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Apple makes money chiefly by selling devices to the public. Joe needs a phone, walks into an Apple store plays with an iPhone and buys one. Suprise works here because of the burst of publicity and the ease of purchase. This approach is based on limited supply and tries to maximize dollars per unit.

Microsoft's Windows platform makes money chiefly by selling OS licenses to hardware companies like Dell. Every month these companies write 8+ digit checks to Microsoft. The multi-year roadmaps involved make surprise a disadvantage. This approach seeks to maximize $100 licenses.

Sony's Playstation platform makes money chiefly by taking a cut from other developers. Sony convinces someone like EA to develop for their system and makes $5 every time one of us buys an EA game for $50. The development lead time involved means the announcement has to be at least a year in advance.

Amazon's Kindle platform also makes money chiefly by taxing the ecosystem (in this case e-books). However the lead time to produce an e-book is minimal and so surprise again works.

Nintendo puts another twist it -- they make money chiefly by selling blockbuster first party titles on their own platform.

Google makes money chiefly by selling ads. A company or ad agency writes Google a check with an expected level of visibility. This approach seeks to maximize units and industry growth (even competitors). Facebook I guess we can expeect the same approach, trying to get aunt millie with the 10 year old cel phone onto a smartphone.

Maybe I should say something about phone hardware vendors like HTC who sell phones to carriers complete with rebranding, etc.

> and tries to maximize dollars per unit.

I've never really understood this line as applied to Apple, since I don't recall them dropping prices after the initial release. If they did I'd expect a "wait two months for the prices to drop" meme, but I've never heard that recommendation.

There's no guarantee that supply increases indefinitely. At some point it will negatively affect your margin per unit. Until you get to that point I guess the goal is to manage demand by staggering releases to different areas and segments.

Even so sometimes your margin goes down but the consumer price is the same like when Apple expanded ipad sales thru Walmart/Best Buy/Target/whoever 6 months after the ipad launched when their supply started to ramp up. Their margin for an ipad at Best Buy is what 15% lower then if they sell it direct but the customer pays the same price.

...than if they sell it direct through the online store, perhaps. I would imagine the overall margins to Apple on an iPad sold in a Best Buy and an iPad sold in an Apple Store are similar, because Apple Stores are typically located on extremely expensive real estate and have much higher running costs than Best Buy stores.

Apple obviously would prefer you to buy it in an Apple Store, because they have more control over the consumer relationship and experience - but running a physical retail store is not cheap, and that's a cost Apple has to cover if they sell direct, which they don't if they sell via Best Buy.

I'd be curious on a statistical breakdown comparing average book authorship time to volume of sales and gross revenue of sales. Because quality books always take a long time to write. Already written books are easy to put up for sale, yes, but I'm curious about the data for new productions.

Of course, the other other side of this is that Microsoft has, over the past decade or so, become a company that specializes in three things:

1. Shipping Windows, Office and XBox.

2. Showing demos of revolutionary "coming next year" technologies that never ever ship.

3. Occasionally shipping something that's not Windows, Office or XBox, and then killing it as quickly as possible.

The last two have especially dogged Microsoft's mobile efforts; every year we hear that "next year's Windows for (this year's hot mobile category) will revolutionize everything", every year we hear the cries of "at last! History will repeat and MS will crush Apple again!", and every year we realize they either never shipped last year's great mobile hope, or shipped one version of it and then announced it would be replaced by next year's great mobile hope.

So at this point, why should anyone in this industry be taking Microsoft seriously?

[Disclaimer: not MSFT employee]

This is an excellent point. For some reason, this pre-release has everyone all excited. There hasn't been this much buzz in the tech circles over a Microsoft product in probably over a decade. Uber's comment below makes me wonder what everyone else is seeing that I'm missing.

On the other side of your other side : this is the only company that shipped a device as revolutionary as the Kinect - a device that is pretty badass.

At this point MS has a 580bn ecosystem. I know that America only deals in trillions now but still 580bn is nothing to scoff at.

[Disclaimer : former intern]

> this is the only company that shipped a device as revolutionary as the Kinect

Were you an intern in the marketing department, perchance? ;)

Nope, sharepoint search :D

> Microsoft, unlike Apple, does not control the entire vertical stack. They don't really have direct control over hardware or retail distribution (some notable exceptions - Xbox, Microsoft stores etc., but you know what I mean - it's nothing like Apple's top-down approach)

I think most people in our field, including Gruber, are well aware that MS doesn't have full control of the stack. It's good to note, but at the end of the day if you're just judging product A from product B; no one, especially the customer, gives a crap about excuses no matter how good they are. Unless you're my family or friend, you either deliver or you don't. I don't care if you have to let the dog eat your homework or not.

