Microsoft's Killer Tablet Opportunity 282
snydeq writes "Advice Line's Bob Lewis sees ripe opportunity for Microsoft in the tablet market: Forget about outdoing Apple's iPad and give us the features that finally improve the way we work. 'The game isn't beating Apple at its own game. The magic buzzword is to "differentiate" and show what your technology will do that Apple won't even care about, let alone beat you at. One possible answer: Help individual employees be more effective at their jobs,' Lewis writes, outlining four business features to target, not the least of which would be to provide UI variance, enabling serious tablet users to expose the OS complexity necessary to do real work."
UI variance ? (Score:3, Informative)
isn't Metro meant to be a one size fits all? And no desktop apps.
So if you come up with a world beating vertical app you have to go thru Microsoft.
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Ah my bad
I misinterpreted this
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2012/02/windows-8-on-arm-the-desktop-is-there-sos-office-but-not-much-more.ars [arstechnica.com]
"but there was always the possibility that existing desktop applications could be recompiled. That option is now unambiguously eliminated, with Microsoft saying "WOA does not support running, emulating, or porting existing x86/64 desktop apps." Office is a special, unique case. All third-party applications for WOA will be Metro applications delivered via the Windo
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Re:Oh, please.. (Score:5, Funny)
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if they really wanted to help employees be more effective at their jobs, they should take away those damn color PCs and tablets and put back the VT terminals.
The geek thinks geek --- and tries once again to put the genii back into the bottle.
Those who understand the clerical worker and the executive prosper --- Microsoft on the desktop and Apple in mobile devices.
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Apple doesn't build devices for businesses, but for consumers. Therefore Apple doesn't care about employee effectivity.
Re:Oh, please.. (Score:5, Insightful)
All of the Apple employees that come to enterprise business meetings paired up with Verizon and AT&T talking about mobile device management solutions, and how to better integrate iPad and iPhone into your corporate IS infrastructure seem to disagree.
You see what I did there? I alluded to something that is actually happening in the real world, rather than just spouting some one-liner that may have been true 5 years ago, but most definitely isn't the case today.
Re:Oh, please.. (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but I did talk to one head of IT recently... he loved his tablet, but hated how to integrate anything Apple into their systems. So you might say it's happening almost despite Apple rather than with Apple. In my impression it's exactly opposite of the PC where people used Windows at home because they use Windows at work. Now they use iDevices at home and want to use iDevices at work.
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You didn't get it, did you?
Apple cares not a hoot for the IT manager trying to integrate Apple devices into their infrastructure. They care about the end user of such devices, whom feel empowered and more productive using them.
So this integration is not happening "in spite of Apple," but precisely because Apple devices help the end users be more productive. The integration is the result of this adoption.
You can say that the integration is not Apple's focus. They don't care if you figure out how to integr
Re:Oh, please.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Where do you work, some bring your own hardware startup or academia where the user gets what the user wants? Like hell no I get to put corporate information in places or devices the company don't approve, no matter how sweet I think that'd be. Apple does not give one shit about making Apple products usable in a corporate setting, it's all but accidental or incidental to making a good consumer product. They not only don't give a hoot about the IT department, but they don't give a hoot about people trying to use it as a business tool at all.
Apple equipment = square peg
Corporations = round hole
Employees = the hammer
Sure, with a big enough hammer you'll probably get an awkward fit but I don't see why Apple should get any credit for that, because I can't see how they could possibly do less.
Bizniz speeick (Score:5, Funny)
TFA in other words:
It is mission critical to have a holistic integration on next generation value-added enterprise, while eating your own dogfood and leveraging the core granular competencies to bring the sustainability to the customers.
Bitch, pahhhleaz!
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Look it, if you are going to suggest that as mission critical, you can at least tell them it must be synergistic as well. Nothing can be mission critical without being synergistic...and also forward leaning into a bold unlimited future.
In Microsoft's defense... (Score:4)
That was as much about the tablets themselves as it was about the tablet "experience" in the OS.
Yes, WinXP and Vista were NOT "tablet ready" in any real sense of the word. but then again, absolutely NONE of the hardware was really 'tablet ready" either.
