Why Windows 7 "Slate" Tablets Won't Happen

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Galen Gruman questions the viability of Windows 7 on tablets in the wake of the news that HP will use Palm's WebOS as the foundation for iPad rivals, rather than follow through with the previously hyped Windows 7-based Slate. 'The iPad proved a tablet shouldn't be a portable computer that happened to have its screen always exposed. Even though technical components are shared between the Mac OS and the iPhone OS, the irrelevant Mac OS functions aren't gumming up the iPhone OS, and Apple's development environment doesn't let you pull through desktop approaches into your mobile applications. You're forced to go touch-native,' Gruman writes, adding that, when it comes to touch capabilities, Windows 7 leaves much to be desired. 'Sure, a few Windows 7 slate-style tablets will ship — Asus and MSI are said to have models shipping later this year. But those products will go nowhere, because Windows 7 is simply not the right operating system for a slate.'"

Comments

Thanks you...

[Itninja]

...for linking to the 'print version' of the article. I wept a small tear of joy.

Re:Thanks you...

[tayhimself]

Putting aside the usual /. tendency, why would you even bother reading TFA? How is this analysis useful AFTER the fact that the ipad has already demonstrated that Windows 7 won't work (for a few years at least).

Re:Thanks you...

[Itninja]

Good point. I was just overcome with emotion after seeing it the print version linked.

Re:Thanks you...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it. How does the ipad indicate that a windows 7 tablet won't work? The fact that there is a market for a handheld web appliance doesn't obviate the existence of a market for a windows 7 tablet. Especially if Microsoft is able to pull in all the consumer class features across their product lines (nice integration of media/content from Xbox/Xbox 360 to desktop to laptop to tablet to phone.) Right now Apple is riding easy, but once someone comes along who can compete across the board, Apple's "just barely enough" attitude* will start to hurt.

* Examples:
- iPad only able to support nine pages in Safari and when you touch a link that opens a new page it drops one of your existing pages without any user interaction. This is bad behavior.
- itunes choking on iTunMOVI atom metadata that iPhone/iPad/AppleTV have no problem with.
- iPod mode of iPhone having bizarre restrictions on rotated video playback. A movie played directly cannot be rotated, but if you add it to an on the go playlist and play the playlist, you can then rotate the video.
- The sleek looking apple remote that requires the hand-eye coordination of a Street Fighter II junkie in order to operate (select-up-up for chapter selection, wtf?)
- Apple's total mediation of content onto the devices and how you interact with them. It would be nice if you could have multiple libraries, both public and non-public across your iTunes environment.

Re:Thanks you...

[Alphathon]

Agreed; there seems to be a false assumption here, i.e. the is iPad is marketable/sells/works therefore Windows 7 cannot be good on a tablet. This does not follow at all. Unless the iPad has Win7 on it, it CANNOT demonstrate that Win7 is bad for tablets, only that it's OS does work on tablets (or that Apple products sell regardless of functionality).

Re:Thanks you...

[peragrin]

apparently your a moron and can't understand history in any way shape or form.

Windows 7 tablet is no different than windows XP tablet that has for the last 10 years failed to make any kind of headway.

All you describe are random small (and not so small) flaws, in the technical approach of Iphone OS. ou can't understand that a tablet isn't a netbook, and it isn't a full blown computer. having a desktop OS on a tablet is like installing netBSD onto a toaster. Just because you can doesn't mean it will work well.

Re:Thanks you...

[fractoid]

Exactly!

'The iPad proved a tablet shouldn't be a portable computer that happened to have its screen always exposed.

No the fuck it didn't. The iPad proved that people will buy anything if it's had enough Apple hype ladled onto it. I think the new wave of Windows 7 and Android tablets will show that in short order. Sadly, breathless hype is a speciality of Apple disciples, and so we'll be hearing about how revolutionary the iPad is long after everyone who actually wanted a real tablet computer has bought one and is happily at home using it.

Even though technical components are shared between the Mac OS and the iPhone OS, the irrelevant Mac OS functions aren't gumming up the iPhone OS, and Apple's development environment doesn't let you pull through desktop approaches into your mobile applications. You're forced to go touch-native,'

Apple's marketing strategy could be best described as "less is more, more is more than that". They build a device without crucial features, and tell the drooling fanboys that it's better without them. Then the rest of us have to put up with months of "but the (iPod Shuffle / iPhone / iPad) is a technical revolution because it (can't just play the track you want / doesn't have 3G / can't multitask)". Then, once all the fanboys have brainwashed themselves into thinking it's the best thing ever because it's only got one leg and half a testis, Apple announces to a wave of fanatical joy that they've re-added the very features they stripped out in the first place! You see? Innovation! So the iPhone gets 3G, iPhone 4 has multitasking, blah blah, and AGAIN we get the "oh my god LOOK AT THIS my phone can run a web browser WHILE I'M TEXTING". Gah. Puke.

Re:Thanks you...

[binarybum]

Saying a tablet isn't a full blown computer is not forward thinking. That's like saying 10yrs ago, you're crazy for wanting to use email on your phone, a cell phone has a niche and this is what it does - accept it. Apple loves this kind of thinking.

    Realistically though - who wants to carry around multiple portable devices? Should I use my netbook for somethings, my laptop for others, and my full-blown computer for yet other things? Marketing departments everywhere are screaming YES! but really, a lightweight portable device that runs a similar platform to whatever I sit in front of at work and that has as few limitations as possible will clearly dominate the market at some point. The demand for performance and user interface will always be highest on portable devices - if you are bothering to lug something around with you in a world saturated with computer terminals - the thing you are carrying around better make itself snappy and easy to use or it gets left behind. I'll wait until I get home to check my email rather than lug some piece of junk on the bus that takes one minute to boot, 3min to connect to some sort of network and another 3min to get into my email. Apple has recognized this and windows has not. As soon as someone makes something that incorporates Apple's understanding of the UI but makes a tablet style computer instead of a toy, the idea that your tablet has to be a specialty niche device evaporates - it becomes just another portal to your digital world.

Re:Thanks you...

[SleeknStealthy]

Incredibly true and precisely said...mod parent up!!

Re:Thanks you...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, '-1, Overrated'. I smell a fanboy with mod points...

Re:Thanks you...

[BrokenHalo]

Exactly. The statement that "The iPad proved a tablet shouldn't be a portable computer" is a complete non sequitur. The only thing that has been proved is that Apple's vision does not include marketing to people who want to be able to pull up a Unix shell of their choice and start hacking. They are more interested in a product that is essentially like a white-goods appliance for which Apple can sell various widgets.

Of course, Apple is entitled to its own point of view, but this rationale is exactly why I won't be buying an iPad.

Re:Thanks you...

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely the mods smelled an anti-Apple viewpoint that is regurgitated regularly and without any thought or originality. He or she immediately starts the usual "they only buy it because it's Apple" rant, spewing more 'Apple Disciple' nonsense, throws in the required 'fanatical', and 'brainwashed' buzzwords. About the only phrase that's missing is the 'Alter of Steve' bit. Was there really anything insightful in the parent post that we haven't read thousands of times in countless Apple threads for the last 3 years? It's gotten far worse since the Droid came out, never mind the fact that Apple gave droid the basis for it's design. Sure there were smart phones out before iPhone, but none of them were really usable for the average joe. The UI's sucked, the OS's were to be detested, and the ease of use simply didn't exist.

Droid didn't happen in a vacuum and if you think it was 'all new' (ala Billy Mays), you're deluding yourself. I agree with the summary. Windows in it's current implementation doesn't work for a tablet. It hasn't worked for a tablet for the last decade, and unless they change their way of thinking to better adapt to touch interfaces, they will continue to be irrelevant.

Re:Thanks you...

[mgblst]

Oh fuck off. Yes, Apple only sells stuff because of the RDF or advertising. What a load of shit.

Windows 7 tablets have been out already, just as Vista and XP tablets have also been out. What we do know, is that so far, these devices have not taken off.

Now, there will be a second wave of tablets, where everyone runs out and copies the iPad, and that might change things. They will be cheaper, and not as powerful, and have longer lasting batteries. It remains to be seen how well W7 does on this, andoid might be a better fit, and might actually take off.

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[AmigaMMC]

No care what OS they'll use, I WON'T BUY HP. You can only get screwed so many times...

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[pantherace]

Actually, Windows based tablets are actually making headway. For one example, look at a lot of medical use doctors offices/hospitals/clinics, many of them have tablets. For another, look at many classrooms, where if the professor uses any computer, it is quite likely a tablet.

It just isn't making the splashy headlines, but it's been slowly and steadily growing. Could the ipad do some of the above? Probably. Is it likely to be given the chance to? I doubt it. Many of the applications used for the medical uses, especially from what I've seen, are both custom and subject to HIPAA. I seriously doubt anyone will actually try to replicate it on the ipad, due to being essentially held hostage to apple's approval for any new versions. That doesn't even address the mess that would be the ipad in regards to HIPAA, due to Apple's control.

Re:Thanks you...

[babyrat]

I'll be the minority here because I've used both an iPad and a windows 7 tablet (Asus T91MT). Windows 7 does a good job at handling touch events, and passing them to non-touch aware apps.

I have the choice between an iPad and a Windows 7 tablet, and I choose the Win 7 tablet.

Re:Thanks you...

[node 3]

I don't get it. How does the ipad indicate that a windows 7 tablet won't work?

It's a bit of evidence, not proof. Another bit of evidence is the complete dominance the iPad has over Windows tablet PCs. Yet another is HP, who previously showed their Slate running Windows 7 at MS's CES Keynote, has scrapped Windows for WebOS.

