Microsoft Promotes Survey That Shows Big Preference for Macs (Premium)

Microsoft's beleaguered Surface business needs a win. This isn't it.

As you may have seen if you follow my Twitter feed, Microsoft today promoted a Creative Strategies survey claiming that "more employees say they would choose Surface" over other PC makes, including Apple's Mac.

There are a number of problems with this position, and while I tried to have fun with this on Twitter, the truth is far more sobering. In fact, there isn't anything funny about this at all.

Sadly, Surface has had a horrible year.

Concurrent with a damning Consumer Reports recommendation that customers do not purchase Surface devices because of rampant reliability issues, Microsoft's newest PCs are not selling well. In the most recent quarter, Microsoft sold fewer PCs than it did in the same quarter one year earlier. This despite shipping four major new devices---Surface Laptop, Surface Pro (2017), (two versions of) Surface Book 2, and Surface Pro with LT---each of which hits at the heart of product lineup. In the year-ago quarter, Microsoft released only two niche products, Surface Studio and Surface Book with Performance Base. And yet, it still sold fewer devices a year later.

I have a hard time understanding why Surface isn't doing better. Microsoft's PC business offers high-quality premium PCs that, in many cases, inspire partners and customers alike to think of PCs as being the equal of Macs in both style and quality. And while I have complained about the slow push to modern technologies like USB-C and Thunderbolt 3, that in no way explains the sales drop-off this year. Something is wrong.

To counter the bad vibes around Surface---including an embarrassing chapter in which Microsoft had to deny rumors that it was killing the product lineup---Microsoft has had to make a bit of lemonade.

First, it publicly voiced support for Surface while internally, it argued against the Consumer Reports recommendation by claiming that customer satisfaction with Surface devices was, in fact, very high. This has nothing to do with reliability, as it turns out, but it's fair to believe that more recent devices, like those Microsoft shipped in 2017, are more reliable than those from the previous year. And with sales falling, Microsoft shipped two lower-cost versions of its newest laptops.

And then this week happened.

"Creative Strategies asked a panel of 1300 US consumers about their preferences for how they use their PCs for both personal and professional scenarios," Microsoft explains. "Responses showed Surface is winning over early tech adopters and continuing to challenge Apple within the broader survey set."

So, the survey does show those things. The issue is that those things are meaningless.

What the survey really shows is that those people who have no say in what computers their workplaces provide them with are engaging in wishful thinking: If money were no object, which products would they choose? And the answer is obvious enough: The mos...