Just having fun with MS's latest pronouncement that Apple was "wrong" about this being a post-PC era. It's just mind-boggling to me that those boneheads would think Apple was wrong in their view when you look at the way consumers are devouring the iPad...
Market share for certain, but possibly mindshare as well.
"Market share." "Mind share." Who cares (even assuming the latter is true).
GM had the world' biggest market share in automobiles for four decades. Nokia had the world's biggest mind share in mobile phones for well over a decade. What happened?
It's just mind-boggling to me that those boneheads would think Apple was wrong in their view when you look at the way consumers are devouring the iPad...
It's mind-boggling to me that Microsoft would ever think that Apple was wrong, given that they've done nothing but copy Apple (to their success) for 28 years.
With 802.11n and a good PC/notebook/server as the back end, do you think that an iPad would work well as a thin client?
Yeah, for lot's of uses... When web surfing, emailing, dictating (Siri), watching streamed video, iCloud music, AirPlaying content -- it is doing exactly that: acting as a thin client. You could use a VNC to another computer... but better to have an iPad app that connects to a server (back room or cloud).
I think that iPads used in specialty fields such as restaurants, medical/hospital are being used as very robust thin clients...
For example, there are a series of forms that you fill out when you first go to a doctor, dentist, etc. There is are free iPad apps for each, that connect to a server app (for sale).
Good questions as we have considered using them to replace our aging touchscreens on the shop floor and an iPad is a 3rd of the cost and easier to manage (for what we do with them).
With 802.11n and a good PC/notebook/server as the back end, do you think that an iPad would work well as a thin client?
Sure, but I think that the only sensible way of using an iPad as a thin client in the original sense of the term would be with 4g let. Wifi would be fine, of course but the idea of the tablet is portability. But as we all know using a tablet in that way would be fraught with problems unless you are certain to always have good internet access. And anyway, a 'thin client' in the way we are talking about it does not even have any apps installed. It would be a useless experience. Like buying a 8gb tablet because all your services are on-line is a terrible idea. Anyone who' ever lived with an 8gb iPhone knows this.
Just read Dick's reply above and yeah - I agree with all of that. In a controlled environment where few if any apps are required, its essentially a great thin client.
New tech rarely supplants the old. Even now, we go to movie theaters and listen to AM radio.
That being said, it is quite rare to see horse drawn wagons in the city these days. Current form factors will be around for a long while, because they work well, like a paperback book at the beach.
Maybe not supplant, but to open up new jobs to be done... and the technology that does those jobs grows so rapidly that the old tech is outnumbered/obsoleted.
I suspect that within a few years every pilot (private or commercial) and flight crew member (non-stewards) will have an iPad.
Michael Cioni describes the making of the movie: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo... He says that this was the first film ever made for digital release to the theaters. It was shot with super high-resolution 5K cameras and then sub-framed down to 4K resolution -- they positioned each 4K frame, for best location, within the larger 5K frame then eliminated the 20% of pixels outside the frame.
Big deal? Yes it is! Not only can the editor change the perspective (up, down, side-to-side), but he can zoom in and out as appropriate. According to Michael, this single capability, sub-framing, allowed them to stitch together different takes, from different cameras at different times -- where the best takes, say of two people talking, did not match up properly. With sub-framing they had the flexibility to move and zoom at will to match the clips. AIR, it is shot at 24 frames a second... and at 5K resolution he said, while snapping his fingers: "That's a gig a second snap... snap...snap...".
His point was that this new tech was so revolutionary (in quality and capabilities) that film or videotape (as we them today) will soon be in the minority.
Within the presentation, Synofsky said that the Surface RT would quote: "come with Office 13".
Now... if I take this literally, this is what MS has decided will be the "killer app" that will give the Surface RT AKA WART, the added edge against the iPad. They can NOT afford to offer a watered-down version, or else the assumed "full integration and compatibility" with the desktop version wont work.
Then, if MS also decides to price the Office 13/WART competitively... what portion of the retail price will people consider to be the "worth of Office 13"?
If a tablet at say $500,- includes Office 13, and is true to it's hype and can replace an ultrabook or laptop, is it safe to say that Office 13 is worth less than:
$100 ... $50 ... $25 ????
Is MS really seriously about to kill their goose? And yes... it is their only Goose... well except the "ugly one" Win8. And it's a long time before that one will ever be golden methinks.
Windows+Office<< $100 in 'worth' and likely $60 in profit.
