So what I am getting out of this is that in just 13 months, 1 out of 12 adults already own a tablet? The tablet, meaning the iPad and then followed by others, came out in April 2010 right?
Can't a successor compliment its predecessor? Anyway, I take your point partially. I should have been more specific. The tablet is more likely to replace the laptop than the desktop for most people. At least it has for me. I have to Mac laptops stacked on the table behind me that I haven't used in months. The iPad is used everyday in place of them. My iMac does all the heavy lifting.
I don't own a desktop because I am never at home. Laptop is for the heavy lifting and Tablet is for everything else. I don't want to have to run home every time I need to do some heavy lifting plus I don't need a desktop unless I am doing some intense video editing or something really graphics intensive. My MBA does everything I need to do as a web developer and it does it better than an iMac could do.
At this stage tablets are like motorbikes and PCs trucks. In a few years the motorbike will be good enough to be a good compact car.
Completely agree! For many people in corporate environments (where I work) many of us use an iPad for email, reading reports, meetings, project billing entry (we have a custom app), travelling and more. However, all us in the upper management still use our desktops for content creation.
I would use the analogy that the iPad is like a mini cooper, fun to drive but when you need more space you need something else. For some people an iPad is all the PC they need. Others who spend they time primarily doing content creation need a laptop/desktop. As tablets get better they will become more like sedans and be suitable for more everyday tasks.
Personally, making a big deal about defining a tablet as a PC makes no sense. Sure a tablet is a PC just like a smart car and a Truck are both vehicles. Claiming tablets are PCs doesn't get Ballmer anything except a a bunch of articles that journalists and bloggers repeat over and over again either vilifying him or pronouncing him as some visionary.
The fact is Ballmer successfully dominated the netbook PC market over linux by extending the life of XP only to lose the netbook market to the iPad. MS sold tablets for a decade and the iPad eclipsed that entire market in a few months. When it comes to desktop and laptop PCs, MS owns the market for under $1000 PCs, but Apple owns the market for pricier PCs. Apple makes more money from the sale of one Mac than HP does from selling seven PCs. http://watch.vivaafrica.net/?p=1864
So using some back of the envelope math if there were 350 million PCs shipped last year and Apple shipped 20 million Macs then Apple made the same profit as selling 140 million PCs. If I were Ballmer, I would be focusing on shit that actually matters not making empty statements.
The market has clearly decided that they don't want (in general) a full-blown PC operating system on a tablet. Looks like Microsoft blew it again. They think that EVERYTHING is a PC - and they're wrong.
That's what makes Ballmer such a visionary. He has the boldness to imagine the status quo...and cling tenaciously to it.
Unless Windows 8 looks more like Windows Phone 7, or vice-versa, then Balmer is fragmenting their products and losing any tie-ins they can gain by leveraging a user's comfort with one to purchase the other.
Unless Windows 8 looks more like Windows Phone 7, or vice-versa, then Balmer is fragmenting their products and losing any tie-ins they can gain by leveraging a user's comfort with one to purchase the other.
We need to at least respect Microsoft for having their own philosophy, unlike some other company that just do whatever Apple does.
True that.
Only a fool would think there was an issue with Microsoft's vision.
The idea of being able to buy an iPhone or an iPad, dock it into a 27" Cinema display and get full MacOSX when needed is 'effing awesome... but only if it doesn't impact the quality of the experience on the iPhone/iPad.
And that's the problem!.
There is (and rightly so) a whole lot of skepticism being directed toward Microsoft that they can actually make this work.
Sure Microsoft can design a new UI that works on tablets, TVs, PCs and phones... but can they take Windows and squash it down into something that is able to run on a tablet or a phone without destroying the performance and/or battery life?
That's the billion (or rather many many many billion) dollar question.
I agree that tablets should be considered PCs, but they're not desktop PCs. Therefore, why does it make any sense to shoehorn a desktop OS into one? This reads more as a dogmatic thing than a desire to cater to the market.
I believe both Apple and Microsoft are headed towards the same end goal but from different directions.
Microsoft wants to tailor its desktop OS for mobile devices. If a tablet will have Windows 8 then why not a phone or media device (i.e. the next Xbox)? Eventually coming down to one OS for consumer devices including desktop and laptop PCs.
