At last, Microsoft is starting to sell Surface RT the right way

A $900 million "adjustment", pointing at several million unsold units sitting in warehouses somewhere, is probably not the way Microsoft hoped to enter the hardware market.

Sure, the company had built mice, keyboards, and game consoles before, but the Surface RT was different. It disrupted Microsoft's traditional OEM model with Redmond for the first time building something that is more or less a PC, going head-to-head with devices from its OEM partners.

When I reviewed it, Surface RT left me a bit nonplussed. It was not a bad device in the way that the Acer Iconia W3 was a bad device. Surface RT uses high quality materials, feels well-built, and certain aspects of its design—its keyboard covers, both the surprisingly effective Touch Cover, and the just plain good Type Cover; its aesthetics; the integrated kickstand—were smart and thoughtful.

But as a complete package, it just didn't make sense. It was a touch-based tablet, but it forced you to use the touch-hostile Windows desktop for some tasks. It ran Windows, but it couldn't run any Windows apps, except the one built-in: Office. It ran Office, but it didn't have Outlook, and you couldn't use it for commercial purposes without a separate license. Even with this Office license, it couldn't join Windows domains. Its Metro environment offered a solid, if incomplete, touch user interface, but it had few apps.

Microsoft argued that it was an uncompromised best of both worlds device: a PC and a tablet.

I can see how it could have been that. With a rounded out Office suite, Active Directory participation, and commercial usage rights, it might have been a viable PC and a good fit for, say, mobile road warriors: full strength Office (including, with the HDMI port, the ability to connect to projectors), iron-clad security, and all-day battery life in a lightweight package.

With a more complete ecosystem of Metro applications—and, especially, if Microsoft's built-in Mail, Music, and Video apps had been better—and a Metro environment that didn't have the desktop dependency, it might have been viable as "just a tablet."

But as it was, it was only part of a PC and only part of a tablet.

Even that might have been acceptable if the price had been right. Make it a spur of the moment purchase, and people can find a niche for it. Strong sales would no doubt induce developers to address the shortage of Metro apps, too. But it wasn't a spur of the moment purchase. The Surface RT started at $499 for a 32 GB unit with no keyboard cover. That put it squarely up against the iPad, or the Google Nexus 10 that came out within a few weeks of the Surface RT's launch.

Both of those tablets had faster processors, better screens, and most importantly, far more applications than the Surface RT.

Why are these people dancing, and what does it have to do with a tablet?

To top it all off, Microsoft's advertising had, oh, just about nothing to do with the product. It showed a bunch of people dancing around, and about the only thing you learned about Surface was that it had a keyboard that could snap on and off.

A keyboard that costs extra and doesn't ship with the $499 version.

Did it show the things that Surface could do? No. Did it show the things that Windows RT does that are actually pretty good? No. Arguably, the ads didn't even explain that Surface is a tablet computer.

More broadly, the same was true of Windows 8 advertising in general. What does this painful looking ad tell you about Windows? Nothing.

If, in spite of all this, Surface RT was still something you wanted to buy, Microsoft made even that hard. At its launch, it was only available in a handful of Microsoft stores and online. The chance of being able to do something fairly basic, like, oh, I don't know, try one before you bought it, was slim to none, unless you lived in exactly the right part of the US. Rest of the world? Fuggeddaboutit.

With all that going for it, it's not tremendously surprising that Surface RT didn't find many people willing to buy it. A few people did, of course; IT guys who just wanted a lightweight package with a good RDP client, or students who wanted something to run Office. There's even a small demographic of haters who bought the Surface RT because they wouldn't dream of buying anything with an Apple logo or running Android.

Though the student market might be a market that could be nurtured into something larger, none of this was what you might call a recipe for success. That success should so far have eluded Microsoft is no great surprise.

The future, however, might be a little brighter. In a bid to woo that student market, Microsoft has a promotional scheme that allows schools to buy the units for $199 (or $289 with the Type Cover). For an Office and Web browsing machine that's basically immune to malware, that's a pretty compelling deal.

While it's a shame that the offer doesn't extend to students, it's nonetheless a sensible move. It's a market where Surface RT's quirky mix of features isn't so inconvenient. Outlook and macros don't matter a whole lot to kids writing up book reports or plotting simple graphs.

Redmond is also starting to tell people what Windows 8 is and does. While streaming Project Runway yesterday, er, while my wife was streaming Project Runway yesterday, we saw this ad a whole lot. It's maybe not the best ad ever made, but it makes a point: Windows 8 lets you run two apps side-by-side on your tablet, and that's actually useful. iOS doesn't.

On the hardware front, the company has been running the Siri-trolling iPad comparison ad for a few weeks now. I personally think it's a great ad. Is it fair and balanced? No, of course not. It's a skewed, biased comparison that highlights Windows 8's strengths and ignores its weaknesses. But it's fun, and I think it does a good job of highlighting the places that Microsoft has innovated, and the ways in which Windows RT devices offer, in some ways, something more than the iPad.

