OneNote on Windows RT. What it tells us about Microsoft Now

One of the unrecognized jewels of Microsoft software is OneNote. It is a great application for note taking, organization, and project planning. For years, Microsoft has not recognized how OneNote could represent their company to the users they were losing. The people at Evernote recognized this opportunity, and their success represents an understanding of people store and utilize this type of data across multiple devices. OneNote is now available for IOS devices, including the iPad and iPhone, in addition to Windows Phone and Windows itself.

The new Microsoft Surface 2 is a great piece of tablet hardware for students and others working on productivity applications. You can read about it elsewhere. It runs on the version of Windows for tablets called Windows RT. One of the selling points of the Surface 2 is that it runs a version of Microsoft Office, which includes OneNote.

Note taking applications on tablets are expected to have one function, audio recording. While it is possible to record audio in OneNote on a desktop running Windows, the version of OneNote for Windows RT cannot record audio. Does this mean that Microsoft cannot engineer this feature? Of course not. It tells us about the organization of the company and how they still somehow miss what their competition is doing. This is a problem of integrating across product groups, and understanding how customers use their products.

Challenge and opportunity for the new CEO of Microsoft.