I remember working with a "late model" tablet about 6 months before the iPad was announced. This was a top of the line demonstration model that we were testing for possible use in some specialized applications with the company I was working for at the time.
What was this tablet like? Imagine a 14 inch 4:3 resolution screen laptop from that era With the screen mounted directly to what would normally be the keyboard surface, and no keyboard. Just an ordinary laptop, sans keyboard.
It was heavy, bulky and SLOOOOOW. Prone to overheating when put in it's protective case, HOT and uncomfortable to hold when not in it's protective case and just generally difficult to use. And that's BEFORE you even start talking about working with software or the UI of Windows XP tablet edition!
The big "Sea Change" that Apple brought about was as much about the shitty hardware of existing tablets as it was about the inadequate UI. In many cases, it was MOSTLY about the hardware, as the old style win-tabs would turn people totally off before they even booted the damn things up!
In contrast, the Apple iPad was sleek, reasonably lightweight and uncomplicated. The carry-over of the touch and gesture-based interaction from the iPhone made it simple and largely intuitive to use, and it made tablets even more enjoyable to use than laptops or netbooks for surfing and casual use (which is what most consumers do with them anyway.)
So it's no surprise that the iPad did well. To be honest, even if iOS hadn't been ported to the iPad and it had used a more touch-friendly version of OSX it would have been a smashing success based purely on the hardware alone. Loading it with iOS and tying it to the App store just sealed the deal.
VMware's got an app for that (Score:5, Informative)
Vmware's got an app for that: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vmware-view-for-ipad/id417993697?mt=8
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as a "corporate" user (Score:2, Interesting)
I will say that, in my experience, the current crop of tablets aren't great at data input in the corporate environment.
I want something that I can write on with a stylus and it will, at the very least, sync to my outlook and preferably my document management system (Hummingbird DM, which to be fair is probably 10 years old now).
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Re:as a "corporate" user (Score:4, Interesting)
Usage wise they are as you said a cool gadget for consumming content and writing short comments. If you want to produce content get a laptop.
That said they are great for traveling and if I was still in a job where I was spending a good portion of the month in a hotel I would have purchased a full blown tablet and carried that around with me in addition to my laptop.
The Tablet is an inbetween (Score:5, Interesting)
Early radio phones, even early mobiles were a disaster to use. A car phone wasn't always just your mobile in your car, it was a major installation.
Early mobile phones came in a suitcase. So... where did you leave all the stuff in your normal case? Carry 2 suitcases? Not very high powered right?
But tech progressed and right now with bluetooth headsets and voice dialing we are getting damned close to the perceived convenience of Star Trek communicators.
I think tablets are a dead end. The future is retina displays and neural input. It is obvious really, holding a screen and a keyboard in whatever combinations just ain't convenient. Laptops ain't any better, we just got used to their inconvenience. If you see some people type on a phone, you can easily forget just how fucking akward it is to use... but we move on.
I think tablets are the very early ancestors of anywhere computing. Not anywhere as in anywhere I sit down but anywhere as in on the move. Not traditional computing work tasks such as writing a document or doing design, but informational and entertainment computing. Google maps has completely replaced my need for a map. I used to have several. Recently threw them out. Don't need them. Not that I use Maps all that often but that is the real convenience, when I need it, it is right there, up to date and ready to use.
Music, movies and games. We used to have to sit down to play them or bring very specialized travel sets with us. With a phone/tablet, you can play almost any game, wherever you want, when you want. Yes, they are akward and simplistic and underpowered. But that will chance. I still got an old phone that can play snakes, compared to that, modern mobile games are a million times better. NEITHER is yet anywhere as convenient and reliable as old LCD games or as rich and powerful as PC games but... getting there.
I remember the Walkman... it was all the rage for a while and then it died. It wasn't until years later that personal audio made a come back with the portable MP3 player. Why?
Walkman's just weren't convenient with their tapes, it takes a lot of work to mix a tape and then you have the same limitted tracks in the same order unless you bring bulky tapes (check tape size vs MP3 player). Only the hardcore persisted, some bought mini-disc but the majority didn't bother.
Now the MP3 player is back with a vengeance.
