No, Microsoft Did Not Make the PC Cool Again (Premium)

Claiming that Microsoft has somehow made the PC cool again is both wrong and disrespectful to the companies that toiled for years to improve PC design, reliability, and performance.

There are two recent memes—which appear to have their origins with the same small set of partisan tech bloggers—that Microsoft has somehow single-handily out-designed Apple and its lust-worthy products while saving the PC from certain doom. These stories probably play well in Redmond, and with those people silly enough to put all their hopes and dreams into a tech conglomerate. But they’re just stories. And those stories do not fully reflect reality.

To be sure, Microsoft makes great-looking hardware. But so does Acer, Apple, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, LG, and countless other PC makers. Companies that have been innovating in PC hardware for decades, unlike newcomer Microsoft. Which by the way, just released its first laptop. In 2017. Can I get a slow clap for the innovator, please?

But Microsoft also makes deeply compromised hardware. From the reliability issues that dogged Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 to the massive futility of Surface RT to the firm’s more recent insistence on ignoring future-proof and customer-friendly technologies like USB-C and Thunderbolt 3, this isn’t a PC maker that always gets it right. There isn’t a single Surface product that doesn’t have an obvious issue that makes it a non-starter for most customers. Too, Surface devices are far too expensive for most people.

No, Microsoft’s PC maker partners aren’t perfect either. In fact, I could quickly build a list of their terrible decisions—the camera location on the Dell XPS 13 is an obvious example—but this isn’t about what we all know and understand. It’s about Microsoft and being honest about its contributions.

As for the PC resurgence that Microsoft has allegedly triggered with its amazing designs, I’ll just remind everyone that the PC industry is two-thirds the size it was at its height and is still shrinking. You have to do some fuzzy math—which I did, by the way—to even call the last quarter anything other than yet another alarming drop-off in PC sales. And Microsoft’s market share is in the low single digits. The very low single digits.

Here’s what Microsoft should be credited with.

Microsoft develops Windows in a more open fashion and involving not just PC makers but also its other partners, and its customers, in the design and direction this OS takes. And that OS is ideally suited to PC form factors after a years-long diversion with Windows 8.x.

Microsoft works with its PC maker partners very specifically on creating better experiences for customers. Consider the close work between HP and Microsoft on the Spectre x360 as an obvious example.

Microsoft finally turned its back on its original and horrible anti-PC maker strategy with Surface and creates aspirational form factors that these companies are free to copy and improve on. (I think that last bit is telling: Virtually every Surface Pro clone does, in fact, improve on Microsoft’s original design in key ways.)

All that is great. But it’s not enough to make the PC industry healthy. And it still ignores the incredible designs and other contributions that other PC makers have made. I’m thinking about virtually every HP premium PC that’s been released over the past three years or more. That XPS 13, despite the curious camera design, or the workstation-class XPS 15, with its gaming PC graphics. Virtually every ThinkPad X-class device, with their perfect keyboard experiences. The super-thin and light jGram PCs that LG is making, defying what we thought was even possible.

None of those were influenced in any way by Microsoft’s PC designs.

Here’s what really happened. With the PC industry in decline, Microsoft finally woke up. And after a few stumbles—shocker, they’re human—-the company finally decided that working fully with its own partners was the right approach. But those partners were already doing what they could do, with or without Microsoft’s help, for many years. And they didn’t need Microsoft to tell them to innovate in many areas, including design.

Put simply, Microsoft did not make the PC cool again, and its frustrating to me that some need to contort history to suck up to this company.

But the bigger issue is that PC was always cool. Just ask anyone who wants or needs a PC to get real work done, play games, or do any other task that requires this most versatile and impressive of personal devices. The PC is cool, dammit. It’s always been cool.