Yes, the article fails to expand on the title's point which I've observed for a long time.
I used to be a hardcore Sony fanboy (still have the original AIBO). Great innovative stuff, pushing limits with abandon, bringing the sci-fi future to life. Except...they always got it a little wrong, in the "uncanny valley" way. Everything was built to specs - barely. Key ports were implemented cheaply. Compatibility was often trumped by proprietary - the latter being better, but in the "Beta vs VHS" losing way. Device driver software was...lacking. Once the device was sold, there was a sense of abandonment - great product, but you're on your own now. Crapware was common (software was delivered with the device just to get the hardware sold). UI/UX was more focused on "cool" than "useable". Overall, the focus was on bringing futuristic to life, failing to make it really usable; as a result, "cool" slides sideways into "weird" - it's neat, but ultimately infeasible.
Examples of Sony weird? MagicGate memory sticks everywhere, whether a device needed it or not (like a pen), incompatible with dominating standards (SD, MicroSD, etc). Innovative remote controls of a type used by nobody else for a reason. Pocketbook-sized notebooks with "retina" displays (before Apple got to "retina" and "Air") so small as unreadable. HDTVs with gorgeous styling suitable only for hyper-minimalism homes. Disc players loaded with demo software that made a Wii look good (trailers for "Salt" at 320x200 resolution, on a 1920x1080p display? really?). UI that looked great yet required steps that would make Jonny Ive choke. Elegant e-readers that were incompatible with pretty much any book formats.
This new tablet looks great, sure - it's big, flat, minimalistic, and has great specs. From experience, I'd hesitate to buy one because I expect it will run slow in odd conditions, have questionable real-world battery life, use proprietary chargers, suffer odd document compatibility issues, have a general sense of post-sale customer abandonment, and some specs will be met only in the most strict & strained sense. Out of the box I'd love it, then slowly develop a sense of irritation by something proving subtly but pervasively unusable. It looks cool on its own, but will predictably look out-of-place amid other serious competition, leading the way in a direction that the industry ultimately won't go. I'm not saying this particular device is defective in such ways, but having been disappointed by numerous products (despite valiant attempts to live & defend them), I expect I'd start using it with a sense of "this is awesome" soon morphing into a nagging sense of "...but something's wrong here" and ultimately buying something comparable that hits the market not long after.
So true. And even when they nail it, as they did with Vaio G1 10 years ago (~2 pounds, 10-hr battery, optical drive, a combination you still can't get today), they abandon that product. If Sony had kept iterating on the G1 I would have never switched to MBP.