Apple on the other hand took OSX and gave birth to iOS. Now, with Lion, iOS features are coming back to OSX blurring the lines between the 2 OSes that share the same kernel. Eventually, OSX will be retired and iOS will live on all Mac form factors. Lion is the last OSX version. iOS will supplant OSX giving Apple again a one OS strategy.
With Lion you buy the base OS then to have server functionality you buy the server pack to install on top of the base OS. Well, iOS could eventually be distributed like that. That is, the base iOS for small form factor devices, a desktop OS pack for laptops and desktops, and then a server pack for those that need server services on their Mac Mini or Pro.
Bravo. You're totally right. The article is (again) written in a "M$" way and doesn't reflect the information given by them because AI added their well known apple sauce to it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bitWrangler
Actually many M$ bashers have grabbed a hold of this story and expounded the usual rants. Point is that he is correct. How long did we have to listen to Google/pundits repeatedly say that Android 2.x was NOT a tablet OS. There is obviously a difference between the user experience on a tablet and a phone. Since Apple designed it right from the get-go, they could leverage effectively a single OS on both platforms. Google and M$ didn't share that same foresight. If anything else, M$ is doing the right thing based on what Google went through. Don't get side tracked by the press/vocal minority. Concentrate on the bigger picture because reactive answers will be trounced soundly and are a non-starter.
"Tablets are PC's", well, that's marketing speak, and why not? Everyone (at least Apple fans) seem to be thinking "oh, here they go again, trying to elevate tablets as touch PC's", when, if you listen carefully, what they're talking about is really migrating PC's (at least the OS) closer to tablets. Which, if you look at Apple with Lion, they are not alone in doing.
I love how everyone is trying to draw some kind of line between Tablets and PCs. PC = Personal Computer, a tablet is just a computer in a different form factor - I don't see anyone making a clear distinction between desktops and notebooks despite the form factor (which woulld essentially be the same thing).
With that aside, if balmer says tablets are PCs, where are ye iPad sales figures in all of this?
I believe both Apple and Microsoft are headed towards the same end goal but from different directions...
Agreed. The question is who will get there first. Microsoft are progressing with an evolutionary, top down approach while Apple are progressing with a revolutionary, bottom up approach.
The problem for Microsoft is the technology landscape is littered with incumbent tech wrecks that were overrun by new, inferior alternatives that replaced them from the bottom up.
This is all quite obvious and simple to understand. Windows Phone 7 retails for $15, Windows 7 between $40 - $80. Why would they upgrade Windows Phone 7 to run on a tablet and have a hard time charging more when they could make Windows also run on a tablet and easily charge more.
Also phones and tablets are completely different things with different needs. iPads are great, but they don't look like the perfect tablet interface, they still resemble the grid icon interface that's been on phones since 2003.
I don't get why people keep saying phones and tablets should use the same OS. Apart from needing to run on slower processors that consume less power, nothing else is the same.
"Windows 8 aims to make the user experience a natural extension of the device…"
For me it very handily summarizes the differences in approach between M$ and Apple, and has been apparent for many years.
M$ has always put the device first (and this is telling in much of the OS dialogue messaging as well). They aim to make the USER an extension of the DEVICE.
Apple on the other hand, aims to make the DEVICE an extension of the USER. This is what makes their products so compelling, what gives the sense that they "just work", intuitively and meaningfully (even when that isn't always true).
I think this difference in underlying philosophy will play a part in defining the way their ecosystems evolve, even if they end up landing in similar space. How they get there, and how they perform once there will be in great part shaped by this…
Oh, and a little more/less on topic: my iPad, after about a year of use, has almost completely replaced my MBP laptop. For literally all tasks other than Adobe CS, Final Cut, and my high-end audio DAWs (which I don't use on the laptop very often anyway, there's a desktop for that ), the iPad has become my "mobile PC" replacement…
I haven't sold my MBP yet, but it's far less useful to me than it was pre-iPad… so I agree, iPad should count as a "computer", in any case...
The number one and two competitors to Apple in the Tablet market run Linux with Android and WebOS.
For now. The whole android thing is a passing fad. In the not too far future you will see iOS tablets, phones and Windows 8 tablets, phones, etc ... Microsoft has been making some incredibly inept moves, but despite these there are a lot of top people there. It's only a matter of time.
