A new dawn for Microsoft?

As Apple was announcing its new, smaller iPad in San Jose, Microsoft was preparing for its biggest

announcement in a generation on the other side of America. Only a hardened cynic would suggest that the

first announcement was timed to spoil the second. And only a realist would believe that Apple is right to

– for once – be worried by Microsoft.

That’s because the multi-layered news from the Windows maker, to be announced on Thursday in New York,

includes the formal unveiling of a tablet that is, by common consensus, the most extraordinary piece of

hardware to be released since, well, the iPad.

Microsoft’s Surface computer is the first PC the company has ever made itself, and it is designed to

provide the best platform available for the controversial new Windows 8 operating system. It features an

extraordinary, slim keyboard that also makes it the first device to genuinely, completely blur the line

between a tablet and a laptop. And because it runs Windows, it ought to offer all the capabilities that

users are accustomed to on fully fledged computers.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, there are two reasons why it doesn’t. The first is that Windows 8 itself is

a huge gamble for the company that runs 90 per cent of the world’s PCs, but it’s also one that it has

been forced to take by Apple. By some measures, while Windows still accounts for those nine out of ten

working computers, it accounts for just three in ten new sales, thanks mainly to devices such as Apple’s

iPad and other tablets running Google’s Android operating system. Where previously it would have been

unfair to compare a computer to a tablet, now users are able to do similar things with a range of

different devices. The changing nature of computing is a nettle that Microsoft has been slow to grasp and

now, as Chief executive Steve Ballmer has put it, they’re betting the company on getting it right.

The resulting software is designed, therefore, to work on both conventional desktop computers, tablets,

laptops and mobile phones too. While there is much to like about it, the current compromise combines a

version of the familiar Windows with a new interface that, while elegant, will provide a huge shock to

many users. It offers a patchwork of ‘live tiles’ which when tapped open up programmes and on their own

act as a sort of dashboard. So as on a mobile phone, say, your newest emails appear immediately on screen.

As a new strategy, the idea is really impressive. But in reviews it has often seemed rough around the

edges, and even as it is polished it is way behind the library of apps that are offered by rival systems

from Google and Apple.

Secondly, although the Surface tablet is a lovely piece of design, it runs a cut-down version of Windows

called RT. Although a full version is coming on a fractionally larger tablet in January, the overall

effect is the feeling that Microsoft has made a beautiful thing and yet been forced to rush it out in

order to stay competitive. It would be mean to point out that the last company that rushed out a tablet is

BlackBerry, whose fortunes have declined precipitously since.

For all that, however, Microsoft has accurately identified its own weaknesses, and it has belatedly seen

that it must reinvent itself for a new era. On Monday, it will launch the mobile phones that will

integrate seamlessly with the new Windows that runs computers and tablets. Like Apple, it will finally

offer an ‘ecosystem’ that users and software makers can really sign up to.

Making that work will be a huge challenge for a company that lost what cool it had some time ago – but

Apple is now itself vast and Microsoft the underdog. With the new hardware going on sale at midnight, and

shops opening early to sell it, Microsoft’s chances of recovery are better than ever.