If Microsoft is sized to make $100 per 'device' and
1) they can't get $100 anymore
2) they are now selling to only 66% of the devices, and soon to be sub 50%
They need to change their model so they get $30-50 on ALL devices, and/or start getting the profits of making and selling hardware.
So they start building hardware...
I wouldn't be surprised to see Office for iOS soon too.
They need to make money from iOS and android (more than royalties).
However, Until Ballmer is out... I hold no hope... He's a salesman, who grew up in a different sales era.
Within the presentation, Synofsky said that the Surface RT would quote: "come with Office 13".
Now... if I take this literally, this is what MS has decided will be the "killer app" that will give the Surface RT AKA WART, the added edge against the iPad. They can NOT afford to offer a watered-down version, or else the assumed "full integration and compatibility" with the desktop version wont work.
Then, if MS also decides to price the Office 13/WART competitively... what portion of the retail price will people consider to be the "worth of Office 13"?
If a tablet at say $500,- includes Office 13, and is true to it's hype and can replace an ultrabook or laptop, is it safe to say that Office 13 is worth less than:
$100 ... $50 ... $25 ????
Is MS really seriously about to kill their goose? And yes... it is their only Goose... well except the "ugly one" Win8. And it's a long time before that one will ever be golden methinks.
PS. just wanna say thanks for the great debate and posts on the other MS thread
Sinofsky did say that Office 13 would be included on the Surface WART... they did not show it. The only thing that I saw that could be construed as Word was when they demod handwriting with the stylus on a full screen of text -- no headers, bands, controls, etc. And this was done on the Surface Pro PC!
Now, why wouldn't MS show their flagship app -- if not running, at least being displayed?
My assumption is not that they couldn't get it working... but they couldn't get it looking acceptably usable!
"There's not a lot of room down here..."
That's [running?] on the Surface Pro that could use the stylus to navigate minuscule controls... But the Surface WART has no stylus....
The big question MS -- can they build Office for the Surface(s) that is feature-compatible with desktop Office and still usable on the tablet -- or will they need to subset the apps like Pages and Numbers?
I suspect the latter -- then the question becomes: is the whole package competitive with the iPad? I think not!
Edit: Apparently Office 13 is available for Windows with Touch. ARS Technica has a review:
Why bother? The sad state of Office 2013 touch support
Office 2013 makes concessions to tablet users, but they're far too few.
One of the headlines is particularly interesting:
Inappropriate touching
...
These are not touch applications, and you will not want to use them on touch systems. They're designed for mice and they're designed for keyboards, and making the buttons on the ribbon larger does nothing to change that fundamental fact.
Somewhere I read that the package for the Surface OS and Surface Office was going to cost manufacturers $85-$100 per device. If that is true, then MS will make considerably less on both the OSes and Office on the Surfaces... than they do on their corresponding desktop offerings.
...
As things stand, far from being a valuable feature of Windows RT, the Office 2013 applications threaten to make it worse.
After reading this it is apparent that Ballmer cannot get the Office Division and Windows Division to work together... The obvious solution: Add a new Hardware Division to the mix!
Ballmer must take care -- lest he be arrested for infamous crimes against business management.
End Edit:
Either way, they're hosed... really hosed...
It's kinda' like the Google purchase of Motorola -- nothing good can come of it, and they would be better off if it just didn't happen.
Somehow, I think that with the Surface, MS has revived the question "What is the right number of buttons on a mouse Surface tablets for a form factor?". As in the classic answer for the mouse, MS' answer for the Surface is: two is too many -- and one is not enough!
Quote:
Is MS really seriously about to kill their goose? And yes... it is their only Goose... well except the "ugly one" Win8. And it's a long time before that one will ever be golden methinks.
In a post on another thread in was suggested that the pronunciation for W8 should be "wait" as in "wait to see if it ever comes out". Maybe it should be "weight" as in "dead weight".
Glad you enjoyed the Michael Cioni video -- he is a rare mixture of a brilliant and talented person that is a joy to listen to/watch... he's fun!
Come on! It's MG Siegler we are talking about! He's like the biggest Apple fan on the planet. He never said something good about Android until now! If he says Nexus 7 is great, then it's great!
Yeah, yeah, and everyone says David Pogue and Walt Mossberg are the biggest Apple fans on the planet too, and they use the same curved grading scale. Actually, it's not really a curve, it's more like, "everyone gets an A for participating."
My impression was that was true in the early days, before the internet. But people started buying lots of computers then, and sales have increased (overall) ever since.
Is it really true that businesses now buy more computers then consumers?