The argument is not about which product is better, its about which release methodology results in a better product, which I claim is a pointless argument when you are shipping different products.

Yes, customers will judge them equally when the product ships - but the developer release isn't for customers. Its for developers and partners

If that's the case, why are so many tech bloggers treating this as though it's the "OS that will defeat the iPad"? If everyone thought as you do, then they would realize that comparing this to a shipped product which has already been evaluated by the public is a pretty poor comparison, and Gruber's argument stands pretty strong.

Fair point, Thurrott calling this the iPad killer is pre-emptive, and Gruber is right in that respect.

I was railing on Gruber's snide remark about "ship something real", where he is subtly making the point that shipping when a product is final is the right way to do things.

EDIT: Typos

C'mon let's be fair here... What Gruber said was that "the right way to do things" depends on whether the person is writing for Apple or for Microsoft, and he (as punctuated by the "To me") doesn't feel like MS's way is the right way.

The whole article was about how different expectations are, and the process... oh, and, ironically, both user bases are equally passionate.

> If that's the case, why are so many tech bloggers treating this as though it's the "OS that will defeat the iPad"?

Seriously?

Because tech bloggers are morons that want to sensationalize their story but can't seem to come up with a new way to do it. You might as well ask why every vaguely scandalous political story is labeled "something-gate." Spoiler: it's probably not because the comparison to watergate is in any way interesting.

And it's cross-platform. Apple gets the same kind of coverage.

He is not talking about moron bloggers. Paul Thrott and BGR. Gruber said "He is not alone" as well.

apple also releases beta iOS and OS X for months in advance so developers can test and write apps against the new release.

but noticeably they don't unveil new hardware until it's ready and stable for the public. the knock on most competitors is that the overall experience is underwhelming or way too beta, which hardware is a big component.

Not to defend Gruber here (since for some reason he is unpopular on HN), but I think that he does understand what you claim he doesn't.

The point of his polemic is not that Microsoft is fundamentally different than Apple in approach and execution. Anyone can see that plain as day. It's not obfuscated in the least.

The question is: which approach is right? Removing for a minute the preconceptions of "that's just how they are," which produces better products?

I don't think its cut and dry really. Apple currently has some MS type approaches with iOS because of their third party dependencies on software, and Microsoft has Apple approaches (i.e., XBox) because of their lack of such.

> "The question is: which approach is right?"

The problem is asking that question. It is irrelevant when they products are fundamentally different. Its like comparing, well, apples & oranges. You cannot compare the methodology of a hardware launch (iPad) to a software launch (Windows 8).

You do not launch major pieces software without a beta / dev preview release. No one does. Even Apple doesn't do it - Lion, iCloud & iOS5 were released in 'unfinished states', which Gruber claims to abhor. So instead of comparing above mentioned software launches (in an unfinished state) to Windows 8 (also in an unfinished state), Gruber chooses hardware.

Compare the Xbox & iPad release schedules, and iOS5/Lion & Windows 8 schedules. I doubt you'll find that the hardware ships with a public beta. And I doubt that you'll find that software ships without a beta.Gruber is twisting examples to suit his arguments, and this is fundamentally flawed logic.

Again, "the question is: which approach is right?" assumes that either company COULD change their approach. Should they?

Don't conflate what is reality with what could be. If that was the case there wouldn't be an iPad (or X-Box, or Metro).

Microsoft does not launch unfinished Xboxes (hardware + software product). Apple does not launch unfinished iPads (hardware + software product)

Microsoft launches unfinished Windows builds (software). Apple launches unfinished Lion builds (software).

The question is flawed in that it assumes that they companies have different release methodologies for the same class of products. Both Microsoft & Apple are making similar choices for similar classes of products.

What Gruber is doing is comparing release methodologies of different classes of products that are in the same market space. What drives the choice of release method is not the market space, but the nature of the product being released.

Actually Microsoft hardware has previewed unfinished hardware which didn't debut at all, or was radically changed:

Microsoft Spot

Digital Home

Courier Tablet

And don't get me started on their abandon-ware hardware projects (Networking, WebTV, Digital Photo TV, Zune, Microsoft at Work, MS Automotive, etc)

This argument thread is rapidly diverging from the original issue. You are now talking about product announcements, not releases. Windows 8 was 'released' today, not announced like the Courier was.

