running different operating systems on different chipsets.
Having potentially incompatible products makes it even more important for tech journos and early adopters to play with the new devices to see how well they work – that version one of any new product doesn’t work well is another lesson from the 1990s IT industry.
In the spirit of vapourware, Microsoft hasn’t mentioned what either version of the Surface will cost, which probably indicates they don’t know what the final sticker price will be either.
Despite being funny, there was a serious side to vapourware – in the 1990s businesses often held off purchasing decisions or upgrades as they waited for promised products or features to arrive.
While eager customers waited for products that never arrived, their productivity slipped and technologies that should have been adopted earlier ended up coming late to the office desktop.
For Microsoft investors, the nature of the Surface announcement should be disturbing as the vapourware business tactic only works for incumbents in a strong market position and the software giant is anything but strong in the tablet computer market.
While it would be good to see a credible competitor to the iPad, it’s going to be difficult to take Microsoft seriously until we see some working versions that we can play with.
The lessons from the 1990s computer industry are clear – don’t fall for vapourware and buy what works for your business today.
A new idea might cut the size of many phone bills, as usual though the devil is in the detail.
One of the hallmarks of the technology industry is the use of jargon; every few months a new buzzword or phrase comes along that captivates the industry and dominates the tech media.
A phrase that’s going to become common in the next few months is Heterogeneous Networks, the concept that mobile phones will be able to switch between phone systems and wireless networks without the user noticing.
Overnight the two major standards organisations agreed to work towards a common framework for phones to run these networks which also go by the name of HetNets.
For consumers the benefit with heterogeneous networks is they can reduce costs as phones automatically switch to cheaper, and usually faster, Wi-Fi hotspots.
The benefit for mobile phone network operators is that data demands are swamping their networks that were originally designed for voice communications. By offloading some of the load to private Wi-Fi systems they hope to manage their systems better.
Of course one should never underestimate a telco’s desire to make a buck and most telecommunications companies see the opportunity to make a few dollars out of offering the feature.
A major concern in putting together these systems is going to be security, using anybody’s Wi-Fi network requires a degree of trust and if a smart phone or tablet computer is accessing these without the owner knowing the risks are substantially higher.
These risks are even higher still if the banking and telco industries manage to convince people to use their mobile phones as an electronic wallet.
Seamlessly connecting to networks is one of the holy grails for mobile device manufacturers and software designers and it’s something that consumers will probably welcome when it becomes reliable.
For the moment we can expect to hear breathless articles about developments in the area and the promises from suppliers about the technology.
As usual the early adopters will leap in and suffer the usual disappointments and heartbreak that is life on the bleeding edge of technology.
Eventually though, long after the hype has settled down, these systems will become commonplace and expected by consumers.
Whether it makes more money for telcos though is another matter.
