Before a Surface (Premium)

While editing Brad's book Beneath a Surface, I was inspired to go back and re-watch Surface press events from the past and research my notes from those days. Doing so was an interesting exercise. And a reminder of how much this product line has evolved over time.

I don't want to undermine what Brad is doing with his book. Instead, I'd like to provide some surrounding context around the stories he tells in Beneath a Surface, and do so using some interesting information from my own archives. Here, I'll examine what was happening in and around the industry at the time Microsoft decided to go forward with Surface.

So let's start at the beginning.

The origin of Microsoft Surface is fascinating to me. It's an intriguing and controversial idea that would never have happened without the patronage of a madman, Steven Sinofsky, who had taken over the Windows organization in the wake of the Windows Vista debacle.

As is so often the case during leadership transitions, one of Sinofsky's first goals was to eliminate both the people and strategies that he felt weren't working and replace them with his own people and ideas.

He had previously led Microsoft Office development, so he brought Julie Larson-Green and other top lieutenants to Windows with him, as well as key user experience people like Jensen Harris.

As for strategy, Sinofsky immediately shut down the open development approach of his predecessor, which relied on big-bang announcements about future plans at Microsoft events to generate excitement. Under Sinofsky, Windows would now be developed in secret. And Microsoft would never disclose any new features unless they were absolutely going to make it into the product.

Sinofsky ran a tight ship, and his version of the trains running on time was to ensure that a new Windows version came out on a regular cadence, in this case, every three years. This was a direct reaction to the years-long delays of "Longhorn," which was eventually tossed aside for Windows Vista. Microsoft would never again let that many years go by between major Windows releases.

A control freak who was suspicious of everyone, Sinofsky cultivated a divisive "us vs. them" mentality within Windows that applied as much to other parts of the company as it did to competitors. Like many of that generation of Microsoft executives, he also suffered from a severe case of Apple envy. And many of the ideas he green-lighted were direct attempts to mimic Apple, despite evidence at the time that these efforts---like Zune---were failing.

Sinofsky's flaws were overlooked and even celebrated in some quarters thanks to the success of Windows 7, which went on to sell 670 million licenses over its three-year life cycle. But with hindsight, it's easy to see that anyone could have "fixed" Windows Vista. It was too big and slow, and it originally shipped with some important compatibility issues. Windows 7 could just as easily have been the next Windows Vista Service Pack...