Your current argument now is about a different problem (one that Longhorn / Vista faced), which is about announcing features before they were actually implemented and ready for release.

I'm not going to continue this, I believe my point has been made.

Don't forget about the Microsoft Cordless Phone (http://web.archive.org/web/20000301023950/http://www.microso...) or, of course, Kin.

Microsoft/Nintendo/Sony absolutely "launch" unfinished consoles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_U

The more 3rd party applications you need on your platform, the longer a lead time you need to give to those 3rd parties. And for that matter -- Apple does launch unfinished iOS builds/features.

What Gruber is arguing about, and I would tend to agree is that Microsoft has "released" Windows 8 on top of a tablet that is nothing like what a tablet would ultimately be. It contains a full Core i5, with fan to keep it cool and all.

Would it have been better to wait till manufacturers were ready with their ARM based tablets that run Windows 8 rather than something PC like that runs Windows 8? Especially since based on the current demo device we will have no idea what Windows 8 will be like on actual low power hardware...

It's a developer unit! Compare it if you like to the Mac Pro Apple released to get developers started on OS X86 - they used CPUs in that were never used in the actual released version of Mac Pro.

Its job is to let developers use the functionality of the OS, and develop/debug right on the device. It's not there to run coolest or use specific SOC. For Metro Apps it won't matter what SOC you are running underneath. And I am sure ARM brethren of Samsung tablets will come out sooner or later for porting Win32 apps.

> Microsoft does not launch unfinished Xboxes (hardware + software product).

Tell that to the millions of Xbox 360 owners whose consoles died with the red ring of death.

.. and all the iPhone users and the slew of hardware problems they faced.

I'm sorry, where do you get that? I never had a problem with iPhones, nor know anyone who ever did, except for a cracked screen or another. No antenna-gate here either. C'mon...

On the other hand, I have a 3RL'd XBox which was promptly replaced with a newer one, since it's still an amazing product and have some friends who had the same problem.

Care to list? I mean real problems, not media going mad over non-issue (like antennagate). More people were annoyed by miscalibrated proximity sensor but that was fixed in software.

>Not to defend Gruber here (since for some reason he is unpopular on HN)

Is that why many of Gruber's posts are consistently upvoted on HN?

Out of all that was displayed during the keynote, he got only one thing to dwell on.

The demo tablet given out has a fan and gets hot? That is like criticizing Windows because Dell makes a pink laptop. There's going to be immense choice.

And this going to put pressure on Intel and other OEMs to reduce heat and power consumption to get closer to ARM.

What if you want a more powerful iPad? You're SOL.

This same argument was used for Android tablets, how well has that turned out so far?

Why was Microsoft in such a hurry as to release a preview of an OS before the ecosystem was capable of handling it?

Explain how putting this out with substandard hardware does anything to bolster confidence from either users or developers? Why not wait until an Arm chassis was ready?

Because unless Microsoft shows what they can do with their OS - OEMs will not have a clue to build new hardware capable of complementing the software. Different ball game where tight secrecy doesn't really work - OEMs needs access to what MSFT is doing, developers need it and there are a crazy number of both of them and they need ample time and clear cut communication from Microsoft in order to make and bake their plans.

Besides no one is explaining why is demoing a preview OS bad? Because it is out of style? It's not like Microsoft is pushing the preview down the throats of average Joes and Janes.

I actually like Microsoft's no surprises approach. It bolsters the confidence of their OEM and Developer demographic. That's how they have been doing it since long time. You would have to be too unrealistic a Microsoft Developer to say "oh that Samsung tablet had a fan. I am just going to ignore Windows 8" - it doesn't make any sense, it's a developer unit and for that it is pretty nice - you can develop and debug on it!

Gruber is popular on HN because he consistently writes high quality, thought-provoking tech-related articles.

Gruber is unpopular because many of his pieces contain enough smug to choke a small giraffe.

Microsoft cannot afford secrecy because they are so far behind. When this thing ships Apple with be halfway through their third generation.

I think Microsoft does not have secrecy because they have lots of OEM partners who want to develop for the platform before its released.

The majority of software on Windows boxes is pirated or free. Why would a developer write an app for Windows 8 if it's just going to be pirated endlessly?

http://www.windows8update.com/2011/04/28/windows-piracy-chin...

Because, despite piracy, Windows ecosystem makes boatloads of money for many, many people.