Apparently, there is no plan to do a tablet OS until the company can come up with something to distinguish itself from the competition. That's fair enough, though I think it's better to aim for usable, rather than just 'different'.

Herbie

Pen is a much better story in Windows today.  Its just that you can't find a 10" Slate PC with an active digitizer for $600.  This is the premium a college student might be willing to pay over a $350 Windows netbook.  At CES Lenovo showed off the IdeaPad Slate and indicated this may hit the market later this year at a suprisingly good price point.  So there is hope, as long as they are not the only Windows PC OEM doing so and these are sold/marketed through mainstream consumer sales channels.

5 hours ago, Ray7 wrote

Pocket-Lint had a bit of a chat with Microsoft's UK top man, Ashley Highfield.

Apparently, there is no plan to do a tablet OS until the company can come up with something to distinguish itself from the competition. That's fair enough, though I think it's better to aim for usable, rather than just 'different'.

They already have a good[1] tablet OS: Windows Phone.

Apple's iOS is the same on both iPad and iPhone, only the screen's bigger. What's stopping MS from deploying WP7 (suitably modified, of course) for 7-10" tablets?

[1]In principle. Let's overlook the massive shortcomings of the platform.

That said, you do have a point. It wouldn't be that difficult to put the WP7 OS, slightly modified, onto a tablet. What I'm reading from the comment, though, is that Microsoft thinks they can do better, and don't want to rush that out. It sounds like Win8 is being designed to work in this space, and the comment is hinting that they think it will bring something to tablets that would differentiate them from the competition.

I'm skeptical, though. Microsoft has to learn to be more nimble if they intend to compete. Waiting another year (roughly speaking) to compete in this area means that they'll really have ot differentiate somehow, and I'm not sure they can. That means an uphill battle against already established brands, like what is happening with WP7. I love my WP7, and I do believe it will eventually hold significant marketshare, but there's no denying that Microsoft is fighting an uphill battle there. Why would they want to get into another fight that difficult?

If I were running the Office team I'd start thinking of following Bing's example and start writing versions for iOS and Android (or port to Silverlight for WP7 and Android).

One other point -- with virtulization being more and more popular I suspect that the PC market will in part contract because people will no longer need a couple of PCs around the house or a dedicated PC at work. Instead they will RDP (or similar) to one PC in the house or a shared virtual PC at work when they need to use legacy Microsoft apps. I've seen some hackish demos of Evo's hooked up to a bluetooth mouse, keyboard, and monitor driving a PC through RDP. I look forward to the day when I can stop carrying my laptop around...

Everyone knows future laptops must be touch-enabled... MS would be foolish if they're not 80% done w/ this already

 Does anyone actually have sales figures for Windows tablets? Are they much lower than sales of any other non-iPad tablets (or of Windows Phone 7 for that matter)?

This Windows slate, for example, seems to have an average rating of 4.5 stars on Amazon (from 77 ratings). Yeah, I know, it's a self-selecting fanboy niche and all that, but aren't Android tablets (and WP7) the same way? 

 I'm still not convinced that it would make sense to release a tablet version of WP7 this year. Windows 7 tablets are a stopgap until Windows 8 is ready, but a tablet based on WP7 wouldn't be any less of a stopgap; at least full PC tablets are differentiated from the iPad.

It's definitely risky though, since W8 won't be ready till mid '12, Microsoft is going to have a very rough next year-plus. The shareholders might not even let them go through with their plan before demanding drastic changes.

8 minutes ago, Ian2 wrote

Win 8 on Arm will have a funky Tablet UI in the box or I will eat my hat.

But you don't have a hat.

And WinPh already have Office included, which is great. When it comes to tablet. People just want to surf the web and doing some simple tasks, like calender, to-do list, paint, simple games, social app, and etc. And most importantly, be able to explore app store and install "safe" apps with simple brainless one touch of the button. And removing them is not only easy, also "reliable". Installation + Safe + uninstallation + reliable = WinPh7, not Win7.

It was horrible that I couldn't remove evil Google app on my friend's XP/Vista. And same with the Evil MSN browser which is dead and unable to remove.

3 hours ago, Harlequin wrote

@Bass: Would it be irony to send him a Windows 7 hat?