I see a LOT of people with iPads that barely use them, they just ain't that comfortable to use right now or all that useful but that will change. Those cheap nasty headphones of the walkman (orange foam pads) have evolved into in-ear buds and massive headphones depending on taste. Tablets will evolve too. How? If I knew that I would be to busy being filthy rich to post on slashdot.
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Why Microsoft? (Score:5, Insightful)
Reading the article I get the impression that this guy would like emacs org mode. Very similar ideas. The added bit is that he wants to embed other files in the document. And to top it all off instead of using a file as an outline, he wants to use a file system. That way you don't have to embed anything. It's just a normal file.
In spite of myself, I think it's a brilliant idea. I'm not sure why he thinks Microsoft will understand it. This is a Un*x idea through and through. Use the file as the lowest level metaphor in the system. Build tools that allow you to operate efficiently on files. I don't think it would be very difficult to implement. And I don't think it has anything to do with tablets. It's just a good idea period.
"Real work" ? (Score:5, Insightful)
enabling serious tablet users to expose the OS complexity necessary to do real work.
Isn't the "real work" stuff like the "true Scotman" ?
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It's a very useful term... for filtering out the pointless rantings of myopic sysadmin types. Guess what, "real work" guys: most work in the world is not batch processing text files! Strange but true.
Here's a mirror to look into (Score:2)
Now do you understand how ridiculous the above post, my little twist on it and any "real world" bullshit putdown is? People do stuff other than your own paticular job you know and that does not make them worthless.
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Strange, you seem to agree with me, but call my post ridiculous. Either you're confused or I am.
Microsoft's killer phone opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
You could say the same thing about their handset opportunity, or their MP3 player opportunity, or before that their PDA opportunity.
They have no special advantage here, they're late to market, they have a sort of half baked touch / non touch solution coming out, their software is generally badly regarded, their prices too high, second class maps, second class webmail, second class search.
Anyone of those could be a disadvantage, but to have them all in one package.
Put it this way, I wanted to track my stocks, I am normally a Visual C++ programmer, but I decided to write it in Java for android. It's just easier runs more stable for longer and the interface is better with touch. I would previously have written that for Windows, but there's too much C#, Silverlight, god knows what garbage on Windows. So Microsoft will go away soon enough.
But not yet, because it was still Eclipse on Windows that I wrote the app in, there isn't a good Android PC yet, big screen keyboard, port of eclipse. All of these would be trivial to do, but they haven't happened yet. So the end result is inevitable, it will just take time.
Uneducated advice line guy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Advice Line's Bob Lewis needs to learn about computers. There has been windows tablets available for over 20 years. he has been able to go out and buy a Windows Tablet for years.
Hell right now even the new Fujitsu Stylistics are nearly the same price as ipads.
So what is this guy whining about? the fact he has not even bothered to look?
Re:Uneducated advice line guy... (Score:5, Interesting)
My killer tablet (Score:5, Interesting)
Tablets have been called a niche item since the days of Tablet PCs - my killer tablet? What I have been crying for all along, a digital artist's tablet. This means a higher resolution screen (better than 1280x800 - try more like a full 1080p screen resolution so that most programs will work in portrait - and preferably in a 4:3 format), dedicated graphics (many digital art programs benefit from this), a Wacom digitizer, and a dual battery design so you can carry a couple of extra cells and swap them out without having to power down.
That is the problem most Tablet PC manufacturers made. They thought they could make a device for the business world that would replace the very low cost and versatile pen/pencil and paper. No tablet will ever be as thin as paper, so carrying a dozen tablets and spreading them out will never work (and there are many times when people want to look over several sheets at once and "100% zoom"). However, if they had focused on the artist and the art student, created a series of specialty pens that had the look and feel of traditional media (a square "charcoal/pastel stick", a fine brush, a wide brush, etc) then marketed it as "get unlimited art tools and supply for only $1500, and carry your entire studio in you bag" or "never worry about using hazardous chemicals to clean up, just click save and go" then they might have had a chance.
Anyway, there is my take on it. You want to differentiate yourself on the market? Think who would benefit from a pen input and design the system around them. I don't want an over-bloated eReader with LCD screen. I don't want a dumbed-down laptop. I don't want a walled garden of apps that only some single company wants to restrict myself to. I don't want a giant smartphone that doesn't work as a phone. I want a portable digital art studio, and I do believe that pen input tablets are the ideal solution. A shame not one company had the foresight to create one.
