“Does the world really need another tablet?” John R. Quain asks for Fox News. “Microsoft finally revealed this week that it will introduce its own tablet called Surface… It won’t go on sale until the fall when the next version of the company’s operating system, Windows 8, is set to debut. Pricing also has yet to be determined (translation: don’t expect it to undercut the iPad).”
“The market may not need a Windows tablet, but Microsoft desperately does,” Quain reports. “The company has been steadily — some might say, inexorably — falling behind in the new era of computing, the era in which the ability to easily access information is more important than the operating system or computing device we use to do it. Microsoft still hasn’t understood this, failing to become a significant force in smartphones or tablets, mainly because it’s working from an outdated model of being the Great Copier.”
Quain reports, “Microsoft has always mimicked other technologies, from graphical interfaces to Web browsing to financial software… In general the company’s approach worked because it was based on an artificial monopoly. It was important for us as users to work with common files and formats, so Windows continued to dominate and we adopted its browser and related software. But it’s a different digital world now. No one cares about operating systems and monopolies (Google notwithstanding). The world that Netscape tried to introduce and Microsoft did everything possible to quash is now upon us… Microsoft’s antediluvian role as the Great Copier looks doomed to fail with its Surface.”
Quain reports, “Microsoft may need the Surface tablet, but you don’t.”
Read more in the full article – recommended – here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Mister C” and “chinstrap” for the heads up.]
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