I'll check the company store

-Josh

I find it interesting that this follows almost exactly the suggestion I made a long time ago about such a portable UI that is equally at home on a desktop, a tablet or a phone, and can either be an additional UI (on desktops and some more powerful tablets), or the one and only UI (on lower-powered devices).

So to me this seems pretty clear what MS's plans are regarding this topic.

3 days ago, Ray7 wrote

Pocket-Lint had a bit of a chat with Microsoft's UK top man, Ashley Highfield.

Apparently, there is no plan to do a tablet OS until the company can come up with something to distinguish itself from the competition. That's fair enough, though I think it's better to aim for usable, rather than just 'different'.

"This just in: company refuses to shoot itself in its foot; and in related news: company plans to produce useable product!"

Let's just assume common-sense is at work here, shall we?

Tablets require different UX's - hopefully noone thinks there's a one-size fits all. For that matter even mainstream operating systems could use new UI metaphors. We've been stuck with the same basic UI metaphors for ages, with only minor revisions. Surely there's room for improvement between here and Minority Report without too much ingenuity needed. Also, Android is doing some good things in the UX space (as is WP7), so I can't imagine the next version of Windows in a UX status quo. The new taskbar is nice, but still a minor revision on my oppinion.

20 minutes ago, exoteric wrote

*snip*

"This just in: company refuses to shoot itself in its foot; and in related news: company plans to produce useable product!"

Let's just assume common-sense is at work here, shall we?

Tablets require different UX's - hopefully noone thinks there's a one-size fits all. For that matter even mainstream operating systems could use new UI metaphors. We've been stuck with the same basic UI metaphors for ages, with only minor revisions. Surely there's room for improvement between here and Minority Report without too much ingenuity needed. Also, Android is doing some good things in the UX space (as is WP7), so I can't imagine the next version of Windows in a UX status quo. The new taskbar is nice, but still a minor revision on my oppinion.

I think there could be a UX adaptive to both tablet and desktop use. The Metro look certainly looks good (and visually presents information well) in either case, and adjusting between the two scenarios might just require a few tweaks.

To my understanding, people use tablet only check website, stream videos, personal notes, and other non-business non-work related tasks. Non-work means it is not something like turbo tax, your own expense sheet, etc. Non-business means it is not for business routines, dose not include "Sales Rep" where they need to show off with finger friendly power point slides.

I understand Windows itself needs to catch up, but, that would be very challanging and takes much more time. They can think about merging the tablet specific os back to Windows (since same SL) later. But, they got to take the market right now. It is like Win95 and WinNT, you need two families before you can merge them together. They should start a new branch and merge it back later.

Once you get used to the idea that a tablet can be a media creation and not just media consumption device, there are a lot of uses. Graphics creation, whether vector based or bitmap based, for instance. You want to be able to use photoshop/illustrator in touch mode, without having to buy a separate device or buy a separate version of CS5 for both tablet and desktop.

I am beaten

12 hours ago, magicalclick wrote

I think it is extremely hard to make Windows "true" tablet friendly. Mainly because of the backward compatibility. I really don't understand why Balmer would want Win8 as front of the tablet market when WinPh is a much better and obvious choice.

In a word: Office.

This is the product upon which keeps Microsoft relevant and swimming in cash. Folk still use and buy Office, mainly because it is a good package (though I'm starting to find it overpriced and a little bit heavy) and because it is the most reliable way to view and edit almost two decades worth of documents written in previous versions of Office.

Now if you believe what the pundits tell you then desktops/laptops are going to give way to tablets for the majority of uses, which means Microsoft is currently at the head of a monopoly market with decreasing relevance. 

What they don't want is to find themselves forced into virgin territory and have to fight competitors like Apple and Google. Apple especially who are championing smaller, nimbler, focussed applications with a consumer-friendly price tag. Microsoft doesn't reaallly want to smaller and tightly-focussed; their expertise is monolithic and expensive. So if they have to move into this strange new world then they would like to take monolithic, expensive and as much of the monopoly with them as they can. This means a full-blown office suite running on a tablet, and that means a full-blown OS to carry it.

From a business point of view this makes sense: it's safe to assume that WP7 sales are nowhere near the sales of Android or the iPhone. At the same time, it's a safe bet that the number of of Windows7 machines deployed already dwarfs the entire Mac user base (and that's not counting the number of Macs that run Windows pretty much full time). So if you were Balmer, wouldn't you try to take as much of that influence with you?