I probably could have worded my "PC sales weighted towards corporate" statement better. What I meant was that a higher % of PCs are corporate purchases vs the % of Macs being corporate purchases. So a contraction in corporate computer purchases would have a greater impact on PCs than Macs.
I don't know if the majority of PC (non-Mac) sales are corporate or not anymore.
Windows+Office<< $100 in 'worth' and likely $60 in profit.
If Microsoft is sized to make $100 per 'device' and
1) they can't get $100 anymore
2) they are now selling to only 66% of the devices, and soon to be sub 50%
They need to change their model so they get $30-50 on ALL devices, and/or start getting the profits of making and selling hardware.
So they start building hardware...
I wouldn't be surprised to see Office for iOS soon too.
They need to make money from iOS and android (more than royalties).
However, Until Ballmer is out... I hold no hope... He's a salesman, who grew up in a different sales era.
I used to think that MS was working on a port of Office to the iPad -- at least since the release of the iPad 2... now I'm not so sure.
Earlier I linked to an ARS Technica article that discusses what MS did to Office to make it work with a Touch UI... It isn't very pretty!
I haven't used Office in 5 years, and haven't done anything but basic stuff with Word, Excel and Access in 15 years.
I like the inherent power of Excel - but I can't possibly use all the features. Word impressed me as a Lean, Mean, Flexible WP application... At least it was when it arrived on the original Mac, circa 1985.
Over the years, it seems that MS just couldn't leave well-enough alone... and Word has morphed into bloated feature-creep monster.
If MS had done the same with a Swiss Army Knife, it would look like this:
(This little beauty will set you back a modest $1,300),
Can any one use all that crap... much less understand what it does?
Both Surface tablet6s will ship with Office...
I hope we never see Office on the iPad -- Not having Office is a competitive advantage, IMO!
I remember when the Laptop first came out and people said it was the death of the desktop. Never happened - some people bought laptops and some people continued to buy desktops. I suspect the tablet computer will have the same effect - it's just another computer format. It's not going to kill anything. The laptop and desktop will continue for many years.
As for that graph it just poses more questions than answers. If the iPad is directly responsible for the drop in PC sales then why did Y/Y PC growth fall in 1999-2001, 2005-2006 and 2007-2009 ? There was no iPad to explain those declines. I'm sure the iPad is taking sales away from the PC but it's impact is being overstated to prove a point and talk up the share price again. I don't know anyone who uses an iPad as their only computer - they all have a laptop or desktop as well. I love my iPad but I wouldn't scrap my desktop for it.
No one in their right mind said it would be the death of desktops expecting you to take it literally. I'd expect Karl Pilkington to take things that literal, but not you. Now an intelligent person should be able to see that notebooks were the future and that it would affect desktop sales much in the same way tablets, because of the iPad (and only because of the iPad if other don't get on the ball), has and will continue to affect traditional PC sales. On that same token (from the other thread), the iPhone, which is also an iPod, has affected traditional iPod sales. As other smartphone OSes get better at being a PMP those numbers will be affected even more.
Just to follow up on Dick's link to the Ars article re Office on RT tablets:
This is exactly what I've been suspicious about all along. Apple chose to make a hard and fast distinction between iOS and OS X because the use cases are so different. Same code base, but wildly divergent UI parameters. MS, on the other hand, can't escape the Windows and Office Everywhere Deathray, so they claim "no compromises" while sort of casually eliding the issues inherent in moving from mouse and keyboard to touch by including a keyboard cover with their tablets.
I think this is going to be a disaster. I didn't think that till I read the Ars article. Peter Bright is a tireless MS defender, he's not short-changing the Office touch situation out of some sort of grudge. The entire case for a Windows tablet that can run Windows was that you didn't have to choose, anymore. You could dock and be a desktop, then grab it and go and switch to touch operations. But if the RT version of Office sucks with touch, what is MS selling? As far as ARM goes, a tablet that arguably does less than the iPad, in that the office suite solution is all but unusable unless you get and use that keyboard cover. At which point why aren't you using an ultrabook, again? And the Office suite is the only legacy "Windows" software that will ship with ARM tablets, the rest will be whatever Metro apps get done, and those bode to be largely social networking, messaging and web stuff.
