ARM-based Windows RT seen confusing consumers, benefitting Apple - Page 2

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zandros 

 

I agree that it will be confusing, but I don't necessarily believe the x86 tablets will be bulkier than the ARM tablets. Intel did finally get their Atom chip into a smartphone last month so I can't imagine slim tablets being much of an issue.

I don't think they really have a choice anyway.  Windows Phone and the whole Metro thing is (so far) about as popular as Zune, so if they went with the more rational approach of letting it stand on it's own, it would almost certainly fail.  Thus the blended OS strategy.  

That being said, I think the greatest confusion will be the fact that there will be two different kinds of Windows tablets (ARM-RT and intel-regular) that will look identical and yet be completely different in terms of what they will run and how you will use them and how long the battery lasts etc. 

I don't think Windows 8 on the desktop will be confusing because it's fairly obvious that some ridiculously large percentage of users will just remove Metro and use the underlying Windows 7 UI instead.  

A little OT....

According to the latest, the new iPad with the retina display and the A5x CPU/GPU has 13.7% of the US iPad traffic:

http://labs.chitika.com/ipad/

I have a new iPad and a new ATV -- both have the A5x chip.   The new iPad can AirPlay to the ATV at a system level and do it with mirroring on -- both the new iPad and. the ATV display the same thing on their screens.

That means that [almost *] anything or any iPad app  can AirPlay to the HDTV and display in both places... I was drawing on pictures on the big screen...  telestrating in a way...

* some existing apps that support AirPlay do not support mirroring -- if they didn't support AirPlay, the system-level feature would provide AirPlay with mirroring.

Think of the possibilities in the living room, the board room, the meeting room, the class room, the operating room...

I doubt that any of the competition's tablets introduced this year (or next?) will have the infrastructure in place to do this.  And, by this time next year, I suspect that Apple will have implemented the new, faster 802.11ac WiFi across their product line...

And remember, the new iPad has more pixels than a 1080P HDTV..

Quote:

Originally Posted by jakeb 

Am I just dumb? I have no idea what the RT stands for. 

 

Rad Tablets?

Really Touchy?

RT  =  Rat Titties. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by KC_150 

RT steads for "Real Tough" experience.

...could be ReTard :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by MacTel 

The "R" probably is for ARM and "T" for tablet.  So ARM Tablet edition. 

 

If it used an "A" that that would bring back memories of IBM PC ATs.  Bad memories.

I have warm memories of my old XT though.  

(although the clones were actually better than the branded ones)

Before they were outclassed by those speed demon 286's :-)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Macky the Macky 

RT  =  Rat Titties. 

RT = Rotten tomatoes

RT = Rancid turd

RT = Rabid tools

RT = Re-tard

RT = Rost in Transration

RT = Rectal titillation

...

So, when are the prises being drawn? Can I have multiple entries, or should I just pick one?

Quote:

Originally Posted by FreeRange 

No (Windows ARM-RT tablet) does NOT run regular Windows apps ...

Even worse though.  

If a Consumer buys a Windows RT tablet, it will *look* like it *does* run regular Windows apps, because it will still have the regular Windows desktop behind the Metro, and it will have Office on it.  They will see Office and the regular Windows desktop and think they can install other stuff but they can't.  

It will be an ARM version of Office running on a "mock" desktop and both will be visually identical to the real thing (at least this is the latest info I've seen). 

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrDoppio 

RT = Rotten tomatoes

RT = Rancid turd

RT = Rabid tools

RT = Re-tard

RT = Rost in Transration

RT = Rectal titillation

...

 

So, when are the prises being drawn? Can I have multiple entries, or should I just pick one?

No...  Windows 8 ARM RT Home/Mobile Pro Edition (with Stylus)...

iOS kinda' rolls off the tongue in comparison :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gazoobee 

 

Even worse though.  

 

If a Consumer buys a Windows RT tablet, it will *look* like it *does* run regular Windows apps, because it will still have the regular Windows desktop behind the Metro, and it will have Office on it.  They will see Office and the regular Windows desktop and think they can install other stuff but they can't.  