I love how everyone is trying to draw some kind of line between Tablets and PCs. PC = Personal Computer, a tablet is just a computer in a different form factor - I don't see anyone making a clear distinction between desktops and notebooks despite the form factor (which woulld essentially be the same thing).
With that aside, if balmer says tablets are PCs, where are ye iPad sales figures in all of this?
A few people have said the same thing.
Microsoft's position is that a tablet should be is just another PC form factor. This has been their position for the past 10 years.
Apple sees the tablet as a different device. For Apple a tablet is a scaled up phone, not a traditional PC.
When Ballmer talks about PC's (in traditional and slate form factors) he doesn't include "media tablets" because they are different devices.
The comments about WP7 running on a tablet confirm what we have already known for a while... Microsoft isn't going to compete in the "media tablet" segment.
For now. The whole android thing is a passing fad. In the not too far future you will see iOS tablets, phones and Windows 8 tablets, phones, etc ... Microsoft has been making some incredibly inept moves, but despite these there are a lot of top people there. It's only a matter of time.
philip
MS has some talented people but they're hamstrung by a hopeless corporate structure. MS is addicted to the windows brand and concept, even in the face of all reason. Windows Phone 7 conjours up in the consumer's mind the horrible idea that windows is running on the phone. A lot of people probably never even saw the pretty Metro interface, they were too worried they'd end up having to use windows on a smartphone. They should have used a different brand name, MSphone, Xphone, heck - zunephone would have been better. WP7 is completely failing to penentrate the channel, and that's not coming from it's enemies - that's coming from its advocates
Microsoft's insistence that Win-8 tablets will be able to run all Win-8 programs actually feeds into that. Win-8 tablet software will likely end up feeling like it was intended for the desktop and had a half assed repurposing to the tablet. If that's the case Win-8 tablets will manage to even further degrade MS' chances with WP7.
Back in the 90s MS had the ability to ship any old crap, and thanks to its windows monopoly, consumers had to buy it.
Now decades later MS is actually producing some nice products, but thanks to its windows association, consumers aren't interested.
Comments
A little perspective:
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/...ts/Report.aspx
So what I am getting out of this is that in just 13 months, 1 out of 12 adults already own a tablet? The tablet, meaning the iPad and then followed by others, came out in April 2010 right?
A little perspective:
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/...ts/Report.aspx
Yeah but what's selling now is important because they will be the ownership in the future.
Can't a successor compliment its predecessor? Anyway, I take your point partially. I should have been more specific. The tablet is more likely to replace the laptop than the desktop for most people. At least it has for me. I have to Mac laptops stacked on the table behind me that I haven't used in months. The iPad is used everyday in place of them. My iMac does all the heavy lifting.
I don't own a desktop because I am never at home. Laptop is for the heavy lifting and Tablet is for everything else. I don't want to have to run home every time I need to do some heavy lifting plus I don't need a desktop unless I am doing some intense video editing or something really graphics intensive. My MBA does everything I need to do as a web developer and it does it better than an iMac could do.
In time, he expects that PCs, tablets and phones will come together into a ?unified ecosystem.?
Yup, it's called iCloud.
At this stage tablets are like motorbikes and PCs trucks. In a few years the motorbike will be good enough to be a good compact car.
Completely agree! For many people in corporate environments (where I work) many of us use an iPad for email, reading reports, meetings, project billing entry (we have a custom app), travelling and more. However, all us in the upper management still use our desktops for content creation.
I would use the analogy that the iPad is like a mini cooper, fun to drive but when you need more space you need something else. For some people an iPad is all the PC they need. Others who spend they time primarily doing content creation need a laptop/desktop. As tablets get better they will become more like sedans and be suitable for more everyday tasks.
Personally, making a big deal about defining a tablet as a PC makes no sense. Sure a tablet is a PC just like a smart car and a Truck are both vehicles. Claiming tablets are PCs doesn't get Ballmer anything except a a bunch of articles that journalists and bloggers repeat over and over again either vilifying him or pronouncing him as some visionary.