Say what you will about the limitations of iWork, it works very well on a tablet. As does every other piece of Apple software, and most of the vast library of third party apps. No confusion: you use an iPad app you're in touch land and good to go. MS acts like its an achievement to put "real" apps on a tablet, but the fact is the real achievement is figuring out how to make powerful software with some depth to it work with touch. Apple has been working on that for probably close to 10 years now (since the iPhone was in development for years before release) and they've learned a lot. MS, apparently, has not. They're going to confuse and irritate the shit out of their customers, when some tablets don't run legacy Windows apps at all, all tablets don't do Office in touch mode in a way that's worth doing, and the "real Windows" tablets are weird crossbreed things that can land you in a purely mouse and keyboard environment when you want touch and put you in touch friendly metro when you want a desktop.
I think Windows 8 might be a trainwreck that makes Vista look like a triumph. At best, people will update their desktops and ignore the entire touch/tablet thing and continue to buy iPads. Maybe even more iPads, once it's clear that Microsoft has nothing to add to the market.
Just to follow up on Dick's link to the Ars article re Office on RT tablets:
This is exactly what I've been suspicious about all along. Apple chose to make a hard and fast distinction between iOS and OS X because the use cases are so different. Same code base, but wildly divergent UI parameters. MS, on the other hand, can't escape the Windows and Office Everywhere Deathray, so they claim "no compromises" while sort of casually eliding the issues inherent in moving from mouse and keyboard to touch by including a keyboard cover with their tablets.
"Eliding" is such an appropriate word!
So MS' tablet OSes will detect MouseOver [TrackpadOver], FingerOver, MultipleFingerOver and for the Pro* model StylusOver... And each of these detected gestures will cause exactly the same actions to take place... sometimes! Actions like "Select", "Zoom", "Swipe", "Hint", or "Handwriting/Paint Strokes"...
* I suspect, that if MS sells a lot of WARTS, that many users will buy a 3rd-party touch-sensitive stylus -- especially to navigate the included Office app. So, in effect, we'll have five different gestures for the OS to detect -- so it can determine how to do things badly.
I think this is going to be a disaster. I didn't think that till I read the Ars article. Peter Bright is a tireless MS defender, he's not short-changing the Office touch situation out of some sort of grudge. The entire case for a Windows tablet that can run Windows was that you didn't have to choose, anymore. You could dock and be a desktop, then grab it and go and switch to touch operations. But if the RT version of Office sucks with touch, what is MS selling? As far as ARM goes, a tablet that arguably does less than the iPad, in that the office suite solution is all but unusable unless you get and use that keyboard cover. At which point why aren't you using an ultrabook, again? And the Office suite is the only legacy "Windows" software that will ship with ARM tablets, the rest will be whatever Metro apps get done, and those bode to be largely social networking, messaging and web stuff.
Say what you will about the limitations of iWork, it works very well on a tablet. As does every other piece of Apple software, and most of the vast library of third party apps. No confusion: you use an iPad app you're in touch land and good to go. MS acts like its an achievement to put "real" apps on a tablet, but the fact is the real achievement is figuring out how to make powerful software with some depth to it work with touch. Apple has been working on that for probably close to 10 years now (since the iPhone was in development for years before release) and they've learned a lot. MS, apparently, has not. They're going to confuse and irritate the shit out of their customers, when some tablets don't run legacy Windows apps at all, all tablets don't do Office in touch mode in a way that's worth doing, and the "real Windows" tablets are weird crossbreed things that can land you in a purely mouse and keyboard environment when you want touch and put you in touch friendly metro when you want a desktop.
I think Windows 8 might be a trainwreck that makes Vista look like a triumph. At best, people will update their desktops and ignore the entire touch/tablet thing and continue to buy iPads. Maybe even more iPads, once it's clear that Microsoft has nothing to add to the market.
Above is a very well developed and presented post!
It could be even worse than what you predict... After reading the ARS article and comments, it appears as if MS has started Windows 8 and Office 13 on a high speed cross-country race -- coming from different places and going in opposite directions on the same track.
If the MS tablets fail -- no big deal, right? Just another Zune! Except that this time they've pissed off some pretty powerful partners whose platforms provide the basis for MS. whole business plan, nay, MS' continued existence!
I have an uneasy feeling in the back of my neck that MS is very much more desperate than it appears -- they are attempting to drive their 2 cash cow products with new versions of each... Are the upgrades compelling enough? Or, to paraphrase Yogi Berra: What will happen if "the customers stay away in droves"?
Edit: While MS is fiddle-farting around with case covers that don't work -- others may have come up with a viable mouse/kb replacement...
Yep, I think your image is apropos. Usually when we say "train wreck" we mean something went off the tracks, but what MS has got going really does seem like sending locomotives in opposite directions on the same track with the hope that they'll somehow fuse mid-journey into a mighty super train.
