Laptop Thoughts: Windows Mobile Lost a 'Whole Generation' Says Ballmer

"Steve Ballmer has delivered a mea culpa to Microsoft's partners for its slip-ups against Apple and Google on tablets and smart phones. Ballmer told Microsoft's annual Worldwide Partner Conference that Windows Mobile missed a "whole generation of users" and promised Windows Phone 7 will set things right."

Dear Microsoft,

I generally feel a lot of love for you as a company, but it's sure frustrating watching you miss the boat again and again. Remember when you laughed at the iPhone? Yeah, exactly, no one is laughing now. The hype around the iPad had been building for years - didn't someone in your organization (other than the Courier team) realize that this whole slate computing thing wasn't going to just be empty hype?

Two years ago you should have been working on some form of operating system that's optimized for touch computing. I know you don't share this opinion Mr. Ballmer, but if you've ever used Windows 7 on a touch-based computer, you'll know that it's really not well-suited for touch...especially when you take away the high-power CPUs and GPUs needed to make the experience even remotely decent. And taking away those things is exactly what you need to do in order to get decent battery life. You need to think of hardware appropriate for phones, not laptops, when you talk about slate computers. You can't rely on Moore's Law to make Windows work well on a slate device - because Moore's Law can't fix the broken user interface paradigm that Windows 7 is based upon.

Mark my words: it's a huge mistake for you to to use an operating system designed for a mouse and a keyboard on a device where touch is the primary method of input. The only hope you have in this space is to use Windows Phone 7 (or even the Zune OS) and design a new custom UI shell on top of it. There's no other option for you that will allow you to bring slates to market to compete against Apple, Google, and HP (via Palm's Web OS) in a reasonable time frame.

Sincerely,

Someone Trying to Help