None of these prove a Windows 7 tablet can't sell, such a proof is impossible anyway (you could always say that there was some non-Windows reason, such as the Apple-hater rally cry of "Apple is just better at marketing!"). But pretty much every indicator is that Windows on the tablet is, in its traditional form, a dead-end.

Right now Apple is riding easy, but once someone comes along who can compete across the board, Apple's "just barely enough" attitude* will start to hurt.

Your list is rather anemic, and I don't mean not very long, but that the examples are pretty lame and aren't even examples of "just barely enough".

Re:Thanks you...

[Itninja]

Kind of a Ford vs Chevy argument. I know of no major PC makers that have not inspired large numbers of horror stories. We have 1000's of servers in our 17 data centers, almost all are HP's, and we have minimal problems. But other organizations swear by Dell and call HP the great Satan. Still others claim IBM servers are the bees knees....

Re:Thanks you...

[node 3]

Saying a tablet isn't a full blown computer is not forward thinking. That's like saying 10yrs ago, you're crazy for wanting to use email on your phone, a cell phone has a niche and this is what it does - accept it. Apple loves this kind of thinking.

What's 10 years from now got to do with anything? If 10 years from now tablets will be running a full-blown desktop OS (they won't), that doesn't mean they should be doing so now.

but really, a lightweight portable device that runs a similar platform to whatever I sit in front of at work and that has as few limitations as possible will clearly dominate the market at some point.

That's not clear at all. An OS designed for a large screen with a mouse and keyboard doesn't make sense for use on a small multitouch device. Additionally, what you mean by "as few limitations as possible" is not relevant to most people. I assume you mean the type of limitations that the iPad has (primarily, the app store). Those "limitations" to you are not limitations for most people. On the contrary, the App Store is more enabling for most people than the Android-style solution.

What matters much more than if your portable unit runs the same OS and the same exact apps as your desktop is if your portable device has apps available to do the things people want to do away from home. With the iPhone and iPad, the answer is clearly "yes" for the vast majority of consumers so far.

As soon as someone makes something that incorporates Apple's understanding of the UI but makes a tablet style computer instead of a toy, the idea that your tablet has to be a specialty niche device evaporates - it becomes just another portal to your digital world.

The thing that makes you call the iPad a toy is the exact reason you are wrong here. People just aren't bothered by the limitations that irk you. In the '80s, the Mac was a "toy" because the mouse was "too limiting" and people "wanted the same text-mode apps they used at work", etc.

Re:Thanks you...

[Capsaicin]

Apple's vision does not include marketing to people who want to be able to pull up a Unix shell of their choice and start hacking. ... [T]his rationale is exactly why I won't be buying an iPad.

Yes, this is the reason I won't be buying one for myself. For my wife, OTOH ...

Re:Thanks you...

[node 3]

Actually, Windows based tablets are actually making headway. For one example, look at a lot of medical use doctors offices/hospitals/clinics, many of them have tablets. For another, look at many classrooms, where if the professor uses any computer, it is quite likely a tablet.

That's not "headway", except possibly in two very small markets. Only 3-4 million tablet PCs are sold per year. I have little doubt that the iPad will outsell all other tablets this year, even given the iPad not being available until April, and the supply being severely constrained.

The far more interesting question isn't "will the tablet PC make headway against the iPad", it's "how long will it take before the iPad sells more total units than total tablet PCs ever sold."

Could the ipad do some of the above? Probably. Is it likely to be given the chance to? I doubt it. Many of the applications used for the medical uses, especially from what I've seen, are both custom and subject to HIPAA. I seriously doubt anyone will actually try to replicate it on the ipad, due to being essentially held hostage to apple's approval for any new versions.

The notion that developers are going to shy away from the iPad for fear of rejection is absurd. It's not terribly difficult to have a fairly reasonable idea of whether or not your app has a reasonable risk of being denied. Sure, there have been a handful of surprising rejections (almost all of which have been accepted after minor changes). Medical apps, especially, have very little risk of being rejected.

That doesn't even address the mess that would be the ipad in regards to HIPAA, due to Apple's control.

And what mess, exactly, is that? "Control" isn't a magic word that means "can't be used by third parties".

Re:Thanks you...

[node 3]

No the fuck it didn't. The iPad proved that people will buy anything if it's had enough Apple hype ladled onto it.

That's why everyone has an AppleTV.

Oh wait. They don't. People don't buy Apple products because they have an Apple logo, they buy them because they work extremely well. The fact that the products that tend to work the best tend to have an Apple logo says more about Apple and its competition than it does about those that buy Apple products.

I think the new wave of Windows 7 and Android tablets will show that in short order.

Nonsense. Windows 7 tablets are a dead end. Android and WebOS are the only real competition for the iPad going forward. This year, there's no chance Android or WebOS tablets will outsell the iPad, and further down the road, I don't see people buying either over the iPad, as there's pretty much no compelling reason to.

Sadly, breathless hype is a speciality of Apple disciples, and so we'll be hearing about how revolutionary the iPad is long after everyone who actually wanted a real tablet computer has bought one and is happily at home using it.

Only 3-4 million tablet PCs are sold per year. The iPad will outsell the tablet PC this year. Windows 7 won't have any significant impact on this.

Apple's marketing strategy could be best described as "less is more, more is more than that".

No, Apple's marketing strategy is to make sure their products are appealing without marketing, and use marketing as a way of getting people to get into an Apple Store. Once there, their products sell themselves. You can't polish a turd. Apple could not have had the success they have had to date if their products are successful primarily due to marketing, and not for the inherent quality of the products themselves.

Re:Thanks you...

[fractoid]

Thanks! It's good to see some backup from someone "who actually wanted a real tablet computer has bought one and is happily at home using it." :)

Re:Thanks you...

[gnalre]

Well, windows 7 is designed for mouse input while the iPad OS is designed from the start for touch input. Also windows 7 require a large amount of memory and a power hungry(compared to arm processor anyway) processor to work so increasing cost and killing battery life.

Re:Thanks you...

[Anonymous Coward]

Trap Sprung.

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[daffmeister]

They're not selling to Apple fanboys, they're selling to the general public. You and I notice when it shuts down the current process to fire up the web-browser but the average person doesn't notice and doesn't care. They care more about it being easy to use. That's Apple's focus and they only add features when they can nail the ease-of-use as well. That's why they are so successful.

It's not for you. It's probably not for me. But it is for most people.

Re:Thanks you...

[LinuxAndLube]

Did Apple (and the media) hype Apple TV as much as the iPad? I didn't think so. The sales of Apple products are proportional to the degree to which they were hyped. People are buying iPads because they're magic and not because they've tried them and compared them to competing devices.

Re:Thanks you...

[Xest]

"Windows 7 tablets have been out already, just as Vista and XP tablets have also been out. What we do know, is that so far, these devices have not taken off."

You actually really just proved the GP's point, because even though I read tech and general news sites daily I wasn't aware that any Windows 7 tablets were out yet, I certainly know some were in development, but have seen nothing about any being finally released. The closest I've seen is Dell has released some Android based mini-tablet but that's about it.

In contrast, I was fully aware of the iPad being out, in fact, I know all about how there have been supposedly shortages, and how various dates have changed.

The fact is, Apple does have a massive advantage in marketing, they're far more adept at spreading the word than any other firm. They seem to have really got the ball rolling and it's just snowballed because they don't even have to do much to get every tech site on the planet to report every minute detail of their latest and greatest products. Now, I wouldn't buy an iPad because I'm not a fan of tablets, and certainly not for heavily locked down general computing devices, but if I was a general user and in the market for one and decided to get one then I'd have absolutely no fucking idea any product other than the iPad was really out there so far. I'd buy an iPad because it's all I've heard about, and heard about constantly.

If you think a massive portion of Apple's sales don't come from marketing then you've got to be pretty ignorant, marketing is far and away Apple's biggest strength.

"Now, there will be a second wave of tablets, where everyone runs out and copies the iPad, and that might change things. They will be cheaper, and not as powerful, and have longer lasting batteries."

This strikes me as a bit of an odd comment, Apple nearly always sells lower spec hardware than their competitors for a higher price, so I'd be suprised if the cheaper longer battery life competitors are less powerful, but this goes back to my point above- Apple devices certainly don't win on technical merit, they win on marketing first, and design second. Things like technical specs and so forth sit much further down the list and historically always have with Apple products. I'm not sure why they'd be copying Apple either when the tablet is hardly an Apple invention. As was pointed out on the BBC yesterday regarding Dell's new tablet, they can hardly have copied Apple because it takes much more than a few months to develop such a product, the tablets coming out now must've been in development well before the iPad was known about. I was trialling a tablet at work at least as far back as 2003, although back then it was a horrible bulky thing running Windows XP, because the hardware just wasn't small enough to match modern tablets back then.

If anything, all that's happened is that the iPad marketing campaign has made the world wake up to the fact the tablet market still exists and again, because of that campaign, of course the iPad is seen as the front runner.

Re:Thanks you...

[node 3]

Did Apple (and the media) hype Apple TV as much as the iPad? I didn't think so. The sales of Apple products are proportional to the degree to which they were hyped.

Hype doesn't appear out of thin air. If all it takes for Apple to sell a product is hype, why would they skimp on it for the AppleTV? Because hype feeds on genuine interest. Hype without genuine interest quickly fades.

People are buying iPads because they're magic and not because they've tried them and compared them to competing devices.

There are no competing devices. And if you don't think people are trying iPads, you clearly haven't been in an Apple Store during the better part of the last two months.

You are right in that people are buying iPads because they are magical. Not literally, of course, but Apple's chosen adjective does a good job of describing the way it feels to use the iPad. And like I've said, if it didn't the marketing would not be able to fake it for long.