 

It will be an ARM version of Office running on a "mock" desktop and both will be visually identical to the real thing (at least this is the latest info I've seen). 

Maybe they'll have a special sticker that says:  "ARM Inside".  

Businesses won't buy Windows 8.  It is destined to be the next Vista.

Businesses won't buy Windows 8.  It is destined to be the next Vista.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Macky the Macky 

X86 is more power hungry than ARM. That may change in a year or os, but for now, one needs to pack a bigger battery. Also, ARM has the graphics circuitry built on the same die as the CPU, unlike the X86 chip. If ARM holds still for a couple years, Intel will catch up, but then again...

 

I'm not sure; the Xolo X900 has a bit smaller battery than the flagship ARM Android phones and it doesn't perform terribly in the battery life tests Anand did. 

Also, there is a single chip Atom SoC solution (Medfield, which is used in this phone and I'll wager some variant will be used in tablets as well), with PowerVR SGX540 graphics and the platform performs pretty well compared to the ARM chips. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by GS Turn 

Businesses won't buy Windows 8.  It is destined to be the next Vista.

Agreed.  Businesses are still moving to 7, they aren't about to have a mixed 7/8 environment unless they're forced to, persuaded to with licensing incentives, or they can get 8 to look, operate, and be administered exactly like 7.  Microsoft has a burden of legacy support unmatched by any other company.

Runtime? In that case, that's some bad branding. Apple has big cats, Android has sugar-related foods, Microsoft has... arcane programming terms?

Quote:

Originally Posted by jakeb 

Am I just dumb? I have no idea what the RT stands for. 

 

Rad Tablets?

Really Touchy?

ReTarded.

Same old MS. Same old jokes apply. Windows remains a godawful mess. Has anything really changed at MS in 20 years?

Everything about Windows 8 is a knee-jerk REACTION to MS' competitors making them look like retards over the past few years. So, naturally, it's a confusing jumble of different paradigms forced to work together. Poorly. 

Ballmer's already given it the Kiss of Death. Whatever he predicts, the opposite happens. 

http://www.neowin.net/news/up-to-500-million-windows-8-users-by-end-of-2013-says-ballmer

Quote:

Originally Posted by fredaroony 

Why would you like to see a company fail? Cynical much?

no company has done more to cripple innovation, stifle interoperability, unleash countless proprietary and patent crippled protocols on top of standard protocols, subvert ISO standards for their proprietary MSOOXML office format, and i could go on and on and on and on....

Microsoft is a horribly evil company which the computer world would be far better without.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bullhead 
no company has done more to cripple innovation, stifle interoperability, unleash countless proprietary and patent crippled protocols on top of standard protocols, subvert ISO standards for their proprietary MSOOXML office format, and i could go on and on and on and on....

 

Microsoft is a horribly evil company which the computer world would be far better without.

And that list doesn't even mention their full-OS theft from Apple. Those items are pure, 100% Microsoft thinking.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Macky the Macky 

X86 is more power hungry than ARM. That may change in a year or os, but for now, one needs to pack a bigger battery. Also, ARM has the graphics circuitry built on the same die as the CPU, unlike the X86 chip. If ARM holds still for a couple years, Intel will catch up, but then again...

 

The main problem I see is that Microsoft Office is designed to be used with a mouse and keyboard. That may not translate well to a touch interface and still look like the same programs to the user.

 

If, however, MS should make a set of touch-based Office programs for ARM, I can't see any reason that MS shouldn't make it available to Apple iOS users to purchase. My business success is largely due to the availability of Office on a Macintosh.It may not be so compelling on an iOS device, but time will tell.

 

Unlike others on this board, I wish Microsoft all the best in the world. I hope their phones and tablets are a huge successss...What the hell am I saying! DIE Microsoft, and take that stinking fetid pile of code you call Windows with you!!