Up to now, the ad has always been slightly undermined by the pricing reveal at the end. Rather than comparing the iPad to Microsoft's own tablet, it resorted to comparing against Dell's Windows RT device, the XPS 10—because it's cheaper.

No longer. With the price cut, Surface can now star in a Siri ad of its own.

Surface RT is a lot more buyable than it ever was, too, with wider international availability, and availability beyond Microsoft's own stores. The Best Buy store-in-store approach should further the visibility of the product.

To top it all off, Windows 8.1 will update Windows RT to give the platform Outlook, filling a substantial functional gap for corporate workers. 8.1 should also deliver an improved Metro Mail app, and more generally, the store is starting to become a little more fleshed out.

Is this going to be enough to make Surface RT a belated success? Realistically: no. It's too late for that, and honestly it wouldn't surprise me to find the company shipping the devices at an even deeper discount to the first few million Xbox One buyers to emphasize the SmartGlass/tablet companion aspect.

So this has been an expensive education. It probably isn't over, either; further price cuts in the future can't be ruled out, and they'll require even more "adjustments."

It is, however, a more promising sign for the future. Wide availability, a price that makes sense, advertising that both informs and amuses, and promotions that emphasize the device's strengths: these are all things that should have been there from day one. For Surface RT, they weren't, but they give me hope that in the next Surface RT—I don't believe that Surface RT will be Microsoft's last foray into the ARM tablet market—they will be.

Listing image by TheGiantVermin

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

At last, Microsoft is starting to sell Surface RT the right way

A $900 million "adjustment", pointing at several million unsold units sitting in warehouses somewhere, is probably not the way Microsoft hoped to enter the hardware market.

Sure, the company had built mice, keyboards, and game consoles before, but the Surface RT was different. It disrupted Microsoft's traditional OEM model with Redmond for the first time building something that is more or less a PC, going head-to-head with devices from its OEM partners.

When I reviewed it, Surface RT left me a bit nonplussed. It was not a bad device in the way that the Acer Iconia W3 was a bad device. Surface RT uses high quality materials, feels well-built, and certain aspects of its design—its keyboard covers, both the surprisingly effective Touch Cover, and the just plain good Type Cover; its aesthetics; the integrated kickstand—were smart and thoughtful.

But as a complete package, it just didn't make sense. It was a touch-based tablet, but it forced you to use the touch-hostile Windows desktop for some tasks. It ran Windows, but it couldn't run any Windows apps, except the one built-in: Office. It ran Office, but it didn't have Outlook, and you couldn't use it for commercial purposes without a separate license. Even with this Office license, it couldn't join Windows domains. Its Metro environment offered a solid, if incomplete, touch user interface, but it had few apps.

Microsoft argued that it was an uncompromised best of both worlds device: a PC and a tablet.

I can see how it could have been that. With a rounded out Office suite, Active Directory participation, and commercial usage rights, it might have been a viable PC and a good fit for, say, mobile road warriors: full strength Office (including, with the HDMI port, the ability to connect to projectors), iron-clad security, and all-day battery life in a lightweight package.

With a more complete ecosystem of Metro applications—and, especially, if Microsoft's built-in Mail, Music, and Video apps had been better—and a Metro environment that didn't have the desktop dependency, it might have been viable as "just a tablet."

But as it was, it was only part of a PC and only part of a tablet.

Even that might have been acceptable if the price had been right. Make it a spur of the moment purchase, and people can find a niche for it. Strong sales would no doubt induce developers to address the shortage of Metro apps, too. But it wasn't a spur of the moment purchase. The Surface RT started at $499 for a 32 GB unit with no keyboard cover. That put it squarely up against the iPad, or the Google Nexus 10 that came out within a few weeks of the Surface RT's launch.

Both of those tablets had faster processors, better screens, and most importantly, far more applications than the Surface RT.

Why are these people dancing, and what does it have to do with a tablet?

To top it all off, Microsoft's advertising had, oh, just about nothing to do with the product. It showed a bunch of people dancing around, and about the only thing you learned about Surface was that it had a keyboard that could snap on and off.

A keyboard that costs extra and doesn't ship with the $499 version.

Did it show the things that Surface could do? No. Did it show the things that Windows RT does that are actually pretty good? No. Arguably, the ads didn't even explain that Surface is a tablet computer.

More broadly, the same was true of Windows 8 advertising in general. What does this painful looking ad tell you about Windows? Nothing.

If, in spite of all this, Surface RT was still something you wanted to buy, Microsoft made even that hard. At its launch, it was only available in a handful of Microsoft stores and online. The chance of being able to do something fairly basic, like, oh, I don't know, try one before you bought it, was slim to none, unless you lived in exactly the right part of the US. Rest of the world? Fuggeddaboutit.

With all that going for it, it's not tremendously surprising that Surface RT didn't find many people willing to buy it. A few people did, of course; IT guys who just wanted a lightweight package with a good RDP client, or students who wanted something to run Office. There's even a small demographic of haters who bought the Surface RT because they wouldn't dream of buying anything with an Apple logo or running Android.

Though the student market might be a market that could be nurtured into something larger, none of this was what you might call a recipe for success. That success should so far have eluded Microsoft is no great surprise.