The only way the "iPad is just marketing" notion can really be true is if iPad sales fall significantly in a short amount of time as marketing lies are laid bare. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen, though.

iPad is a huge success. People don't spend $499+ merely on hype. Not in the sort of numbers the iPad has been seeing.

Re:Thanks you...

[LinuxAndLube]

People don't spend $499+ merely on hype.

Some Apple customers have spent 1000 USD on an app that shows a stone...

Re:Thanks you...

[mavi_yelken]

I think the new wave of Windows 7 and Android tablets will show that in short order

Why do you think companies are investing into tablets all of a sudden after long years of indifference? Here is a hint, it has to do with a company who singlehandedly changed the smartphone paradigm for the betterment of everyone and introduced a new wave of healthy competition.

everyone who actually wanted a real tablet computer

No one cared about tablets before iPad. While I hate the heavy handed control Apple has over iPad and won't be buying one, I WILL buy a comparable tablet with Android that has a competent multi-touch interface.

Re:Thanks you...

[gnasher719]

No the fuck it didn't. The iPad proved that people will buy anything if it's had enough Apple hype ladled onto it. I think the new wave of Windows 7 and Android tablets will show that in short order. Sadly, breathless hype is a speciality of Apple disciples, and so we'll be hearing about how revolutionary the iPad is long after everyone who actually wanted a real tablet computer has bought one and is happily at home using it.

I noticed your post was modded up as "Insightful". It makes me wonder why the rating menu doesn't have a "completely of his rocker" entry.

Where did you find any "breathless hype"? I haven't seen any. I have seen plenty of information what the iPad does - it is basically a huge iPod Touch and by being huge it suddenly becomes very useful. It has applications that are easy to call up and many of them look very nice and they all are very easy to use. Have you ever used the word "ladled" and "disciples" anywhere except in connection with Apple products? What is going on in your sad little mind that Apple outselling a Windows-based product makes you choose strange words like that?

Someone more clever than me wrote: "I couldn't figure out what would be the killer application for the iPad. Now I know: The killer feature is: It is _no computer_". People don't want a "real tablet computer". 70 percent of all people who bought a netbook or laptop never wanted a "computer" in the first place.

Re:Thanks you...

[node 3]

People don't spend $499+ merely on hype.

Some Apple customers have spent 1000 USD on an app that shows a stone...

That doesn't refute my claim. If you think it does, you should go back and read the sentence that immediately follows the one you quoted.

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[fractoid]

Someone more clever than me wrote: "I couldn't figure out what would be the killer application for the iPad. Now I know: The killer feature is: It is _no computer_". People don't want a "real tablet computer". 70 percent of all people who bought a netbook or laptop never wanted a "computer" in the first place.

Actually, you're right, that person is insightful. That is one thing that Apple did with the iPad which makes it exceptional. They continued their fine tradition of making computers into appliances. It's a computer for people who don't want a computer. It's an appliance that you turn on and poke at things to look at them. And that does fill a definite (and potentially huge) market niche.

It's just a pity that they had to so completely destroy its ability to be a computer in order to do it.

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[imakemusic]

apparently your a moron

His a moron what?

Re:Thanks you...

[LinuxAndLube]

It refutes your claim that people don't spend (a lot of) money on air.

iPad is a huge success.

So is Lindsay Lohan (and has been for a long time).

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[Deviate_X]

I totally agree with your rage, but the difference is Apple sells and always has to an extent on usability not functionality, and yes nokia, microsoft and what not have been selling smart capable mini devices decades before apple, but beyond the camera, no one with a life could use them.

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[Anonymous Coward]

i would never buy any appla product, its always behind the chineese gadgets (cowon etc)..
Having a decent OS that can run any of my desktop applications... just as normal...

I tell you the next Asus with windows 7 is THE iPAD killer..., and i m sure im going to buy it.

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[Anonymous Coward]

hmm my windows mobile of 2003 could allready do more usefull things then the iPAD can now and that was 7 years ago..
it had GPS, i could phone, was connected to my company Email, etc.
Had internet, had all my music, some videos, and i wrote some of my own apps for it for other functionality.
Best of all most of the apps i used where free.... from pocketPC.com (chess,sudoku to kill time) :)

And it also was a lot smaller too.

So to be honest i think its a first child of apple and they have a long way to go, they lack the experience that microsoft has with this.
Although microsoft took it never that seriously the gadgets field, microsoft changed its vision on this field a lot.. .. these days you can run terminal server client on a windows mobile device and take over your server/desktop .. oh well its just cool , with a lot more productive software.

There are just some people, who refuse Microsoft, and they are happily brainwashed by apple (they even lack looking further)
If you try to explain them that a windows product can do it all, it just depends how you configure it.
Then they say we dont need to configure it because its apple... (in other words they cannt configure in neither operating system what they would want themselves).

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[Anonymous Coward]

what I don't understand is why everyone is on an apple imitation spree.

no way the hp slate is going to compete with the ipad, so why aim squarely at that segment?

the need for actually useful slates is still there, and _now_ there is the tecnology to build something light, durable and powerful enough for day to day work, at least cpu wise comparable to standard middle range laptop.

Re:Thanks you...

[Amarantine]

Back in the nineties, people bought Windows 95 without even owning a computer. Seriously. So, your point is? There are always people who have more cash than they know what to do with, but i doubt there are so many of them that they offset the statistics.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Not true, Just tested some andrioid based gadget and I'm not impressed. Yes the iPhone OS has it's down sides. But Andriod isn't close yet. I'm not sure what the problem is though. Is it the software that makes andriod fail? personally I doubt that would be the reason. Is it the hardware that the andriod gagets have that sux? Personlaylly I say maybe, and sertanily in some cases. But most of all, Software and Hardware are not made togther resulting in lesser user experience than the Apple branded version.

And that is one of the main reasons why people who chose Apple chose Apple, Software and hardware are one product. Not so with PC's or Andriod products. They are 2 seperate products stirred up together. It works but is inferor to the one product from venders like Apple. Few such vendors out there nowadays but Apple that produce products like that. Nintendo is one who else?

Re:Thanks you...

[master_p]

When a Windows tablet computer costs 3000 bucks, it's no wonder it is not successful.

Re:Thanks you...

[LinuxAndLube]

Yes, maybe you're right and most people don't waste their time or money. Well, I have to go now. FarmVille is waiting!

Re:Thanks you...

[pizzach]

Exactly!

'The iPad proved a tablet shouldn't be a portable computer that happened to have its screen always exposed.

No the fuck it didn't. The iPad proved that people will buy anything if it's had enough Apple hype ladled onto it. I think the new wave of Windows 7 and Android tablets will show that in short order.

Modders, you have to read beyond the first sentence even if you really like the first one. Someone can dislike Apple and the iPhone and whatever else, but hateful nonsensical rubbish shouldn't be +5 insightful.

He names two brand new OSes that have been developed in the wake of the iPhone to prove what? On top of that, I'm pretty sure that Android even borrows a lot of interface sensibilities.

Re:Thanks you...

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't "wife" be in scare quotes?

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[drinkypoo]

Nonsense. Windows 7 tablets are a dead end. Android and WebOS are the only real competition for the iPad going forward. This year, there's no chance Android or WebOS tablets will outsell the iPad, and further down the road, I don't see people buying either over the iPad, as there's pretty much no compelling reason to.

You could have said the same thing about the iPhone and Android, yet Android phones have already outsold the iPhone. Non-Apple Tablets will outsell Apple tablets because more people want a computer that works than want a computer that's shiny, and let's face it, Android works so it meets the basic requirement. The masses will go with what's cheap, over time. Who cares if the iPad sells more in its first year, or second? There's still a lot of years left (unless the world ends in 2012, is that on what you are basing your projections?)

Re:Thanks you...

[Hognoxious]

Want to drink the Kool-Aid! There's an app for that!

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[Alphathon]

I wasn't saying that Win7 is good on tablets, just that the argument put forward by tayhimself is full of shit.

Re:Thanks you...

[fractoid]

Not true, Just tested some andrioid based gadget and I'm not impressed. Yes the iPhone OS has it's down sides. But Andriod isn't close yet. I'm not sure what the problem is though. Is it the software that makes andriod fail? personally I doubt that would be the reason. Is it the hardware that the andriod gagets have that sux?

Just out of curiosity, what device were you trying? A friend of mine recently got an HTC Desire and it is SO FUCKING SHINY. I want one badly (although I've still got a year and a half on my current phone contract so I'll hold off). Everything was smooth and responsive and from what little time I played with it, I thought it was awesome. Very similar feel to an iPhone but with a few extra interface features.

I guess this is a pitfall of Android (and Windows and Linux) - because they run on such a wide range of hardware, some people will try them on underpowered hardware and end up going "meh this sucks". Apple stuff, since the whole platform is so tightly controlled, is a lot more consistent. It's kind of like going to an exclusive club vs. going to a house party. In the club you're going to pay through the nose but they'll have exotic beer and hot socialite girls (eew). At the house party it's much cheaper, you're going to see more fat chicks but there'll be hotties there too and if you have the know-how there's even a chance of a threesome... ;)

Re:Thanks you...

[fractoid]

Don't worry, the Apple fanboys woke up and logged on. It's not hateful nonsensical rubbish, though - read it more carefully. I never deny that Apple has very nice (albeit expensive) hardware, and that their mobile user interfaces are excellent. I simply point out the obvious workings of their marketing department. I'm so so sick of hearing "look it's a table with three and a half legs, that's an innovation!"

Re:Thanks you...

[pizzach]

on't worry, the Apple fanboys woke up and logged on. It's not hateful nonsensical rubbish, though - read it more carefully. I never deny that Apple has very nice (albeit expensive) hardware, and that their mobile user interfaces are excellent. I simply point out the obvious workings of their marketing department. I'm so so sick of hearing "look it's a table with three and a half legs, that's an innovation!"

