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.
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
Re:UI variance ? (Score:3, Informative)
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 Windows Store, and must meet the restrictions imposed on those applications."
Maybe the article isn't the best
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.
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 application is tablet-friendly, you still need to manage your Windows settings occasionally. Which brings you back to the above accuracy problem, and right-clicking is slow and awkward compared to the mouse. There goes much of the usefulness of the context menus in the Windows 7 GUI. In short, it sucks. "Throw-the-damn-thing-against-the-wall frustrating" describes it well.
So I think Microsoft needs to re-design both the OS and the applications before Windows and tablets will be an attractive combination. Windows re-design is under way with Windows 8, but I'm not aware of a similar project for Office.