Years after being shown by Apple, poor Microsoft still doesn’t understand what tablets are for

“In New York on Monday, Microsoft unveiled two new tablets aimed at solidifying the company’s hold on a key niche market: people who hate fun,” Will Oremus writes for Slate.

“The Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 are jam-packed with productivity features guaranteed to make you feel guilty for using the devices for anything other than work. The big upgrades over the last Surface tablets that no one enjoyed lie in the technical specifications: faster processor, faster bus, better battery life, more cores on the GPU, etc. The new ones also both come with the full Microsoft Office suite, including Outlook, ensuring that your calendar alerts are the first thing you’ll see when you sit back on the couch and pick up your tablet,” Oremus writes. “Oh, and about that sitting back on the couch thing: Microsoft has fixed that too, tweaking the kickstand to make it easier to type away at that Excel spreadsheet while holding the tablet on your lap or sitting at a desk. Who needs to lean back and relax when you can use your tablet just like a PC?”

“There’s just one problem with Microsoft pitching its new tablets at people who prefer to use their tablets for work rather than play: Those people barely exist,” Oremus writes. “A Gartner survey found that tablet owners use their devices overwhelmingly for entertainment, followed by social media, e-mail, and other types of communication. Just 15 percent of tablet screen time is devoted to work. That makes sense when you consider that nearly everyone who owns a tablet also owns a different device that is far-better suited to doing work, whether desktop, laptop, or both. The tablet is where they go to get away from that work.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft is (still!) led by a confused clown and hopelessly polluted at its upper levels with political schemers and backstabbers. It’s amazing the bloated carcass can even produce a product at this point, even if it is a product for a market that does not exist outside of Microsoft’s delusional dreams/misleading advertising campaigns.

The company is a failure. That’s why its products are failures, too. GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out.

In the end, Microsoft will be a mere footnote; a blotch on the early timeline of computing that nobody will remember fondly, if at all.

As we explained quite clearly last October in yet another prescient Take that even Microsoft could have read, long before they were forced to swallow a $900 million write-off over their Surface flop:

That dumbass kickstand is yet another ill-considered, misguided, corporate committee-driven “differentiation” squirted out of Microsoft’s back door unbidden onto the public.

Microsoft is staffed with stupid and/or lazy people. There’s no other explanation besides crippling narcissism – which is a very real possibility. Most people use iPads while lounging around. All Microsoft’s Surface “team” had to do was buy some real iPads and use them for a few weeks. Steve Jobs himself even demonstrated the iPad while reclining in a comfy leather chair, not sitting upright at a friggin’ desk. Microsoft was shown the way and, once again, they failed to properly follow Apple’s lead. By now, that’s just stupid and/or lazy.

Microsoft suffers from delusions of grandeur. They think they matter and that people will buy their pretend iPad over other pretend iPads because it’s from Microsoft. Microsoft does not matter. Microsoft no longer has the power to sell superfluous products. The world already has iPad. The thinking world finally woke up and moved on from Microsoft’s soul-sapping dreck. That clueless Microsoft haven’t figured this out years ago (Zune, Kin, how many total face-plants do they need?) is illustrative of the depths of their delusions.

As with Zune, Kin, and Surface, Microsoft is unnecessary in today’s world. Their rapidly retiring/expiring IT Doofus firewall is the only thing keeping them around today.

And that’s not going to last much longer, either:
Gartner: By 2014, Apple will be as accepted by enterprise IT as Microsoft is today.

Related articles:
Microsoft unveils Surface 2 tablet; nobody cares about this one, either – September 24, 2013
Desperate Microsoft wants to pay you at least $200 to trade in your iPad for a Surface tablet – September 13, 2013
a href=”http://macdailynews.com/2013/08/30/liquidation-microsoft-permanently-slashes-price-on-poor-selling-surface-pro-tablet-to-799/”>Liquidation: Microsoft permanently slashes price on poor-selling ‘Surface Pro’ tablet to $799 – August 30, 2013
Microsoft now dumping non-selling Surface RT tablets into schools – August 21, 2013
Class-action suit filed against Microsoft over Surface tablet flop -August 13, 2013
Desperate Microsoft cuts Surface Pro tablet prices; could signal even more losses – August 6, 2013
Microsoft’s Surface sales figures are in, and they’re a total disaster – July 30, 2013
Microsoft earnings, sales badly miss expectations; $900 million inventory writedown on Surface tablet flop – July 18, 2013
Gartner: Apple to overtake Microsoft in total OS sales in 2015 – June 25, 2013
Apple Macintosh owns 45% of PC market profits – April 16, 2013
Steve Jobs’ revenge – April 12, 2013
Apple Macintosh on the rise as Windows PC market plummets – April 11, 2013
Gartner: PC Market posts 11.2 percent decline in Q113; Apple Mac sales up 7.4 percent in U.S. – April 10, 2013
IDC: PC shipments post the steepest decline ever in a single quarter, down 13.9% in Q113 – April 10, 2013