3 reasons Microsoft's Surface is no joke

Many have scoffed at the idea that Redmond's tablet will succeed. But there are three crucial reasons to take the effort seriously. By Don Sears

FORTUNE -- Do not underestimate Microsoft's Surface tablet move. Its gambit to design and build its own hardware is a bold play to develop a thriving ecosystem of new products. It is centered on Microsoft's dominant property: the operating system. Monday's flashy Surface launch may have felt like an Apple event with its bright, pastel-colored keyboard, slick introductory videos and breathless hyping from little-known engineers. But, in fact, Microsoft's play is anything but Apple-like. The company is clearly trying to make tablets into hybrid PC-mobile devices, something its California rival has said is a bad idea. We don't yet know all of Surface's details -- battery life, pricing, official release dates are all to-be-determined for instance. But here are three important reasons Microsoft's Surface is likely to be anything but dead on arrival:

Microsoft (MSFT) has had success in the consumer market with the Xbox and most recently with the Kinect motion-control devices. The Xbox has become a household name with major brand extensions as an entertainment device. Microsoft disrupted gaming, and it can disrupt hardware.

Microsoft has serious engineering chops. Josh Topolosky, Editor-in-Chief of The Verge and not exactly a fanboy, was blown away by a visit to Microsoft's R&D in 2011. He wrote of that visit: "[MS] showed me a project … which would allow you to create a virtual window from one room to another, utilizing a variety of display, motion sensing, and 3D technologies… dubbed … the 'magic wall.' It was nuts. It was awesome. It was ambitious. The whole time, all I could think was: where has Microsoft been hiding guys like this?"

You really have been drinking too much of that "Apple-ade".

Consumer satisfaction? Apple? You gotta be kidding!

Look, when those surveys are done, and the people being surveyed are the Apple-ade drinkers, and the iFanatics, then, the survey is useless, since, it would be like asking Obama how he feels about his job performance. Or asking a Muslim how he feels about his religion, and, since he's got nothing to compare against, because he's only known one religion, then, the answer would be totally useless for comparison or analysis.

Perhaps what people need to do with Apple, is to conduct a "Coke vs Pepsi" type of study, where people are asked to rate a computer on many different tasks, without knowing which computer is which, and without looking at the exterior packaging. But, Apple would never let that kind of study occur, and they would disavow any such study, because, they know that they would lose, BADLY.

" Uhhhh, that's not ours either! "

---Adorno, Weiner, Obama, Perry, Pelosi, Frank, Pritzker, Bush and Associates, LLLP.

Follow the....

http://www.campaignmoney.com/finance.asp?type=in&cycle=08&criteria=pritzker&fname=penny

Billionaire business mogul Penny Pritzker is a member of one of America’s richest families and was the Finance Chair for the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. It was Pritzker that led the prolific, and illegal, fundraising that helped power Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. She was the chair of Chicago-based Superior Bank’s board for five years.

Pritzker was into subprime lending before it became all the rage starting in around 2000. Prtizker's chairmanship was to concentrate on sub prime lending, principally on home mortgages, but for a while in subprime auto lending, too, after the Pritzkers' bank acquired its wholesale mortgage organization division, Alliance Funding, in December 1992.

Back then they called it "predatory lending."

Superior Bank went belly up in 2001 with over $1 billion in insured and uninsured deposits; 1,406 depositors lost much of their life savings. This collapse came amid harsh criticism of how Superior’s owners promoted sub-prime home mortgages.

On Nov. 1 [2002] the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. pointed the finger at Ernst & Young, Superior’s auditor, in a fraud suit filed in federal court here. But that action came two months after a group of Superior depositors accused the bank’s owners and directors, including two members of the Pritzker family, of racketeering....

[snip]

...Pritzker is chairman of Classic Residence by Hyatt, luxury senior living communities in 11 states; chairman of The Parking Spot, which owns and operates off-airport parking facilities in nine cities; chairman of the credit data company TransUnion and chairman of Pritzker Realty. She also sits on the board of Global Hyatt and plays a role in numerous non-profit groups, including serving as chairman of the Olympic village portion of Chicago’s bid to win the 2016 Summer Games.

http://www.theobamafile.com/_associates/PennyPritzker.htm

Nudge nudge nudge...

