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Alan Kay once famously said "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware". We know a few companies who have worked with this ethos, like Apple does to this day, and Acorn and Palm used to do when they were still around. Other companies have not had such a total solution, just some select parts like peripherals, and instead they have let other companies do the bulk of the hardware side of things.

Lately we have seen Microsoft get seriously into the mobile device game with their Surface and Google have since years been dipping their toes into the smartphone pond, and more recently in the tablet computer space. Did they feel these devices were necessary in order to make their over-all vision come true, or is it just they they don't have any trust in the OEMs anymore? That they feel it's necessary to have at it themselves and show the rest how it's supposed to be done?

I have been wondering about this since Microsoft announced the Surface a while back, and continously since Google released their first collaboration with any external manufacturer.

Could it be that they are both running into the Alan Kay-situation? Have the two not been serious about their software until recently, when they stated building their own hardware to go along with it? I would, rather, speculate that this is more about the external face of the products they are promoting and they the companies are afraid of what a mess the OEMs could do. In the case of Windows 8, I think Microsoft are very well aware of what a huge leap in user interfaces they have taken and they want to be very careful about how people should perceive and meet this new breed of the system.

For Google, I think it is more of a damage control situation for the Android brand. While it can be debated wether this means anything outside of the small demographic of geeks, nerds and tech freaks, it does make sense in the long run. Just because the average person on the street doesn't have a clue about what Android is, even if they have a device running it in their pocket, Google can only go on for so long with the way some OEMs have been treating it in terms of a brand. From the no-name Chinese manufacturers of crappy, low-spec tablets to the big-hitters like HTC, Samsung and Toshiba, Android has gotten a fair bit of tarnish, not due to the software as much as due to the devices it has run on.

Hardware is very much a part of the end user experience and if it is poor, it will undoubtedly reflect poorly on the company behind it. Or at least the one that people see. In this case, that would be Windows and Android. In this ever more inter-connected world of ours, brand means more than any person or company is prepared to admit in the light of day. Defending it against being dragged in the gutter is key and if the stuff customers are being exposed to is more or less crap, then dragged in the mud the brand shall be.

So rather than have an epiphany about the value of making hardware and software in an electronic symbiosis, this is more about protecting themselves in terms of marketing. But I hope we get some benefits of the hardware being built for the software and vice versa.

Robert Falck

Robert is a freelance tech writer from Sweden. You can follow his posts here on the British Tech Network, listen to him yap away on the British Tech iOS Show and read even more of his stuff on his site streakmachine.com or you can even follow him on twitter @streakmachine.

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Robert Falck

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