Microsoft is Ruining Smartphones and Tablets for Everyone

If there was a big tech shocker this Christmas, it was the fact that the Kindle was the top selling gift of all time, according to multiple news sources. Really? If so, did the entire industry miss the mark, leaving the space open to a guy whose company specializes in online books sales? A guy who has never really entered the hardware space in any meaningful way before, except as an investor?

How did this happen?

The kicker here, is the fact that numerous failed attempts at a pad machine have been made, beginning with the imaginary Dynabook in the 1970s and including various WinPads and other tablets right up to the Microsoft announcement of a tablet platform a few years ago. You remember that, right? This was the platform that was set to dominate all computing by 2000 or 2004 or whatever. In the meantime, a slew of "convertible" laptops evolved and subsequently ended up in the trash heap of innovation.

Apparently all anyone actually wanted was a device they could read books on. Of course, this may only be the beginning, should Apple come out with its iSlate or iPad—what I prefer to just call a Giant iPod Touch.

So, what changed? Why are we making this sort of platform shift, all of the sudden?

How's this for an idea: This would have happened a long time ago, were it not for Microsoft. The same holds true for the smartphone. It would have become an object of desire a lot sooner, had Microsoft laid off.

The software giant has been a hindrance to progress ever since it transformed from a subversive company to a kind of IBM-clone to a lackey for big business. There's no connection between the company and the end-user anymore.

To understand this, we need to travel back to the introduction of Excel. The dominant spreadsheet app used to be Lotus 1-2-3. The program put Lotus at the top of the software heap. The company was bigger than Microsoft—by a lot. Microsoft had a crummy spreadsheet program called Multiplan at the time, but it discovered a guy who was working on a Lotus killer. His app became Excel and Microsoft ran a series of humorous ads featuring people skulking around an office, showing each other Excel in a manner that suggested their fictitious company wouldn't approve of the use of the unauthorized product. All of the workers continued to use it on the sly, because they could get so much more work done.

The ad was totally subversive. It fit right in with the mid-1970s PC revolution, where attendees at those early computer conferences would boo IBM's name. The entire "micro-computer" scene was very subversive in that way. But Bill Gates said that he'd like Microsoft to become the software version of IBM. It's since managed that feat, and now Microsoft is as likely to get booed as IBM was back in 1976.—

And you know what? Judging from the company's recent history, it deserves it. Microsoft is the post-modern IBM, serving as the same sort of hindrance to the scene that IBM was 50 years ago. Microsoft is hindering the industry with its vision, stumbling into places it doesn't belong. The company is like the big, dumb rich kid you don't want at your party. He comes anyway and knocks over the punchbowl--again. The company ruins markets just by showing up.

Microsoft entered the smartphone space early on and slowed things down in the process because nobody wanted to compete with its money and fickle approach. It's not worth risking that the company would take your good idea, re-brand your idea, and ruin the whole thing for everyone. It's a scorched earth policy. Examples are everywhere. Look at FrontPage, a very functional HTML editor bought and branded as a Microsoft product. The company kept mucking with the app until it was useless. The product line was eventually shuttered. HTML and page editing gravitated to the Mac in order to avoid Microsoft (the aforementioned big, dumb rich kid). That Mac software was eventually re-coded for Windows.

Microsoft's tablet was doomed from the beginning—actually, it's been doomed numerous times over the years. The company was lording it over everyone, while making bogus predictions about the potential of its vision. The smartphone story is the same. We would have no smartphone industry without Steve Jobs's iPhone.

I'm not writing this to slam Microsoft. The company is amazing, but once it lost its subversive edge, it lost its ability to be anything more than a functionary company—that big, dumb uninvited rich kid—doing the bidding of big business. Microsoft is a well-paid lackey. Gates himself used to go to user group meetings. The company pulled the plug on all of that, and the scene rapidly declined as the corporate shills took over.

Now we're seeing the emergence of the next Microsoft-free zone—the Kindle and the Apple iDunno. Finally, a touchscreen computer that people actually want. The Kindle was beyond Microsoft's grasp. This became apparent when the company decided to stop scanning books to compete with Google. Someone asked why they stopped, and I guess the answer was, "I don't know. Does anyone even read anymore?" It was also beyond them because it has no relation to the big corporations, amongst which Microsoft has settled. I'm sure it's comfortable there, but it doesn't do me or anyone else outside of the corporate structure any good, does it? Microsoft should just get out of the smartphone business and the tablet game. It wasn't invited in the first place.