"Oops"

How DID all that happen, Wiley -- if not ala the craftsmanship of self-worshipping suuuper genius Software Wizard-clerks for whom, evidently, the calibration of their moral compass was as corrupt, as yours?

FAIL. No Sale.

What Facebook was doing in March 2008

You're still too dumb to understand what occurred in 2008, and the people at Facebook were lucky to have started their website years earlier.

BTW, that's a pretty stupid graph to put up, since, the number of visitors to a web site, especially a FREE one, is not indicative of its economic health.

My website, YES!, I said, "MY WEBSITE", would also be free, and there would be no membership requirements, and the only "members" would be the people who create articles to be read by the general public. The general public wouldn't pay a dime, while the official "members" would be the ones paying the bills. So, even if "MY" website were to be successful, I would not be counting the number of users or members of the public, since, they would not be members. It would be like what happens when people pick up a newspaper or magazine from a local store or distributor, and the publisher would have no idea about who that person is. Similar concept with my idea. No logging in, and no IP to keep track of.

So, to me, showing number of visitors is, basically, useless, and it wouldn't translate to number of sales or be indicative of a revenue stream. Facebook's numbers, for the most part, don't translate to real success. Google does a lot better job converting their visitors into real revenue, but, even there, Google is a business which got started way before the recession of 2008. Oops! I gave it away. I accidentally told you what happened in 2008, and now, you won't have to go back and figure it out yourself. But, no matter, you'll still not understand.

>>”MY WEBSITE”, would also be free,

Sure it will Wiley. No doubt the servers running your vaporware will be powered ala an ACME Pons&Fleishman Cold Fusion generator too.
But alas, you'll never finish it --- as boring folks with the self-Adornoation of your ego in the Vanity is clearly more your Forte than finishing actual projects.

>>Google does a lot better job converting their visitors into real revenue

Google was started with CIA seed money. Have you thought about asking them to fund your patents? Of course not.
That’s the thing about the Adornoation of one’s self in the Vanity, Wiley - it’s only skin deep and has no character or real substance.
FAIL. No sale.

Google, CIA, invest in ‘future predicting’ startup

http://business.financialpost.com/2010/08/02/fp-tech-desk-google-cia-invest-in-future-predicting-startup/

But we don't need that to predict your unfunded "current project" ending up on the unfinished excuse pile, do we Wiley?

Go ahead. Prove me wrong by finishing your website and publishing that URL. I dare you.

Until then,Wiley, this...

Help! ????? - not a valid win32 application
myself | myself

Posted on Friday, March 07, 2008 3:25:03 PM by adorno
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1982166/posts

...is the technically (un)proficient albatross you'll be wearing around your vainglorious neck.

>>So, to me, showing number of visitors is, basically, useless,

That information wouldn’t be useless to the individual “members” you’re allegedly planning to try to lure into funding your pay-to-publish fairy tale. Nobody is going to leave their magazines to sell at a kiosk in a basement closet with no traffic — much less pay for the “privilege” of leaving them there.

Besides, there’s lots of interesting groups on FB where various content is presented in a manageable, useful, and interesting format... thus manifesting an internet presence for whoever wants to do so — all without becoming a paying “member”.

So try harder - at something besides rationalizing your failure.

Look, when those surveys are done, and the people being surveyed are the Apple-ade drinkers

This is the American Customer Satisfaction Index. They survey 80,000 people on questions relating to dozens of markets and industries, spanning hundreds of companies and even the government. Consumer electronics is only a tiny part of the overall survey. And they've been doing this since long before Apple was in the phone or music player business. So much for the fanboi theory.

What will really kill you is that not only does the iPhone rank highest now, it ranks higher than anyone ever did in the history of the survey before the iPhone was released. Nobody else, even Nokia in their heyday, has ever broken 80. And Apple's still there above 80, far ahead of the nearest competition.

But don't let the facts ruin your fanboi conspiracy theory.

