ComputerWorld had a scathing review of Microsoft’s appearance at CES yesterday.
They had some really good points too.
Some excepts:
Computerworld – Microsoft’s announcement yesterday at CES that its next version of Windows will run on the ARM chip architecture was the wrong message at the wrong place, said an industry analyst.
“I’m baffled,” said Michael Cherry, the analyst at Kirkland, Wash.-based Directions on Microsoft whose specialty is Microsoft’s operating systems. “I just don’t get what they get from this.”
Cherry was talking about the news Wednesday from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that Microsoft will support the ARM chip line, which is prominent in smartphones and most recently, Apple’s iPad tablet.
Later in the article, he gets to the point…
But Cherry couldn’t figure out why Microsoft would even talk about Windows 8 running on an ARM system-on-a-chip, or SoC, at CES.
“This is the Consumer Electronics Show, right?” said Cherry, emphasizing the first word of the monster trade show’s name. “It’s not COMDEX,” he added, referring to the long-defunct computer show that Las Vegas last hosted in 2003. “And it’s not the Professional Developers Conference.”
Microsoft picked the wrong stage to talk up Windows and chips, Cherry contended.
“CES is like a car show,” Cherry said. “When I go to the auto show, I don’t mind seeing a couple of concept cars, but what I really want to know is what can I buy at the dealership now? This is a consumer electronics show. It’s not about processors, it’s about features. And I didn’t hear anything about that.”
What Cherry wanted to hear from Microsoft was what features and capabilities a future Windows will deliver on tablets, the hottest hardware category at the moment and the one that Sinofsky was referencing when talking about ARM.
I didn’t think about it that way but he’s dead right. They basically spent a lot of time talking about Windows 8 on ARM and got a lot of buzz from it but analysts are starting to really dig deeper and ask tougher questions.
I thought it was a good demo myself. I though Ballmer did a good job with what Microsoft have right now. Windows Phone 7 isn’t selling that well, Windows 8 isn’t ready and we don’t know how many consumer units Kinect has really sold.
When you don’t have great news, distract the audience.
They did just that…