This may be the endgame for Microsoft's famous culture of silo-ed competitors working at cross purposes. A shotgun marriage of components that just don't fit together all that well. If their tablet thing doesn't take off, they're done. They can keep selling gradually fewer Windows 8 licenses and continue to see the gradual erosion of their OS hegemony, and it will be slow, but without a credible touch solution that actually works well, they're on the wrong end of a losing bet.
Or not, maybe they'll pull it together between now and release, or people will tolerate a high degree of pain for the privilege of running "real Windows" on a tablet. But that definitely won't be the ARM tablets, which means the real bet the company product may wind up being a mildly tricked out version of what they haven't been able to sell all along: a notebook without a real keyboard, running a version of Windows only modestly adapted to touch. No one wanted that over the last 10 years, why would they want it now? And no, "Metro" isn't a magic solution, it's starting to look like a shell that handles phone stuff (email, browsing, social networking, games) OK, but at this point I don't think that's enough.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Er, what?
Just having fun with MS's latest pronouncement that Apple was "wrong" about this being a post-PC era. It's just mind-boggling to me that those boneheads would think Apple was wrong in their view when you look at the way consumers are devouring the iPad...
Quote:
Originally Posted by JerrySwitched26
Market share for certain, but possibly mindshare as well.
"Market share." "Mind share." Who cares (even assuming the latter is true).
GM had the world' biggest market share in automobiles for four decades. Nokia had the world's biggest mind share in mobile phones for well over a decade. What happened?
It's mind-boggling to me that Microsoft would ever think that Apple was wrong, given that they've done nothing but copy Apple (to their success) for 28 years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JerrySwitched26
With 802.11n and a good PC/notebook/server as the back end, do you think that an iPad would work well as a thin client?
Yeah, for lot's of uses... When web surfing, emailing, dictating (Siri), watching streamed video, iCloud music, AirPlaying content -- it is doing exactly that: acting as a thin client. You could use a VNC to another computer... but better to have an iPad app that connects to a server (back room or cloud).
I think that iPads used in specialty fields such as restaurants, medical/hospital are being used as very robust thin clients...
For example, there are a series of forms that you fill out when you first go to a doctor, dentist, etc. There is are free iPad apps for each, that connect to a server app (for sale).
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/macpractice-clipboard-dds/id464905430?mt=8
Quote:
Originally Posted by icoco3
Good questions as we have considered using them to replace our aging touchscreens on the shop floor and an iPad is a 3rd of the cost and easier to manage (for what we do with them).
I'm interested...
What kind of shop floor?
Is it a clean environment?
Are your current devices mobile or stationary?
What do you do with them?
We will have this same discussion again in 2013 as the trends continue....
Quote:
Originally Posted by JerrySwitched26
With 802.11n and a good PC/notebook/server as the back end, do you think that an iPad would work well as a thin client?
Sure, but I think that the only sensible way of using an iPad as a thin client in the original sense of the term would be with 4g let. Wifi would be fine, of course but the idea of the tablet is portability. But as we all know using a tablet in that way would be fraught with problems unless you are certain to always have good internet access. And anyway, a 'thin client' in the way we are talking about it does not even have any apps installed. It would be a useless experience. Like buying a 8gb tablet because all your services are on-line is a terrible idea. Anyone who' ever lived with an 8gb iPhone knows this.
Just read Dick's reply above and yeah - I agree with all of that. In a controlled environment where few if any apps are required, its essentially a great thin client.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JerrySwitched26
New tech rarely supplants the old. Even now, we go to movie theaters and listen to AM radio.
That being said, it is quite rare to see horse drawn wagons in the city these days. Current form factors will be around for a long while, because they work well, like a paperback book at the beach.
Maybe not supplant, but to open up new jobs to be done... and the technology that does those jobs grows so rapidly that the old tech is outnumbered/obsoleted.
I suspect that within a few years every pilot (private or commercial) and flight crew member (non-stewards) will have an iPad.
Michael Cioni describes the making of the movie: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo... He says that this was the first film ever made for digital release to the theaters. It was shot with super high-resolution 5K cameras and then sub-framed down to 4K resolution -- they positioned each 4K frame, for best location, within the larger 5K frame then eliminated the 20% of pixels outside the frame.
Big deal? Yes it is! Not only can the editor change the perspective (up, down, side-to-side), but he can zoom in and out as appropriate. According to Michael, this single capability, sub-framing, allowed them to stitch together different takes, from different cameras at different times -- where the best takes, say of two people talking, did not match up properly. With sub-framing they had the flexibility to move and zoom at will to match the clips. AIR, it is shot at 24 frames a second... and at 5K resolution he said, while snapping his fingers: "That's a gig a second snap... snap...snap...".
