Now the iPad hype/excitement [delete as applicable] has calmed down, it's a good time to look at Microsoft.
It's been pushing tablets for nearly a decade. What went wrong? How could a company with so many brilliant people be upstaged yet again?
The problem appears to be, er, Microsoft itself. Writing in the New York Times, former Microsoft vice president Dick Brass explains: "When we were building the tablet PC in 2001, the vice president in charge of Office at the time decided he didn't like the concept. The tablet required a stylus, and he much preferred keyboards to pens and thought our efforts doomed."
So what did this forward-thinking, go-getting team player do? Yep, he decided to cripple Office. "He refused to modify the popular Office applications to work properly with the tablet. So if you wanted to enter a number into a spreadsheet or correct a word in an email message, you had to write it in a special pop-up box… even though our tablet had the enthusiastic support of top management and had cost hundreds of millions to develop, it was essentially allowed to be sabotaged."
Can you imagine the carnage if somebody tried to do that at Apple?
Microsoft didn't always work that way. As Todd Bishop of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported back in 2008, Bill Gates' "brusque style of doing business" often ruffled feathers.
He would send angry emails demanding to know why the download process for Movie Maker was such a convoluted load of crap, and in the firm's early days "the prospect of a technical review with Gates would instil the fear of God - or more precisely, the fear of Bill - in Microsoft's product teams."
That probably doesn't make for a great working environment, but it tends to make for successful companies.
Apple without Steve Jobs? Useless. Apple with Steve Jobs? Quite possibly terrifying to be part of, but with an extraordinary run of products: iMac, iPod, iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad.
Lose the layers
What's the difference between, say, an iPad and a Windows-based Tablet PC? The former hasn't gone through 400 layers of management, six trillion meetings and input from every "stakeholder".
The cliché says that a camel is a horse designed by a committee, but the Microsoft described by Brass would have enough problems developing a cardboard box with a horse's face drawn on it.
Apple isn't the only tech firm that's thrived with an apparent dictator at the helm. Rob Glaser very nearly became the king of digital media, with RealNetworks dominating the pre-MP3 world of digital music. Former colleagues describe him as "intense", with one dubbing him a "screamer".
Valleywag describes Salesforce.com's CEO Marc Benioff as a "tyrant" and describes how TechCrunch's Michael Arrington "yells at anyone and everyone" like a fat, angry baby. Closer to home, temper and ego led to the ZX81, the Sinclair Spectrum, the Acorn Electron and the BBC Micro.
Before you think that you need to be a pretty crappy human being to run a successful tech firm, we need to stress that it isn't the anger that makes firms work: it's passion, attention to detail and talent.
Temper is often a side-effect of that, but if you take the talent out of the picture then it's just a bunch of rich men yelling at their underlings. Not much to admire in that.
It does seem that when tech firms lose the tyrannical boss, they lose the plot - but firms with mercurial management shouldn't get too cocky, either. The same ego that can produce amazing products and world-beating companies often leads to cockiness, hubris and nemesis.
Microsoft might want to take comfort in that - because while there's no doubt that the iPad is the product of a singular vision, a triumph of technology and a completely new way of doing things, so was the Sinclair C5.
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Liked this? Then check out 7 things Apple should change for iPad 2.0
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Your comments (5) Click to add a new comment
axel
February 11th 2010
5. This article says exactly nothing. Tech firms need a tyrant at the top, except when they don't. Your supporting facts for the "needs one" scenario are wrong: Bill Gates tried and failed at the Tablet PC for years in spite of the tyranny--Oh!--the tyranny!
The iPad is a poor example of success-by-tyranny because it is not a success. Will it be? Maybe. Probably not. The iPhone is a great example of success and the tyrant-in-chief may have had something to do with it. The Apple cult of design definitely did and he can take credit for that.
The sub-headline-as-a-question is a cop-out.
May a suggest a tyrannical editor? <grin>
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mdmagnusson
February 11th 2010
4. The way people get all riled up by any mention of an iPad you'd think they'd been molested by one as children.
I'm curious to see how consumers ultimately take to it.
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harry
February 11th 2010
3. A tyranical boss only works when they are respected. You can shout all you like, but if you are not talented, visionary and respectful of your employees they'll just ignore you. Thankfully for Apple & MS with Gates that wasn't a problem. I still think MS are fine in that respect with Ballmer, their problem is they have become too large and their teams no longer worked together and the individual boses of each team played cat and mouse with each other as they wanted to score points with Gates. I think the exact same problem hit Sony. These big companies need a structure where there's mutual respect and correlation through departments or they fall apart.
As for the iPad, can't agree entirely JJ. I would take a Windows Tablet 10X before an iPad, but it is not over-priced. It's almost the first time Apple have surprised by being less than people expected. But then it's not a standard high quality product like their Macbooks, it's using the same cheap Chinese metal & plastic all the PC manufacturers use. I think it's only chance to succeed comes from the fact it's not the usual high quality, high price Apple product, cos otherwise as you say it's incredibly underfeatured.
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ootempo
February 11th 2010
2. You have a good point there. It actually makes sense to me dude.
Jess
www.online-anonymity.cz.tc
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jjheath
February 11th 2010
1. Are you serious? the difference between an ipad and a pc tablet is that the former can't multi-task, can't have peripherals without an adapter, can't use the standard video player on the web, and is completely locked down. wow, sounds like apple has a real winner here. an over-priced, over-sized ipod touch. i really don't see how that's a win. From the name to the feature-set, the ipad is one of the biggest letdowns we've seen from the tech community in sometime.
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