The future, however, might be a little brighter. In a bid to woo that student market, Microsoft has a promotional scheme that allows schools to buy the units for $199 (or $289 with the Type Cover). For an Office and Web browsing machine that's basically immune to malware, that's a pretty compelling deal.

While it's a shame that the offer doesn't extend to students, it's nonetheless a sensible move. It's a market where Surface RT's quirky mix of features isn't so inconvenient. Outlook and macros don't matter a whole lot to kids writing up book reports or plotting simple graphs.

Redmond is also starting to tell people what Windows 8 is and does. While streaming Project Runway yesterday, er, while my wife was streaming Project Runway yesterday, we saw this ad a whole lot. It's maybe not the best ad ever made, but it makes a point: Windows 8 lets you run two apps side-by-side on your tablet, and that's actually useful. iOS doesn't.

On the hardware front, the company has been running the Siri-trolling iPad comparison ad for a few weeks now. I personally think it's a great ad. Is it fair and balanced? No, of course not. It's a skewed, biased comparison that highlights Windows 8's strengths and ignores its weaknesses. But it's fun, and I think it does a good job of highlighting the places that Microsoft has innovated, and the ways in which Windows RT devices offer, in some ways, something more than the iPad.

Up to now, the ad has always been slightly undermined by the pricing reveal at the end. Rather than comparing the iPad to Microsoft's own tablet, it resorted to comparing against Dell's Windows RT device, the XPS 10—because it's cheaper.

No longer. With the price cut, Surface can now star in a Siri ad of its own.

Surface RT is a lot more buyable than it ever was, too, with wider international availability, and availability beyond Microsoft's own stores. The Best Buy store-in-store approach should further the visibility of the product.

To top it all off, Windows 8.1 will update Windows RT to give the platform Outlook, filling a substantial functional gap for corporate workers. 8.1 should also deliver an improved Metro Mail app, and more generally, the store is starting to become a little more fleshed out.

Is this going to be enough to make Surface RT a belated success? Realistically: no. It's too late for that, and honestly it wouldn't surprise me to find the company shipping the devices at an even deeper discount to the first few million Xbox One buyers to emphasize the SmartGlass/tablet companion aspect.

So this has been an expensive education. It probably isn't over, either; further price cuts in the future can't be ruled out, and they'll require even more "adjustments."

It is, however, a more promising sign for the future. Wide availability, a price that makes sense, advertising that both informs and amuses, and promotions that emphasize the device's strengths: these are all things that should have been there from day one. For Surface RT, they weren't, but they give me hope that in the next Surface RT—I don't believe that Surface RT will be Microsoft's last foray into the ARM tablet market—they will be.

Listing image by TheGiantVermin

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

At last, Microsoft is starting to sell Surface RT the right way

A $900 million "adjustment", pointing at several million unsold units sitting in warehouses somewhere, is probably not the way Microsoft hoped to enter the hardware market.

Sure, the company had built mice, keyboards, and game consoles before, but the Surface RT was different. It disrupted Microsoft's traditional OEM model with Redmond for the first time building something that is more or less a PC, going head-to-head with devices from its OEM partners.

When I reviewed it, Surface RT left me a bit nonplussed. It was not a bad device in the way that the Acer Iconia W3 was a bad device. Surface RT uses high quality materials, feels well-built, and certain aspects of its design—its keyboard covers, both the surprisingly effective Touch Cover, and the just plain good Type Cover; its aesthetics; the integrated kickstand—were smart and thoughtful.

But as a complete package, it just didn't make sense. It was a touch-based tablet, but it forced you to use the touch-hostile Windows desktop for some tasks. It ran Windows, but it couldn't run any Windows apps, except the one built-in: Office. It ran Office, but it didn't have Outlook, and you couldn't use it for commercial purposes without a separate license. Even with this Office license, it couldn't join Windows domains. Its Metro environment offered a solid, if incomplete, touch user interface, but it had few apps.

Microsoft argued that it was an uncompromised best of both worlds device: a PC and a tablet.

I can see how it could have been that. With a rounded out Office suite, Active Directory participation, and commercial usage rights, it might have been a viable PC and a good fit for, say, mobile road warriors: full strength Office (including, with the HDMI port, the ability to connect to projectors), iron-clad security, and all-day battery life in a lightweight package.

With a more complete ecosystem of Metro applications—and, especially, if Microsoft's built-in Mail, Music, and Video apps had been better—and a Metro environment that didn't have the desktop dependency, it might have been viable as "just a tablet."

But as it was, it was only part of a PC and only part of a tablet.

Even that might have been acceptable if the price had been right. Make it a spur of the moment purchase, and people can find a niche for it. Strong sales would no doubt induce developers to address the shortage of Metro apps, too. But it wasn't a spur of the moment purchase. The Surface RT started at $499 for a 32 GB unit with no keyboard cover. That put it squarely up against the iPad, or the Google Nexus 10 that came out within a few weeks of the Surface RT's launch.

Both of those tablets had faster processors, better screens, and most importantly, far more applications than the Surface RT.