His point was that this new tech was so revolutionary (in quality and capabilities) that film or videotape (as we them today) will soon be in the minority.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ThePixelDoc
Within the presentation, Synofsky said that the Surface RT would quote: "come with Office 13".
Now... if I take this literally, this is what MS has decided will be the "killer app" that will give the Surface RT AKA WART, the added edge against the iPad. They can NOT afford to offer a watered-down version, or else the assumed "full integration and compatibility" with the desktop version wont work.
Then, if MS also decides to price the Office 13/WART competitively... what portion of the retail price will people consider to be the "worth of Office 13"?
If a tablet at say $500,- includes Office 13, and is true to it's hype and can replace an ultrabook or laptop, is it safe to say that Office 13 is worth less than:
$100 ... $50 ... $25 ????
Is MS really seriously about to kill their goose? And yes... it is their only Goose... well except the "ugly one" Win8. And it's a long time before that one will ever be golden methinks.
Windows+Office<< $100 in 'worth' and likely $60 in profit.
If Microsoft is sized to make $100 per 'device' and
1) they can't get $100 anymore
2) they are now selling to only 66% of the devices, and soon to be sub 50%
They need to change their model so they get $30-50 on ALL devices, and/or start getting the profits of making and selling hardware.
So they start building hardware...
I wouldn't be surprised to see Office for iOS soon too.
They need to make money from iOS and android (more than royalties).
However, Until Ballmer is out... I hold no hope... He's a salesman, who grew up in a different sales era.
PC sales in UNITS are down 0.1% YoY.
In DOLLARS PC sales are down far more, Wall Street cares about dollars not units.
All those PC companies expect a high price multiple due to GROWTH, the PC market has had declining sales for year as witnessed by HP.
No growth or hope for growth, they all are overpriced.
Within the presentation, Synofsky said that the Surface RT would quote: "come with Office 13".
Now... if I take this literally, this is what MS has decided will be the "killer app" that will give the Surface RT AKA WART, the added edge against the iPad. They can NOT afford to offer a watered-down version, or else the assumed "full integration and compatibility" with the desktop version wont work.
Then, if MS also decides to price the Office 13/WART competitively... what portion of the retail price will people consider to be the "worth of Office 13"?
If a tablet at say $500,- includes Office 13, and is true to it's hype and can replace an ultrabook or laptop, is it safe to say that Office 13 is worth less than:
$100 ... $50 ... $25 ????
Is MS really seriously about to kill their goose? And yes... it is their only Goose... well except the "ugly one" Win8. And it's a long time before that one will ever be golden methinks.
PS. just wanna say thanks for the great debate and posts on the other MS thread
Re: Michael Cioni video -- GREAT presentation! Thanks for the link.
Boy, that's a loaded response.
Sinofsky did say that Office 13 would be included on the Surface WART... they did not show it. The only thing that I saw that could be construed as Word was when they demod handwriting with the stylus on a full screen of text -- no headers, bands, controls, etc. And this was done on the Surface Pro PC!
Now, why wouldn't MS show their flagship app -- if not running, at least being displayed?
My assumption is not that they couldn't get it working... but they couldn't get it looking acceptably usable!
"There's not a lot of room down here..."
That's [running?] on the Surface Pro that could use the stylus to navigate minuscule controls... But the Surface WART has no stylus....
The big question MS -- can they build Office for the Surface(s) that is feature-compatible with desktop Office and still usable on the tablet -- or will they need to subset the apps like Pages and Numbers?
I suspect the latter -- then the question becomes: is the whole package competitive with the iPad? I think not!
Edit: Apparently Office 13 is available for Windows with Touch. ARS Technica has a review:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/why-bother-the-sad-state-of-office-2013-touch-support/
Why bother? The sad state of Office 2013 touch support
Office 2013 makes concessions to tablet users, but they're far too few.
One of the headlines is particularly interesting:
Inappropriate touching
...
These are not touch applications, and you will not want to use them on touch systems. They're designed for mice and they're designed for keyboards, and making the buttons on the ribbon larger does nothing to change that fundamental fact.
Somewhere I read that the package for the Surface OS and Surface Office was going to cost manufacturers $85-$100 per device. If that is true, then MS will make considerably less on both the OSes and Office on the Surfaces... than they do on their corresponding desktop offerings.
