Something that has been true for the past decade; inside of Microsoft are hundreds of small companies that will never get out.
As I see it almost everyone involved with the Surface ended up paying the Windows strategy tax. Microsoft should have released two separate OS's Surface for tablets and Windows 8 for the workstation market. But, they should not have done what they did; which is to create a confusing frankenstein of a UI that will drop you into the windows explorer when you were trying to open an app with your fingers.
This is a sterling example of how Ballmer's management team and the culture he has created have failed to understand both customers and markets. Too many agendas working at cross-purposes and no one who can outright say no to a bad idea coming from a powerful or connected source.
> Microsoft should have released two separate OS's Surface for tablets and Windows 8 for the workstation market
This was the fatal mistake IMO, and I don't know why it doesn't get more discussion. I think Metro is a great tablet interface, and I can imagine that a Surface just running Metro with just the app store would sell pretty ok. Instead its confusingly positioned as some sort of tablet hybrid that still runs the old windows, but with a new start menu or something.
And on the flip side, you have PCs running Metro, which not only absolutely sucks to use with a mouse and keyboard, the new interface puts off corporations from upgrading because they are worried about training costs etc.
Its like thinking, 'So, Excel sells pretty well, and Word does too. Therefore we should develop a hybrid Word processor-spreadsheet application'.
Incidentally, I don't know that Ballmer is totally to blame here. I strongly suspect that Sinsofsky pushed very hard to make sure every new operating system initiative would come under his division. I think this is why Windows Phone is called Windows Phone too, even though it would probably by much much easier to market under its own brand.
They need developers and they need to make people feel ok with the new interface before buying a tablet. So it made sense to put the same UI in windows 8 so people can try it and then feel comfortable and buy a related tablet.
Problem is: the most of the people hate metro ui, the medium user can get the difference between w8 and wRT and really a incredible small part of the total windows developers joined the ship of winRT/JS and no one of the "main" contributors
As I see it almost everyone involved with the Surface ended up paying the Windows strategy tax. Microsoft should have released two separate OS's Surface for tablets and Windows 8 for the workstation market. But, they should not have done what they did; which is to create a confusing frankenstein of a UI that will drop you into the windows explorer when you were trying to open an app with your fingers.
This is a sterling example of how Ballmer's management team and the culture he has created have failed to understand both customers and markets. Too many agendas working at cross-purposes and no one who can outright say no to a bad idea coming from a powerful or connected source.