From deep within the Macalope’s woodland home on the edge of the great plains we bring you yet another thrilling production of…
MICROSOFT ALWAYS WINS THEATER!
[Cue the Microsoft Always Wins Players performing the hit single “Microsoft Always Wins.”]
Writing for the social media integration buttons and face-devouring demons of the 12th dimension over at Business Insider, Matt Weinberger is here to tell us how “Microsoft is beating Apple in a key battle for the future of computing.” (Tip o’ the antlers to @JonyIveParody.)
A-gain.
What is it this time?! Is it mobile? Is it auto tech? Wearables? Virtual reality? Lasers? Cyborg pandas? OH, GOD, IS IT CYBORG PANDAS? It’s 2016. If you don’t have a cyborg panda strategy it may already be too late!
What? Is? IT?
…the rise of keyboard-detachable tablets…
Yes, not since “The Rise of the Silver Surfer” has there been a rise so designed to get a rise out of the risible.
IDC projects that Windows 10 devices like the Surface Book laptop and the Surface Pro 4 tablet will ride that wave to a 74.6 percent share of the detachable tablet market by 2020, up from 53.3 percent in 2016.
Look, let’s not do what Weinberger did and pretend this is an actual thing that will assuredly happen while burying the lede until the very last sentence:
Of course, as PCWorld points out, IDC also predicted that Microsoft would dominate the smartphone world. So take it all with a grain of salt.
Yes, simply put, IDC has a track record about as good as your Uncle Larry’s in determining when is a good time at Thanksgiving to tell that racist joke. (NEVER, LARRY.) These predictions are genuinely stupid in that they are usually based on two assumptions: 1) Apple will continue to ship the same things it’s always been shipping and never change a thing, because that seems reasonable, and 2) MICROSOFT BIG, MICROSOFT STRONG.
The Macalope doesn’t want to say IDC has a pro-Microsoft bias, but it’s weird they don’t seem believe their own numbers that show the iPad Pro outsold the Surface in the holiday quarter, even when the iPad Pro was only on sale for half the quarter and in constrained quantities.
The Macalope’s not saying the Surface isn’t going to do well, he’s just pointing out that, based on the frequency at which IDC is forced to update its predictions, they should not be taken with even an entire salt lick of salt. They should not be taken at all.