2 weeks ago, I was presenting to a group of Headteachers in Cambridge. They had asked me to go in and tell them about Windows8, before deciding whether to roll out a large batch of iPads. At the end of the presentation, they asked the usual question people ask when you’ve shown them something cool, which is; “How Much?”. I said that I could not answer that and that they’d need to wait and see what our OEM partners like Samsung, Dell, Toshiba, RM or Viglen came up with – because, I said (and I can still see these words hanging in the air) “Microsoft doesn’t make hardware”.
Then, on literally the next working day, came the breaking news from LA, that Steve Ballmer (our CEO) had just announced that Microsoft are releasing our own devices for Windows 8, and they’re called “Surface”. When the emails came in from the Cambridge Heads, asking “why didn’t you tell us this on Friday?” – I could honestly say to them that I didn’t know. This highlighted two things for me: a) I am clearly not high enough up the food chain at Microsoft to get told the important stuff, and b) the world of IT moves pretty fast. One week we don’t make tablet PC’s, the next week – we do.
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