Why We Can't Count Windows Out of the Tablet Game

[gmp23]

Nobody cares BF3 is about to come out.

 

[soo-nah-mee]

[citation][nom]gmp23[/nom]Nobody cares BF3 is about to come out.[/citation]+1
Cheers for a completely out-of-nowhere comment. Love it.

 

[CyberAngel]

I think that "real" laptops are eating up the low-end PC market share
Tablets there are the new laptop!!!
Battle will be fierce
Intel Atom is shrinking twice as fast usual Tick-Tock
AMD has new APU Trinity coming up, then the new one with a better GPU
ARM is already designed to go almost 3GHz with 4 cores or more
and has just released an ultra-low-power-ARM7 + ARM15 HW system
Win8- is supporting 3-4 designs or ARM (besides x86-64)
2012 is just the beginning of the tablet wars
We even don't all the players yet, nor the long-term winner
Nokia with it's M$ CEO might surprise all (I'm not under NDA)
AND Windows 9 team is going forward really fast with NT 6.3 (no NDA)
While Next Windows with integrated VM is in the plans (again no NDA)
Steven Jobs initiative on Apple's future products is unknown...
Android WILL get several rivaling Linux designs
2013 is even better year because the market will mature
Then Haswell will kick in and Intel goes 14nm, new atom design
ARM could make a deal with IBM on SOI process

I'm selling all my HW stock and buying med co. shares
sleeping pills, antidepressant, relaxants, headache meds, etc
:-D =:-O ;-) :-/ :-(

 

[applerocks]

Windows already has an app marketplace that is growing fast.

Please provide a link to the Windows 8 ARM tablet marketplace you say is growing fast... From what I have read they OS wont even ship for another year...

 

[applerocks]

By that they mean that traditional x86 and x86-64 programs will not run on ARM processors (it is a physical impossibility). However, if you watched any of the BUILD conference you would know that all apps designed for win8 will be cross compile-able to ARM architecture because of how the new developer tools will work. That being said, there will be Office for ARM, as well as all of the Intuit software, and Adobe software will follow eventually. Once you get those 3 productivity houses on ARM then it will make tablets pretty freakin awesome. Granted to do real hard core productivity work you will still need x86-64 just because it is faster and more mature, but you will still be able to shoot wedding pics, and then do a quick preview on your tablet. Or while doing an audit, be able to run quickbooks, or tax software, on your tablet. Or run full PPT on your tablet. All the 'little' things that you can sorta get to work with apps, but will finally run fully featured with win8. Laptops will become extinct long before the PC.

All that said, I'm still going to sit out until win9

Cross compiling is one thing, you still have MAJOR engineering changes to Apps to make them really work in a touch/multi-touch environment. You could come up with some middle ware today to get existing apps to run on a tablet, but you know that it would be a kludge at best and not a true tablet app. Just look at how most of the existing tablet PC's work... Its just not a pretty sight.

I dont doubt that Win 8 for Tablets will eventually take off, my point is that on day 1 of release, the amount of software that will run natively on it, and behave like it was designed for a touch interface, not a mouse interface, will be few and far between, and many of the people posting hear seem to think they are going to take any App that runs on Win7 and load it directly into that shiny new Win 8 ARM based tablet and be off and running, and that just isn't even close to reality.

 

[hoofhearted]

I personally think Android tablets are going to win, just as Angry Birds became popular. You can go to Sam's, spend $240, get a Viewsonic tablet each for the wife and kids and they can do Netflix, Facebook, email, and web browsing without having o bother me with a single question or technical issue.

 

[Wish I Was Wealthy]

The iPads are probably bought by companies mainly & that is where their profit is from. For gaming it's a waste of time except if you play those little toddler games.

 

[back_by_demand]

[citation][nom]amk-aka-phantom[/nom]UGH! Get out of here! Tablet gaming is worse than consoles...[/citation]
Agreed, but you will be able to attach a USB mouse & keyboard and play CSS no problem as long as they use an Intel CPU and a basic GPU.

 

[CaedenV]

[citation][nom]applerocks[/nom]Cross compiling is one thing, you still have MAJOR engineering changes to Apps to make them really work in a touch/multi-touch environment. You could come up with some middle ware today to get existing apps to run on a tablet, but you know that it would be a kludge at best and not a true tablet app. Just look at how most of the existing tablet PC's work... Its just not a pretty sight.I dont doubt that Win 8 for Tablets will eventually take off, my point is that on day 1 of release, the amount of software that will run natively on it, and behave like it was designed for a touch interface, not a mouse interface, will be few and far between, and many of the people posting hear seem to think they are going to take any App that runs on Win7 and load it directly into that shiny new Win 8 ARM based tablet and be off and running, and that just isn't even close to reality.[/citation]
Thus the 'Designed for Win8' disclaimer. Win7 tablets suck for 2 reasons. 1) they tend to come with crap touch screens (like the IBM tablet/laptops which are otherwise nice except for the touch part, and in that they are not alone). 2) Win7 is designed as a traditional desktop for traditional computers, and the touch part is very much an afterthought.
Win8 is being designed as a touch first, KVM 2nd OS (even if they claim otherwise, we all know it is true), and developers will be making a lot of changes to incorporate that environment because it is not going away any time soon (for better or worse).