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And this would cater to a tiny fraction of art students - of which there are not that many. Tiny market, tiny chance of it happening. Buhey, start a kickstarter thing and see how far you get. Who knows, maybe art students actually do have money!
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"Art students" tend to turn into "professional artists" and spend more time (and money) as such than they do as students.
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but "professional artists" are an even smaller subset of "art students". All I'm saying's that there's no market for this, even though it'd be cool. That said, people should get back into the workshops and make stuff to their hearts content even if there is zero market for it. There's not enough of that.
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Yeah, just like the 'professional photography' market there is no way a small group of professionals could every justify a market big enough to allow expensive equipment to be sold at a profit... Oh, wait, yes they can.
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I use my IBM/Lenovo X60t for this purpose. To me, it is a high-end laptop (Intel core duo with 4 Gb of RAM and a 256GB SSD). Although by today's standards it is low-end. It is more than sufficient for me to code, access servers and connect to network devices. Thanks to the larger battery it can run over 3 hours on a full charge. With the big battery, it weighs slightly over 3 lbs. I transport it in my panniers on my bicycle.
From an artists perspective it has a 12.1" WACOM screen with a pressure-sensit
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A shame not one company had the foresight to create one.
Plenty of companies had the foresight. The Hp-Compaq TC1100 for one. It came with a pressure sensitive wacom pen by default. They're really only netbook speed these days, but at the time, they were the thinnest, lightest machines available, pretty much.
They run Linux just fine and the gimp works with all the funky features of the Wacom pen too.
Oh and without the keyboard attached, they looked strikingly like a pretty much featureless rectangular slab w
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I couldnt agree more. As a deveoper i want some thing that has a pen and some kind of graph design and note taking software. I want a digital white board with handwriting recognition and search capability. There are some apps close to this but they lack the recog part. I want my tablet to improve the concept of a pieve of paper. I can only consume so much information. I produce a lot and would love to have something that actually helped with that.
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Cintiqs are nice for what they are, but the lack of portability kills them for a lot of working artists. It's like telling someone that a device is "like an iPad, but not portable". Ugh. The combination of a Cintiq + a laptop is clunky and awkward to carry around and use; you might as well just get one of those god-awful TabletPC "convertibles" with the rotate-and-flip screens. There have been a few Windows slates (i.e. no integrated keyboard) that are sort of suitable for use as a drawing tablet, but t
Printing (Score:2)
A true enterprise class printing capability would do wonders for this effort.
AirPrint? Really?
face meet palm (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple makes gorgeous meticulously designed products that make people's lives easier.
To combat this, apparently Microsoft needs to produce something that will make employees more effective at their jobs.
Re:face meet palm (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple makes gorgeous meticulously designed products that make people's lives easier.
To combat this, apparently Microsoft needs to produce something that will make employees more effective at their jobs.
No. You're making the same mistake that Steve Ballmer often seems to make. This isn't about "combating" Apple. It's about market opportunities for Microsoft. Following Apple into the consumer market probably isn't a good move for Microsoft. Producing something targeted at business needs probably is. That isn't because targeting business needs will lead to them reducing Apple's sales, or even to them outselling Apple, it's because it is likely to lead to more sales and profits for Microsoft than they would otherwise have.Talking about "combating" someone else's success is hideously stupid.
Apple is already doing it all (Score:2)
Tablets do not represent a tool for longer term intensive use. They are for entertainment, casual computing and casual web-surfing. For that that perform very well. However, this is the only thing you can do well with a limited UI, namely no keyboard, no mouse, and limited power, but more screen-area than a smartphone. Apple already has all of these covered and in addition has the "lifestyle" factor so critical for a device you do not really need.
Real work? (Score:4, Insightful)
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X Server ? (Score:2)
How about a tablet that just runs an X server - like the old X-Terminals?
For the business user they should have plenty of access to servers to run the software on - Linux or Mac.
Users are not currently expecting to run Windows on tablets so now is the ideal opportunity to get another product out there.
