Microsoft May Finally Put Windows RT Out To Pasture

onyxruby writes "Microsoft may finally be ready to put Windows RT out to pasture. After ignoring pundits, the public, and a staggering $900 writedown, the subsequent lack of sales for the second edition of the RT have finally gotten the message through. Speaking at a UBS seminar, Microsoft VP Julie Larson-Green said, 'It just didn't do everything that you expected Windows to do. So there's been a lot of talk about it should have been a rebranding. We should not have called it Windows (.DOCX). How should we have made it more differentiated? I think over time you'll see us continue to differentiate it more. We have the Windows Phone OS. We have Windows RT and we have full Windows. We're not going to have three.'"

No business continuity with Microsoft

[ruir]

Microsoft has a disruptive model of work, and this just shows it. They have no interest whatsoever in giving continuity in the long run to their APIs/products, to sell new ones and new training too. And then there are the failed market of bad products. Newsflash, there isnt a tablet market, it is an iPad market. And then there is a market of subpar, less than 100 euros tablets for iPads wannabes.

The real reason for RT?

[Bugler412]

I think the real reason for RT was to spur Intel to get better power consumption on their chipsets for the real version of Windows, seems to have met that goal if you view it that way

Interesting

[Horshu]

This is the first site I've come across that has interprested Larson-Green's presentation to indicate MS is ditching RT. Every other one has assumed that they're just going to merge the WinPhone shell into RT and make Modern UI more scaleable across screen sizes.

Re:No business continuity with Microsoft

[Algae_94]

Newsflash, there isnt a tablet market, it is an iPad market. And then there is a market of subpar, less than 100 euros tablets for iPads wannabes.

Get out of here with this nonsense. Maybe once upon a time this was true, but there are tons of tablets out there that are selling quite well.

Re:Shooting Itself in the Foot

[0123456]

And Metro sucks on anything other than a phone.

As far as I can see, the whole push for Metro was to try to convince people to develop apps for Windows phones, becuase there was no point in developing for a tiny market like that. Now, they've screwed their desktop users to try to get into the tablet and phone market, and they're dumping tablets.

Problem is more fundamental to RT

[Junta]

RT couldn't find a value proposition that created a market just like windows phone is struggling. Windows without legacy compatibility is just not attractive (live by the sword, die by the sword: windows on x86 has gobs of compatible software, windows on arm has next to nothing compared to google and apple devices).

The initial hard *need* for RT would be that Intel couldn't/wouldn't release an architecture that would even get in the same ballpark as ARM manufacturers in terms of cost and power. Now that need is greatly reduced with Intel's Bay Trail platform. Windows 8 x86 tablets are in the same ballpark as the Nexus 7. There are certainly cheaper android devices more and more, but Intel and MS could elect to participate at those price points if they want to at this point and still turn a profit.

MS was screwed either way...

[Radical Moderate]

because Microsoft isn't much of a brand. Everyone knows Windows, but I'll bet half the people who use it couldn't tell you what Microsoft is, and half of those couldn't name anything else MS makes, besides Office. So the only thing MS had to leverage was Windows, which created a crapload of confusion.

That said, I do agree with you, because MS needs to create a new brand, and they have the resources to play the long game. But they chickened out, and that didn't work out so well for them.

Re: Problem is more fundamental to RT

[Vanderhoth]

Except they won't and you only get one chance to make a first impression. They had their chance and screwed it up, on just about every conceivable level. They can't compete with Apple for the high end / status symbol market or with Androids for the techy geek / cheap tablet market and windows 8 is a joke MS sold their primary market out for to try and get into the "me too" market.

Microsoft? ASK SLASHDOT!

[erroneus]

Seriously. If you want to get any kind of traction in a new market, ASK SLASHDOT. I'm not kidding at all. Sure there will be trolls and there will be some really stupid ideas. But if any group of people out there will be able to predict the success of a product offering and be able to voice the opinions of the market, it's this group right here.

We all knew Windows RT wasn't going to make it. But then again, we knew it based on Windows 8. You still haven't listened to you customers and support people (AKA Slashdot) in any of this.

And this is something you simply haven't tried yet. You keep doing the same crap, living on your bloated Win16, Win32, Win64 model which is now a security nightmare and what's it gotten you? Negative public opinion for one. Public doubt for another. If the public says anything it's that Windows isn't wanted when "something other than Windows" is available. You never should have made a Tablet version of Windows. It should have been a tablet version of anything else! And frankly, since Android is making more money for you than many other things, it seems to me you should just embrace it and run! But why not? Oh, because you don't control it... forgot about that little obsession. Well, you're controlling the market less than you did before anyway and it's just going to get worse. Embrace the change or be left behind.

And ASK people who know!

Re:Problem is more fundamental to RT

[berashith]

I think they did it on purpose. Coke released a clear product, not to compete with a successful pepsi clear product, but to dilute the market, then fail, and cause the playing field to go back to the original status quo. Microsoft is highly interested in all consumers staying in the x86 market. When ARM started looking interesting to normal people, MS had to do something to protect its turf. Competing fairly would be hard and expensive, and kill off the current cash cows. Burying the new trend by placing a bad taste in the mouth of people who dont know which part of a technology stack to blame can get years of bad publicity for the up and comers.

Microsoft does another bad Apple knock-off.

[JonBoy47]

Microsoft has had a long history of (poorly) knocking off Apple's products. The Surface is no different. Apple's genius, which Microsoft utterly failed to appreciate, was in making the iPad run iOS instead of MacOS. Steve's reality distortion bullshit notwithstanding, this design decision invited comparison with the cheaper and less capable iPhone. Apple was able to frame the iPad, in customers' minds, as a super-size iPhone, rather than as a miniaturized version of anything that they would call a "computer".

By running software called "Windows" the Surface naturally inviting comparison to "conventional" Windows PC's. It faired poorly; PC-makers' razor thin margins meant potential buyers could buy nearly any Windows laptop for the same or less money, get a bigger screen, better keyboard, more storage, and be better able to do "real work". Surface RT added insult to injury by not even being a "real computer" in the sense that it didn't even run legacy Windows software.

Re:"Not Even" Office, huh? ;-)

[peppepz]

True, but as complex as it can be, Office has always been a showcase for Microsoft's new technologies, that's why I said "not even".
Windows 3.1? You'd see its full potential with Office - truetype, common dialogs and all.
COM/ActiveX? Office became entirely based on it.
Windows NT's Unicode support? Office shipped with fonts covering the whole of it.
The innovative UI elements of Windows '95 (and long file names)? Office '95 shows how to take advantage of them.
The (in)famous banner? Office got it before MS Paint.
Perhaps it's with .NET that Microsoft began not eating their own dog food anymore, as they bolted it on Office, instead of rewriting Office in .NET.

But now with Metro, Microsoft are telling their whole community of developers that they need to make the biggest change in the history of Windows, to completely drop their proven, decades-old development tools and habits, and embrace a radically new programming paradigm and distribution channel. This requires large investments, and investments require trust, which tends to be lost when even the leader doesn't show the way.