Whether this is best for consumers or Microsoft I'm not sure. We shall wait and see. 

3 hours ago, Ray7 wrote

*snip*

From a business point of view this makes sense: it's safe to assume that WP7 sales are nowhere near the sales of Android or the iPhone. At the same time, it's a safe bet that the number of of Windows7 machines deployed already dwarfs the entire Mac user base (and that's not counting the number of Macs that run Windows pretty much full time). So if you were Balmer, wouldn't you try to take as much of that influence with you?

Whether this is best for consumers or Microsoft I'm not sure. We shall wait and see. 

The assumption here is that Windows 7 machines will continue to dwarf Macs and more importantly phones and tablets that unhitch users from the Windows world. Sure PCs will be with us for quite some time but their cash cow is going to be giving quite a bit less milk in the future IMO. Balmer would rather rest on Microsoft's laurals just like Bill did with the Internet. When people think of the Internet they immediatly think of Microsoft right? No, I'm afraid pr0n has one once again...

4 hours ago, Ray7 wrote

*snip*

In a word: Office.

This is the product upon which keeps Microsoft relevant and swimming in cash. Folk still use and buy Office, mainly because it is a good package (though I'm starting to find it overpriced and a little bit heavy) and because it is the most reliable way to view and edit almost two decades worth of documents written in previous versions of Office.

Now if you believe what the pundits tell you then desktops/laptops are going to give way to tablets for the majority of uses, which means Microsoft is currently at the head of a monopoly market with decreasing relevance. 

What they don't want is to find themselves forced into virgin territory and have to fight competitors like Apple and Google. Apple especially who are championing smaller, nimbler, focussed applications with a consumer-friendly price tag. Microsoft doesn't reaallly want to smaller and tightly-focussed; their expertise is monolithic and expensive. So if they have to move into this strange new world then they would like to take monolithic, expensive and as much of the monopoly with them as they can. This means a full-blown office suite running on a tablet, and that means a full-blown OS to carry it.

From a business point of view this makes sense: it's safe to assume that WP7 sales are nowhere near the sales of Android or the iPhone. At the same time, it's a safe bet that the number of of Windows7 machines deployed already dwarfs the entire Mac user base (and that's not counting the number of Macs that run Windows pretty much full time). So if you were Balmer, wouldn't you try to take as much of that influence with you?

Whether this is best for consumers or Microsoft I'm not sure. We shall wait and see. 

They've already made scaled down versions of Office in different formats. They could easily retool WP and Office for WP to a tablet form if they really want to. There are plenty of skeptics on the future of the iPad model though, including myself, even though its popular among bloggers.

1 hour ago, brian.​shapiro wrote

*snip*

They've already made scaled down versions of Office in different formats. They could easily retool WP and Office for WP to a tablet form if they really want to.

Scaling down will only work when you are simply providing added options to existing product.

The unique selling proposition that Microsoft is trying for is legacy. If they go head to head with Apple and/or Google then they will lose. WP7 on its own doesn't have enough to beat them. When folk see it they think 'Well, none of my apps will work, and all my files are going to lose all that nice formatting, so why not go to a more mature platform and start again?'

This is why MS is obsessed with cramming the desktop into a tablet, because it enables them to use legacy to shield them from the competition.

There are plenty of skeptics on the future of the iPad model though, including myself, even though its popular among bloggers.

Well, I'm seeing iPads and laptops in pretty equal numbers now, though I still can't say I completely understand what the attraction is.

4 minutes ago, Ray7 wrote

Well, I'm seeing iPads and laptops in pretty equal numbers now, though I still can't say I completely understand what the attraction is.

For how long? Most people who'd want laptops already own them and would only buy a new one to upgrade. The iPad is still a new device.

I really do hope that whatever MS comes up with for their "Immersive Tablet UI", retains stylus support. Traditional Windows tablets didn't fail because of stylus support, it failed because it had a $500 - $600 price premium and there just weren't enough stylus-only apps that justified such a price premium. I believe there is a whole category of applications that would be very popular to use with a stylus if the hardware is cheap enough and good enough to become popular. If the iPad had true stylus support, I think there would have been a lot of apps that took advantage of that (why would there be an iPad-stylus aftermarket if there wasn't any demand?). MS could have an advantage over the iPad if they create a dumbed-down and easy to use tablet like the iPad but still gave it pen support.

