The surface is one of my go-to examples of Microsoft’s ineptitude. The surface is honestly an amazing tablet. It works very well, great battery life, and you can either use a standard tablet mode or it as a full Windows machine. For businesses too it was a slam-dunk, where since it’s Windows it already interfaces with most IT systems out of the box, no special setup or store integrations or Apple stuff, it’d work with Microsoft AD. Unfortunately it followed the pattern.

• They gave up on tablets before fully vetting the market
• Apple lands the iPad, and it takes off, is groundbreaking
• Microsoft got butthurt that Apple made profit on a thing they gave up on
• They take years coming up with the Surface, in the meantime every 3rd party came out with an Android one that was slow and choppy so the people have all decided iPad was the winner
• Microsoft hired thousands of engineers and pivoted the entire world to touch, forcing Windows 8 down everyone’s throats, making the public hate it
• Surface finally lands, but everyone already hates the interface, and anyone who wants a tablet already has one
• Microsoft quietly lays off everyone. Surface is still around, but on life support.