Ex-Windows chief calls MacBook Neo "a paradigm shifting computer" — reflects on Surface failure and Windows on Arm while lamenting "we were early, but not wrong"

Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft's former head of Windows from 2009-2012 has shared his thoughts on Apple's new MacBook Neo, calling it "a paradigm shifting computer" while also lamenting what could have been with his original plans for Surface and Windows 8.

Sinofsky was the mastermind behind the original Surface RT and Windows 8 platform, including Windows RT which was Microsoft's first foray into Windows on Arm-based SoCs, which failed spectacularly. The former head says his new MacBook Neo has him feeling melancholy over how his original vision for Windows and Surface failed to materialize.

His post starts with praise for the MacBook Neo. "I am completely blown away by it. It is a paradigm shifting computer ... All the “compromises” are totally acceptable and go unnoticed to me." He explains how he's using MacBook Neo, and is incredibly positive about the whole thing. "Neo doesn't have to get better. It just has to stay excellent ... The Neo in 5 years will be more powerful than most of those [other devices] and probably still cost $699. Moore's law is undefeated."

"For me, Neo is just a MacBook Air replacement. And in a much cooler color. It is also a laptop made with "a phone chip". That's the part that is so familiar. That's why I got a bit melancholy looking at it," Sinofsky says. "A theme in computing that repeats is how something that appears to have been a prescient product or “early” is actually little different than “wrong”. In almost all cases something that was early was early across many dimensions. The “concept” was right, but the ability to actually execute the concept was wrong."

Of course, Sinofsky is referring to how the media and mass market reacted to Windows 8 and Surface when it first launched in 2012. "So when I thought about Windows 8 over the past dozen years, I quite often settled on being early AND wrong or too much too soon when I didn’t want to feel that bad ... But today I’m using Neo and thinking about Windows 8 and Surface, and I have to admit I’m struggling with that conclusion."

Sinofsky says that Surface RT was the world's MacBook Neo of 2012, a $599 computer in a premium chassis that was capable of light workload tasks. "We had all the pieces and all the pieces worked then. One I’m thinking about is compute. The original Surface on ARM (Nvidia Tegra) had 2GB RAM and 64GB storage ... Both had no problem running Office and browsing. In other words, the hardware and software were not early. The world as we lived it was quite capable of running the device. And it cost $599 with keyboard/32GB, $699 for 64GB"

"Where we were wrong was in moving the ecosystem to a new app model fast enough that was safer, more reliable, more power efficient. A lot of people rebelled about this. They wanted the old Windows app model. We knew there was no way to secure it, no way to make it power efficient, no way to make it safe. It was designed for another era. From the day we announced ARM we sought to separate the x86 Windows world and be new. I knew that any baby-step in the Microsoft world was in practice a lifetime commitment. You can see this in how ARM is treated today, as a forever alternative to x86. We viewed it then and I still view it that way as the replacement. There’s no revisionist history here. It was our strategy."

It's clear that under Sinofsky, Microsoft would have evolved Windows on Arm to become the future of Windows, rather than keeping it as something that existed alongside x86 Windows like it does today. Sinofsky never got to realize that vision as he "retired" from the company not long after Windows 8 launched.

"I type this today with these emotions and there’s no escaping my “certainty” that had we kept going and been able to round the corner with developers to build new apps we would have been in the same spot Neo is today in just a few years ... The trajectory of the hardware was clear. I am certain we would have had a clamshell. We would have had a desktop all-in-one. We would have done cellular (all the code was there and we even gave that hardware out previously).

Sinofsky signs off his post by thanking the Windows 8 team "that even to this day delivered more in one release, on time and on schedule, than any other Windows team before or after. We were early, but not wrong."

🗨️ Do you agree with the ex-Windows chief?

Sinofsky's comments provide a different view to how the whole situation with Windows 8 and Surface RT played out. While many blame Windows 8 for the state Windows is in today, it's clear Sinofsky had good intentions with the product, setting up the platform for the future, even if it was too early. What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

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