In addition, I think it is time MS creates their own tablet hardware. Going through OEMs only dilutes the "vision" MS has for a tablet. MS should still license the OS to any OEM that wants it, but with a true "reference" MS tablet out there, they will no longer be able to release sub-par hardware and think they can compete. And with the current low marketshare of Windows tablets, I don't see why this could trigger antitrust issues. Apple is clearly dominating this market right now, and everyone is fine with them having a much more closed tablet than MS would ever have.

4 hours ago, brian.​shapiro wrote

*snip*

There are plenty of skeptics on the future of the iPad model though, including myself, even though its popular among bloggers.

And there are WMDs in Iraq too. Microsoft would love for this problem to just go away but it won't. Balmer said the iPhone was a fad. Bill didn't pay attention to the internet. How many times is Microsoft going to make the same lack-of-vision mistake? Microsoft has a lot of great talent and has shown it's capable of putting out some really great software but always seems to lack  vision at the top. I thought that problem was fixed when Ray Ozzie joined Microsoft but now that he's gone IMO Microsoft will continue to just not get it. Window 8 will ship on ARM driven slates in a year or two, will run like crap relative to their competition, and Microsoft will label them as a success (Yeah! Windows runs on ARM!) rather than look at the sales numbers. When they do they'll say "well we still own the desktop". At that point people will have worked around not having Office on their tablets and Microsoft will be left holding a marginalized set of products. Of course that's just my opinion...

39 minutes ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

*snip*

And there are WMDs in Iraq too. Microsoft would love for this problem to just go away but it won't. Balmer said the iPhone was a fad. Bill didn't pay attention to the internet. How many times is Microsoft going to make the same lack-of-vision mistake? Microsoft has a lot of great talent and has shown it's capable of putting out some really great software but always seems to lack  vision at the top. I thought that problem was fixed when Ray Ozzie joined Microsoft but now that he's gone IMO Microsoft will continue to just not get it. Window 8 will ship on ARM driven slates in a year or two, will run like crap relative to their competition, and Microsoft will label them as a success (Yeah! Windows runs on ARM!) rather than look at the sales numbers. When they do they'll say "well we still own the desktop". At that point people will have worked around not having Office on their tablets and Microsoft will be left holding a marginalized set of products. Of course that's just my opinion...

Bill said he didn't pay attention to the Internet, but IE1 was planned as part of the Windows 95 Plus! Pack even before Netscape was released. So I always saw that claim as a bit of false modesty. I think they were hoping MSN/Blackbird would take off faster than the Internet.

39 minutes ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

*snip*

And there are WMDs in Iraq too. Microsoft would love for this problem to just go away but it won't. Balmer said the iPhone was a fad. Bill didn't pay attention to the internet. How many times is Microsoft going to make the same lack-of-vision mistake? Microsoft has a lot of great talent and has shown it's capable of putting out some really great software but always seems to lack  vision at the top. I thought that problem was fixed when Ray Ozzie joined Microsoft but now that he's gone IMO Microsoft will continue to just not get it. Window 8 will ship on ARM driven slates in a year or two, will run like crap relative to their competition, and Microsoft will label them as a success (Yeah! Windows runs on ARM!) rather than look at the sales numbers. When they do they'll say "well we still own the desktop". At that point people will have worked around not having Office on their tablets and Microsoft will be left holding a marginalized set of products. Of course that's just my opinion...

Bill said he didn't pay attention to the Internet, but IE1 was planned as part of the Windows 95 Plus! Pack even before Netscape was released. So I always saw that claim as a bit of false modesty. I think they were hoping MSN/Blackbird would take off faster than the Internet.

19 minutes ago, brian.​shapiro wrote

*snip*

Bill said he didn't pay attention to the Internet, but IE1 was planned as part of the Windows 95 Plus! Pack even before Netscape was released. So I always saw that claim as a bit of false modesty. I think they were hoping MSN/Blackbird would take off faster than the Internet.

 

I wonder how close we were to having the Internet be a academic thing and a closed network like MSN or AOL taking over in the 90s. Scary to even think about.