Why are these people dancing, and what does it have to do with a tablet?

To top it all off, Microsoft's advertising had, oh, just about nothing to do with the product. It showed a bunch of people dancing around, and about the only thing you learned about Surface was that it had a keyboard that could snap on and off.

A keyboard that costs extra and doesn't ship with the $499 version.

Did it show the things that Surface could do? No. Did it show the things that Windows RT does that are actually pretty good? No. Arguably, the ads didn't even explain that Surface is a tablet computer.

More broadly, the same was true of Windows 8 advertising in general. What does this painful looking ad tell you about Windows? Nothing.

If, in spite of all this, Surface RT was still something you wanted to buy, Microsoft made even that hard. At its launch, it was only available in a handful of Microsoft stores and online. The chance of being able to do something fairly basic, like, oh, I don't know, try one before you bought it, was slim to none, unless you lived in exactly the right part of the US. Rest of the world? Fuggeddaboutit.

With all that going for it, it's not tremendously surprising that Surface RT didn't find many people willing to buy it. A few people did, of course; IT guys who just wanted a lightweight package with a good RDP client, or students who wanted something to run Office. There's even a small demographic of haters who bought the Surface RT because they wouldn't dream of buying anything with an Apple logo or running Android.

Though the student market might be a market that could be nurtured into something larger, none of this was what you might call a recipe for success. That success should so far have eluded Microsoft is no great surprise.

The future, however, might be a little brighter. In a bid to woo that student market, Microsoft has a promotional scheme that allows schools to buy the units for $199 (or $289 with the Type Cover). For an Office and Web browsing machine that's basically immune to malware, that's a pretty compelling deal.

While it's a shame that the offer doesn't extend to students, it's nonetheless a sensible move. It's a market where Surface RT's quirky mix of features isn't so inconvenient. Outlook and macros don't matter a whole lot to kids writing up book reports or plotting simple graphs.

Redmond is also starting to tell people what Windows 8 is and does. While streaming Project Runway yesterday, er, while my wife was streaming Project Runway yesterday, we saw this ad a whole lot. It's maybe not the best ad ever made, but it makes a point: Windows 8 lets you run two apps side-by-side on your tablet, and that's actually useful. iOS doesn't.

On the hardware front, the company has been running the Siri-trolling iPad comparison ad for a few weeks now. I personally think it's a great ad. Is it fair and balanced? No, of course not. It's a skewed, biased comparison that highlights Windows 8's strengths and ignores its weaknesses. But it's fun, and I think it does a good job of highlighting the places that Microsoft has innovated, and the ways in which Windows RT devices offer, in some ways, something more than the iPad.

Up to now, the ad has always been slightly undermined by the pricing reveal at the end. Rather than comparing the iPad to Microsoft's own tablet, it resorted to comparing against Dell's Windows RT device, the XPS 10—because it's cheaper.

No longer. With the price cut, Surface can now star in a Siri ad of its own.

Surface RT is a lot more buyable than it ever was, too, with wider international availability, and availability beyond Microsoft's own stores. The Best Buy store-in-store approach should further the visibility of the product.

To top it all off, Windows 8.1 will update Windows RT to give the platform Outlook, filling a substantial functional gap for corporate workers. 8.1 should also deliver an improved Metro Mail app, and more generally, the store is starting to become a little more fleshed out.

Is this going to be enough to make Surface RT a belated success? Realistically: no. It's too late for that, and honestly it wouldn't surprise me to find the company shipping the devices at an even deeper discount to the first few million Xbox One buyers to emphasize the SmartGlass/tablet companion aspect.

So this has been an expensive education. It probably isn't over, either; further price cuts in the future can't be ruled out, and they'll require even more "adjustments."

It is, however, a more promising sign for the future. Wide availability, a price that makes sense, advertising that both informs and amuses, and promotions that emphasize the device's strengths: these are all things that should have been there from day one. For Surface RT, they weren't, but they give me hope that in the next Surface RT—I don't believe that Surface RT will be Microsoft's last foray into the ARM tablet market—they will be.

Listing image by TheGiantVermin

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

At last, Microsoft is starting to sell Surface RT the right way

A $900 million "adjustment", pointing at several million unsold units sitting in warehouses somewhere, is probably not the way Microsoft hoped to enter the hardware market.

Sure, the company had built mice, keyboards, and game consoles before, but the Surface RT was different. It disrupted Microsoft's traditional OEM model with Redmond for the first time building something that is more or less a PC, going head-to-head with devices from its OEM partners.

When I reviewed it, Surface RT left me a bit nonplussed. It was not a bad device in the way that the Acer Iconia W3 was a bad device. Surface RT uses high quality materials, feels well-built, and certain aspects of its design—its keyboard covers, both the surprisingly effective Touch Cover, and the just plain good Type Cover; its aesthetics; the integrated kickstand—were smart and thoughtful.

But as a complete package, it just didn't make sense. It was a touch-based tablet, but it forced you to use the touch-hostile Windows desktop for some tasks. It ran Windows, but it couldn't run any Windows apps, except the one built-in: Office. It ran Office, but it didn't have Outlook, and you couldn't use it for commercial purposes without a separate license. Even with this Office license, it couldn't join Windows domains. Its Metro environment offered a solid, if incomplete, touch user interface, but it had few apps.

