Surface Fail

To the surprise of few, Microsoft Surface has performed a big ol' financial belly flop.

The original Surface concept, which was essentially an interactive tabletop, showed real promise. Corporate, education, construction, design -- I can envision many uses for such a device at the right price point. Instead, they bastardized the concept and tried to go head-to-head with the iPad. They lost.

Microsoft made their fortune creating a market, not playing in someone else's. Unfortunately for Microsoft, at this moment they have a money man instead of a product man heading up the corporation. Given that fact, this result was inevitable. I'm not saying that shipping Ballmer off to the corporate equivalent of Siberia will solve all the problems in Redmond, but it surely would be a good place to start.