But, Apple would never let that kind of study occur

Apple doesn't have to let such a study happen. Anybody can do it. Samsung tried something like that with the Note, but it didn't go over too well. I think the extreme cherry-picking of included capabilities that were freely downloadable for the iPhone anyway was just too obvious.

This is the American Customer Satisfaction Index. They survey 80,000 people on questions relating to dozens of markets and industries, spanning hundreds of companies and even the government.

Well then, the study would be faulty, no matter who conducted it. A study asking a question of the general public, about a product that they haven't used, would be completely flawed. The only people that can answer a customer satisfaction survey about a certain product, would be the people who purchase it and used it. Putting the question to somebody that doesn't use a particular device, is stupid. It's like asking a Chevy Impala owner how satisfied he is with Cadillacs, which they never owned or drove.

Fact is that, only iPad and iPhone users would have to be asked those consumer satisfaction questions about those gadgets, and, as we all know, they are fanatical about Apple stuff, no matter what it is, or how good or bad it is, and so, the results will always reflect that irrational behavior from the iFanatics. It would be like asking a hard-core. life-long democrat, how he feels about Obama. Right or wrong, and no matter his performance, that democrat will never say anything bad about Obama. Try reality for a change.

Well then, the study would be faulty, no matter who conducted it. A study asking a question of the general public, about a product that they haven't used, would be completely flawed.

Are you being purposely dense? Everybody is being asked questions about companies they deal with and products they use. It is random among all users, not targeted to die-hard fans of any product. This means that for smart phones they ask users of at least Nokia, HTC, Samsung, Motorola, Apple and Blackberry how they like their products.

As noted, nobody has ever scored as high as Apple does. Also, note that Motorola and Blackberry users are liking their phones less and less recently.

as we all know, they are fanatical about Apple stuff, no matter what it is, or how good or bad it is

They ask a random cross section. Apple has sold at least 200 million iPhones to all types of customers, from casual people who just want a phone and liked that one best to total "fanatics." The odds of the survey being loaded with "fanatics" are extremely slim. You are the one having problems with reality if you think there are actually that many "fanatics" out there.

It would be like asking a hard-core. life-long democrat, how he feels about Obama. Right or wrong, and no matter his performance, that democrat will never say anything bad about Obama.

You are, of course, absolutely wrong. He has caught a lot of heat from the left for not closing Guantanamo, keeping up those deadly drone attacks, and stepping up prosecution of marijuana dispensaries. The anti-gun crowd is really pissed because, based on his record, they expected some gun bans to have come through by now, and the only gun legislation he's signed allowed carry in national parks.

To shut you up, I’m including some screen caps from my system, and the following are screen captures of some of the pages as I’m testing the system. The database is written with Postgresql, and consists of around 30 tables at the present time.

I wrote the system to compete with all news organizations, and to even replace those news organizations, by enabling the columnists/reporters/writers, to work on their own, and not have to be affiliated with any publisher. However, even writers with affiliations, and publishers, can use my system to publish their work.
**********************************************************

The first screen is the start screen, with a small introduction about what the system will do, and how it will do it.

http://www.4freeimagehost.com/uploads/761ab12bce4b.jpg

The second is the criteria screen, where a regular user selects and/or enters the specific criteria for searching the system for articles.

http://www.4freeimagehost.com/uploads/bc0615fe7151.jpg

The third screen presents a listing of the articles found that met the selection criteria which was entered n the criteria screen.

http://www.4freeimagehost.com/uploads/5fa5b3e6e270.jpg

The fourth screen presents an article, which was selected in the listed articles screen. (The presented article, is one hosted within “MY” system, and which was entered by an author/writer/columnist, whose information is also hosted within my system

http://www.4freeimagehost.com/uploads/3f00e8bed2da.jpg

The fifth screen presents an article selected from the articles list screen, but, in this case, the link to the article sent the user to an externally hosted article.

http://www.4freeimagehost.com/uploads/81da1c2b7a60.jpg

Just a hint, seriously clean up the criteria screen, far too many choices on the page at once for the average user. Take a hint from Apple: people like simplicity. Even if the system is complex, hide the complexity. I have seen a system with this huge number of choices on the page, but in that case the small number of people who used it were experts with the subject matter, and the complexity was actually written to cater to their taste.

