“Hopefully you weren’t sitting on the Android tablet sidelines, patiently waiting for Lenovo’s options,” Matt Burns reports for CrunchGear. “Yeah, it’s not going to happen anytime soon.”
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Burns reports, “The company’s COO recent stated that the Lenovo’s US-market tablet will not be based around the Android 2.2 Froyo release, but rather Honeycomb. Therefore, if Google pushes back Honeycomb, Lenovo’s tablet will obviously have to suit. This puts the tablet on schedule for a Summer 2011 release — or rather a few months into the iPad 2′s life.”
Burns reports, “While the Android tablet was delayed, the Windows 7 flavor is simply canceled and for good reason too. Lenovo’s director of new technology, Howard Locker, nailed it by saying, ‘The challenge with Windows 7 is that it’s based on the same paradigm as 1985—it’s really an interface that’s optimized for a mouse and keyboard. It has to be optimized for touch. How do you do that?'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We pray that Microsoft shareholders will continue to remain as comatose as they have been for the better part of a decade and leave Ballmer right where he is, but as things snowball for Microsoft, we grow worried that even they will see the light. The good news is that Microsoft is so inherently broken, it’s quite likely that nobody short of a Steve Jobs could fix it – and, as we all know, there’s only one Steve Jobs and he’s quite busy.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dow C.” for the heads up.]
@MDN
“The good news is that Microsoft is so inherently broken, it’s quite likely that nobody short of a Steve Jobs could fix it – and, as we all know, there’s only one Steve Jobs and he’s quite busy.”
Love the take….
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@MDN
“The good news is that Microsoft is so inherently broken, it’s quite likely that nobody short of a Steve Jobs could fix it – and, as we all know, there’s only one Steve Jobs and he’s quite busy.”
Love the take….
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The Pile grows deeper for Redmond. What’s next? Maybe Billy Gates will return like M. DeLL?
The Pile grows deeper for Redmond. What’s next? Maybe Billy Gates will return like M. DeLL?
Lets remember that Steve himself was considered to have damaged Apple back then but all those who were brought in to improve things only destroyed it all the quicker, until the great return. Microsoft actually have someone who is destroying it from within and it increasingly seems unlikely that as the few high power enlightened guys within jump ship altogether anyone brought in from outside could turn matters around when he will simply get noise from all around him arguing what he should do. What possible new innovative plan can he/they offer that could possibly turn things around like Jobs did at Apple. Indeed he will probably spend most of his time trying to learn the Microsoft business itself and fire fight, than actually formulate a working forward looking plan. Like Apple it would have to shrink massively relatively speaking and then find a new focused way to move ahead, not something a monolith is at all good at. Its competitors will have taken most of its clients by then.
Lets remember that Steve himself was considered to have damaged Apple back then but all those who were brought in to improve things only destroyed it all the quicker, until the great return. Microsoft actually have someone who is destroying it from within and it increasingly seems unlikely that as the few high power enlightened guys within jump ship altogether anyone brought in from outside could turn matters around when he will simply get noise from all around him arguing what he should do. What possible new innovative plan can he/they offer that could possibly turn things around like Jobs did at Apple. Indeed he will probably spend most of his time trying to learn the Microsoft business itself and fire fight, than actually formulate a working forward looking plan. Like Apple it would have to shrink massively relatively speaking and then find a new focused way to move ahead, not something a monolith is at all good at. Its competitors will have taken most of its clients by then.
Howard Locker’s quote about Windows 7 as a 1985 paradigm is pretty damning. He seems to get it. MS clearly does not.
Howard Locker’s quote about Windows 7 as a 1985 paradigm is pretty damning. He seems to get it. MS clearly does not.
@spyinthesky
Apple key mistake was not taking the Mac mainstream, i.e., lowering the cost, ramping the volume and licensing to a few premium hardware players to achieve a dominant market position.
As Scully noted in his interview last week, S. Jobs had a vision that was well past the hardware capabilities. Apple turnaround when they had a spanking new OS that could take advantage of hardware advances and expand its capabilities at a rate consistent with hardware improvements.
I’m still not sure licensing isn’t the way to go with iOS. HEAR ME OUT. While maybe not to competitors in phones and ipads, but how about appliance makers, anything electronic (Auto Companies?) that will need to be connected. Apple can’t take iOS everywhere it can go, simply not realistic, but carefully selected licensees can.
@spyinthesky
Apple key mistake was not taking the Mac mainstream, i.e., lowering the cost, ramping the volume and licensing to a few premium hardware players to achieve a dominant market position.