Microsoft argued that it was an uncompromised best of both worlds device: a PC and a tablet.

I can see how it could have been that. With a rounded out Office suite, Active Directory participation, and commercial usage rights, it might have been a viable PC and a good fit for, say, mobile road warriors: full strength Office (including, with the HDMI port, the ability to connect to projectors), iron-clad security, and all-day battery life in a lightweight package.

With a more complete ecosystem of Metro applications—and, especially, if Microsoft's built-in Mail, Music, and Video apps had been better—and a Metro environment that didn't have the desktop dependency, it might have been viable as "just a tablet."

But as it was, it was only part of a PC and only part of a tablet.

Even that might have been acceptable if the price had been right. Make it a spur of the moment purchase, and people can find a niche for it. Strong sales would no doubt induce developers to address the shortage of Metro apps, too. But it wasn't a spur of the moment purchase. The Surface RT started at $499 for a 32 GB unit with no keyboard cover. That put it squarely up against the iPad, or the Google Nexus 10 that came out within a few weeks of the Surface RT's launch.

Both of those tablets had faster processors, better screens, and most importantly, far more applications than the Surface RT.

Why are these people dancing, and what does it have to do with a tablet?

To top it all off, Microsoft's advertising had, oh, just about nothing to do with the product. It showed a bunch of people dancing around, and about the only thing you learned about Surface was that it had a keyboard that could snap on and off.

A keyboard that costs extra and doesn't ship with the $499 version.

Did it show the things that Surface could do? No. Did it show the things that Windows RT does that are actually pretty good? No. Arguably, the ads didn't even explain that Surface is a tablet computer.

More broadly, the same was true of Windows 8 advertising in general. What does this painful looking ad tell you about Windows? Nothing.

If, in spite of all this, Surface RT was still something you wanted to buy, Microsoft made even that hard. At its launch, it was only available in a handful of Microsoft stores and online. The chance of being able to do something fairly basic, like, oh, I don't know, try one before you bought it, was slim to none, unless you lived in exactly the right part of the US. Rest of the world? Fuggeddaboutit.

With all that going for it, it's not tremendously surprising that Surface RT didn't find many people willing to buy it. A few people did, of course; IT guys who just wanted a lightweight package with a good RDP client, or students who wanted something to run Office. There's even a small demographic of haters who bought the Surface RT because they wouldn't dream of buying anything with an Apple logo or running Android.

Though the student market might be a market that could be nurtured into something larger, none of this was what you might call a recipe for success. That success should so far have eluded Microsoft is no great surprise.

The future, however, might be a little brighter. In a bid to woo that student market, Microsoft has a promotional scheme that allows schools to buy the units for $199 (or $289 with the Type Cover). For an Office and Web browsing machine that's basically immune to malware, that's a pretty compelling deal.

While it's a shame that the offer doesn't extend to students, it's nonetheless a sensible move. It's a market where Surface RT's quirky mix of features isn't so inconvenient. Outlook and macros don't matter a whole lot to kids writing up book reports or plotting simple graphs.

Redmond is also starting to tell people what Windows 8 is and does. While streaming Project Runway yesterday, er, while my wife was streaming Project Runway yesterday, we saw this ad a whole lot. It's maybe not the best ad ever made, but it makes a point: Windows 8 lets you run two apps side-by-side on your tablet, and that's actually useful. iOS doesn't.

On the hardware front, the company has been running the Siri-trolling iPad comparison ad for a few weeks now. I personally think it's a great ad. Is it fair and balanced? No, of course not. It's a skewed, biased comparison that highlights Windows 8's strengths and ignores its weaknesses. But it's fun, and I think it does a good job of highlighting the places that Microsoft has innovated, and the ways in which Windows RT devices offer, in some ways, something more than the iPad.

Up to now, the ad has always been slightly undermined by the pricing reveal at the end. Rather than comparing the iPad to Microsoft's own tablet, it resorted to comparing against Dell's Windows RT device, the XPS 10—because it's cheaper.

No longer. With the price cut, Surface can now star in a Siri ad of its own.

Surface RT is a lot more buyable than it ever was, too, with wider international availability, and availability beyond Microsoft's own stores. The Best Buy store-in-store approach should further the visibility of the product.

To top it all off, Windows 8.1 will update Windows RT to give the platform Outlook, filling a substantial functional gap for corporate workers. 8.1 should also deliver an improved Metro Mail app, and more generally, the store is starting to become a little more fleshed out.

Is this going to be enough to make Surface RT a belated success? Realistically: no. It's too late for that, and honestly it wouldn't surprise me to find the company shipping the devices at an even deeper discount to the first few million Xbox One buyers to emphasize the SmartGlass/tablet companion aspect.

So this has been an expensive education. It probably isn't over, either; further price cuts in the future can't be ruled out, and they'll require even more "adjustments."

