Robert Scoble

One day I met Steve Jobs in the street (back when I worked for Microsoft). He said "nice to meet the guys who are copying us."

I never imagined just how true that would turn out to be. Steve Ballmer's strategy seems to be:

1. Copy iPhone. Check!
2. Copy Stores. Check!
3. Copy AppleTV's ability to play video wirelessly from iPad. Check!
4. Copy iPad. Check! http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/the-only-post-you-need-to-read-about-microsofts-t (great post that lays out the new Surface impact from Microsoft).

What else is there left to copy? Oh, the cool aspirational advertising? The love Apple gets from developers? (Last night another developer and I were arguing about whether Apple continues to be in the driver's seat. I was actually arguing that the Samsung SIII was going to take developers away from Apple. He was having none of it).

But seriously, Microsoft has no choice here. Its business model is getting uprooted, as I can tell by all the iPhones I saw in the Tube last night. I didn't see a single Windows Phone. Not a single one out of seeing hundreds of phones and folks who live here confirm that seeing a Windows Phone is a very rare thing indeed. I also saw tons of iPads and Kindles and this new tablet is aimed at both of those.

Well, we know know where Microsoft is going: straight to copying Apple. Will that be a successful business strategy for Microsoft? I'm not very confident it will be. Everyone knows that the iPad has really great apps out for it and this new Surface will be welcomed to the market just the same way Windows Phone has been welcomed to the market: with 3% marketshare or so.

Now the ball is in another Seattle company's court: Amazon. What is Jeff Bezos up to? How will he beat Apple? I think Amazon is going to be the real innovator here. It's the one that probably keeps Tim Cook up at night.

I have noticed a trend, though. Lots of journalists are doing their best to cheer this new Microsoft effort. Just like they tried to cheer Windows Phone (journalists like it when there's a good market competition, because that means more readers, more stories, and more distribution channels for their content). One set of journalists took me aside at yesterday's Facebook Olympics launch and explained why they don't like Facebook all that much: because Facebook doesn't give them much of a way to make money.

They don't like Apple for the same reason because Apple takes 30% of every dollar that rolls through its machine and they are hoping for a real competitor to come along that would keep Apple honest. The thing is the iPad already has Flipboard and until Microsoft Surface has anything cooler the market is going to be fairly harsh. Remember, this new Surface computer doesn't run traditional Windows applications!

Some kudos for Microsoft, though. Finally you are free of backward compatibility with Windows apps. Finally you are free of all those IT CTOs who want to run old software that they invested in in the 1990s (er, remember Visual Basic?!?) Finally you have a cool hardware design that matches last year's iPad (has any Windows OEM been able to do that? No!)

Well, welcome Microsoft to the new post-PC world. Good luck with that!