Just like you said, Office, and we need a tablet that install Office. We don't want people move away from Office because they don't have it for tablet and go and start migrating to other format. It doesn't have to be a heavy duty as Desktop Office, but, people want to present PPT with it, people want to show Excel in a conference, and they are ok with less functionalities as long as the files can be used interchangbily on different OS.

Like I said, start a new branch and merge it back. It is about choice. For the people who doesn't care about legacy apps, they will buy WinPhTablet. And they will find alternative apps that works well with fingers. And there is a gigantic market for those new apps that provides good solutions and experence without "virus, malware, spyware, evil unable to uninstall (Google Desktop and MSN), evil registery errors, decentralized update systems".

When Windows is upgraded with WinPhTablet experience 6 years after WinPhTablet launched, people will gladly use their WinPhTablet apps on their Windows.

Win95 drives the MS customer relations. That's how WinNT is relavent. That's how Office is relavent. Not WinNT and Office drives Win95. While the money is indeed from WinNT and Office, but, you cannot have those without proper advertisment and proper casual (non-business) customer perceptions.

My point is simple, people want a thin protable device where they can use their fingers and they want to easily explore/install/uninstall/upgate an random app without fear to all the things that happened on non-managed space. I don't care how MS is going to address this, but, the demand has to be made or the people will just buy competitor's offering. Once they switch, you can kiss them goodbie. Once 50% of teens use it, you can also kiss your Windows Home edition goodbie.

12 hours ago, brian.​shapiro wrote

*snip*

For how long? Most people who'd want laptops already own them and would only buy a new one to upgrade. The iPad is still a new device.

Even though I don't understand it, I think it is here to stay. The problem is that many people who own a laptop seem to be replacing them with iPads, or foregoing the upgrade and getting an iPad instead. I thought they would be useless because they couldn't be used to create content. Seems I was wrong: Adobe are racing to get stuff out onto it as fast as they can, and have pretty much given up on any idea of saving Flash. 

Developers love it (and again, I don't understand this because I find ObjectiveC the most hideously archaic language I've ever come across).

All it's really missing is a stylus and handwriting recognition. Jobs says a stylus is wrong. What he really means is 'We haven't figured out how to do it yet.'

16 hours ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

*snip*

The assumption here is that Windows 7 machines will continue to dwarf Macs and more importantly phones and tablets that unhitch users from the Windows world. Sure PCs will be with us for quite some time but their cash cow is going to be giving quite a bit less milk in the future IMO. Balmer would rather rest on Microsoft's laurals just like Bill did with the Internet. When people think of the Internet they immediatly think of Microsoft right? No, I'm afraid pr0n has one once again...

I think it is fair to say that Window desktops will continue to dwarf Mac sales. Growth figures for the Mac line don't really tell the whole story:

If I sold 1 Mac last year and then sold 2 Macs this year then that is 100% growth.

If I sold 50 PCs last year and 30 PCs this year then that is a decline of 40%

Even though I still sold a boatload more PCs in both years. Eventually, you might sell more Macs. Anything is possible.

The only problem is that I'm not sure folk are going to be tied to the Windows desktop for very much longer. Apple doesn't think so, which is why they have attacked the hegemony from its most vulnerable flank: mobility. If they can get folk to start making regular use of these smaller devices then they can get them to use a larger device with a similar interface. 

Microsoft also doesn't think so, which is why they are desperately trying to move the desktop to a tablet. They have no chance of starting a new hegemony, so they're trying to move the existing one.

11 hours ago, DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

*snip*

And there are WMDs in Iraq too. Microsoft would love for this problem to just go away but it won't. Balmer said the iPhone was a fad. Bill didn't pay attention to the internet. How many times is Microsoft going to make the same lack-of-vision mistake? Microsoft has a lot of great talent and has shown it's capable of putting out some really great software but always seems to lack  vision at the top. I thought that problem was fixed when Ray Ozzie joined Microsoft but now that he's gone IMO Microsoft will continue to just not get it. Window 8 will ship on ARM driven slates in a year or two, will run like crap relative to their competition, and Microsoft will label them as a success (Yeah! Windows runs on ARM!) rather than look at the sales numbers. When they do they'll say "well we still own the desktop". At that point people will have worked around not having Office on their tablets and Microsoft will be left holding a marginalized set of products. Of course that's just my opinion...