 

[Northwestern]

[citation][nom]JamesSneed[/nom]Well written article but strangely felt like a Microsoft marketing pitch. A reason we cant count windows out is that students cant use Microsoft's One Note on a Mac, seriously lost me on that. There is not a single reasonable reason why Windows is better in this article. I personally don't use Macs and think MS will be a huge player in tablets but I just found this article sounding like a Windows 8 sales pitch.[/citation]

OneNote can't be used on a Mac, yet it can be used on an iPod/iPad. Ohh the irony.

 

[upgrade_1977]

iTunes practically renders the iPad useless except for streaming or surfing the Internet. iTunes makes the iPad, pardon the term, neutered. Love the hardware, hate the software. I only have an iPad and an iPhone 4 because my wife bought them for me as a Christmas and b-day present. I am so ready to trade them both for windows 8 products. Just waiting. Can't tell you all the frustrations I've had with iTunes. Also, I just got my iPhone replaced with a new one because the center button stopped responding, and battery was starting to go. Thank god I bought the extended warranty. Now iOS 5 is giving me issues syncing, and half my apps don't work. Thanks apple. I'm so done with apple products. iOS is such a closed operating system, 99% of the apps are garbage, and the other 1% of apps that are any good are rendered useless because apple either buys them and makes them a paid feature like Siri (wich doesn't work on my iPhone 4 anymore) or taken off the app store because apple is afraid they will eat into there profits. I'm all for windows 8 and hoping it opens people's eyes on how computers should be, designed around the customers wants, instead of the customer being at the will of apple.
People keep telling me how apple products are superior.... How?!?! I have always been a pc guy, have even tried macs that have come into our store, and honestly, I just don't "get it". People need to start looking at features and design and get over fads. Most of my friends have android, and I am jealous at all the features and how easy to use they are. Anyways...

Sorry bout the rant..

 

[Northwestern]

[citation][nom]Upgrade_1977[/nom]iTunes practically renders the iPad useless except for streaming or surfing the Internet. iTunes makes the iPad, pardon the term, neutered. Love the hardware, hate the software. I only have an iPad and an iPhone 4 because my wife bought them for me as a Christmas and b-day present. I am so ready to trade them both for windows 8 products. Just waiting. Can't tell you all the frustrations I've had with iTunes. Also, I just got my iPhone replaced with a new one because the center button stopped responding, and battery was starting to go. Thank god I bought the extended warranty. Now iOS 5 is giving me issues syncing, and half my apps don't work. Thanks apple. I'm so done with apple products. iOS is such a closed operating system, 99% of the apps are garbage, and the other 1% of apps that are any good are rendered useless because apple either buys them and makes them a paid feature like Siri (wich doesn't work on my iPhone 4 anymore) or taken off the app store because apple is afraid they will eat into there profits. I'm all for windows 8 and hoping it opens people's eyes on how computers should be, designed around the customers wants, instead of the customer being at the will of apple. People keep telling me how apple products are superior.... How?!?! I have always been a pc guy, have even tried macs that have come into our store, and honestly, I just don't "get it". People need to start looking at features and design and get over fads. Most of my friends have android, and I am jealous at all the features and how easy to use they are. Anyways...Sorry bout the rant..[/citation]
The only GOOD Apple products are ones that are pre-OS X. I use a Powerbook 150 from 1994 and honestly, I prefer it over Lion. OS X has MANY "features" that should have been either scrapped or upgraded years ago. For example, my main mode of media transportation is through USB. In Windows XP, I can plug it in, transfer documents/media and unplug. In OS X (Leopard to be exact) I plug it in, transfer documents/media, manually eject the drive, wait a minute, then unplug it.

Why do I need to do all that just to remove a USB drive? If this was 2000, it would be understandable as Windows 2000 demands the same concept but it's 2011! Don't even get me started on the iPod Touch and iPad. Why should you have to follow Apple's money-making scheme? Why does the iPod feel the need to annoy the crap out of you by refusing to let the apps work half the time?

Let's hope Windows 8 will provide alternatives.

 

[upgrade_1977]

Exactly, same thing with hdmi, most smart phones have hdmi, apple you get RGB component proprietary cord that cost's $60 to $80 and has lower res. Apple makes everything closed and proprietary.

 

[amk-aka-Phantom]

Exactly, same thing with hdmi, most smart phones have hdmi, apple you get RGB component proprietary cord that cost's $60 to $80 and has lower res. Apple makes everything closed and proprietary.