Factoid, calm down. Your posts reek more of emotion than logic. Apple found a market segment that was going to be filled sooner by Amazon with the Kindle than by the PC industry. I don't own a single Apple product and my main computer is an Asus netbook with Linux. Factoid, It wouldn't surprise me if you own more Apple product than I do.

In the game industry, as remarked upon in another of my other posts, if good game doesn't do well it is blamed on the company not advertising it. Microsoft and the PC industry have regarded the tablet industry as niche and have gone out of their way to not advertise it at all. You snooze, you lose.

Seriously, you're giving slashdot a bad name with your posts.

Re:Thanks you...

[Anonymous Coward]

No the fuck it didn't. The iPad proved that people will buy anything if it's had enough Apple hype ladled onto it.

That's why everyone has an AppleTV.

Oh wait. They don't.

Except for the fact Apple never made a marketing push for AppleTV. I never saw a TV commercial for it, unlike to 50 I see a day for the iPad. Don't remember seeing it on the front page of Apple.com. Can you guess what's on the front page of Apple.com is now? A huge ad for the iPad covering ~80% of the page. The fact that no one bought an AppleTV only proves the point, it's all about the hype Apple puts out.

Re:Thanks you...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did Apple (and the media) hype Apple TV as much as the iPad? I didn't think so. The sales of Apple products are proportional to the degree to which they were hyped. People are buying iPads because they're magic and not because they've tried them and compared them to competing devices.

Right. The Apple TV doesn't sell well because Apple chooses not to hype it. Wait... what?

Re:Thanks you...

[Sethumme]

Consumer HP products always come laden with ugly, slow, intrusive bloatware under the guise of enhancing user experience. Even their basic printer/scanner software has the tendency to crash and clog up your computer memory. The HP tablet will be about as attractive (and as useful) as the advertisement pullout from a newspaper.

Re:Thanks you...

[Itninja]

Well, my HP Pavilion PC runs like a champ. Of course I had spend about 30 minutes when I first bought it uninstalling all the HP bloatware. But that's common with any non-custom PC. Now it runs great.

Re:Thanks you...

[LordLimecat]

Apple loves this kind of thinking.

And so do many consumers.
To give some anecdotal support, I recently had a friend touting the glories of the HTC Touch Pro, so I upgraded from my Blackberry Curve to one. He was right on some level about all the bells and whistles it had, and I did see that there was an active dev community. Problem is, the phone was slow, bloated, and incredibly over complicated-- to dial a number from the home screen took some 4 clicks to even get to the phone app. Now Im a techie, and I love tearing things apart, customizing, etc, but when I have a phone, I want it to do one or two things (email and phone), and to do them very well. Anything else is icing, but if it is not superb at its primary function i am not interested.

The problem is Microsoft has shown over and over that they dont get this-- anyone who has dealt with WinMo knows this. A company that ships a task manager (windows style) with their phone just doesnt get it. What on earth would lead one to believe they get tablets either?

Re:Thanks you...

[Gilmoure]

I've got it configured now to where it only burns bagels. Bread and waffles work fine.

Re:Thanks you...

[node 3]

You could have said the same thing about the iPhone and Android, yet Android phones have already outsold the iPhone.

No they haven't.

Non-Apple Tablets will outsell Apple tablets because more people want a computer that works than want a computer that's shiny, and let's face it, Android works so it meets the basic requirement.

Possible, but doubtful. The reason Android has been selling so well recently in the US is that it's available on carriers other than AT&T, and it's been heavily discounted. Carrier choice is fairly irrelevant on tablets (although not entirely), and discounts are not going to be as common (no subsidies, but there will be sales).

People actually want iPhones more than they want Android, and Apple sells more iPhones (and especially iPhone OS devices) than Android phones (and especially Android devices).

The masses will go with what's cheap, over time. Who cares if the iPad sells more in its first year, or second? There's still a lot of years left (unless the world ends in 2012, is that on what you are basing your projections?)

I'm basing my projection on the likelihood of Android or WebOS ever being a better multitouch OS than iPhone OS.

Re:Thanks you...

[node 3]

Except for the fact Apple never made a marketing push for AppleTV. I never saw a TV commercial for it, unlike to 50 I see a day for the iPad. Don't remember seeing it on the front page of Apple.com. Can you guess what's on the front page of Apple.com is now? A huge ad for the iPad covering ~80% of the page. The fact that no one bought an AppleTV only proves the point, it's all about the hype Apple puts out.

The point, which you are completely missing, is that if the notion that "people will buy anything that Apple hypes" is true, then why wouldn't Apple simply hype the AppleTV to get it to sell?

This shows the falseness of that notion. Apple products don't sell because they are hyped, they are hyped because they sell. Because people want them. The hype helps amplify sales, but there has to be a truly great product in the first place for the hype to work with.

Re:Thanks you...

[node 3]

It refutes your claim that people don't spend (a lot of) money on air.

I never made that claim. I made the claim that people don't buy products for $499+ based on hype in the sort of numbers that they've been buying iPads.

So is Lindsay Lohan (and has been for a long time).

People buy Lindsay Lohan for $499? Over a million per month in the US alone?

Re:Thanks you...

[node 3]

You are a master of the straw man. No one said most people don't waste their time or money.

Re:Thanks you...

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't "wife" be in scare quotes?

Relax dude. Women really aren't that scary.

Re:Thanks you...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. Windows 7 tablets are a dead end. Android and WebOS are the only real competition for the iPad going forward. This year, there's no chance Android or WebOS tablets will outsell the iPad, and further down the road, I don't see people buying either over the iPad, as there's pretty much no compelling reason to.

You do know that Android phones are out-selling the iPhone, right? If it turns out that iPad has carved out a place in society's hearts for the tablet, then I can assure you that 5-10 manufacturers will fill that place with Android-based competitors. It's simply not possible for Apple gadgets under the current strategy to compete in long-term numbers against Android, because "Android" is actually a group of all the world's other gadget manufacturers led by the only mega-corporation that can realistically compete with Apple on demographic-crossing user satisfaction.

That said, I'm only talking about longterm winners in each product area. Apple will always have a strong place (at least, as long as current management strategies are in places). If they can somehow continue to develop in new areas (smart phone -> PDA/smart music player (iPod Touch) tablet -> ???), they might keep ahead of Android in total products.

Re:Thanks you...

[LinuxAndLube]

Millions of people spend their time (which is valuable) being obsessed with Lindsay Lohan. Because it is good value?

Take the app store, one of the main selling points for the iPhone. What is currently the most popular paid app in Belgium, Italy, Norway and Sweden: FatBooth. This illustrates well what the iPhone and the iPad is all about: air for airheads.

Re:Thanks you...

[LinuxAndLube]

So, you do agree that most people do waste their time and money?

I suppose we then just disagree on the extent to which people buy stuff, not because the need it, but because they feel the need to have it.

Come to think of it, much of Apple's stuff serves as status object. Hey, have you seen my iPod / iPhone / iPad? A bit like jewelry, except that it looses its value really quickly.

Re:Thanks you...

[LinuxAndLube]

Make that status symbol.

What do you make of the text below?

When rumours of the the Apple iPhone surfaced around the world, it was pre-selected as one of the biggest must-haves of 2007. When it became a reality, as soon as Apple set a release date, it was already sold-out. The first shipment of iPhones were gone before anyone had the chance to discern or decide whether it was worth the hundreds of dollars or not.

Re:Thanks you...

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to realize that tablet style devices don't turn off by default but rather enter a low power sleep state which allows them to 'boot' almost instantly, the same can be done for windows 7, and I think that the windows 7 UI is actually rather conducive to a larger (say ten inch) tablet. Especially if microsoft were to take some time with an OEM producing said tablet to make some optimizations geared toward tablets.

Are you serious...?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember all the buzz around Hewlett-Packard's Slate, a Windows 7-based tablet that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer featured in a keynote presentation [1] at the Consumer Electronics Show in January? It was Microsoft's shot across Apple's bow, meant to show Microsoft wasn't ceding the tablet market to the then-unreleased iPad [2]. HP kept the Slate in the blogosphere's eye [3] through occasional posts and carefully vague videos of the device at its Website.

But quietly, the Slate went away, and now the buzz around HP is that it will use Palm's WebOS as the foundation for iPad rivals [4], once it's completed its buyout of Palm. (On Friday, Digitimes [5] quoted an HP Taiwan exec saying the Slate would use WebOS instead of Windows 7.)

[ Stay up on tech news and reviews from your smartphone at infoworldmobile.com [6]. | Get the best iPhone and iPad apps for pros with our business iPhone apps finder [7]. | Keep up on key mobile developments and insights with the Mobile Edge blog [8] and Mobilize newsletter [9]. ]

All the tablet buzz now centers around the iPad, various Android devices said to be in development at Dell and other manufacturers, and HP's future WebOS tablet [10]. What happened to Windows 7?
Enterprise iPhone Deep Dive
[11]

A tablet is not a laptop whose screen is always visible
The answer: The iPad proved a tablet shouldn't be a portable computer that happened to have its screen always exposed. Instead, a tablet should be something else. Apple got a lot of criticism early on for not making the iPad essentially a Mac OS X tablet computer [12], in the vein of the Windows tablet computers available -- but hardly used -- for the last decade.