It is, however, a more promising sign for the future. Wide availability, a price that makes sense, advertising that both informs and amuses, and promotions that emphasize the device's strengths: these are all things that should have been there from day one. For Surface RT, they weren't, but they give me hope that in the next Surface RT—I don't believe that Surface RT will be Microsoft's last foray into the ARM tablet market—they will be.

Listing image by TheGiantVermin

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Linus Torvalds defends his right to shame Linux kernel developers

Linus Torvalds will never get a job in HR.

Profanity and insults have long been management tactics of Linux creator Linus Torvalds. He once memorably gave the middle finger to Nvidia; separately, he announced that he would not change Linux "to deep-throat Microsoft." Torvalds has also shown no qualms about being rude to those who disagree with him.

When Torvalds is fighting for the open source way against proprietary software companies, his abrasive style may elicit cheers. But developers who volunteer to improve the Linux kernel and find themselves on the receiving end of a Torvalds tirade might prefer a different management style. One developer is now calling out Linux's leader for turning the world of open source kernel development into a hostile working environment.

The Linux "workplace" is primarily a mailing list in which developers discuss changes to the kernel. The criticism of Torvalds came yesterday from developer Sarah Sharp, a software engineer at Intel who has made numerous contributions to the Linux kernel in the past seven years. Sharp wrote:

Seriously, guys? Is this what we need in order to get improve -stable? Linus Torvalds is advocating for physical intimidation and violence. Ingo Molnar and Linus are advocating for verbal abuse.

Not *fucking* cool. Violence, whether it be physical intimidation, verbal threats or verbal abuse is not acceptable. Keep it professional on the mailing lists.

Let's discuss this at Kernel Summit where we can at least yell at each other in person. Yeah, just try yelling at me about this. I'll roar right back, louder, for all the people who lose their voice when they get yelled at by top maintainers. I won't be the nice girl anymore.

Sarah Sharp

Sharp's e-mail quoted statements from Torvalds such as "Have you guys *seen* Greg? The guy is a freakish giant. He *should* scare you. He might squish you without ever even noticing" and "Greg, the reason you get a lot of stable patches seems to be that you make it easy to act as a door-mat. Clearly at least some people say 'I know this patch isn't important enough to send to Linus, but I know Greg will silently accept it after the fact, so I'll just wait and mark it for stable.' You may need to learn to shout at people." (Torvalds' target is Linux kernel chief Greg Kroah-Hartman.)

On her blog, Sharp pointed to two other e-mails from Torvalds containing language such as "Mauro, SHUT THE FUCK UP!" and "Rafael, please don't *ever* write that crap again."

The argument over whether such language is appropriate then moved off-list, with Torvalds trying to make the conversation private and Sharp making it public again. "Oh, FFS, I [was] just called out on private email for 'playing the victim card,'" Sharp wrote. "I will repeat: this is not just about me, or other minorities. I should not have to ask for professional behavior on the mailing lists. Professional behavior should be the default."

At another point, Sharp added, "I am serious about this. Linus, you're one of the worst offenders when it comes to verbally abusing people and publicly tearing their emotions apart." She noted that while Torvalds has shown that he can politely tell developers their work needs changes, "You just don't want to take the time to be polite to everyone."

Torvalds' responses to Sharp's e-mails made it clear he has no intention of changing the way he writes to people on the Linux kernel mailing list. He even claimed to be something of an oppressed minority, saying Sharp should be sensitive to his Finnish culture and its reliance on cursing. In response to being called "one of the worst offenders," he wrote:

Yes. And I do it partly (mostly) because it's who I am, and partly because I honestly despise being subtle or "nice".

The fact is, people need to know what my position on things are. And I can't just say "please don't do that", because people won't listen. I say "On the internet, nobody can hear you being subtle," and I mean it.

And I definitely am not willing to string people along, either. I've had that happen too—not telling people clearly enough that I don't like their approach, they go on to re-architect something, and get really upset when I am then not willing to take their work.

Sarah, first off, I don't have that many tools at hand. Secondly, I simply don't believe in being polite or politically correct. And you can point at all those cultural factors where some cultures are not happy with confrontation (and feel free to make it about gender too—I think that's almost entirely cultural too). And please bring up "cultural sensitivity" while at it. And I'll give you back that same "cultural sensitivity". Please be sensitive to _my_ culture too.

Google "management by perkele".

Do you really want to oppress a minority? Because Finns are a minority compared to almost any other country. If you want to talk cultural sensitivity, I'll join you. But my culture includes cursing.

In another e-mail, Torvalds told Sharp that "the 'victim card' is exactly about trying to enforce your particular expectations on others, and trying to do so in a very particular way. It's the old 'think of the children' argument. And it's bogus. Calling things 'professional' is just more of the same—trying to enforce some kind of convention on others by trying to claim that it's the only acceptable way."

Torvalds concluded:

Because if you want me to "act professional," I can tell you that I'm not interested. I'm sitting in my home office wearing a bathrobe. The same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm *also* not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords. Because THAT is what "acting professionally" results in: people resort to all kinds of really nasty things because they are forced to act out their normal urges in unnatural ways.