It's kind of my opinion too, unfortunately. I would love to see MS step up and get some real competition going; I'm just not sure they can anymore.

And it's not that they don't get it; they just need to make the 'Shrink Windows' plan work to maintain their revenues at the levels the shareholders are used to. The average price of an iPad app is about $5. MS doesn't want any part of that.

All it's really missing is a stylus and handwriting recognition. Jobs says a stylus is wrong. What he really means is 'We haven't figured out how to do it yet.'

I believe it's impossible to do it right. Microsoft's tablet computing vision relied on the stylus from the beginning in 1992. Things did improve but styluses for data entry just don't work. It's slower, less accurate, laggy, and feels unnatural.

There is room for both touch and stylus input at this party. I will be sorely disappointed if the stylus goes away.

12 hours ago, Ray7 wrote

*snip*

Even though I don't understand it, I think it is here to stay. The problem is that many people who own a laptop seem to be replacing them with iPads, or foregoing the upgrade and getting an iPad instead. I thought they would be useless because they couldn't be used to create content. Seems I was wrong: Adobe are racing to get stuff out onto it as fast as they can, and have pretty much given up on any idea of saving Flash. 

Developers love it (and again, I don't understand this because I find ObjectiveC the most hideously archaic language I've ever come across).

All it's really missing is a stylus and handwriting recognition. Jobs says a stylus is wrong. What he really means is 'We haven't figured out how to do it yet.'

 

Well, people who own laptops use them in one of two ways:

First, as a desktop replacement -- in which case I wouldn't expect them to be trading them in for iPads. Most of the desktop replacement market is probably younger people who got laptops as students and have been using them ever since ; these people are savvy with technology so don't need the simplicity of an iPad and would be missing the functionality they'd forgo if they got rid of their laptop. Personally, I'd guess that to be the majority of laptop owners nowadays. Most people don't have a need to own both a desktop and a laptop, or the resources  to buy them both.

Second, as a secondary, portable device. I'd expect that to be mainly business users , and I'd expect business users would probably prefer netbooks so they could also get work done. Home users who want a secondary device might get the iPad instead. But I would guess most home users that are buying them aren't using them to replace laptops, they're just buying into the trend.

What are you going by when you say people seem to be replacing laptops with iPads?

3 hours ago, kettch wrote However, for taking notes and sketching diagrams it's much easier. Typing on a screen is not cool, and neither is having any sort of keyboard at a meeting.

Typing on a screen is faster than handwriting, even if you're using only your fingers. Try it. Although I'll note that I'm even faster using a stylus on an on-screen keyboard, but let's not go there.

As for making illustrative notes, you've got a point there. However you can still draw on a finger-touch device (there are apps that show the brush in a location north of the fingertip, so you can see where you're drawing) just as accurately.

21 minutes ago, W3bbo wrote

*snip*

Typing on a screen is faster than handwriting, even if you're using only your fingers. Try it. Although I'll note that I'm even faster using a stylus on an on-screen keyboard, but let's not go there.

As for making illustrative notes, you've got a point there. However you can still draw on a finger-touch device (there are apps that show the brush in a location north of the fingertip, so you can see where you're drawing) just as accurately.

The utility isn't only a matter of speed, though.. if youre doing a long document or keeping pace with notes the speed is important and, and also just the fact that the flow is self-correcting with typing while its not with handwriting. But if you're just occassionally jotting down information, and in a leisured pace, handwriting feels a lot more natural.

21 minutes ago, W3bbo wrote

*snip*

Typing on a screen is faster than handwriting, even if you're using only your fingers. Try it. Although I'll note that I'm even faster using a stylus on an on-screen keyboard, but let's not go there.

As for making illustrative notes, you've got a point there. However you can still draw on a finger-touch device (there are apps that show the brush in a location north of the fingertip, so you can see where you're drawing) just as accurately.

The utility isn't only a matter of speed, though.. if youre doing a long document or keeping pace with a lecture the speed is important and also just the fact that the flow is self-correcting with typing while its not with handwriting. But if you're just occassionally jotting down information, and in a leisured pace, handwriting feels a lot more natural.

We'd ultimately also be talking about precision drawing, and the use of tablets for art or illustration.

