Announcing vs. shipping

Written by

Dermot Daly on the differences between Microsoft’s and Apple’s strategy of announcing products:

People’s reactions are then about sprinting to their local Apple store, or reaching for their credit card.

He’s right. Apple creates a furor around its products and people race to buy it. It shows a real lack of planning and knowledge when you don’t even know how much it’s going to cost.



  • http://twitter.com/borjamar Borja Marcos

    And don’t forget it can still be another prop, like that “slate” so lovingly fondled (paraphrasing The Register and their funny “fondleslab” word) by Ballmer during what was, probably, his most important keynote in the whole year.

  • stevex

    Microsoft has always done this. They must think there’s a good reason for it, but all logic seems to defy it. Windows 8 was announced January 2011 and now a year and a half later they still haven’t announced a release date. I don’t see how this does them any good.

  • http://twitter.com/borjamar Borja Marcos

    Moreover, I suspect this isn’t that well engineered and it’s most like an “hey, see how cool I am compared to Apple”.

    Proof: It offers 802.11n networking with a MIMO 2×2 radio. Yeah, cool. What for? Do you really need that much bandwith in a device which processing capacity is strictly bound by the battery? I don’t see the benefit, and it increases power consumption.

    The 2×2 seems to be an easy pick to say “ok, not a retina display, but my wireless card is more powerful”. Plain and simple featuritis.

  • kvanh

    On the Windows release date, Apple still hasn’t announced a release date for mountain lion (except a month and that was just recently.)

    iPhone 1 wasn’t immediately available BUT price and ship date were announced and pre-orders started that weekend.

    • EVula

      If I recall correctly, the reason the iPhone was announced as “early” as it was had to do with FCC regulations or somesuch that would have gotten the specifics about the device out there in a rather boring fashion, so they decided to go ahead and announce it on their terms.

      As for Mountain Lion, it’s just Apple’s yearly software update; announcing a formal release date in advance isn’t as important as the release of a major new hardware component.

      • lucascott

        You recall correctly. The FCC applications are public knowledge and Apple hates for anyone else to ‘announce’ things for them. So they did both the iPhone and the iPad themselves early.

        But even then they had a clue about announcement dates and weren’t just like “sometime later this year, probably, maybe next year” like all the tablets that were announced right before the iPad, these tablets, etc

  • Bob

    You should announce a new product months in advance if you are entering a new market, like Microsoft is with the Surface. That way you stand a chance on stealing sales from other manufacturers. Some people who were about to buy an iPad may wait for the Surface. Personally, I don’t know who those people are but that is the theory. But Microsoft should have announced a price at this point, I agree. Typically you only announce things that are going to help your product. I can only assume the price isn’t going to be as competitive as Microsoft thinks. Whether they like it or not, they are now competing based on price. The Surface will get lost in the sea of tablets that aren’t iPad.

    • http://geekfun.com/ Erik S.

      So, in other words, FUD.