Outsourcing Control ⇥ theverge.com

Tom Warren, The Verge:

Speaking at Microsoft’s TechForum event this week, Steve Ballmer’s senior advisor, Craig Mundie, detailed the history of Redmond’s philosophy toward Windows OEMs and how Surface came to be. “I think one of the things evolved over a long time in the PC business was we stopped some years back really trying to actively curate what the devices looked like,” said Mundie, discussing the engineering and design influence involved in creating an experience and hardware that’s relevant to people.

“We said, ‘oh the OEMs, that’s their design, they deal with it.’ We got huge diversity out of that at all possible price points, but it became hard to guarantee a uniform quality of experience that the end user had,” he explained.

In fewer words, the Surface was designed to compete with the best hardware design and quality in the world: Apple.