That is not necessarily true (any more)... recently released Android phone based on Intel logic (and I believe that logic is based on Atom) seems to be pretty much on par with equally performing ARM Android devices. I must admit I haven't read whole article, but did have noticed battery life details.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5770/lava-xolo-x900-review-the-first-intel-medfield-phone

Quote:

Originally Posted by bullhead 

 

no company has done more to cripple innovation, stifle interoperability, unleash countless proprietary and patent crippled protocols on top of standard protocols, subvert ISO standards for their proprietary MSOOXML office format, and i could go on and on and on and on....

 

Microsoft is a horribly evil company which the computer world would be far better without.

Cute, but delusional.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gazoobee 

 

Even worse though.  

 

If a Consumer buys a Windows RT tablet, it will *look* like it *does* run regular Windows apps, because it will still have the regular Windows desktop behind the Metro, and it will have Office on it.  They will see Office and the regular Windows desktop and think they can install other stuff but they can't.  

 

It will be an ARM version of Office running on a "mock" desktop and both will be visually identical to the real thing (at least this is the latest info I've seen). 

I don't think RT will have classic desktop at all. Only Metro. Likewise Windows Phones will not have classic desktop.

At least that is what we have been told by MS reps...

I'm curious about the Metro Office suite that's supposed to be ready for ARM tablets.  It's a further point of confusion-- there's Office, so it must be a Windows device, no?  But turns out Office will be the only "Windows App" available.  And in what form?  Some MS boosters have acted like all it takes is Microsoft to decide to put Office on an RT tablet to make it happen, but making touch equivalents of desktop apps is hard work. It's not enough to have touch available, or a pretty OS shell and navigation, or the horsepower to run bigger software.  You have to figure out how to translate all those fiddly little menus and options and checkboxes and sliders and toolboxes and hover events and drag and drop routines into a functioning touch equivalent.  Look at the latest iPhoto for the iPad-- it's a complete rethinking of the software.

And then when you've done all that, does it seamlessly integrate back with the desktop version?  Is all formatting preserved?  What about the other way-- desktop files to RT tablets?  If you don't have all the functionality of the desktop version in your tablet, that isn't possible, since you'd be able to setup something in the desktop that can't be replicated for touch, if the equivalent functionality isn't even present.

Apple has kind of skated on this problem by not making wild claims.  iPad iWork, for instance, can't do everything that desktop iWork can do (so far), so you can't just toss something you've working on on your Mac onto your iPad and expect things not to break, unless you're careful.

But Apple isn't positioning the iPad as a seamless tablet/desktop solution, with "no compromises."  So what's going to happen when that no compromises RT tablet makes a hash of your desktop Windows Word file?  How is that not a compromise?  And how is that not going to piss off their customers?

Quote:

Originally Posted by FreeRange 


In summary, it's lipstick on a pig...

In a word, yes.

But had I said it that way, some might have perceived my comment as unprofessional. ;-)

Quote:

Originally Posted by charlituna 


I'd rather wait until I can get a leg

Either way, it will probably cost you an arm and a leg.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrDoppio 

Microsoft tax? Hahahahaha...

Yes, you remember?  It's the one Steve Ballmer placed on the entire netbook industry in order to ramp up prices and destroy the segment.  The one that adds £80-150 to the price of a PC.  The one that Vista users had to pay to get their operating system to function effectively because Billy-boy sold them a lemon.  The one that I, as a developer, have to pay in order to develop software rather than use Apples free tools.

The Microsoft tax.

Quote:

Originally Posted by zaren 

The interface isn't a problem as far as I'm concerned. The blocks appear to be labeled well enough and easily recognizable; it's just a matter of the user deciding what goes where, and getting used to the positioning. I'm sure you did the same thing with your phone; I know I did with mine. 

Glad you like Metro, but, no, the confusion goes beyond the simple interface of Metro.

The real confusion is that "Windows 'RT'" for ARM is billed as "Windows" at all (unlike "iOS" and "OS X"). Many will think they are getting the "full Windows experience" on their tablets, which they won't if they are ARM tablets. There are not ARM versions for most desktop apps. Apple has made iOS versions of all its iLife apps, MS has not been successful in making Metro versions of Office apps as far as we know.