Apple -- followed by Dell, HP, and the rest of the industry -- has realized a tablet is something different, and force-fitting a desktop OS into it simply won't work. Remember the splash Microsoft and HP made on touchscreen PCs last fall? That chatter has gone quiet too outside the nichy kiosk space, and for the same reason: Windows 7 is not designed for a touch-oriented interaction [13]. Microsoft's touch extensions to Windows 7 are awkward to use and don't get around the problem that all the apps and the OS itself assumes the use of mouse or other pointing device. A finger isn't as accurate as a mouse, and UI elements designed for a mouse-and-keyboard interface don't translate to the touch world, even with UI extensions that support finger-based input.

Lessons from Apple's touch-native enforcement
Microsoft needs a UI designed for touch -- rich gestures for input and a fundamental UI design that doesn't involve lots of elements such as tabbed panes, radio buttons, check boxes, and dialog boxes. But it doesn't have one. Plus, for applications to really support touch and gestures, they need to do more than map mouse actions to finger ones; the interface and operational design needs to be touch-native as well. No mapping layer for libraries will take care of that for you, as you can quickly see if you use a Windows 7 touchscreen PC.

I believe Microsoft recognizes that fact, which is why its forthcoming Windows Phone 7 mobile platform uses a separate, largely new OS [14] designed at the ground level for gestures and touch.

Could Microsoft retrofit Windows 7 to support touch natively through and through, making it appropriate for a tablet? Maybe. After all, the iPhone OS is based on Apple's Mac OS X [15], a desktop operating system that supports the same UI expectations and complexity as Windows 7. A lot of the underlying code is the same between the Mac OS and the iPhone OS.

Yet you can't run Mac OS apps on an iPhone or vice versa. Sure, some UI elements are the same across the two operating systems, but they have more to do with a consistent Apple style than with fundamental operations. Look no further than Apple's iWork productivity suite for Mac OS X and iPhone OS: Beyond a compatible file format and name, they share little in common in terms of how they actually operate. (I'd argue that iWork for iPhone OS is a d

Re:Are you serious...?!

[binarylarry]

Don't worry bro, now that Microsoft's entertainment and electronic executives have been fired, Ballmer is back in charge.

Smooth sailing from here bro.

Microsoft needed moar Ballmer and it's getting it.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear the chairs are already fleeing the Microsoft campus

Re:Are you serious...?!

[PopeRatzo]

The iPad proved a tablet shouldn't be a portable computer

Sez you.

I think the iPad proved just how badly we need a tablet that IS a portable computer.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[man_of_mr_e]

I agree to some extent.

Certainly, the iPad has it's place, and it's a popular place. It's going to destroy part of the ebook reader market, at least until color eInk shows up, and even then lack of backlight makes eInk difficult for a lot of people. I know, that's what makes it such a great ebook reader, lack of a backlight... but tell that to people that like to read in bed, or in low-light areas.

In any event, the iPad proves there's a market for a non-general purpose computer tablet. It does not prove that general purpose tablets will fail. To date they have because they keep trying to cram a full computer into a tablet, and they cost too freaking much.. but a netbook level computer with a tablet interface would be priced correctly, and would appeal to a lot of people as well.

Too many tablet makers price tablets outside their value proposition, they're too greedy.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[jo_ham]

Well, it proved it in the sense that tablets with full desktop OSes have been on sale for many, many years and when the iPad went on sale it sold at twice the rate of the iPhone and continues at that pace even after the reviews are in.

There are already many tablets that are portable computers; they just don't sell well.

iPad/Android/WebOS tablet, however, looks like it has some promise.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[hedwards]

No, what they need is to have somebody that actually understands technology running the company. Gates for all his problems was at least a nerd. Ballmer doesn't seem to get the tech side of things or at least not apply it. When they've tried to get the tech right they've done so. The Xbox controller is the best controller for any of the consoles I've ever used. The Zune while not a hit, works well from a technology stand point. I can't recall ever having had trouble with any of their hardware products.

And their software tends not to suck until they've achieved there monopoly and stop actually trying.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[suomynonAyletamitlU]

Let me rephrase it then: the iPad shows with crystal clarity the difference between a traditional GUI and a designed-for-touch GUI when using a tablet.

I'm not aware of any existing full-scale OS--including Linux--where existing applications can be cleanly ported to 'designed for touch' GUI. Therefore, if you want a designed-for-touch GUI, you need a designed-for-touch OS.

Now maybe Android will be exactly what you're looking for, with the right hardware--a full OS/GUI stack designed for touch with the power of a full computer. But so far, nobody else has really done it. I mean, hell, it is a good idea. I like to think that eventually a portable OS with an intuitive interface will merge with the full power of linux scripting, development, etc, on a processor strong enough to really carry the whole setup. However, I don't think that the iPad shows that restricted OS+Touch GUI is a bad combination.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[jedidiah]

Only twice the rate? This is pretty sad considering how CHEAP Apple's devices are.
Really, they are the "netbooks" of tablets. The PC tablets that have been around
for years and years are much more expensive and often ruggedized for real work.

A cheap device with an absurd amount of hype treated with kid gloves by the media
should be able to sell well.

The iPad has gotten more media hype than an atrocious Hollywood remake.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[chriso11]

WebOS?

Re:Are you serious...?!

[PopeRatzo]

In any event, the iPad proves there's a market for

I guess I'm still surprised that here on Slashdot that there are people who form their preferences for technologies based on how well "they're doing in the market". Maybe it would be different if I ran an electronics store or an advertising agency. The fact that a lot of people are buying iPads might persuade me to buy Apple stock, but it's not going to persuade me to buy an iPad.

Honestly, the fact that people are lining up to buy something has never been a strong recommendation for me, any more than having a lot of advertisements for a particular technology indicates superiority. If it was, I'd be getting my technology news from Wired Magazine.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[grapeape]

So where were you when HP Pushed their slates last time around? It failed and it wasnt HP's first attempt in fact it was its 3rd. Others have tried as well like Motion Computing, Panasonic and AIS. None have ever been able to garner more than a niche market. Geeks say they want them but they dont actually buy and use them in enough numbers to really make it worth a manufacturers time and money.

I have a couple HP TC1100's here, they have 1.2ghz centrinos, 2 gigs of ram, 160 gig harddrives, shipped with xp tablet edition but they can run windows 7 as well as any netbook, but they collect dust now since they are just not practical. Im hoping to get my ipad in a couple weeks, it does just enough to be useful, has a decent battery life, and is simple enough my wife and kids and use it without having to bug me about if its ok to click on this or that.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[jo_ham]

Consider that the iPhone also received similar hype on the lead up to its launch.

That is why I compared the sales rates of the two devices in their launch quarters, and because Apple themselves released figures.

Also, you're saying the iPad is cheap now? I thought it was a massively overpriced toy? Which is it today?

Re:Are you serious...?!

[Totenglocke]

There are already many tablets that are portable computers; they just don't sell well.

Show me a tablet running a full OS that costs as little as $499. When you find a tablet running Windows that is in the same price range as the iPad, THEN you can compare how well they sell. Currently a tablet pc costs around $1,500-$2,000 - hardly a fair comparison since the overwhelming majority of people won't spend more than $700 on a computer. Hell, I only spent $900 on my quad-core, dual video card gaming system.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[Douglas Goodall]

Are you being sarcastic or not? I am afraid that I cannot tell. It was not clear whether your tongue was in your cheek or not...

Re:Are you serious...?!

[mgblst]

You are right, it is too early to say whether the ipad is a success or not, although so far it seems to be doing very well (200,000 devices sold a week, in the US).

It does represent a shift in the way we do things, just at the iPhone has done.

If you are a developer, it is wise to target the ipad.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[mgblst]

Oh, you are going to grapple at any excuse.

"Oh, its not fair, it is not the same comparison at all."

Whinge away flyboy, Windows 7 sucks, and HP dropped it because they wanted >1 hours battery and $999 price.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[jedidiah]

An iPad is cheap compared to the business machines everyone wants to compare it to in order to create some sort of "failure" situation for PC tablets.

It has weaker hardware. It is capable of less. It has less features. It's not terribly durable.

It's the equivalent of the mythical $150 ARM netbook.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[pantherace]

Look up Qtopia, granted it was designed for a stylus/higher accuracy than iphone touchscreen has, so it's not perfect for capacitive touch screens/fat fingering things. Also satisfies your criteria for easily portable, being based upon Qt.

Another GUI + underlying Linux OS: WebOS (without the easily portable apps thing)

You are confusing a GUI with the OS, in both cases, the OS is Linux, the GUI is what's drastically different.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[scottgfx]

Well, there were quite a few that were expecting the iPad to be priced much higher than it's $499 starting point. Some were pointing toward $999.

Apple's not selling them at a loss either; not like the netbook makers.

So if the media hype is so cheap, why can't other manufactures get the word out? It can't possibly be that Apple has a product that people actually want, is it? ;)

Re:Are you serious...?!

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Yeah, that's why Apple sold a million of them in a month and why tablets running Windows are rarely seen.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[ppanon]

Yep. The iPads are the modern equivalent of the original Palm Pilot. A different compromise between functionality and battery life that meets the needs of a large market. Eventually, the battery and CPU power capabilities may move the sweet spot to a more functional platform (as it has with smartphones vs. PDAs) but for now, Apple have hit the sweet spot desired by a large number of customers.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[Anonymous Coward]

The many fulll computer tablets did not suffer from a software problem. They suffered from a hardware problem. Up to about a year ago, a multitouch screen wasn't even available. And the ones that did afterwards were too expensive, priced at over $1000.

I also disagree that there is an intrinsic problem with Windows 7 input. It works plenty well with touch and handwriting recognition, and heck, even voice recognition. But you need the right hardware. That didn't exist because the manufacturers didn't step up. If there was a mistake it was not taking control over the hardware design.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[PhilHibbs]

And I think it's way too early to say that anything has been proven. I haven't even seen one yet, they don't go on sale outside the US until Friday. We're still deep in the first round of hype, I'm reserving judgement until the end of the year on whether the iPad is a good idea. I expect my verdict will be something like "a good idea for X and maybe Y".