...
As things stand, far from being a valuable feature of Windows RT, the Office 2013 applications threaten to make it worse.
After reading this it is apparent that Ballmer cannot get the Office Division and Windows Division to work together... The obvious solution: Add a new Hardware Division to the mix!
Ballmer must take care -- lest he be arrested for infamous crimes against business management.
End Edit:
Either way, they're hosed... really hosed...
It's kinda' like the Google purchase of Motorola -- nothing good can come of it, and they would be better off if it just didn't happen.
Somehow, I think that with the Surface, MS has revived the question "What is the right number of buttons on a mouse Surface tablets for a form factor?". As in the classic answer for the mouse, MS' answer for the Surface is: two is too many -- and one is not enough!
Is MS really seriously about to kill their goose? And yes... it is their only Goose... well except the "ugly one" Win8. And it's a long time before that one will ever be golden methinks.
In a post on another thread in was suggested that the pronunciation for W8 should be "wait" as in "wait to see if it ever comes out". Maybe it should be "weight" as in "dead weight".
Glad you enjoyed the Michael Cioni video -- he is a rare mixture of a brilliant and talented person that is a joy to listen to/watch... he's fun!
Quote:
Originally Posted by NelsonX
Come on! It's MG Siegler we are talking about! He's like the biggest Apple fan on the planet. He never said something good about Android until now! If he says Nexus 7 is great, then it's great!Yeah, yeah, and everyone says David Pogue and Walt Mossberg are the biggest Apple fans on the planet too, and they use the same curved grading scale. Actually, it's not really a curve, it's more like, "everyone gets an A for participating."
Quote:
Originally Posted by focher
Ah yes, the "Android is winning" meme...
Charley Sheen was recently signed to be the new Android spokesperson.
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Originally Posted by JerrySwitched26
Is that true these days?
My impression was that was true in the early days, before the internet. But people started buying lots of computers then, and sales have increased (overall) ever since.
Is it really true that businesses now buy more computers then consumers?
I probably could have worded my "PC sales weighted towards corporate" statement better. What I meant was that a higher % of PCs are corporate purchases vs the % of Macs being corporate purchases. So a contraction in corporate computer purchases would have a greater impact on PCs than Macs.
I don't know if the majority of PC (non-Mac) sales are corporate or not anymore.
I heard that MS is trying to get John Wayne as the Windows 8 spokesman... Or maybe Roz Ho will come out of retirement.
I used to think that MS was working on a port of Office to the iPad -- at least since the release of the iPad 2... now I'm not so sure.
Earlier I linked to an ARS Technica article that discusses what MS did to Office to make it work with a Touch UI... It isn't very pretty!
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/why-bother-the-sad-state-of-office-2013-touch-support/
I haven't used Office in 5 years, and haven't done anything but basic stuff with Word, Excel and Access in 15 years.
I like the inherent power of Excel - but I can't possibly use all the features. Word impressed me as a Lean, Mean, Flexible WP application... At least it was when it arrived on the original Mac, circa 1985.
Over the years, it seems that MS just couldn't leave well-enough alone... and Word has morphed into bloated feature-creep monster.
If MS had done the same with a Swiss Army Knife, it would look like this:
(This little beauty will set you back a modest $1,300),
Can any one use all that crap... much less understand what it does?
Both Surface tablet6s will ship with Office...
I hope we never see Office on the iPad -- Not having Office is a competitive advantage, IMO!
No one in their right mind said it would be the death of desktops expecting you to take it literally. I'd expect Karl Pilkington to take things that literal, but not you. Now an intelligent person should be able to see that notebooks were the future and that it would affect desktop sales much in the same way tablets, because of the iPad (and only because of the iPad if other don't get on the ball), has and will continue to affect traditional PC sales. On that same token (from the other thread), the iPhone, which is also an iPod, has affected traditional iPod sales. As other smartphone OSes get better at being a PMP those numbers will be affected even more.
Just to follow up on Dick's link to the Ars article re Office on RT tablets:
This is exactly what I've been suspicious about all along. Apple chose to make a hard and fast distinction between iOS and OS X because the use cases are so different. Same code base, but wildly divergent UI parameters. MS, on the other hand, can't escape the Windows and Office Everywhere Deathray, so they claim "no compromises" while sort of casually eliding the issues inherent in moving from mouse and keyboard to touch by including a keyboard cover with their tablets.