They already did that... (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft already had a tablet that would make employees potentially much more productive. It was called Courier [wikipedia.org], the internet was crying out for them to make it, and they cancelled the whole project.
Mmmm buzzwords.... (Score:2)
Could you spew out some more buzzwords and corporate-speak in that summary? I haven't got my fill yet.
Pundits are morons. (Score:2)
Where do they dig up these mouth breathers?
First off, I neary tuned out when he made,a dismissive jab at the iPad calling it fashionable. Cute. Real professional.
Then I started to tune out when he started to drown in corporate double speak about workflows that do not represent reality.
Err. What? I want the minute of my life back.
go after the artists (Score:2)
This is the hardware manufacturers' bailiwick as much as Microsoft's, but if someone wants to sell tablets to the visual arts profession, a lightweight 17-inch device that can run apps such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and Manga Studio, with a precision pressure-sensitive stylus, would make a lot of them overlook the fact that it's Windows instead of OS X or iOS. When the iPad came out, I heard artist after artist who thought it was going to be a great productivity tool, only to be disappointed that it's lim
A very compelling solution (Score:2)
I think the ARM story is less compelling. If a tabl
why? (Score:2)
If this takes off, apple could probably beat it with just a ios app emulator for osx, and a decent remote desktop app for ios. I have a couple pads, and I just open a RDP session if I need a windows only app. Frankly the kind of heavyweight windows apps that dont run on an ipad arent going to suddenly stop consuming tons of CPU.
Its funny, thats what i'm doing now because my desktop browser is better/faster than the one built into the tablet.
Let the fad run it's course (Score:2)
Keyboard & Pen (Score:2)
No, you don't have to make it big/h
No market for business tablets (Score:2)
Tablet purchasers are mostly individuals doing so for entertainment reasons, not companies.
Regardless of what features a tablet offers, I don't see many businesses adopting tablets. Those that do will be the few that have unconventional use-cases where tablets work better, and will probably have bought iPads already.
Handwriting and speech input everywhere: YES! (Score:3)
Enabling hand writing input anywhere one could bring up a virtual keyboard would be an incredible boon to the usefulness of a tablet for me. I can't touch type on a virtual keyboard, so I'd have to LOOK for the "keys" I want as if I were a two-finger typist. It would slow me down FAR more than stylus-driven handwriting recognition would.
And for crying out loud, spend some time on a diagramming tool that can "snap" to geometric shapes if you turn that feature on (e.g. You roughly diagram a box and a proper box shows up that you can then resize and reshape to fit, rather than being left with your unevenly scrawled lines.) But don't FORCE the diagramming UI to do that -- just make it an option that is the initial default.
In short:
I still want my Alan Kay Dynabook!
Wah! :P
clueless advice (Score:3, Insightful)
This has to be about the most clueless advice I've ever read about how to build a better tablet. First of all, just about everything the author mentions already exists and has existed for years with Windows tablet pcs. Speech and handwriting recognition, having a filesystem, and the nebulous "The filesystem is the CMS is the PIM is the email client" already existed or could have easily have been built into the existing tablet pc ecosystem. If those are the features you really care about, why not just buy a laptop or netbook?
At no point in this article does the author acknowledge the importance of the defining features of tablets, namely that they should be portable, have good battery life, have a good screen and have a responsive and well designed touch interface. I consider these to be pretty much the essential basics when it comes to any tablet that hopes to be widely successful. Yet, going on two years later, almost no other company has succeeded in integrating these features into a compelling product despite having a template to work from. iOS itself is not that ambitious an OS. It's actually not the flashiest or most eye-candy-laden OS out there -- not by a a long shot. It doesn't even have the most intuitive user interface all the time. But for core tablet functionality, it is extremely good and is perhaps still unmatched in the industry.
You have to understand how the features of a tablet all work together to support the overall use-cases that you designed the tablet for. So if it is a tablet whose defining features are: (1) not having a keyboard, (2) probably held and used while standing up or lying down, (3) may spend prolonged time outside of the home or away from an outlet, (4) will be used under varying lighting conditions, then why do we see so many tablets these days that are bulky, heavy, have poor screens, and poor keyboards? I don't get that. This is working against your own best interest. Now, there are a lots of tablets that do more than an ipad in a technical sense but since they are such poor tablets they don't differentiate themselves sufficiently from a netbook or laptop to justify the costs.
