Craig Mundie on Microsoft’s (new) perspective on hardware quality:

“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. Pointing to the initial touchscreens in Microsoft’s first-generation phones, there were clearly devices with better hardware than others. “If you were in front of a bad one then people said that was a piece of crap; it didn’t work a damn.”
Right. Quality of hardware matters. No shit, Mundie.
The reason Microsoft didn’t give a damn about hardware quality in the 80’s, 90’s and 00’s is because they were only trying to license Windows to businesses and businesses don’t mind if they’re giving their employees crappy PCs and laptops. For businesses, it’s all about the bottom line. Forget how important the quality is or how people will appreciate it more and it will last longer.
Sounds like Microsoft’s (and Bill Gates’s) original mantra might be changing. It used to be, “A computer on every desk and in every home.” It was all about quantity, not quality.
Now Microsoft is trying to sell to human beings with opinions and, surprisingly, it turns out a lot of people like to buy quality hardware.