The fact is Ballmer successfully dominated the netbook PC market over linux by extending the life of XP only to lose the netbook market to the iPad. MS sold tablets for a decade and the iPad eclipsed that entire market in a few months. When it comes to desktop and laptop PCs, MS owns the market for under $1000 PCs, but Apple owns the market for pricier PCs. Apple makes more money from the sale of one Mac than HP does from selling seven PCs. http://watch.vivaafrica.net/?p=1864
So using some back of the envelope math if there were 350 million PCs shipped last year and Apple shipped 20 million Macs then Apple made the same profit as selling 140 million PCs. If I were Ballmer, I would be focusing on shit that actually matters not making empty statements.
Wait does this mean they implied that they are EOL Windows Phone 7?
Good luck getting developers to write apps for it.. I hope Nokia got the memo...
No. WPx apps target the Silverlight runtime, not the underlying OS.
These apps could just as easily run on Windows 8 x86/ARM, Windows Phone 8 or even iOS or Android if you ported the Silverlight runtime.
The market has clearly decided that they don't want (in general) a full-blown PC operating system on a tablet. Looks like Microsoft blew it again. They think that EVERYTHING is a PC - and they're wrong.
That's what makes Ballmer such a visionary. He has the boldness to imagine the status quo...and cling tenaciously to it.
Unless Windows 8 looks more like Windows Phone 7, or vice-versa, then Balmer is fragmenting their products and losing any tie-ins they can gain by leveraging a user's comfort with one to purchase the other.
Have you seen the new UI's?
We need to at least respect Microsoft for having their own philosophy, unlike some other company that just do whatever Apple does.
True that.
Only a fool would think there was an issue with Microsoft's vision.
The idea of being able to buy an iPhone or an iPad, dock it into a 27" Cinema display and get full MacOSX when needed is 'effing awesome... but only if it doesn't impact the quality of the experience on the iPhone/iPad.
And that's the problem!.
There is (and rightly so) a whole lot of skepticism being directed toward Microsoft that they can actually make this work.
Sure Microsoft can design a new UI that works on tablets, TVs, PCs and phones... but can they take Windows and squash it down into something that is able to run on a tablet or a phone without destroying the performance and/or battery life?
That's the billion (or rather many many many billion) dollar question.
I agree that tablets should be considered PCs, but they're not desktop PCs. Therefore, why does it make any sense to shoehorn a desktop OS into one? This reads more as a dogmatic thing than a desire to cater to the market.
I believe both Apple and Microsoft are headed towards the same end goal but from different directions.
Microsoft wants to tailor its desktop OS for mobile devices. If a tablet will have Windows 8 then why not a phone or media device (i.e. the next Xbox)? Eventually coming down to one OS for consumer devices including desktop and laptop PCs.
Apple on the other hand took OSX and gave birth to iOS. Now, with Lion, iOS features are coming back to OSX blurring the lines between the 2 OSes that share the same kernel. Eventually, OSX will be retired and iOS will live on all Mac form factors. Lion is the last OSX version. iOS will supplant OSX giving Apple again a one OS strategy.
With Lion you buy the base OS then to have server functionality you buy the server pack to install on top of the base OS. Well, iOS could eventually be distributed like that. That is, the base iOS for small form factor devices, a desktop OS pack for laptops and desktops, and then a server pack for those that need server services on their Mac Mini or Pro.
Ballmer is hoping that Microsoft's smartphone hardware b!tch, Nokia, will release a magical iPhone-killer.
Hardware b!tch!?!?!? That made my day hahahaha
Actually many M$ bashers have grabbed a hold of this story and expounded the usual rants. Point is that he is correct. How long did we have to listen to Google/pundits repeatedly say that Android 2.x was NOT a tablet OS. There is obviously a difference between the user experience on a tablet and a phone. Since Apple designed it right from the get-go, they could leverage effectively a single OS on both platforms. Google and M$ didn't share that same foresight. If anything else, M$ is doing the right thing based on what Google went through. Don't get side tracked by the press/vocal minority. Concentrate on the bigger picture because reactive answers will be trounced soundly and are a non-starter.
"Tablets are PC's", well, that's marketing speak, and why not? Everyone (at least Apple fans) seem to be thinking "oh, here they go again, trying to elevate tablets as touch PC's", when, if you listen carefully, what they're talking about is really migrating PC's (at least the OS) closer to tablets. Which, if you look at Apple with Lion, they are not alone in doing.