I think if Microsoft or any company wants to beat Apple at making a better tablet then they need to acknowledge the unique constraints and opportunities of the form factor they are working with. Add features that truly leverage the benefits of a portable device. Aim for a battery life of 15+ hours. This is more than a whole workday because it gives you leeway in case you forget to recharge the device overnight from the previous 'whole day' of work. Find a good balance for security that sits somewhere between the locked down iTunes Appstore and the Android Market. Apps need not be rejected on silly grounds like conformance to a style guide or ease of use but they damn well better not be obvious malware or trojans. With the resources that these companies have it their disposal, how hard can it be to run each app in a sandbox with a monkey-like [android.com] testing environment and monitor for anomalous outgoing connections to China or some place?
Every one of the major competitors to Apple have lots of cash on hand, well into the billions. If one is serious about tablets, why not buy up or seriously invest in every company that is trying to build reflective screen technology? There are whole classes of use-cases related to the outdoors that are poorly served by any tablet today. Shit, at a minimum, whoever gets this right can crash the ebook market which is a pretty significant market in itself.
Perhaps, I am a fool and this is not as easy as I think, but I never said it was easy anyway. And yet, the problem can't be money since Apple did not have the billions upon billions of revenue that it has now when it was designing the ipad. They just had a very clear idea of the device they were working on and what its purposes were. To this point, Amazon with its
MS and opportunities (Score:3)
Sorry, but despite dreams and wishes of the shareholders and shills, MS is not the company to use opportunities. They had a lucky break once and that was it.
The MS approach is to wait until they're sure a market exists, then enter it with a plan to outspend the competitors until they go broke. Seriously, I've been watching these jokers for almost 20 years, and I've never seen them employ any other strategy.
It'll be a very cool day in hell when MS takes on a market with actual innovation.
Re:Considering who most computer users are these d (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Considering who most computer users are these d (Score:5, Funny)
consumers could care less
No they couldn't. Consumers don't care about accessing company files.
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consumers could care less
No they couldn't. Consumers don't care about accessing company files.
What about people in sales department? They are the worst kind of consumers. They need to show to salesmen in other companies how cool and modern they are. And (believe it or not) they need (sometimes) to access company files and to check mail every few minutes.
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No? Doesn't it sound good?! No, wait a minute, don't just walk away like that... hey!
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What the devil are you going on about?
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You may find this [youtube.com] agreeable.
Sadly, as far as the topic goes: Microsoft had their chance to revolutionize the tablet market, with the Courier [wikipedia.org], and they dumped it in favour of Windows 8. That train has already left the station. It would have completely decimated iPad sales if it had been released; when it appeared, the gadget geeks fawned over it as much as consumers later obsessed over the iPhone 4. Unfortunately MS thought the market segment was too narrow, and Billy G finally dismissed it on the grounds t
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I agree with your first point, but the second and third are a little silly. It's true that neither of those features were shown in the video, but it doesn't seem far-fetched to add those back in through apps or updates. Tagging could be as simple as writing in a special 'title' field, or tapping and holding on a word in the document, then selecting 'make this a tag' from the pop-up menu. With theoretically sufficient OCR, you could even search through the whole thing. Similarly, creating forms and organizin
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Whoosh!
Re:Considering who most computer users are these d (Score:4, Interesting)
Says you. Fortunately there's no English language authority, only groups who document usage and meaning (ie dictionary folks).
The language evolves, sometimes quite rapidly. A great example of radical change over a relatively long time span is the word "nice". An example of change in a short time span is "gay".
In the end, the correct usage depends on the context, which includes the forum and audience. The TV journalist is probably ok with their usage of "begs the question" because they will be understood by their audience. A student in a philosophy class wouldn't get away with it.
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"Americanizm"
Re:Considering who most computer users are these d (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Considering who most computer users are these d (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, with a move to more web based applications you can now easily access your data from a device like an ipad...
Plus since the ipad doesn't store any data locally, it's less dangerous should it go missing.
Re:Considering who most computer users are these d (Score:5, Insightful)
unless it has automated access to every single aspect of your life.