I think this is going to be a disaster. I didn't think that till I read the Ars article. Peter Bright is a tireless MS defender, he's not short-changing the Office touch situation out of some sort of grudge. The entire case for a Windows tablet that can run Windows was that you didn't have to choose, anymore. You could dock and be a desktop, then grab it and go and switch to touch operations. But if the RT version of Office sucks with touch, what is MS selling? As far as ARM goes, a tablet that arguably does less than the iPad, in that the office suite solution is all but unusable unless you get and use that keyboard cover. At which point why aren't you using an ultrabook, again? And the Office suite is the only legacy "Windows" software that will ship with ARM tablets, the rest will be whatever Metro apps get done, and those bode to be largely social networking, messaging and web stuff.
Say what you will about the limitations of iWork, it works very well on a tablet. As does every other piece of Apple software, and most of the vast library of third party apps. No confusion: you use an iPad app you're in touch land and good to go. MS acts like its an achievement to put "real" apps on a tablet, but the fact is the real achievement is figuring out how to make powerful software with some depth to it work with touch. Apple has been working on that for probably close to 10 years now (since the iPhone was in development for years before release) and they've learned a lot. MS, apparently, has not. They're going to confuse and irritate the shit out of their customers, when some tablets don't run legacy Windows apps at all, all tablets don't do Office in touch mode in a way that's worth doing, and the "real Windows" tablets are weird crossbreed things that can land you in a purely mouse and keyboard environment when you want touch and put you in touch friendly metro when you want a desktop.
I think Windows 8 might be a trainwreck that makes Vista look like a triumph. At best, people will update their desktops and ignore the entire touch/tablet thing and continue to buy iPads. Maybe even more iPads, once it's clear that Microsoft has nothing to add to the market.
"Eliding" is such an appropriate word!
So MS' tablet OSes will detect MouseOver [TrackpadOver], FingerOver, MultipleFingerOver and for the Pro* model StylusOver... And each of these detected gestures will cause exactly the same actions to take place... sometimes! Actions like "Select", "Zoom", "Swipe", "Hint", or "Handwriting/Paint Strokes"...
* I suspect, that if MS sells a lot of WARTS, that many users will buy a 3rd-party touch-sensitive stylus -- especially to navigate the included Office app. So, in effect, we'll have five different gestures for the OS to detect -- so it can determine how to do things badly.
Above is a very well developed and presented post!
It could be even worse than what you predict... After reading the ARS article and comments, it appears as if MS has started Windows 8 and Office 13 on a high speed cross-country race -- coming from different places and going in opposite directions on the same track.
If the MS tablets fail -- no big deal, right? Just another Zune! Except that this time they've pissed off some pretty powerful partners whose platforms provide the basis for MS. whole business plan, nay, MS' continued existence!
I have an uneasy feeling in the back of my neck that MS is very much more desperate than it appears -- they are attempting to drive their 2 cash cow products with new versions of each... Are the upgrades compelling enough? Or, to paraphrase Yogi Berra: What will happen if "the customers stay away in droves"?
Edit: While MS is fiddle-farting around with case covers that don't work -- others may have come up with a viable mouse/kb replacement...
Have a look at this:
[VIDEO]
http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/151293/as-pc-sales-stall-apple-projected-to-sell-69m-ipads-in-2012/40#
https://live.leapmotion.com/about.html
Here's a classic quote from the leap motion web site:
It’s like being able to reach into the computer and pull out information as easily as reaching into a cookie jar.
Yep, I think your image is apropos. Usually when we say "train wreck" we mean something went off the tracks, but what MS has got going really does seem like sending locomotives in opposite directions on the same track with the hope that they'll somehow fuse mid-journey into a mighty super train.
This may be the endgame for Microsoft's famous culture of silo-ed competitors working at cross purposes. A shotgun marriage of components that just don't fit together all that well. If their tablet thing doesn't take off, they're done. They can keep selling gradually fewer Windows 8 licenses and continue to see the gradual erosion of their OS hegemony, and it will be slow, but without a credible touch solution that actually works well, they're on the wrong end of a losing bet.
Or not, maybe they'll pull it together between now and release, or people will tolerate a high degree of pain for the privilege of running "real Windows" on a tablet. But that definitely won't be the ARM tablets, which means the real bet the company product may wind up being a mildly tricked out version of what they haven't been able to sell all along: a notebook without a real keyboard, running a version of Windows only modestly adapted to touch. No one wanted that over the last 10 years, why would they want it now? And no, "Metro" isn't a magic solution, it's starting to look like a shell that handles phone stuff (email, browsing, social networking, games) OK, but at this point I don't think that's enough.