As Scully noted in his interview last week, S. Jobs had a vision that was well past the hardware capabilities. Apple turnaround when they had a spanking new OS that could take advantage of hardware advances and expand its capabilities at a rate consistent with hardware improvements.
I’m still not sure licensing isn’t the way to go with iOS. HEAR ME OUT. While maybe not to competitors in phones and ipads, but how about appliance makers, anything electronic (Auto Companies?) that will need to be connected. Apple can’t take iOS everywhere it can go, simply not realistic, but carefully selected licensees can.
The problem with Microsoft, and fundamental difference between MS’s situation of today and Apple’s of fifteen years ago is, Apple was 90 days away from bankruptcy when Steve arrived (or so he says), while MS is still turning profit, quarter after quarter. It is amazing how much money you can make cruising on autopilot, when your customers are corporate drones locked into a 4-year refresh cycle that nets you solid profit for essentially nothing.
All those MS developers do is tweak Office and Windows, so that Ballmer (and other sales guys) can go and sell “new and improved” product to the drones.
As long as MS is turning (ever so slight) profit at end of each quarter (and sometimes even showing slight growth), neither its board members, nor the share holders, will initiate any significant move to reorder things.
By the time traditional desktop ends up giving way to other models of computing (mobile, cloud, touch, whatever), it will be too late to turn a Titanic-sized ship around. And from Ballmer’s office, you can’t see the iceberg towards which they’re steaming…
The problem with Microsoft, and fundamental difference between MS’s situation of today and Apple’s of fifteen years ago is, Apple was 90 days away from bankruptcy when Steve arrived (or so he says), while MS is still turning profit, quarter after quarter. It is amazing how much money you can make cruising on autopilot, when your customers are corporate drones locked into a 4-year refresh cycle that nets you solid profit for essentially nothing.
All those MS developers do is tweak Office and Windows, so that Ballmer (and other sales guys) can go and sell “new and improved” product to the drones.
As long as MS is turning (ever so slight) profit at end of each quarter (and sometimes even showing slight growth), neither its board members, nor the share holders, will initiate any significant move to reorder things.
By the time traditional desktop ends up giving way to other models of computing (mobile, cloud, touch, whatever), it will be too late to turn a Titanic-sized ship around. And from Ballmer’s office, you can’t see the iceberg towards which they’re steaming…
Essentially, lenovo chief just that WinMo7 is DOA! That’s gotta wake someone up on the MSFT BOD.
Imagine building a car that runs on helium, only to find out that, no, the fuel is hydrogen. Slight misprint due to auto correct in MS Word. That’s what just happened to lenovo.
Essentially, lenovo chief just that WinMo7 is DOA! That’s gotta wake someone up on the MSFT BOD.
Imagine building a car that runs on helium, only to find out that, no, the fuel is hydrogen. Slight misprint due to auto correct in MS Word. That’s what just happened to lenovo.
Maybe with the concern of Ray Ozie being gone, they will forget that Balmer’s still there.
Maybe with the concern of Ray Ozie being gone, they will forget that Balmer’s still there.
Why is Lenovo listening to Google while the other tablet makers are not? Poorly done Android tablets could kill future markets.
Why is Lenovo listening to Google while the other tablet makers are not? Poorly done Android tablets could kill future markets.
I see the problem. I am shocked that Steve Ballmer hasn’t explained it to these tablet idiots. All Windows 7 tablets require both a mouse and keyboard to work. “Touch” is a sales gimmick used to move these turds / devices. Will they come on brown like the first Zune players did?
I see the problem. I am shocked that Steve Ballmer hasn’t explained it to these tablet idiots. All Windows 7 tablets require both a mouse and keyboard to work. “Touch” is a sales gimmick used to move these turds / devices. Will they come on brown like the first Zune players did?
Brown is the color of Mokey Boy’s eyes because he’s so full of it.
Brown is the color of Mokey Boy’s eyes because he’s so full of it.
If MS just took a few of Job’s principles, it would go a long way. (e.g It’s not what you do; it’s what you don’t do that makes your products. That sort of thing.)
If MS just took a few of Job’s principles, it would go a long way. (e.g It’s not what you do; it’s what you don’t do that makes your products. That sort of thing.)
Microsoft is so broken, replacing Ballmer now would come way too late. They were only ever relevant at the start. Then they sleazed their way into the mainstream without ever knowing how to innovate technology. Their irrelevance became obvious by the late 1990s, and by Y2K the slide had already begun. It’s such a huge corpse it takes a long time to rot.
@chaz
Licensing the iOS is not going to happen. Apple products succeed because they integrate hardware and software for the optimum user experience. Jobs will not poison the brand just to chase every cheap-minded customer, and he is right.