Clearly, Torvalds has an aversion to the corporate world. He works full-time on the kernel, with his work being funded by the nonprofit Linux Foundation (which in turn is funded by IBM, HP, Intel and dozens of other companies). The Linux Foundation has traditionally taken an extremely hands-off approach to Torvalds' work. We asked the Foundation if it has any response to Sharp's comments or any plans to discuss the matter with Torvalds, but we didn't receive an immediate response.

Sharp describes herself on LinkedIn as "a huge advocate of open source, open hardware, and Linux." She began contributing to Linux in 2006 "through an Intel Undergraduate Research Grant, [in which] I was funded to redesign the current Linux USB filesystem to better fit into the standard Unix I/O stream model." She is also the author of the Linux USB 3.0 host controller driver.

Torvalds' management hasn't prevented Linux from becoming one of the most sophisticated pieces of technology on the planet, and Sharp sounds unlikely to walk away from Linux development—but concerns about a hostile environment might have that effect on others.

Developer Neil Brown noted on the Linux kernel mailing list that "scolding people senior developers in front of newcomers ... is not likely to encourage people to want to become senior developers." Another developer, Stefano Stabellini, wrote that "I think there is a way to get the point across without cursing. One can be clear and decisive without 'bursting'. It's easy to mistake cursing on the quality of the code for a personal attack."

On Twitter, numerous developers thanked Sharp for her efforts. One called himself an "ex-kernel hacker," and another said, "Thanks for standing up for politeness/respect. If it works, I'll start doing Linux kernel dev. It's been too scary for years."

Longtime technologist, open source software user, and journalist Sean Michael Kerner expressed hope that Sharp's protests might help Linux development circles become more welcoming to those who prefer polite collaboration over confrontation. On InternetNews.com, Kerner wrote:

It's obvious to me that Sharp is right. It should be obvious to all decent human beings that violence and threats of abuse have no place in civil development discourse either.

Do I expect Linus to change? No. Do I hope he will? Yes.

Will Sharp change anything? I sure hope so. The fact that she's standing up and making her voice heard is the start of a conversation that should have started a long time ago.

UPDATE: Torvalds told Wired today that he looks forward to discussing "workflow" issues at the upcoming Kernel Summit. “It’s maybe easy to forget for outsiders. I’ve been doing this for 20+ years, and people don’t think about *why* I’m still doing it,” Torvalds wrote in an e-mail. “I care. Deeply.” However, Torvalds doesn't want a "code of conduct," saying that "venting of frustrations and anger is actually necessary, and trying to come up with some ‘code of conduct’ that says that people should be ‘respectful’ and ‘polite’ is just so much crap and bullshit.”

View the original article here

Linus Torvalds defends his right to shame Linux kernel developers

View the original article here

Linus Torvalds defends his right to shame Linux kernel developers

Linus Torvalds will never get a job in HR.

Profanity and insults have long been management tactics of Linux creator Linus Torvalds. He once memorably gave the middle finger to Nvidia; separately, he announced that he would not change Linux "to deep-throat Microsoft." Torvalds has also shown no qualms about being rude to those who disagree with him.

When Torvalds is fighting for the open source way against proprietary software companies, his abrasive style may elicit cheers. But developers who volunteer to improve the Linux kernel and find themselves on the receiving end of a Torvalds tirade might prefer a different management style. One developer is now calling out Linux's leader for turning the world of open source kernel development into a hostile working environment.

The Linux "workplace" is primarily a mailing list in which developers discuss changes to the kernel. The criticism of Torvalds came yesterday from developer Sarah Sharp, a software engineer at Intel who has made numerous contributions to the Linux kernel in the past seven years. Sharp wrote:

Seriously, guys? Is this what we need in order to get improve -stable? Linus Torvalds is advocating for physical intimidation and violence. Ingo Molnar and Linus are advocating for verbal abuse.

Not *fucking* cool. Violence, whether it be physical intimidation, verbal threats or verbal abuse is not acceptable. Keep it professional on the mailing lists.

Let's discuss this at Kernel Summit where we can at least yell at each other in person. Yeah, just try yelling at me about this. I'll roar right back, louder, for all the people who lose their voice when they get yelled at by top maintainers. I won't be the nice girl anymore.

Sarah Sharp

Sharp's e-mail quoted statements from Torvalds such as "Have you guys *seen* Greg? The guy is a freakish giant. He *should* scare you. He might squish you without ever even noticing" and "Greg, the reason you get a lot of stable patches seems to be that you make it easy to act as a door-mat. Clearly at least some people say 'I know this patch isn't important enough to send to Linus, but I know Greg will silently accept it after the fact, so I'll just wait and mark it for stable.' You may need to learn to shout at people." (Torvalds' target is Linux kernel chief Greg Kroah-Hartman.)

On her blog, Sharp pointed to two other e-mails from Torvalds containing language such as "Mauro, SHUT THE FUCK UP!" and "Rafael, please don't *ever* write that crap again."

