Otto Berkes, the man behind Microsoft’s Origami and Ultra Mobile PC, is leaving Microsoft. Berkes had the vision and knew where mobile computing was headed long before the iPad came on to the scene. As we all know now, Apple executed on it ways Microsoft could not.
Todd Bishop interviewed Berkes today and asked him his thoughts on the iPad:
“It’s been bittersweet,” he said. “It certainly validated the notion of having a truly touch-centric, connected computing device, but I obviously wish that Microsoft had gotten there first. … The concepts were certainly all there, but the investment level required and the clarity of focus on that class of product was not what it needed to be to achieve the kind of commercial success that Apple has achieved with the iPad.”
I think about Origami all the time in relation to the current tablet influx.
If you go back to their original teaser video and vision, it *absolutely* is the iPad, but they were way ahead of their time and the technology wasn’t there (Windows XP? resistive touch? low-res screen?). That said, there’s no excuse for not catching up more quickly – it is a bitter lesson that I hope is well-learned by our leadership.