If MS really wants to win the tablet battle, they need to get a tablet OS out there NOW, not a year from now when Win8 ships. Every iPad user I've seen is either browsing the web, checking email, or playing a game. The majority couldn't care less about Office support.

For instance, here are two examples of some of the drawings I tend to make:

This one is where I sketch out what I need to do to apply CSG operations to level geometry after I imported it from Unreal Editor, and determining where to insert portals for instance.

This one is where I figure out various collision detection related functionality.

Yes my handwriting is pretty bad but usually it's just me that needs to read it. I have other drawings that are more inticate than these, like block diagrams, flow diagrams etc. But these two are just some quick examples.

Now tell me how I can do this with an iPad? How can you make detailed text annotations to drawings? This has nothing to do with the speed between typing and writing. I can't do this in Word, even less with an onscreen keyboard. This has everything to do with being able to make detailed sketches to express ideas, etc.

Yet, provided that the stylus is fast and accurate, and that the user can write using an actual pen, there is an application where a stylus is unbeatable, and that's taking notes as ink. All that's required is basic ink manipulation (with reflow), to insert, delete, change, annotate and reorganize your scribbles; handwriting recognition would be nice, but even a simple background task that grabs what it can for indexing purposes would suffice... and voilà, an infinite (kind of) and searchable (again, kind of) notepad.

Yes, we already discussed all that, when the Courier was still around, and no, I haven't given up hope.

Yea I think the reason people shoot down stylus support is because they think it is a replacement for entering text documents. It isn't. That is why such arguments always contain the speed of A vs B. At that point it completely misses the point.

See my post above.

1 hour ago, spivonious wrote

I think the big issue here is that MS has always been targeted at businesses and is slow to react to the fast-changing home consumer market. When they do react, it's by tacking a user-friendly surface on top of the business piece (MS Bob, Luna UI), or by copying a competitor's product (Zune, Xbox). Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but their core market will always be businesses.

If MS really wants to win the tablet battle, they need to get a tablet OS out there NOW, not a year from now when Win8 ships. Every iPad user I've seen is either browsing the web, checking email, or playing a game. The majority couldn't care less about Office support.

That isn't a sustainable long-term strategy. Apple has shown that "consumerising" the business market is an effective means of spreading their tentacles.

There's a reason many business customers moved over to the iPhone rather than to the Blackberry after Windows Mobile hit the doldrums: the quality of the user-experience. Managers and the like want the smooth experience you get with iProduct and Apple is offering them that device, and as a bonus it supports multiple PIM providers at a time (remember how Blackberry and Windows Mobile (at the time) only supported a single email account at once) so they can use the same device for both work and personal.

With desktop software increasingly becoming irrelevant thanks to the "cloud" and web-based applications (especially those with offline support) Microsoft is going to face stiff competition from webapps that are "good enough" but offer a much-improved user experience and easier moving around of personal data. This isn't the early-1990s when putting your personal data on a 1.44mb floppy disk was commonplace.

To this day, Microsoft Excel doesn't support many intuitive things like global undo and a "reveal formatting" feature, which would make Excel life easier.

It's important to note that Apple classifies their iProducts as "post-PC" devices, which is to say they're meant to work in the world that has already been revolutionised by the desktop and is now ubiquitous. Similarly Microsoft needs to admit that they lost the smartphone war/revolution and work on the next area due for a surge of interest. My own money rides on "cloud" based services. Unfortunately Microsoft seems to think that being a 'behind the scenes' provider of cloud services is the future, as opposed to being a provider of frontend cloud services. Windows Live is a nice start, but its imperfect and incomplete.

....they could start by making Windows Live ID less painfull for people living outside North America. It still takes over 3 seconds to login...or out (and every time my browser does a redirect, shivers go down my spine).

For my every day usage, I primarily use the stylus for note taking and drawing. For most everything else I use the onscreen keyboard. Even the onscreen keyboard isn't an ideal solution because muscle memory is of limited use.

14 hours ago, Blue Ink wrote

Yes, we already discussed all that, when the Courier was still around, and no, I haven't given up hope.

Yes, the Courier. Defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. But the problem is the same as always: the solution needs to run full-Office so MS can take as much of their market with them, rather than trying to compete with something new.