Re:Are you serious...?!

[ChunderDownunder]

Qtopia is dead, long live... KDE?

Nokia aren't lying down as far as iPhone/Android challenges go. Both Meego and Symbian will be based on Qt.

So my idea of a tablet probably resembles something like KDE desktop once the touch-screen goodies filter down. We get the best of both worlds - a 'proper' Linux with gesture support based on a toolkit that's very much at home on a touchscreen and to potentially re-use existing codebases re-skinned for mouse/keyboard or digit-based input.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, the fact that people are lining up to buy something has never been a strong recommendation for me

Exactly. People lined up to buy Pet Rocks, after all, and they hardly seem like a necessity. Argue all you like about Pet Rock being a 40 year old, obsolete product, but they were a billion year old, commodity technology at the time and there have been no major advances in geological structures since. People will line up for almost any shiny box they see someone else with.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[tburkhol]

Currently a tablet pc costs around $1,500-$2,000 - hardly a fair comparison since the overwhelming majority of people won't spend more than $700 on a computer. Hell, I only spent $900 on my quad-core, dual video card gaming system.

I bought an NEC Lightpad five years ago for $900. 2 pounds, 0.6" thick, 2-2.5 hour battery. It was a perfectly useful slate for anything that didn't require text input, and it was about the middle of the notebook price range. And, if you docked it, it could be a reasonably functional computer (although the keyboard NEC bundled really sucked). I've no doubt that you could build a $500 Windows slate now, but people would expect it to be their only computer. I can tell you from experience that most productive computer use requires a keyboard.

The Windows problem is perception - if you see a Windows desktop, you expect a whole computer. You expect to be able to write as well as read email, and neither a slate nor an iPad is especially good for writing even email. The iPad isn't even trying to be a computer - it's a big screen iPod. Nobody would ever try to write War and Peace on an iPod, and no one is going to try to write on an iPad. iPad's success is managing user expectations, not device price or performance

Re:Are you serious...?!

[davidsinn]

How about >5 hours battery and does things the iPad 3 won't be able to do? All for $550.

http://store.archos.com/archos-p-96.html

Re:Are you serious...?!

[Uksi]

I think you're naive in putting down the iPad (or any Android or WebOS tablet) as a cheap device that's not fit for real work. How much horsepower do you think you really need? Do you need multi-GHZ processors to run bloated apps on top of Windows? These tablets run lean apps that are optimized for these "cheap devices"--and they certainly don't feel any slower. The fact is my Palm Handspring felt faster and snappier to use than a PocketPC Axim I had, despite the latter having four-five times as fast a processor.

With all the Slashdot bitching and moaning about how bloated apps have become these days, you should be happy that a cheap device can run web browsing, word processing and photo editing software at what feels like full desktop speeds.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[ThrowAwaySociety]

In any event, the iPad proves there's a market for

I guess I'm still surprised that here on Slashdot that there are people who form their preferences for technologies based on how well "they're doing in the market". Maybe it would be different if I ran an electronics store or an advertising agency. The fact that a lot of people are buying iPads might persuade me to buy Apple stock, but it's not going to persuade me to buy an iPad.

Honestly, the fact that people are lining up to buy something has never been a strong recommendation for me, any more than having a lot of advertisements for a particular technology indicates superiority. If it was, I'd be getting my technology news from Wired Magazine.

OP didn't say that the iPad was the greatest thing ever, or that you, as Joe Average Slashdotter, should immediately buy one. OP just said that it was successful and that there were lessons to be learned from its success.

Slashdotters focus on the iPad's limitations and the restrictions Apple places on it. Fair enough. But when a limited, restricted devices like the iPad succeed, you have to wonder, what does it have that makes people buy it anyway? The popular response from Slashdot is: well, the people who buy it are either brainwashed fanboys, fashion-conscious posers, or idiots with more money than brains.

The really smart people are taking notes on how marketing, product positioning, user experience, and industrial design wins out over limitations and restrictions in the mind of the body public. You can bet that Steve Ballmer and Microsoft are watching and learning from the iPad's success very carefully, even if they don't plan to buy iPads for their children this Christmas.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[suomynonAyletamitlU]

You are confusing a GUI with the OS, in both cases, the OS is Linux, the GUI is what's drastically different.

Not really; I know the difference. The problem is that if every single existing GUI element has to be either replaced or rewritten (menus, window frames, multi-select list boxes, scroll bars, anything involving mouseovers, and every application that uses them), you're essentially starting off new. Granted, if you start with linux, you could just fork every.single.project that depends on X/QT/GTK and give then a place in your new ecosystem, but until you do, the only apps ready to be run on your GUI are terminal/background programs, which frankly takes away a lot of the benefit of using an existing OS to begin with. Not all of it--you still have plenty of existing libraries--but a lot of it.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[Just Some Guy]

I guess I'm still surprised that here on Slashdot that there are people who form their preferences for technologies based on how well "they're doing in the market".

But that's not what he said. He didn't say that iPads are good or that you should buy one or that everyone will want one. He said that the iPad (and from inference, its sales numbers) proves that a lot of people - maybe not you, or me, or even the OP! - want such a thing.

There are a lot of very successful products that I have no desire or use for, but clearly someone does, because they keep making and selling them.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[pandrijeczko]

It actually might only prove that Apple fanboiism is so rampant that whenever Apple release anything new, lots of people will swarm in to buy it.

Re:Are you serious...?!

[Kazoo the Clown]

The answer: The iPad proved a tablet shouldn't be a portable computer that happened to have its screen always exposed. Instead, a tablet should be something else. Apple got a lot of criticism early on for not making the iPad essentially a Mac OS X tablet computer [12], in the vein of the Windows tablet computers available -- but hardly used -- for the last decade.

The problem with this approach, is as soon as you start taking things away from a "portable computer," you start eliminating some of your marketplace. I have a pretty good use for a tablet, but the iPad ain't it, because they left in a bunch of stuff I don't need or want, and took out stuff I do want. For example, I do want wifi & a browser (preferrably, a CHOICE of browsers), but not cellular, especially any requirement of buying a phone data plan. I want at least 80G of storage, memory stick & usb interfaces (usb HOST). It should behave as a digital photoframe when it's otherwise idle (and have most of that 80G available for images & home vids to show guests). I want to be able to run custom apps, as one of my reasons for it is to have it as a "console" and super-remote for all my home automation and home security, so it needs to be able to run vidcam control software and tie into X10/Smarthome devices, etc. The screen should be AT LEAST 10", and if it had bluetooth (so I can either tie it into my Wiimote for even more simplified remote functions, or tie it into a wireless speaker system for speech feedback throughout the house), that would be stellar.

The iPad has SOME of these features, but is not really the right tool for my job. Just about all they really got right is the removal of the keyboard and mouse, the battery life and screen size. And the reason it's not right, is that Steve Jobs thinks he knows better than you do what you want out of such a gizmo. Well, he's wrong about that in my case. Clueless newbs who like shiny may snap them up, but such newbs don't always stay newbs forever, eventually they may grow into power users who have their own ideas what a computer should do for them, and won't just jump when Steve says jump.

I'll be waiting for the right Linux based machine when the price gets right because I know it can be made to do what I need it to do. What's really needed here, is not the one-size-doesn't-really-fit-very-many approach of Apple, but the more componentized approach that was used back in the heyday of the HiFi/Stereo system where you bought each component separately and assembled them in to what you want or need-- amp, tuner, turntable, tape player, CD player, EQ, speakers-- a standardized system where you can configure it to YOUR needs, rather than having to "conform" to what Steve thinks you need. That's the Apple way-- the computer doesn't conform to YOUR needs, you have to conform to IT'S needs. Only the starry-eyed newbs will fall for that, and not indefinately...

Re:Are you serious...?!

[PopeRatzo]

OP didn't say that the iPad was the greatest thing ever

Right, but the discussion here seemed to be about how the iPad proved that nobody wants a tablet that is a real personal computer.

Very often, when discussing the relative qualities of various devices, whether media players or cell phones, Apple fans will use the rapid sales of Apple devices as proof of their superiority. As in, I'll say "I really don't like buying a device that is locked into one source for applications" and the reaction will be "But Apple's winning in "the marketplace"" which doesn't have anything to do with what I want or why I want it.

No current OS is "right for a slate"

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, I'm having a hard time thinking of what would be right for a "slate". That Courier sure looked nice for what it was designed to do. As a general computing platform... nah

OS designed to be used at a desk with a keyboard, mouse, and unlimited energy? Not so great on a small slate.

OS designed for small handsets for quick and dirty access to stuff on the go? Easier to put on a slate, but still not something I'd want.

Where is a slate with a "SlateOS"? Good for reading, good for watching, good for casual surfing/ computing. multitouch, high end pen input.

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[aristotle-dude]

Where is a slate with a "SlateOS"? Good for reading, good for watching, good for casual surfing/ computing. multitouch, high end pen input.

The iPhone OS. You can use a pen input if you really want to and the touch screen has a fairly high resolution sensor grid.

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[forkazoo]

Newton.

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[nutshell42]

Hell, I'm having a hard time thinking of what would be right for a "slate". That Courier sure looked nice for what it was designed to do. As a general computing platform... nah

Microsoft's the Xerox of our days. There's some great ideas coming out of Microsoft Research but the rest of the company's pathologically unable to see anything through to the end.

Tablet PCs. Great idea, it failed because all the devices were half-assed notebooks with a touchscreen tucked on. It failed because MS went all the way to create the best handwriting recognition on the planet and then didn't make it usable in Office (with the exception of one specialized app). It failed because they really needed something like the Courier user interface but instead they built the back-end then scrapped it and instead they're just gonna copy Apple like usual.

