I understand Jeff’s fascination with Surface, but my sentiment is in line with Sqlsvrman’s point: Microsoft needed to make no obvious errors during this Surface launch to reliably capture new customers.
They didn’t do it.
What’s worse, the errors they made are typical Microsoftian blunders, that could’ve been predicted by many, and (for that reason) avoided by Microsoft if they spent any time in self-reflection.
First, the software’s behavior, with the email app’s poor design, and with the operating system’s slow performance, simply brings to the consumer’s mind the question of ‘Why?’
Microsoft has had years to focus on this new product. How on earth do they allow the software experience (their wheelhouse for their entire existence) to be so bad?
Then, in the hardware, the decision to make the keyboard an integral part of the Surface experience, and yet to charge extra for it, will simply infuriate potential buyers, who judge it as a nickel-and-dime decision that tries to bait them into considering the Surface a lower-cost purchase than it really is.
Jeff believes that people should consider this purchase as entrée into a future experience, not as an experience for the here-and-now.
I believe that it’s too late for Microsoft to be begging for this gimme.
If this was 2007, and they were competing on level ground with Apple and the iPhone, it would’ve been totally justified. Even if this was 2010, and Microsoft was competing against the first iPad, consumers would’ve probably granted them the leeway. But in 2012, against an entire product sector which has been thrashing Microsoft black and blue for years, they needed to be near-perfect coming out of the gate, but they’ve unforgivably failed.
