Obviously he is the worlds #1 Microsoft-basher, but a lot of Windows devotees will find truth in his statement

Courtesy of MacRumors

Q: Can you talk about how you think about the markets for tablets and PC devices going forward? You've been fairly clear about saying that tablets will eclipse PC's in volume at some point, and they are somewhat discrete markets. There seems to be a lot of work on PC platforms to combine PC and tablet experiences going forward. Can you comment on why you don't believe the MacBook Air and tablet markets won't converge? Isn't it realistic to believe that we'll have a device under 2 lbs that will be a notebook and a tablet? Can you comment on why you don't think that product will come?

A: Anything can be forced to converge. The products are about tradeoffs. You begin to make tradeoffs to the point where what you have left at the end of the day doesn't please anyone. You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator but those won't be pleasing to the user. Our view is that the tablet market is huge and we've said that since day one. We didn't wait until we had results. We were using them here and it was clear to us that there was so much you could do and the reasons people used them would be so broad, the iPad is so useful in consumer, and enterprise and education -- the applications are so easy to make very meaningful for someone and there is such an abundance of those, as the ecosystem gets better and better -- we'll continue to double down on making great products. The limit here is nowhere in sight. It's been 2 years since we shipped the iPad and we've sold more than 60 million iPads. Took 24 years to sell that many Macs, 5 years to sell that many iPods, 3 years to sell that many iPhones.

Count the number of times that journalists used the phrase 'lower price points'. They seem to think that lowering the price automatically leads to greater profits.

I agree that when you converge two devices designed for different uses then you often end up with the worst of both worlds.

Not sure I'd go as far as to say he was scoffing though. As he said, the 'two device' thing is the Apple view.

My view is that it should be up to the consumer whether he wants a device that functions both like a notebook and a tablet, just like it should be up to the consumer whether he wants his phone to have a keypad or be fully touch screen. Apple likes deciding for people what's best though.

I have not yet been able to get my hand on a tablet running Windows 8, but if you give it to a toddler, and they can use it, then all will be fine and dandy. It will mean also that as people buy their Windows 8 tablet, they will be able to move to a laptop/desktop without complaining, because they will be used to the navigation paradigm. That remains to be seen

1 hour ago, brian.shapiro wrote

@Ray7:

My view is that it should be up to the consumer whether he wants a device that functions both like a notebook and a tablet, just like it should be up to the consumer whether he wants his phone to have a keypad or be fully touch screen. Apple likes deciding for people what's best though.

Well apple is a hardware company. Convergence doesn't help their bottom line at all, much better that you buy three pieces of hardware than two or one.

2 hours ago, blowdart wrote

*snip*

Well apple is a hardware company. Convergence doesn't help their bottom line at all, much better that you buy three pieces of hardware than two or one.

... per year.

3 hours ago, vesuvius wrote

@brian.shapiro: I think one of the best videos I have ever seen for a software product, was a baby given an iPad for the first time, that knew how to operate it immediately, with the correct gestures, clicking icons, moving screens and so on.

*snip*

Yeah, right. That's until the baby accidentally clicks a link for an ad that brings up Safari browser and having no way to go back to the app except to hit the home button and then scroll through several pages of icons to find the one that launched that app in the first place.

IOW, the intuitiveness comes from the designers of the apps themselves, not the OS or the rectangular screen that it's displayed on.

4 minutes ago, Harlequin wrote

@cbae:Unless it's iPad 2+, then you can have more than one thing open at once. I think you swipe between apps with 3 or 4 fingers on the canvas. But yeah, a young 'un won't know that until you teach them, then the gesture should become second nature.

Teach a baby a 4-finger swipe? Yeah, like that might happen.

1 hour ago, PaoloM wrote

*snip*

... per year.

So, when's the next edition of D&D coming out? And I hear there's a new Magic expansion coming out next week.

15 minutes ago, DeathByVisualStudio wrote

My Samsung tablet from build just ran out of juice during a meeting in about 2.5 hours in "balanced" power mode. I had Outlook running and was taking periodic notes in OneNote. I sure hope they (hardware & software mfgs) can improve upon this in whatever convergence product they offer.

They're getting great battery life out of these recently released Ultrabooks. There's no doubt that they'd apply some of the Ultrabook specs to this new category.

EDIT: Also, 2.5+ hour meetings?

24 minutes ago, DeathByVisualStudio wrote

@kettch: Well it is a prototype running a beta OS; I expect it to be a little worse than normal. The tablet runs hot a lot of the time and the fans probably suck a lot of the juice. I'm sure the ARM version will do better but it has issues that will prevent it from being my PC replacement.

I'm not sure if the new Ultrabooks even have fans. Most of them have fully-enclosed unibody designs, so fans would be pointless. So it is possible to design fanless x86 devices, slate or otherwise.

2 hours ago, DCMonkey wrote

*snip*

So, when's the next edition of D&D coming out? And I hear there's a new Magic expansion coming out next week.

We don't milk our customers every year with a new edition

6 hours ago, vesuvius wrote

@brian.shapiro: I think one of the best videos I have ever seen for a software product, was a baby given an iPad for the first time, that knew how to operate it immediately, with the correct gestures, clicking icons, moving screens and so on. I also gave my Auntie my iPad who continually moans that her work computer was upgraded to Office 2007 from 2003, and she went silent for the best part of an hour. I didn't have to explain anything to her. Even though Apple do like to choose, they have invariably been right in their choices.

What's interesting about Apple's commercials is that they use the actual product in the commercials. Every other tablet or phone manufacturer has to put disclaimers on the screen like "simulation", or basically any paraphrase of "actual product is slow and laggy." I've seen Apple commercials and I use Apple products - WYSIWYG.

28 minutes ago, Craig_Matthews wrote

*snip*

What's interesting about Apple's commercials is that they use the actual product in the commercials. Every other tablet or phone manufacturer has to put disclaimers on the screen like "simulation", or basically any paraphrase of "actual product is slow and laggy." I've seen Apple commercials and I use Apple products - WYSIWYG. 

Apple had to add the (almost invisible) line "Sequences shown are shortened" after the UK ad council busted their * some years ago.

2 hours ago, PaoloM wrote

*snip*

Apple had to add the (almost invisible) line "Sequences shown are shortened" after the UK ad council busted their * some years ago.

Apple's magical products pretty damn convincing, aren't they?