Titles should also stand out from the rest of the text, so at least bold them. And choose a font style for your input boxes. Mixing serif and sans-serif doesn’t work.

Also think about better use of white space, and shortening your lines. It is very hard to track from the end of a line to the beginning of the next when lines are so wide with normal leading.

Notice extensive duplication of wording on your buttons on the left. If the title says “News Stories” then those words don’t have to appear in every option under it. This throws more text at the user, making it harder to easily see the options. Simplify. Stuff surrounded by other stuff doesn’t stand out. White space is your friend.

And check out “Top Discussion Sites.” You have “Other.” That’s not top, that’s “Other.” My eyes tracked to this to look for “Top” not “Other.” How about just “Recommended Discussion Sites” with “Top 20 Republican”, “Top 20 Democrat” and “Other.”

But even then, what if I want below the Top 20 Republican? Am I stuck with “Other” that would be logically mixed Republican and Democrat? Simplify further under this category “Republican”, “Democrat” and “Other.” Under each category’s page you can do a “Top 20” or even allow sorting options like by editor’s choice, by popularity, by activity. You’d have to add extra programming, counting the click-throughs to determine popularity, and constantly checking your linked sites to check for their activity.

Yes, I’ve played usability expert in a past career. I’ve revamped applications and had the users literally excited and downright giddy to use the new one. No, I don’t do it anymore, but it doesn’t hurt to throw out a few hints.

Even if you’re clueless on the electronics industry and absolutely myopic in your hatred of all things Apple, you’re still a conservative, and conservative endeavors deserve to prosper regardless. Good luck.

Wow, what a thread! Lot of issues being beat to death here.

I suspect that anyone reading all this who has enough invested in NASDAC to have an interest in this discussion is into both MS and Apple, and rooting for both of them, so why all the flag-waving?

I've served time in all four slots -- user, developer, manager, investor -- and I think Microsoft/Apple/Unix/Linux/other is a great mix.

I started out using VMS and Unix on big DEC machines, then wrote assembler and BDS C for 8080/Z80 on CP/M, then wrote a couple hundred thousand lines of MS C and C++ and C# from early MS-DOS versions through Visual Studio 2008, and also quite a bit of Linux driver code, with a couple of years of heavy development in several Turbo Pascal and Delphi versions (from TP 3.0 through D7) thrown in, and I made (and, unfortunately, spent) around three million dollars at it in eighteen years, from my own software and royalties and salaries.

I also managed a medium-sized state agency's development shop for a couple of years, and wrote a lot of Delphi and C# code for another agency, all of which is still in use today. I've got a few shares of some of the companies under discussion, but just a few. I'm keeping them.

At home, I run a Win Server 2008 R2 server (MSDN subscription holdover) mostly for the grandkids and for me to play with, and I have an old laptop running XP Pro on the network for a couple of programs that only run there.

But when I "retired," I needed a new "main box" I hoped would last me at least ten years. I looked seriously at all the options -- and bought a maxed-out Apple MacBook Pro. Sorry, adorno, it's just a better computer. With Parallels, I have XP and Win7 and FReeBSD and Linux when I need (or want to play with) them. Best of a bunch of worlds, in other words... I love OSX.

I have an iPhone 3GS, and envy my daughter's iPhone 4S, with its faster CPU and flash and better camera. Best smartphones there are. My sister has an iMac and an iPad and a Macbook Air, and I'd love to have one of each. I just can't justify them right now.

But I won't give up my Windows boxes, or disown my years of Windows development, or even my Linux and FreeBSD VMs, with their free software that does things I want to do. I don't have to! They're all out there, serving me and making me happy! I buy computers to do things, and I use the hardware/OS/software that does what I want at any given time. Right now that's Apple and OSX/iOS and Parallels. Maybe next year, or the year after, it will be someone else -- but I'm not going to get my knickers in a twist over it. I like 'em all!

I fought these wars for a while, until I realized that they're all good -- so, for me, why not buy Apple and have them all!

Relax, adorno, and enjoy your MS products -- they're cool, and I hope "Surface" will be, too. But you don't have to knock everyone else -- think about your blood pressure.

