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Comment by colkassad | Hacker News Reader

So I was in Best Buy the other day and asked a Microsoft rep who was there touting Windows 8 where the Surface tablets were. He said they only sell them online and through their store. Why is that? Perhaps they would sell more Surface tablets if they had them visible in a Best Buy where a good portion of middle America demos new electronics?

On another note, why is the Nokia Lumia 920 an AT&T exclusive? If they want their platforms to become more popular, why do they hamper their access so much (the same can be said for Nokia who are supposedly in trouble)? Most Windows phones available from carriers are pretty lackluster. The only ones that catch my eye are the Lumia 920 and the HTC One X.

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I don't blame them. The presentation of hardware at Best Buy is absolutely horrible lately. It's all cabled down, price tags are often tattered or missing and most of the devices can't even be turned on to try them.

I'm sure they could stipulate presentation requirements to some degree, but the current state of affairs is not exactly how I'd want my hardware presented to customers.

I saw a geo-targeted Facebook post yesterday telling me (and everyone in Florida) to come to the Microsoft Store to check out the Surface RT. Problem is, the nearest store is a 4 hour round trip. They have exactly one store in Florida, in Orlando. (There are two temporary "holiday" stores in Miami.) It's hard to take a company seriously when they're so uncertain of their retail business that they won't even cover the top 30 U.S. markets with stores.

I thought their partnership with Barnes and Noble was in part to address this. It wouldn't take much to expand the Nook store-within-a-store to include Surface tablets. I've been moderately impressed with the Nook sales reps in their stores. Sure, it would create some conflicts with the Nook Android tablets, but money can solve that problem.

Perhaps they're trying not to compete with their OEM partners, but rather trying to set a benchmark to help their OEM partners compete with Apple.

Except, having used a bunch of Win8 touchscreen machines (desktops, laptops, and convertible/tablet formats) at local tech shops, the Surface RT still blows all of them out of the water in terms of "usual tasks" (emailing, surfing, facebooking, tweeting, etc).

If I were MS, I wouldn't be relying on OEMs to do anything except continue to suck.

Except Microsoft, at this point, has to rely on OEMs. They don't have a big enough foothold to get components as cheap as some of their OEM partners, which means their devices, on the whole, will be more expensive.

Plus, a major source of their revenue is OEM licensing, so like it or not, they still have to deal with them.

Coincidentally both strategies were implemented by Apple, or sort of. Anyway, seems like Redmond's photocopiers have been running like crazy lately.

It's a bit unfair to say that given that both the Surface and the Lumia are quite original.

Sure they are, and I actually like these devices. As a matter a fact I hope they do well in the market. However, my comment was not targeted at thoses devices. But was at their mindset, specially the MSFT's business people.

He was saying they photocopied Apple's distribution strategy not their devices.

It's amazing to me how many companies fall for a strategy that works for Apple, and think that it could easily work for them, too. Apple has so many advantages that makes stuff like this work, that it would be almost impossible for anyone else to get it working without those advantages.

"If only we would get carrier exclusivity, too"

"If only we had our own custom proprietary OS, too"

"If only we created our own proprietary docks and connectors"

"If only we had our own specialized stores"

And many other such things. They copy all these things, thinking that it will work for them just like it did for Apple, without realizing that those work only for Apple, because they are Apple.

With a long term and rather singular/focused goal measured in years, not quarters, these probably would work for some other company. But, these elements are really the byproduct of the long-term goals, vs the goals themselves.

I don't see many companies willing to invest in a long-term and multi-pronged strategy. With most companies, one down quarter or bad gartner report and they'll revise next year's activities and products.

So many companies just do cargo culting when they imitate Apple without understanding :-(

When Apple makes a white and slightly rounded version of something that others made years ago, it actually turns out that they are inventing it for the first time.

It doesn't exist until Apple makes it.

It isn't about rounded corners.

It's about polished implementations that don't suck running on solid hardware.

Don't bother dude, you can't argue with haters. They're gonna hate no matter what.

Slightly tangential response: "Why Apple does not do concept products"

http://counternotions.com/2008/08/12/concept-products/

Competition from companies who continue to think Apple just took an existing phone, and made it slightly rounder, or took existing tablets, and made them slightly thinner, or took existing laptop designs, and made them slightly sleeker, is why Apple mercilessly dominates those industries.

When another company copies an idea, it is "cargo culting" from Apple. But when Apple copies an idea, it is doing exactly what it should be doing.

The reality is that lots of companies copy lots of ideas and that is normal. The exchange doesn't just go from Apple geniuses to everyone else. No company is an island

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