P.S.: Oh and they failed because Intel's been unable or unwilling to really improve the Atom in over two years. It's their Tick....Quack model of development. The Quack is them moving the GPU on the CPU die which is less about better performance or lower power and more about killing Nvidia without being quite so obvious about it.

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[Mike Buddha]

I concur. Microsoft already tried the tablet route with the MIDs not 3 years ago, and it sucked, because desktop OS's are too deeply invested in keyboards, mice, and power outlets. I bought a Samsung MID and it was a terrible user experience.

I've thought for a long time now that stylus' are crutches that allow you to use the wrong kind of UI on a portable device. The iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad only serve to reinforce that belief.

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[Lifyre]

From what I can tell of Gnome-shell it would be supremely suited for a tablet pc. Unless I missed something it sure as hell isn't suited for general desktop use but the minimalist interface with expanding sidebar navigation seem ideal for a tablet.

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[baxissimo]

You can use a pen input if you really want to and the touch screen has a fairly high resolution sensor grid

That's a crap experience and I'm sure Apple knows it. I'm betting next rev of the iPad will have a stylus. They just didn't have a chance to getting working along with everything else they had to make happen to get the iPad out in a reasonable time frame. So it got cut along with the camera. It'll be there in a future version.

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[Draek]

And Tablet PCs failed because I've never, *ever* seen one priced below the level of a high-end notebook. I've heard there's some in the US, if you're willing to spend two days finding one online and then masquerading as a small business to buy it, but in the rest of the world your options are between "sell one kidney" and "sell both".

When an Apple product is the *cheap* alternative, you know you're doing something very, very wrong.

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[AHuxley]

Less bloat Linux distro and a cam with flash would be :)
Let you enjoy all aspects of the web and fix faults :)

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[Voyager529]

I've thought for a long time now that stylus' are crutches that allow you to use the wrong kind of UI on a portable device. The iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad only serve to reinforce that belief.

That depends. Wacom seems to be making a living for themselves making it possible for graphic designers to use a stylus on their laptops. A general purpose input, it is not. But if Wacom can make their existence dependent on adding a stylus to a computer, there IS in fact a demographic that WANTS one. Personally, I've been saying it for ages - HP, Toshiba, and Fujitsu have all had tablet PCs since 2004, they've all cost an arm and a leg (though I've seen some decent HP units cost south of $1,000 recently), and they all had low end CPUs/GPUs/HDDs/RAM, because it was assumed that they were intended to be carried around like five subject notebooks. What one of them needed to do was to make a desktop replacement tablet (i.e. one that CAN, in fact, run Crysis) and target the media design people.

Similarly, the iPad may get all kinds of media coverage and consumer acceptance, but WinMo is still very entrenched in retail and industrial applications. The stylus reigns supreme in warehouses, shipping yards, and your local Wal-Mart, and like it or not, virtually every one of those devices is running some flavor of WinMo. Someone needs to make a slate with a barcode scanner, an AS/400 client, and a few other niceties, let Apple have the consumer space, but get half a dozen of their devices into every Wal-Mart, Staples, and UPS truck instead. The two CAN, in fact, coexist.

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[NightLamp]

I think, far from dropping the ball on 'slate' form-factors, Microsoft has given away a great idea in the form of the Courier - a book-like, protected and familiar form. Clearly, based on recent news, they are not going to make and market such a device.

I would enjoy making one. I have the know-how to emulate the functionality witnessed in the tech demos of the Courier, in .net. Really, they have all the important ideas laid out - what form factor, what you want to do, how it can benefit YOU. Seeing the desire for the product and the opportunity to make one is a situation that comes along rarely. In form it is basically an evolved Nintendo DS, easily possible, challenging to make cutting-edge.

As with many Microsoft ideas it is ahead of its time - already on high-end Dell tablets one can purchase a touch-screen which is friendly to both finger and stylus. This will only get more common - right tool for the job. To focus exclusively on fingerprint-sized interaction on a non-keyboard device is a mistake, why can't I use my fingernail? duh.

I own and use an HP TC4100 Tablet, Nokia N800, Wacom tablet an iPod Touch and a Sony E-Reader. Have used an iPad,

Angels, call me!

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[Anonymous Coward]

Newton sucked, it didn't have Flash.

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[pantherace]

That is the big problem with them. Hopefully, Apple's entry will drive the price down, and the Wacom pen tablet that all of those have will decrease in price. (From what I've heard one of the reasons why tablet PCs were so expensive was to not kill their (really expensive) Cintiq market) Some others had a 'real' touchscreen also built in, specifically IBMs just before being sold to Lenovo, and Lenovo after that.

Which somewhat explains the cost. The rest being that it's niche, and one of those applications is medical... which is the only place outside art, I've seen Cintiqs... and that was at admissions. That alone says they are spending way too much on some portions of technology.

The lowest, I recall seeing tablets, which were comparable in hardware specs to the then equivalent of a $400-500 laptop, was $1000. Actually, they were more like netbooks, in terms of CPU and such, now that I think about it, again, helping the case for them being very expensive.

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[babyrat]

. They just didn't have a chance to getting working along with everything else they had to make happen to get the iPad out in a reasonable time frame.

I'm guessing the marketroids held it back to provide incentive for future 'upgrade sales'

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[scottgfx]

But is did eventually have "Electronic Mail" :)

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, you really need to read up the history of Xerox PARC and Microsoft. PARC came up with incredible ideas that were implementable, not just great on paper. That's why people who visited PARC were blown away and some, like Jobs, saw what the future was like when he thought what the possibilities of those ideas brought. Microsoft came up with great but unimplementable ideas. Anyone can do that. I envision a micro tablet weighing 1.5 oz. powered with a fusion battery to drive a quantum computing chip. No screen, just a holographic projector. It creates a force field so that you can feel the virtual keyboard. And it costs $10. I've got the rendering of the device. All geeks praise me!

Courier was announced to create a FUD so that people don't buy iPad, but keep on waiting for Microsoft tablet. Many MS ideas are vaporwares. MS != Xerox PARC.

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[Anonymous Coward]

Newton sucks, it doesn't have Flash.

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[Toonol]

A general purpose input, it is not. But if Wacom can make their existence dependent on adding a stylus to a computer, there IS in fact a demographic that WANTS one.

I've replaced the mice on both my desktops with wacom tablets. I far prefer the stylus to a mouse, and don't think you lose anything by going to them. They aren't a replacement for a keyboard, that's true.

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[Gilmoure]

But the Apple tablet isn't a real computer. All it does it connect to the internet, play media and have a lot of stupid games and shit for it. Who the hell wants that?

  Apple might as well stop calling themselves a computer company if this is what they think is cool.

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[Mike Buddha]

I was referring primarily to phones, PDA's, MIDs, and PMPs. Of course there is a proper place for stylus' but a daily use phone isn't it.

As far as Windows Mobile goes, wouldn't all those folks in the warehouse be much better off with a better designed interface? Just because that's the way it's done now doesn't mean that it's the best way to do things. I'm sure these people would have no problem using their fingers rather than a stylus except for conditions where gloves are the norm, or for signatures. For that we can give them sausages.

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[Voyager529]

they likely would. But also remember that the applications dictate the OS, not the other way around. In my case, Staples was using WinMo 'cuz they needed it access an AS/400 server and interact with our point-of-sale software. The question wasn't "does it do it well", but "does it do it at all". Good, bad, or indifferent, you need to get big, niche software devs to code for a given platform before their multi-thousand licensing clients shell out for new hardware and new platforms.

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[Mike Buddha]

If you're stuck using an X-Windows-like system on a mobile device, then by definition you're using the stylus as a crutch to access an interface that was not designed for mobile devices.

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[Voyager529]

In my case, I was using an AS/400 client. The AS/400 was designed for exactly one type of input: a keyboard. Anything else is just as much a crutch as a stylus. Yeah, pecking with the thing wasn't much of a picnic, but I don't think I would have liked an iPad sized device, either. Similarly, I had the pleasure of using Terminal on my iPhone when I had one. The touch keyboard for terminal input is barely more than an academic step forward in that regard. I agree that industrial software could stand a huge redesign for touch uses, but the WinMo apps and the industrially priced software they interact with are going to dictate the chosen platform, and by that metric WinMo, stylus and all, is deemed "good enough".

In a more general sense, Win7 actually had plenty of touch-oriented features to it. The taskbar is big enough to be touched by a finger, desktop icons can be sized to finger-friendly sizes, and every Explorer window supports kinetic scrolling; no digging for taskbars. It's not perfect, and it's still definitely a desktop OS, but the implementation of touch/multitouch/stylus input is def closer to demonstrating half a thought being put into the design, rather than retrofitting XP with a set of obviously bolted on applications.

Re:No current OS is "right for a slate"

[Squozen]

I'll take that bet. How much would you wager that the next rev will? I'll wager $100 that it won't.

Mobile and Microsoft

[Miros]

Microsoft has never managed to crack the mobile nut, why is that? What is their strategic blind spot that makes them so unable to penetrate this industry, even through acquisition?

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Archangel Michael]

Their vulnerable blind spot is called WINDOWS.

Everything in Windows was designed for mouse/keyboard combination, and there is no touch UI to behold.

Apple's approach is much better, different products, different approaches, and a different UI for Desktop and touch based items.

The reason why touch screens suck so much, is not because they suck, but the application/OS is always bolted on afterthought, rather than separate approach.

This is why I see Apple and Android being the dominant players in these types of devices. And if HP can pull off a miracle and get Palm functioning, it might prove to be a viable third tier option.

