I don’t want to hear anyone say anything ever again about Steve Jobs’ infamous Reality Distortion Field. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has one of his own, though it only seems to affect the likes of Rob Enderle, Paul Thurrott, and Philip Elmer-DeWitt. Ballmer’s keynote presentation at CES ran for almost 80-minutes. The last three minutes were devoted to Microsoft Windows running on three new tablet PCs. One from HP, one from Pegatron, one from Arcos. Elmer-DeWitt’s take on the whole event:
But what got the most attention from the press gathered to watch it were the three minutes Microsoft’s (MSFT) CEO spent talking about his answer to the tablet computer Apple is expected to unveil in less than three weeks.
From that, Elmer-DeWitt concocted the headline, Microsoft upstages Apple’s tablet. No details. No specifications. No price tag. No delivery date. No demonstration of features or functions. And that constitutes upstaging of an unannounced Apple product?
This is not Microsoft’s first venture into tablet computing. Ballmer did not mention his flagging Ultra-Mobile PC project, which got so much attention three years ago, or the Microsoft Courier, a two-sided prototype tablet that has been gathering trade-press buzz since September.
Uh, Phil, how did that work out for Microsoft?