Thinking About the Next Wave of Personal Computing (Premium)

That said, I don’t begrudge Terry (or Microsoft more broadly) for this characterization. There’s no doubt that Mixed Reality is “a” next wave of computing, an important milestone.

But when I think about computing waves, particularly in the personal computing space, which is what we’re talking about here, there are waves … and then there are waves. The PC was once the biggest wave, but it was recently outdone by smartphones or, more generally, mobile computing. And on that note, Microsoft should be credited for pushing Windows boldly into the mobile computing era with new innovations in Windows 10 and 2-in-1 PC form factors. Instead, the software giant is perhaps better known for its failure in smartphones. Two years ago, after a decade of work, Microsoft finally capitulated the smartphone market to Android and iPhone and began winding down that business.

That retreat is being completed as I write this, and in keeping with the plan that Microsoft outlined in 2015. Less well remembered, perhaps, was the promise that Microsoft made at that time: It would not miss the next wave of personal computing, we were told.

And yet, I feel like Microsoft has, in fact, already missed the next wave as well.

That wave—which I feel will eventually dwarf mobile computing in the same way that mobile computing out-performed the PC—is called ambient computing. And today, it is most clearly seen in home-based appliances like the Amazon Echo. But it will progress quickly, and to a Star Trek-like future in which we can walk around our homes, and eventually public spaces, and speak and otherwise indicate to unseen AI- and machine learning-backed sensors what it is that we need and want.

The obviousness of ambient computing, the sheer inevitability of it, is indisputable. That Amazon is the company that jumpstarted that wave is, alas, is a mystery.

Like Microsoft, Amazon completely failed in the smartphone space, though it only took one generation of attempted innovations for the online retailer to figure out the hopelessness of the situation.

But unlike Microsoft, Amazon never made any bold promises about not missing the next wave. Worse, and again, unlike Microsoft, Amazon simply took matters into its own hands and created that wave. Amazon. It boggles the mind.

Microsoft’s lateness to this wave is not unprecedented, but then Google and Apple, the two companies that dominate mobile, are also late to this game. In late 2016, Google finally released its Home appliance in unfinished form, though it appears to be improving rapidly. Apple still hasn’t released a Siri-powered appliance, though it is rumored to be prepping an announcement for next month. Microsoft, as you know, is finally readying its own partner ecosystem for Cortana-powered appliances which will begin appearing late this year too.

But as with smartphones, being late isn’t necessarily an advantage, and the smart money is on Microsoft failing here. That not happening will first require Google and Apple to fail at capitalizing on mobile in the same way that Microsoft previously failed to capitalize on its PC successes. That could happen, but in the case, it will be because Amazon is already too successful.

This, I think, explains Microsoft’s talk about Mixed Reality as the next wave. I feel that the company knows two things: That it is already too late to this first generation of ambient computing, and that it will never actually dominate any of these subsequent computing waves, no matter what they are. So Mixed Reality is the next wave. For Microsoft.

It’s also a differentiator that it can hold over today’s dominant platform makers. The trouble is, that differentiation could be very temporary. Google has already made some small steps into Mixed Reality with Project Tango, and into VR more generally with Cardboard and Daydream View. And Apple is widely rumored to be working on its own Mixed Reality solutions, because Apple is always widely rumored to be doing everything. (They’re like Microsoft was in the 1990s; if there is something important happening, Apple is always secretively working, supposedly, to swoop in and fix everything.)

So Microsoft’s position is tenuous. All it can leverage is the PC, with its shrinking and unengaged user base. Google and Apple, meanwhile, have larger and more engaged user bases. And because these companies dominate mobile, they seem hipper and less stodgy than Microsoft, and more likely to deliver cool new products and services that people will want to buy and use. That’s true of both ambient computing and Mixed Reality.

So we’ll see what happens. Tablets kind of came and then fizzled into sort-of PCs. Wearables are a non-event, comparably, with Apple selling even fewer Apple Watches than Microsoft has sold Xbox Ones. So all of these companies are looking to the future, to the next wave, and each has its own ideas about what they might be. Not coincidentally, each of their predictions plays to their own strengths.

Which is, again, what makes Amazon so amazing. This company had no particular strength on which to build its ambient computing empire. It just did it. And I suspect the reason it worked is that Amazon got it right because it made sense for customers. Not because it made sense for the company making the product.

And that, folks, is how computing waves are defined. The PC succeeded because it was the right product. So did the iPhone, and then all the smartphones that copied it. Amazon may not ultimately win the next round, but it will forever be credited for jumpstarting the next computing wave. Which is a future of ambient computing.

PS: For the Microsoft fans in the audience, take heart: The software giant may not understand consumers, but it has a rich history with enterprises and scalable computing services. And I suspect Microsoft has an important role to play in ambient computing. Not through Cortana-powered speakers, per se, but rather in the important back-end services that will power other devices and sensors. In some ways, this future should model what happened in mobile, and Microsoft will eventually realize that the role it will play is less front-facing. This is fully in keeping with our understanding of how this company will evolve over time.