“Dear Microsoft, Steve Balmer and Bill Gates: What is up with your obsession with keyboards?” John Kirk asks for TechPinions.
Just giving people [tablet] devices has a really horrible track record. You really have to change the curriculum and the teacher. And it’s never going to work on a device where you don’t have a keyboard-type input… – Bill Gates, 25 June 2012
$500 fully subsidized with a plan! I said that is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard, which makes it not a very good email machine… I like our strategy. I like it a lot… – Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, 17 January 2007
“Now, is that the very same Steve Ballmer who just introduced us to the Surface – with an attachable keyboard? Not to rub it in, Mr. Ballmer, but your strategy of relying upon the importance of a physical keyboard was wrong, and not just a little,” Kirk writes. This week marks the fifth anniversary of the iPhone. The iPhone now generates nearly $25 billion in revenue per quarter or over $100 billion per year. And – are you ready for this – the iPhone, all by itself, is bigger than ALL of Microsoft. That’s right, one single product, that didn’t exist five years ago, is now bigger than Microsoft… and it doesn’t even have a keyboard.”
Kirk writes, “The Surface is, perhaps, a bit too aptly named. With a keyboard and a kickstand and an upturned rear-facing camera, it’s very clear that Microsoft intends the Surface to work best of all on…well…on a suface. A flat surface, to be precise. But tablets want to be held, not held down. Tablets want to be touched, tablets want to be moved, tablets want to be ‘free.’ A word of advice. A keyboard is a peripheral device, not the principal device. Focus on what matters or soon nothing else will matter at all.”
Much more in the full article – highly recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Anachronisms love antiques.
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