AllThingsD highlights an interview with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in which Ballmer says,
I don’t think anybody has done a product that is the product that I see customers wanting. You can go through the products from all those guys … and none of them has a product that you can really use. Not Apple. Not Google. Not Amazon. Nobody has a product that lets you work and play that can be your tablet and your PC. Not at any price point.
This is Microsoft’s problem in a nutshell. Ballmer thinks everyone wants their tablet to act like a laptop or desktop, and—if Windows 8’s Metro is any guide—their laptop or desktop to work like a tablet.
But not everything has to be a Swiss Army Knife. I don’t expect or want my $400 tablet to do everything my $1500 laptop does. Microsoft doesn’t seem to get it that the Apple, and to a lesser extent Android, succeeded where Microsoft failed in its Tablet PC efforts.
As one of the commenters on the AllThingsD story put it, Ballmer is complaining here that nobody is making refrigerators with built-in toasters. Yes. And, of course, there’s a reason for that.