Like every iPad I have used...
not to mention dropbox (Score:3)
or any other "free" cloud services in which you are storing your companies files because you are not able to easily store files locally.
Re:Considering who most computer users are these d (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Considering who most computer users are these d (Score:5, Interesting)
Hi, I used to be a complete skeptic when it came to tablets (not just iPads). Then, recently, I saw someone with an iPad + stylus + Notes plus [notesplusapp.com] in a meeting, just happily jotting down his hand-written notes on the iPad. And just watching the ease with which he could do that might just have sold me a tablet.
To elaborate a little: I dislike typing for note-taking, so I stick to the pen-and-paper approach but this means my notes are scattered across a number of notebooks (depending on which were lying around when I grabbed one for wherever the next meeting was). Being able to take hand-written notes that all end up on the same device, nicely browsable and printable - yeah, that can win me over.
Re:Considering who most computer users are these d (Score:4, Insightful)
Hi, I used to be a complete skeptic when it came to tablets (not just iPads). Then, recently, I saw someone with an iPad + stylus + Notes plus [notesplusapp.com] in a meeting, just happily jotting down his hand-written notes on the iPad. And just watching the ease with which he could do that might just have sold me a tablet.
To elaborate a little: I dislike typing for note-taking, so I stick to the pen-and-paper approach but this means my notes are scattered across a number of notebooks (depending on which were lying around when I grabbed one for wherever the next meeting was). Being able to take hand-written notes that all end up on the same device, nicely browsable and printable - yeah, that can win me over.
Is there any trouble caused by the rest of the user's hand resting on the touch screen?
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Re:Considering who most computer users are these d (Score:4, Interesting)
That sounds like an ugly hack. From what I've heard, Lenovo solved that problem with its Thinkpad Tablet by using digitizer for its stylus rather than it imitating touch - so it can actually distinguish between stylus and your hand, and ignore the latter when stylus is active. It sounds like a better engineering solution to me.
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Out of all the users in my company, I can think of only 1 or 2 who even understand what a file structure is, much less make use of it. Almost everyone throws everything into the a pile in the My Documents folder. No subfolders. Most users want to be able to get to Excel, Word or any job specific app, and want it to open up to their most recent documents. iPads with keyboards would work great for 99% of them.
Re:Considering who most computer users are these d (Score:5, Interesting)
iPads with keyboards would work great for 99% of them.
So actually any notebook, notepad, subnotebook,... would also work great for them...
Actually, 99% of them need only a paper notebook and a telephone.
eee slate heading in the right direction (Score:3)
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Well, Microsoft already *has* a tablet-ready operating system that will run desktop applications. It's called Windows 7. I happen to have a Lenovo S10-3t, a netbook that converts to a tablet. The bundled apps that take over the screen work ok -- except that the device itself is too fat and heavy to use as a tablet for long. The biggest problem with Windows 7 is that provides an approach for controlling desktop apps on a touchscreen that almost works, but which is throw-the-damn-thing-against-the-wall
Windows 7 and tablets (Score:3, Informative)
I have recently worked on a project that was about developing a tablet version of existing software. Target system was a x86 tablet under Windows 7.
Lessons learned:
1) Using the standard Windows GUI elements with fingers on a touch screen is difficult, because the accuracy is much worse. A stylus is better, but still inferior to a mouse. We (that is, our GUI designer) had to duplicate most GUI elements in double or triple size. After that, our application was reasonably user friendly.
2) Even when the applica
Re:Considering who most computer users are these d (Score:4, Interesting)
businesses will adapt anything that improves productivity while conforming to security's infrastructure.
ROFL
You've never been in a large corporation, have you? Politics and whatever the decision makers believe in plays a much bigger role than productivity, even if you manage to measure it.
The last company I worked for introduced the iPad into the company as an "information device for the top 50 managers".
Top 50 wasn't selected by who actually had the most immediate need to have an information device with them, it was by selected who the top 50 people in the corporate hierarchy were.
In other words, they handed out shiny toys to themselves. You could literally smell the ego-boost for weeks when you entered their offices and they were reading their e-mail on the iPad instead of the desktop PC that was an arm's length away.
