Actually I'd claim that the real problem with Pocket PC and Tablet PC (and I worked on both products) was that they predated cheap, universal wireless communications. The effort to send a text message from a cell phone is much greater than any of the input methods on either of those devices, yet millions of people do it all the time. That wireless network totally changed the value proposition of one of these devices, and before that, they just weren't worth the trouble.

In plain terms, the isolated Tablet was little more than a crippled laptop, and the isolated Pocket PC was almost completely useless. Attach them to a network, though, and they become something magical. Something none of us working on them was wise enough to foresee.

--Greg

In the case of Tablet Computers, it has been a very long wait for someone to make something that worked!

--Greg

For a long time, Microsoft avoided the sort of sclerosis that seemed to affect big companies like IBM, AT&T, and Xerox. People attributed it to things like Microsoft's amazing decentralization of responsibility (in which each VP operates much like the CEO of his or her own startup) to the "Program Manager" role that separated the job of collecting requirements from the job of progamming them. But over the last decade, things seem to have gradually frozen up.

I was at Microsoft at the same time Dick Brass was (and even reported into his organization for a while), so I'm going to beat up on him a little. (He won't mind.) We really wanted Tablet PC to be viable without a keyboard because it made such a difference in weight and size. There are a number of problems with operating such a device that way, but simply logging into it was a bear. Virtual keyboard and handwriting recognition solutions were both miserable, so we looked at biometrics. Now for a Tablet PC, the obvious biometric is signature verification, but one powerful individual in Dick Brass's organization had such a passion for fingerprint verification, that he effectively stopped us from even evaluating signature verification systems. Never mind that the fingerprint systems were extra hardware, stuck out the side, were easy to break off, etc. -- this individual was impervious to reason. Dick could have broken the logjam, but wouldn't get involved. Ultimately, we did nothing, and no serious keyboardless Tablet PCs were ever made (that I know of). This wasn't the only reason, but it was enough by itself.

This pair of problems -- the non-technical guy who kills ideas and can't be reasoned with plus upper management that can't get involved -- seems to have become depressingly common across the whole company. Bright people get discouraged and leave. People who thrive on stifling other people stay.

Where I do disagree with Dick is that I think a VP still has enough autonomy to make his/her own org successful. Microsoft's top management could still fix this problem if it consistently focused on getting and keeping the right VPs and eliminating the bad ones. I think the problem and the solution start and end in the same place.

--Greg

On Earth, the Oxygen Cycle is about a million years. Seed Mars with plants, add water, and wait a million years. Presto! Instant oxygen atmosphere.

Of course, advanced technology might cut that to as little as ten-thousand years . . .

--Greg (Why I lost interest in terraforming)

Note that even China doesn't build many nuclear reactors. The Chinese aren't exactly ecowarriors, so it can't have anything to do with considerations of safety or waste disposal. Nuclear power is a very cool, very complex technology. It's just very expensive to build.

--Greg