Then there is the confusion of what happens when you are on an Intel tablet or PC: you get both Metro and traditional Windows interfaces... BUT, it switches you in and out of the different modes unexpectedly depending on what you are doing and what apps your are using. Apparently this has been extremely jarring to the guinea pigs. A lot of people are talking about switching it off, much as they would switch off Aero or ribbon control panels so they have something familiar once again. Nice start for Metro.

So, the MS "strategy" is to leverage the brand of Windows everywhere, but the experience is disjointed; they want one thing to work on all devices no matter what the use-case or what job it is hired to do, or the how the user interacts with the device. They pay token service to the fact that "touch" is different than mouse, but they only add a new layer. There is not a real effort at making something fundamentally new or different: Metro is a layer that runs certain types of apps a la java/Web OS/.net-type things -- it is akin to "Widgets" on the Mac OS X, and therefore it is not that special. The Mac OS X desktop has slid into different modes for years!

By contrast, Apple has developed a completely new OS for the touch paradigm... and yet, that new OS actually has a lot of solid underpinnings in common with OS X and actually runs native apps; whereas "Windows RT" for ARM is Metro-only and has very little to do with the Windows OS, other than providing it some lipstick and the appearance of something new.

The messages from MS about all this have been very confusing for a year, and many Windows sites are still apparently confused. There is already mixed- and mis-communication about all this, and that already shows there will be major confusion when it is actually launched.

This is because excrement at 15", 27", 13", 11" or 10" and 7" is still... excrement.

Quote:

Originally Posted by krabbelen 

Glad you like Metro, but, no, the confusion goes beyond the simple interface of Metro.

 

The real confusion is that "Windows 'RT'" for ARM is billed as "Windows" at all (unlike "iOS" and "OS X"). Many will think they are getting the "full Windows experience" on their tablets, which they won't if they are ARM tablets. There are not ARM versions for most desktop apps. Apple has made iOS versions of all its iLife apps, MS has not been successful in making Metro versions of Office apps as far as we know.

Microsoft has obviously lost the plot, there is nothing post-Windows 7, post Xbox360 that makes any sense. Again, I call on Bill Gates to remove himself completely from Microsoft, because while he is still tied in with it, I place him as founder and visionary responsible for Microsoft having lost its way, also because he's kept on his college buddy as the person that has also, basically, done nothing much for Microsoft. I admire Bill's philanthropic efforts and hope that he focuses on that rather than nurse the limping horse that is Windows.

Metro on Xbox360, and Xbox360 itself shows what Microsoft actually can do right. It's clean, fresh, simple, practical. Oh, it's also CLOSED AND PROPRIETARY. Funny how that worked out, huh? 

Windows Phone, Mobile, RT, 8, 9, 10, Bulldog, Falcon, Scooter, whatever they are coming up with, clearly makes no sense.

Almost anyone "non-tech" that has actually spent five minutes with an iPad and made a decent effort into understanding OS X for a few days would simply tear their hair out at having to use Windows. It is simply a decrepit and obsolete mode of not only "computing", but "living".

Quote:

Originally Posted by knightlie 

Yes, you remember?  It's the one Steve Ballmer placed on the entire netbook industry in order to ramp up prices and destroy the segment.  The one that adds £80-150 to the price of a PC.  The one that Vista users had to pay to get their operating system to function effectively because Billy-boy sold them a lemon.  The one that I, as a developer, have to pay in order to develop software rather than use Apples free tools.

 

The Microsoft tax.

Netbook industry is being destroyed by the artificial limitations on RAM and screen resolution, not by software prices (netbooks initially came with free Linux, remember?). You can get a decent PC with Win 7 for less than $500, so I don't see how almost $200 have been added just for the OS. Vista was undeniably a failure, however, for the laptop I bought three months before the release of Win 7, I received a free OEM upgrade, so no complaints on the price either. Finally, I haven't purchased MS developer tools, but considering they are professional products I don't see your problem -- use Apple's free tools if the investment in MS isn't worth it (I would guess it is).