That is how corporations select what to adapt. Playing golf with the CTO has ten times the chances of landing you the deal that presenting excellent performance measures does.
Yes, I have a low opinion of most managers. I've worked closely with too many of them. There are exceptions, as everywhere. The average manager could be exchanged with a 9 year old and aside from the redecorated office, nobody would notice.
And yes, there were studies about decision quality of so called top managers against random selection and kids. In almost all of them, either the kids or random chance wins.
Re:Considering who most computer users are these d (Score:4, Funny)
...How large is the market for such a tablet going to be?
The mobile professionals in need for more muscular arms or faster legs - either carry the extra weight of the batteries or to put the tablet in the dock to recharge it.
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Re:Been there, done that. (Score:4, Insightful)
I wholeheartedly agree. I believe the merits of these new table devices are their simplicity and, well, lack of thunder underneath their case. That's not to say they are inferior; they are well capable to fulfill their users' needs. But they probably pale if I compare their hardware to my full-featured convertible I bought four or five years ago. I should point out that it was heavy as hell, and its batteries barely survived the three hours mark.
I've also skimmed through what the article proposes. Well, actually, it doesn't propose that much. It's rather vague and I think, the author is oversimplifying many aspects. The devil in the detail might come to bite the author's ass if he ever tried to build such a system. For instance, what's up with the Triple UI approach he described? I don't know how he envisioned the details here, he's a bit light on that, but if it's anywhere near where I suspect he's trying to go (and I'm really guessing here): It may sound good on paper to empower the user with everything, but overconfidence may lead to people breaking stuff.
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to provide UI variance, enabling serious tablet users to expose the OS complexity necessary to do real work.
Nah, can't be stupid shit. Sounds too much like someone's resume or some company's "mission statement".
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Not only that, but Microsoft themselves have been there before. At the start of the decade, they were the ones pushing for "tablet computing" as a work-enabling tool.
I'm sure you know how that ended.
-dZ.
Re:Any Tablet that can offer features wins (Score:4, Insightful)
"Too many people are "STATUS" oriented, so they pick iPad.
It is the APPS that make the system!"
I love how you contradict yourself.
People pick iPad because it has the apps. android has almost nothing right now in apps. It's why you see businesses with iPads on the hands of everyone and NOT galaxy Tabs.
The android devs are getting there, but they only recently have had decent hardware to work on as android tablets from a year and a half ago were garbage.
But right now it's not "status" like you trollishly proclaim, but its the APPS.
Call me when I can send the display output from my android tablet wirelessly and effortlessly to the plasma on the wall in the board room. Because that is another killer feature of the ipad in business.
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Streaming video over WiFi was a breeze. Sure, my shite TV hasn't got WiFi but plenty of others do. Streaming video to my laptop with HDMI output is too easy.
Re:Any Tablet that can offer features wins (Score:4, Interesting)
android has almost nothing right now in apps
That's BS right there. Care to name any useful app that iOS has but Android does not?
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Too many people are "STATUS" oriented, so they pick iPad.
It is the APPS that make the system!
Doesn't the Apple App Store have a largest number of apps, though?
I know, it's a coincidence. Those people who picked Apple couldn't possibly have done it for any reason other than to look cool...
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Android devs have only had something decent to work with for the last 12 months, and there are already many times more useful business apps on the android market than in the apple market, despite there being far less apps in total and having had less time to develop them.
The iPad is a status toy, anyone who thinks otherwise is just trying to fool themselves.
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I understand your frustration. It sucks and sometimes it hurts, but you must trust me when I say that it does get better.
I know how you feel, I've been there myself. Eventually, you'll just realize that it is really not all that important that your old perception towards something as insignificant as a technology product, was wrong; and that arguing against it is not only futile, but emotionally destructive.
It truly is not the end of the world, and with time you'll come to accept it and recover from it.
Pe
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You don't seem to understand my frustration.
My frustration isn't with the iPad, the iPad does what it is /intended to do by Apple/ fantastically well.
It is in no way intended for a business environment however. Those that keep trying to force it to be are just using it as a status object. The thing IS a toy. Its a toy for consumption of the internet, the same way a Nintendo Entertainment System was a toy for consumption of the programs written and stored on compatible cartridges. Neither of those devices ha
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