The argument over whether such language is appropriate then moved off-list, with Torvalds trying to make the conversation private and Sharp making it public again. "Oh, FFS, I [was] just called out on private email for 'playing the victim card,'" Sharp wrote. "I will repeat: this is not just about me, or other minorities. I should not have to ask for professional behavior on the mailing lists. Professional behavior should be the default."

At another point, Sharp added, "I am serious about this. Linus, you're one of the worst offenders when it comes to verbally abusing people and publicly tearing their emotions apart." She noted that while Torvalds has shown that he can politely tell developers their work needs changes, "You just don't want to take the time to be polite to everyone."

Torvalds' responses to Sharp's e-mails made it clear he has no intention of changing the way he writes to people on the Linux kernel mailing list. He even claimed to be something of an oppressed minority, saying Sharp should be sensitive to his Finnish culture and its reliance on cursing. In response to being called "one of the worst offenders," he wrote:

Yes. And I do it partly (mostly) because it's who I am, and partly because I honestly despise being subtle or "nice".

The fact is, people need to know what my position on things are. And I can't just say "please don't do that", because people won't listen. I say "On the internet, nobody can hear you being subtle," and I mean it.

And I definitely am not willing to string people along, either. I've had that happen too—not telling people clearly enough that I don't like their approach, they go on to re-architect something, and get really upset when I am then not willing to take their work.

Sarah, first off, I don't have that many tools at hand. Secondly, I simply don't believe in being polite or politically correct. And you can point at all those cultural factors where some cultures are not happy with confrontation (and feel free to make it about gender too—I think that's almost entirely cultural too). And please bring up "cultural sensitivity" while at it. And I'll give you back that same "cultural sensitivity". Please be sensitive to _my_ culture too.

Google "management by perkele".

Do you really want to oppress a minority? Because Finns are a minority compared to almost any other country. If you want to talk cultural sensitivity, I'll join you. But my culture includes cursing.

In another e-mail, Torvalds told Sharp that "the 'victim card' is exactly about trying to enforce your particular expectations on others, and trying to do so in a very particular way. It's the old 'think of the children' argument. And it's bogus. Calling things 'professional' is just more of the same—trying to enforce some kind of convention on others by trying to claim that it's the only acceptable way."

Torvalds concluded:

Because if you want me to "act professional," I can tell you that I'm not interested. I'm sitting in my home office wearing a bathrobe. The same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm *also* not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords. Because THAT is what "acting professionally" results in: people resort to all kinds of really nasty things because they are forced to act out their normal urges in unnatural ways.

Clearly, Torvalds has an aversion to the corporate world. He works full-time on the kernel, with his work being funded by the nonprofit Linux Foundation (which in turn is funded by IBM, HP, Intel and dozens of other companies). The Linux Foundation has traditionally taken an extremely hands-off approach to Torvalds' work. We asked the Foundation if it has any response to Sharp's comments or any plans to discuss the matter with Torvalds, but we didn't receive an immediate response.

Sharp describes herself on LinkedIn as "a huge advocate of open source, open hardware, and Linux." She began contributing to Linux in 2006 "through an Intel Undergraduate Research Grant, [in which] I was funded to redesign the current Linux USB filesystem to better fit into the standard Unix I/O stream model." She is also the author of the Linux USB 3.0 host controller driver.

Torvalds' management hasn't prevented Linux from becoming one of the most sophisticated pieces of technology on the planet, and Sharp sounds unlikely to walk away from Linux development—but concerns about a hostile environment might have that effect on others.

Developer Neil Brown noted on the Linux kernel mailing list that "scolding people senior developers in front of newcomers ... is not likely to encourage people to want to become senior developers." Another developer, Stefano Stabellini, wrote that "I think there is a way to get the point across without cursing. One can be clear and decisive without 'bursting'. It's easy to mistake cursing on the quality of the code for a personal attack."

On Twitter, numerous developers thanked Sharp for her efforts. One called himself an "ex-kernel hacker," and another said, "Thanks for standing up for politeness/respect. If it works, I'll start doing Linux kernel dev. It's been too scary for years."

Longtime technologist, open source software user, and journalist Sean Michael Kerner expressed hope that Sharp's protests might help Linux development circles become more welcoming to those who prefer polite collaboration over confrontation. On InternetNews.com, Kerner wrote:

It's obvious to me that Sharp is right. It should be obvious to all decent human beings that violence and threats of abuse have no place in civil development discourse either.

Do I expect Linus to change? No. Do I hope he will? Yes.

Will Sharp change anything? I sure hope so. The fact that she's standing up and making her voice heard is the start of a conversation that should have started a long time ago.

UPDATE: Torvalds told Wired today that he looks forward to discussing "workflow" issues at the upcoming Kernel Summit. “It’s maybe easy to forget for outsiders. I’ve been doing this for 20+ years, and people don’t think about *why* I’m still doing it,” Torvalds wrote in an e-mail. “I care. Deeply.” However, Torvalds doesn't want a "code of conduct," saying that "venting of frustrations and anger is actually necessary, and trying to come up with some ‘code of conduct’ that says that people should be ‘respectful’ and ‘polite’ is just so much crap and bullshit.”

View the original article here