Steve Jobs was working on an Apple TV before he died. No, not that AppleTV they offer nowadays - something that was supposed to "re-imagine" television... I'm glad he died before he could complete that or any other BS.

Though, Apple is not a company, it's a way of thinking - as long as ignorance rules over reason, fads and looks over functionality, hype and ads over the price, Apple or similar companies WILL exist. The problem is in the people's brains... or more like the absence of them. Apple is merely exploiting the problem and, while I loathe them for doing so, I realise that they're not the root of the problem. Educate the people, open their eyes and the fad dies.

 

[tomfreak]

Because windows is not free.

 

[xcomvic]

Bring WOW to tablets and/or consoles and you win Microsoft and ActiBliz

 

[cyberkuberiah]

cant count them in either

 

[lordstormdragon]

[citation][nom]amk-aka-Phantom[/nom]Steve Jobs was working on an Apple TV before he died. No, not that AppleTV they offer nowadays - something that was supposed to "re-imagine" television... I'm glad he died before he could complete that or any other BS. Though, Apple is not a company, it's a way of thinking - as long as ignorance rules over reason, fads and looks over functionality, hype and ads over the price, Apple or similar companies WILL exist. The problem is in the people's brains... or more like the absence of them. Apple is merely exploiting the problem and, while I loathe them for doing so, I realise that they're not the root of the problem. Educate the people, open their eyes and the fad dies.[/citation]

I couldn't agree more. Apple is just for the bottom-of-the-barrel, mediocre, lowest common denominator types. These people will always exist. It's almost one of those situations where (on a long enough timeline) it will become socially unacceptable to make fun of Apple users the same way it's not acceptable to mock retarded and disabled people.

Apples are for the mentally handicapped, which explains their great success in America very easily.

 

[eddieroolz]

If I were presented with Android, iOS and Windows tablets, then I'll choose the Windows model, hands down.

The Windows tablet can do almost anything the other two can. But it can do all those at the same time with TRUE multitasking. It can also allow me to do much more, like coding.

Windows is where it's at.

 

[WyomingKnott]

[citation][nom]amk-aka-phantom[/nom]UGH! Get out of here! Tablet gaming is worse than consoles...[/citation]
For now.

 

[lordstormdragon]

[citation][nom]WyomingKnott[/nom]For now.[/citation]

Do you anticipate playing a tablet game with a PS3 or Xbox controller, or having a mouse and keyboard (or, say, a G13 controller for example) plugged into a tablet?

This is certainly possible. But without a decent control mechanism, such as the upcoming new PSP overhaul with the touch-area on the underside as well, gaming on tablets is seriously hampered by a faulty control mechanism. The touch-screen alone is simply not enough to play complex games, no matter how you cut the mustard. And while fun, stupid Facebook games and little app-games can be nice, they'll be short-lived. Angry Birds can only hold people's attention for so long.

Real gamers demand more. More graphics and AI horsepower. Better control. More flexibility, not less...

There's no way Deus Ex 3 would play on a tablet and be anywhere near the precise, glorious, and beautiful experience it was on my gaming rig with a G13 and a G5, in glorious HD clarity. That said, it's also not possible to replicate this experience with the PS3 or Xbox 360 either...

Let elitism reign.

 

[WyomingKnott]

Lordstormdragon

On the controls, you have a point. On the precise, glorious, and beautiful experience, time will change this. My daughter has a phone that plays games with better graphics and more smoothly than any hardware I played on (well, I stopped playing games at least a decade ago). Input and physical screen size are the only limitations that I see. Tablets increase the screen size, and I'm sure that the thumb-typing generation will master controls that I can only wonder at.

Then again, I am an old man. When I was her age, computer games were played with text on paper printout.

 

[Guest]

Just to clarify: normal Windows applications will NOT run on either the Intel OR ARM Tablet (Metro-style) versions of Windows 8, not even .NET WPF apps. You can't even run Silverlight apps in the Win 8 Tablet browser -- it runs no plug-ins at all, whether Silverlight or Flash. The only place you will be able to get an app that will run on the Win8 Tablet is from the Microsoft app store, and it must be Metro-lated and be subject to all sorts of restrictions! (Windows Phone 7 apps won't work on the Win8 Tablet, either.) While you can run both the desktop and the Tablet versions of Win8 on the same Intel-based machine, the desktop version is not touch optimized. Worse, it can't communicate with the Tablet/Metro version running on the same machine, inany way! The Tablet doesn't give you access to the file system, so can't even exchange files even on the same machine (except perhaps by going through the "cloud").

Microsoft seems to think that a totally Microsoft controlled, consumer-oriented tablet OS coming out 6 - 12 months from now will have traction. Their approach seems to be going against all of the reasons given in this article (and the comments) for why anyone wants a Windows tablet. I don't see how it can possibly work.