With that aside, if balmer says tablets are PCs, where are ye iPad sales figures in all of this?
I believe both Apple and Microsoft are headed towards the same end goal but from different directions...
Agreed. The question is who will get there first. Microsoft are progressing with an evolutionary, top down approach while Apple are progressing with a revolutionary, bottom up approach.
The problem for Microsoft is the technology landscape is littered with incumbent tech wrecks that were overrun by new, inferior alternatives that replaced them from the bottom up.
Mainframes >> desktop PCs
Film photography >> digital photography
CDs >> Digital download.
Windows >> iOS?
Also phones and tablets are completely different things with different needs. iPads are great, but they don't look like the perfect tablet interface, they still resemble the grid icon interface that's been on phones since 2003.
I don't get why people keep saying phones and tablets should use the same OS. Apart from needing to run on slower processors that consume less power, nothing else is the same.
"Windows 8 aims to make the user experience a natural extension of the device…"
For me it very handily summarizes the differences in approach between M$ and Apple, and has been apparent for many years.
M$ has always put the device first (and this is telling in much of the OS dialogue messaging as well). They aim to make the USER an extension of the DEVICE.
Apple on the other hand, aims to make the DEVICE an extension of the USER. This is what makes their products so compelling, what gives the sense that they "just work", intuitively and meaningfully (even when that isn't always true).
I think this difference in underlying philosophy will play a part in defining the way their ecosystems evolve, even if they end up landing in similar space. How they get there, and how they perform once there will be in great part shaped by this…
Oh, and a little more/less on topic: my iPad, after about a year of use, has almost completely replaced my MBP laptop. For literally all tasks other than Adobe CS, Final Cut, and my high-end audio DAWs (which I don't use on the laptop very often anyway, there's a desktop for that
I haven't sold my MBP yet, but it's far less useful to me than it was pre-iPad… so I agree, iPad should count as a "computer", in any case...
The number one and two competitors to Apple in the Tablet market run Linux with Android and WebOS.
For now. The whole android thing is a passing fad. In the not too far future you will see iOS tablets, phones and Windows 8 tablets, phones, etc ... Microsoft has been making some incredibly inept moves, but despite these there are a lot of top people there. It's only a matter of time.
philip
I love how everyone is trying to draw some kind of line between Tablets and PCs. PC = Personal Computer, a tablet is just a computer in a different form factor - I don't see anyone making a clear distinction between desktops and notebooks despite the form factor (which woulld essentially be the same thing).
With that aside, if balmer says tablets are PCs, where are ye iPad sales figures in all of this?
A few people have said the same thing.
Microsoft's position is that a tablet should be is just another PC form factor. This has been their position for the past 10 years.
Apple sees the tablet as a different device. For Apple a tablet is a scaled up phone, not a traditional PC.
When Ballmer talks about PC's (in traditional and slate form factors) he doesn't include "media tablets" because they are different devices.
The comments about WP7 running on a tablet confirm what we have already known for a while... Microsoft isn't going to compete in the "media tablet" segment.
For now. The whole android thing is a passing fad. In the not too far future you will see iOS tablets, phones and Windows 8 tablets, phones, etc ... Microsoft has been making some incredibly inept moves, but despite these there are a lot of top people there. It's only a matter of time.
philip
MS has some talented people but they're hamstrung by a hopeless corporate structure. MS is addicted to the windows brand and concept, even in the face of all reason. Windows Phone 7 conjours up in the consumer's mind the horrible idea that windows is running on the phone. A lot of people probably never even saw the pretty Metro interface, they were too worried they'd end up having to use windows on a smartphone. They should have used a different brand name, MSphone, Xphone, heck - zunephone would have been better. WP7 is completely failing to penentrate the channel, and that's not coming from it's enemies - that's coming from its advocates
http://wptattletale.com/
Microsoft's insistence that Win-8 tablets will be able to run all Win-8 programs actually feeds into that. Win-8 tablet software will likely end up feeling like it was intended for the desktop and had a half assed repurposing to the tablet. If that's the case Win-8 tablets will manage to even further degrade MS' chances with WP7.
Back in the 90s MS had the ability to ship any old crap, and thanks to its windows monopoly, consumers had to buy it.
Now decades later MS is actually producing some nice products, but thanks to its windows association, consumers aren't interested.