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Comment by drewcrawford | Hacker News Reader

Quite simply, no.

Performance optimizations are all about trade-offs, and what might be a good trade-off for Microsoft's own hardware could be a bad trade-off for 95% of the other hardware on the market.

In theory, Microsoft could ship a second set of bits for their own hardware. But now you start to have nightmares about the antitrust lawsuits in the 90s. Why is Microsoft keeping a secret faster Windows that only it gets to use? That's the headline anyway.

The only way for Microsoft to achieve the kind of vertical integration that Apple has would be if it was willing to destroy its existing OEM partnerships. And risk a lawsuit from the DOJ. And this is a crazy strategy, because Apple has all the experience manufacturing hardware, and Microsoft has very little.

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>Performance optimizations are all about trade-offs, and what might be a good trade-off for Microsoft's own hardware could be a bad trade-off for 95% of the other hardware on the market.

Why not have an "Extended-Battery profile" that you can turn on and off, that will have Windows be more aggressive with respect to power conservation? It'll be toggled on automatically on Surface-type devices, and turned off for desktops and servers (though servers may also benefit).

So give me a break. Where there's a will there's a way.

>The only way for Microsoft to achieve the kind of vertical integration that Apple has would be if it was willing to destroy its existing OEM partnerships.

Hyperbole much?

I already told you why not. Because anything that gives the Surface an advantage has that antitrust lawsuit smell.

> Hyperbole much?

Again, no. Any move to give preferential treatment to MS's own hardware is the push the OEMs need to convert their Windows Tablet initiative into an Android Tablet one. Not to mention having potential ripple effects in unrelated businesses lines like spooking HP into doing more Linux servers.

For better or for worse, Microsoft's most valuable asset is its OEM partnerships. It's not as cool a trick as it used to be, but it's the only card they have to play.

>I already told you why not. Because anything that gives the Surface an advantage has that antitrust lawsuit smell.

Who says it needs to be Surface only? Who says it needs to be limited to Microsoft hardware?

If the changes need to be in the driver or hardware layer, all Microsoft needs to do is release specs and then setup a certifying service for OEMs. Something like "Battery Optimized" cert that the partner can then communicate to the end-user. However, I have a feeling that lots of improvements can be done at the OS level to boost battery life before you start thinking about changing your driver model.

Bottom line this can be done. Windows tablets can and should be able to match Apple hardware in battery life and I have no clue why you're arguing they can't.

> all Microsoft needs to do is release specs and then setup a certifying service for OEMs

So this exists. It's called the Windows Logo Program for Hardware. The reason we are reading this article is that it failed to do the job.

What you seem not to be understanding is that in order to "match Apple hardware in battery life" one also has to "match Apple hardware" in the small number of distinct hardware configurations sold per year.

Taking that hardware configuration and calling it "a standard" doesn't actually do anything. If your standard is broad enough to support 100 hardware configurations, battery life will be poor. If your standard is narrow enough to only support 2 hardware configurations, OEMs will not build it, because Dell has no way to differentiate itself from Toshiba.

To match Apple, Microsoft needs to cut back to maybe 3 models of Windows tablets per year. You can make that into a standard if you like, but no OEM will ever adopt it. They will all (correctly) point out that such a standard is designed for Microsoft's hardware team to implement and to hell with all the third parties.

(I can't reply to your child comment so replying here.)

>Any move to give preferential treatment to MS's own hardware is the push the OEMs need to convert their Windows Tablet initiative into an Android Tablet one.

I hope Microsoft's OEM partners don't think this way for the sake of progress. It is a scary thought that MSFT/Google would not optimize their reference hardware for the sake of pleasing OEM partners. I have a Nexus 4 phone. I certainly hope when they write an update for mako, they optimize it for mako.

It doesn't mean OEM partners can't use similar optimization. However, to my naive mind it is absurd to cripple reference hardware for the sake of pleasing OEM partners.

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