Chill.

My blood pressure is fine, and the doctors tell me, every time I go for a checkup, that I have the blood pressure of a teenager, and I haven’t been one for a long time.

When it comes to your preferences on computer equipment and computer software, I don’t give a damn. To each his own.

What you don’t seem to understand is that, I am a practical person, and I go with what is more practical with the rest of the world, and, for what I do, and for what most people do, Windows software, and Windows-based hardware, does the trick a lot better than any Apple gear or software. Price is also something that matters to most people, and what Apple provides, is not really that much superior to warrant the price differential that comes with what Apple creates. You may think that you MacBook Pro is superior quality, but, I could just as easily do whatever you can, with a much lower priced Windows Box, and still have plenty of dough to make another hardware purchase. When it comes to quality that matters, how long do you suppose you’re going to use your MacBook pro? Three years? Five? After 3 years, it will be time to move on and upgrade again, to some newer, faster, better MacBook Pro, which is precisely the reason that, purchasing a $2000-$3000 piece of hardware makes no sense whatsoever to me. For that kind of expenditure, I could easily purchase 2 high-end Windows machines, and have more productivity come from them than any two MacBook Pros. Quality is nice, and looks are nice, but, practicality is more important, to me and the vast majority of people in the world.

I completely understand what you’re saying, and all of your suggestions, and I actually appreciate your input.

But, I have considered what you suggested in the past, and, when it comes to the criteria screen, it’s a lot simpler than it appears, when, the user only needs to select or enter one piece of data to make his/her selections. I actually had designed the system with multiple pages for each selection entry, but, I found it to be very cumbersome to take the user through so many entries and screens. So, I decided against 8 or 10 screens, and presented the whole ball of wax on one screen, with the user, after becoming acquainted with the screen, becoming a bit savvy about how to use the screen. In reality, like I said earlier, it’s a lot simpler than going through several screens for selections, and, in many cases, it’s as simple as just hitting the “Submit” button and proceeding to the next screen, where the current day’s articles are presented in a menu. But, the criteria screen is meant for the user more directly target the kind of articles he or she is interested in, and, there is really no need to make all the selections, and perhaps one or two is more than necessary, and even none is what many people will choose. So, in a way, although the screen may look “busy”, it’s really not that busy when a person understands how to use it. To me, after playing around with the “many” screens programming, it became clearer that, one screen might actually be a lot simpler for the system and the users.

One thing that I will admit, is that, I’m not a web designer, so, no doubt, the screens could use some cleaning up and some changes to make them more appealing.

When it comes to the menu on the left, with Discussion sites and republican and democrat options, I really hadn’t paid that much attention to how the options appear or read. That is one part of the system which I wrote many years ago, and I haven’t paid attention to it until I recently picked up the system again to, test and improve it, and hopefully, try to get something on the internet. I had actually given up on the system, but, with so much ignorance out there, and with the media being so biased, I thought it’s time to try to get the system out in the world. My intent is to present the news and information in an unbiased manner, with everybody represented, and no preferences for the way the material is presented. Thus, is someone is looking to see what Obama and Romney are up to, I would present all of the day’s news concisely, in one page or two, without regard to who wrote the articles, and all together, with democrat and republican showing together, and thus, hopefully, people would get to see the stories from the many different viewpoints, and not just liberal or republican. The spin that comes from working for a NY Times would disappear, because, the user would get to see the articles from all sources, and from all writers, and from all different viewpoints.

BTW, your conclusion about the way I feel about Apple, are off target, since, it’s not “hate” that drives my Apple rants. I just dislike the fanaticism that surrounds the Apple users, and I myself, do own an iPad and an older Mac. But, I don’t express any kind of love for anything Apple, nor even for Microsoft. I’m just a lot more practical than most people, and I don’t love Microsoft or Apple, nor do I hate them. That to me, is silly and stupid. But, I won’t get in the way of anybody purchasing anything Apple nor will I try to dissuade them from it. It’s the fanboysm and the fanaticism that irks me. Oh, and the high prices that come from most of Apple’s products and software.

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Google, CIA, invest in ‘future predicting’ startup