Steven Sinofsky was one of the most important product managers at Microsoft for a long time and led, among other things, the development of Windows and Office. After leaving the company in 2012, he founded a blog and has since written extensively about product strategies, platforms, software history and the tech industry. In a new article he talks about the MacBook Neo, which receives the greatest possible praise in the introduction: The device simply blows him away, it is “paradigm-shifting”. Sinofsky congratulates Apple on an “insanely great product,” echoing a well-known Jobs formulation. For him, the MacBook Neo is now the replacement for his MacBook Air, but in a “much cooler color” and with an iPhone chip. Sinofsky wanted something similar 15 years ago…
In his detailed essay, he focuses primarily on why a concept like the MacBook Neo comes from Apple – even though Microsoft had similar ideas many years ago. It is precisely this point that leads him to a much more personal and “melancholic” look back at Windows 8, Surface and Windows on ARM. Sinofsky puts forward the thesis that in computer history it is often difficult to distinguish “early” from “wrong”. He cites Newton, General Magic and, to some extent, Palm Pilots as examples: In each case the concept was right, but network connection, miniaturization, displays and input technology were not yet advanced enough.
Cheap ARM devices then and now
… you would also have had the substructure…
Looking back, he often accepted the idea that Microsoft was simply “too early” and “doing too much at once” when it came to Windows 8. However, the MacBook Neo makes him rethink this opinion. The technical basis for the “Surface on ARM” with Nvidia Tegra, 2 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage was definitely there at the time – but Microsoft made key mistakes in the ecosystem. They didn’t manage to switch developers and users to a new app model quickly enough – one that should be safer, more reliable and more energy efficient. There was massive resistance to this because many wanted to stick to the classic Windows model. From his point of view, this old model was unsuitable for a new class of devices: it could neither be adequately secured nor made really energy-saving or robust.
…but did wrong what Apple solved right
Sinofsky describes Apple as the opposite of this development – starting with Mac OS X, the company has continuously modernized the operating system, APIs and app ecosystem and removed old code over two decades. You can’t run “everything forever” on the Mac; instead, developers are forced to constantly update with newer frameworks. Virtually everyone on the Mac is always up to date, while Windows itself is still characterized by very old backwards compatibility. This is exactly what he sees as the central difference. From this he develops the sharpest thesis: Microsoft’s greatest historical strength, namely “everything goes on forever,” has also become its greatest weakness.
MacBook Neo gives a new perspective
In the closing remarks, Sinofsky expressly praises the Mac, calls Apple’s development in chip and packaging technology exceptionally strong and describes macOS as fantastic. The Neo gave him a new perspective on something he had been thinking and writing about for many years. Even back when he left Microsoft, he believed that the actual direction of development should have been completely different. Today, in front of the MacBook Neo, he feels this old conviction very strongly again.