I'm afraid the people running Microsoft can't think outside of the whole "Windows" paradigm long enough to figure out that Windows is NOT a touch screen OS, no matter what they try to bolt on.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Lally Singh]

They're working too hard for Windows lockin. If they would just let that go, and let all their smart people develop a *good OS* for *just* *mobile*, with no ball & chain to Windows, it'd be competitive.

Sadly, I think that such an activity is against their DNA at this point.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Monkeedude1212]

(Disclaimer: Personal experience)

For the same reason that people don't like Internet Explorer, or Windows in General, after trying out alternatives seriously. It's slow, it's bloated, it's insecure. I haven't seen a windows mobile phone that takes less than a second to load the contacts list, or one that even manages to navigate menus fluidly.

It's not a hardware issue, its a software issue. And they haven't had a lot of big name acquisitions in the mobile field, as far as I can recall.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[willabr]

I've been using a Hp tablet PC, windows 7 and OneNote (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_2010). This seems to be a very good solution for me, I can use all my desktop data, anotate with the pen, and when not using the One note touch/pen interface I can swivel the screen around and use like a laptop (keyboard etc). I travel around alot and need to gather a bunch of "freeform" data, I can take some pictures, embed them into my documets, write a few notes next to them, send them off to various mail accounts, download some data from the net, and when I get back to the Orfice, connect up to the network and share the whole works whith a few co-workers. I don't really listen to a lot of music or watch movies with it, (although I did spend a week out in boondocks of Wisconsin and the netflix account came in handy) I guess you get what you need and leave it at that, often I think that most of the hype is created to sell advertising copy. When all is said and done, you figure out what you need to do, and then get the best fit.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[ozmanjusri]

Their vulnerable blind spot is called WINDOWS.

Sort of.

Actually, Microsoft doesn't have a "vulnerable blind spot". What they have is an applications stack lever. They've never managed to reach into the mobile platforms because their whole business is built on application/data incompatibility with other platforms. The cost of moving from Microsoft is not the loss of Windows. It's the loss of the millions of Windows apps.

That's wonderful for them when they "compete" in the Wintel market, but elsewhere, without the support of that weight of backwards compatible applications, their OS efforts are exposed as bland, clunky and unreliable.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has never managed to crack the mobile nut, why is that?

Because they haven't had anyone who has been successful to copy yet.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why Microsoft is moving towards Windows Mobile 7, based on a touch based interface. It seems logical to presume that this will scale up to a tablet in the future. Since everything works around hubs which are larger than the display surface, it should also scale well to larger screen real estate.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

They're working too hard for Windows lockin.

And Apple isn't working just as feverishly for their own lockin?

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Skuld-Chan]

Who has said they are complete failures at this? They have a phone on every network/carrier, they have tons of apps, and they have tons of sales - no not as much as apple, but you don't have to beat everything to a pulp to be successful.

Only reason I quit using my Windows Mobile 6 device (and will never get another one ever again) is because of the firm belief that I shouldn't have to reboot the phone 2-3 times a day. Aside from that issue - the apps were great, the experience was usable and the battery life was ok.

My Nexus One goes for weeks and weeks and weeks without any problems :) - I'm now a happy Android user.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[obarthelemy]

There's a bunch of stuff they never managed to crack. In the entreprise, "embrace and extend" works, though I wouldn't really call that "cracking" anything, it's more like buying into something. In the consumer market, they failed at pretty much everything, except Xbox, and that's only because they where willing to sink so much money into it that they scared competitors away.

Generally speaking, their blind spot is their legacy: they're afraid to innovate lest they either break backwards compatibility, or open themselves to competitors. That defensiveness is a huge diversion from actual innovation. They WANTED WinMobile to look and feel like Windows, and Tablets to feel so close to Desktops... Never mind usability was horrendous, god forbid users would learn another interface/paradigm... And for a while, it worked, because consumers are sheep, Palm could not market water to the thirsty, and Linux devs think users are a nuisance. It says a lot that Apple manages to make so much money from so little sales, and that Google, a spyware company, could and had to step in with Android for things to get moving.

MS is so backward-looking they couldn't innovate, and, worse, they're so aggressive and powerful they managed to drive the competition away. The rewards are going to be plentiful for the few remaining mobile players... and be ready for a big laugh as WinMob 7 gets released. MS has, has had for a while, great stuff in their labs... They're just fearful or releasing innovating stuff that doesn't immediately work for they users, fit with their legacy stuff, and/or only makes sense with standards that competitiors could graft onto. Apple obsoleted PPC, MacOS pre-X, broke backwards compatibility, came up with the very different interface for their media consumption devices, bullied their devs to ensure control and consistency... MS never had the balls to do any of this, though I'm sure a bunch of Softies knew that was needed.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[obarthelemy]

I've yet to see anything in WinMob7 that's not a direct ripoff off iPhone OS.. and an older version of iPhone OS at that ?

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[clarkkent09]

Also, what is it about a multi-billion company that cant find an advertising agency that can make one decent commercial for them? Seems like every single ad by Microsoft is somewhere between bad and embarrassingly bad.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Mike Buddha]

So, iPhone has a Today screen? When did Apple add that? Oh, they didn't? Well, there, I just blew your flawed assertion right out of the water.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct. Simply put, until Ballmer is kicked out on his fat ass Microsoft is going nowhere. They need to confront their fears about losing the Windows monopoly and just plain innovate.

Talking about innovation all the time doesn't make it happen.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Well to start with, I am yet to see a single feature in the iphone that is not a ripoff of all the other smart phones that came before it, including the winmo devices and a lot of the nokia stuff. iphone just packaged it better with less features then them.

secondly looking at the winmob7 they seem to have done the exact opposite of iphone, iphone is application centric, from my limited exposure so far to winmob7 it is people centric, a rather interesting approach that in thoery if they implement it well should turn out as a significantly better model, time will tell.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[JAlexoi]

They're working too hard for Windows lockin.

If they do that, they will loose a very big chunk of the market. So it's not in their interest to drop the Windows lock-in option.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[jo_ham]

It's a little different - the ecosystem, yes - vertical integration is their game, but for your data they are opposed to lock-in.

Office apps: documented, open XML format (making it very easy and supported to write converters if you don;t want to use the format itself).
Audio: AAC
Video: H.264
Email: .mbox
Calendars/contacts: vcard/icalendar

They want you using Apple hardware and software, but they make it easy to move your data in and out of the ecosystem as you choose.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that Apple is trying lock their users into Apple's solutions. Microsoft is trying to lock their users into Windows. You can dislike either or both but you must recognize that there are differences.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[man_of_mr_e]

Their vulnerable blind spot is called WINDOWS.

Yes, and no. Microsoft wants Windows to be everywhere, and lots of people want Windows to be everywhere. So far, that hasn't worked for a variety of reasons.

Everything in Windows was designed for mouse/keyboard combination, and there is no touch UI to behold.

Again, yes and no. Windows 7 has a terrific touch UI. but the legacy apps aren't written to support it.

An affordable windows slate is wanted and needed and has a market, if it has the performance characteristics necessary (cpu, battery, etc..). Nobody wants another overpriced tablet pc.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if you were around back in the '80s but, one thing I do not fondly recall it's scrolling the edges of an 800x600 screen that's been set to 1024x768 in the name of more "screen" real estate. This idea of hubs and scrolling the screen around hearkens back to this and is nothing more than MS wanting to be different just for the sake of not being accused of being an iPhone clone. As an interface paradigm, it was clunky and irritating back then and if my Windows Phone 7 SDK is any indication, it is just as bad now. As that is WP7's claim to fame, I assure you MS will fail if they persist with this folly.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that is if all other products work together flawlessly, and MS went an entirely different direction. *EVERYONE* is incompatible with everyone else, but no one is as popular, which makes it more obvious, especially when MS makes the most used software, MS Office. Apple is the undisputed heavyweight champ of lock-in. Don't like iTunes? Tough. Want Flash? Sorry. I'm not a MS fanboy, or Apple hater, but to say they lock you in any more than anyone else is wrong.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's mobile lock-in is separate from its desktop lock-in. That's why it's managed to succeed.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[jedidiah]

Yes. Microsoft lock in gives me a access to more interesting things
and an inherently more powerful platform. Basics like file systems,
file sharing and printing aren't abandoned in order to give a false
sense of simplicity.

It takes something to make Microsoft look like a bastion of software
freedom and user empowerment by comparison.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[mcrbids]

And Apple isn't working just as feverishly for their own lockin?

Sure, they are, but they aren't trying to leverage MacOS out into the iPod Nano. The difference is that Microsoft isn't willing to compete on features + quality alone, they want to bring all their application base to the new platform. They may eventually succeed, but it would be a long, hard road. Apple seems perfectly willing to ditch their "application base" if/when the need arises - witness OSX itself, which is a complete, ground-up rewrite of their O/S for Macs. And it's worked very well for them. I type this on a Mac Mini that I've grown to love.

So much, that I was just about to turn in my geek cards and pick up the Apple Fanboi deck. But I have to say, with their recent shenanigans around Flash and the iPad, any urge to do so have vaporized. As a developer myself, I'm thinking I'd rather take my chances on Android than deal with the increasingly dystopic-looking future with Apple!

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Qwavel]

But don't they wrap their media in proprietary DRM that they refuse to license?

Isn't it kinda' the worst sort-of lock-in when you actually pay for some media (and you are paying at Apple's inflated prices) and they prevent you from playing it on platforms they don't like.

I'm not a normal /. user in that I am not philosophically opposed to DRM. I just won't use DRM that is used against me in this way.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[foniksonik]

Apple didn't just package it better. They packaged it so it works on the device. Features don't get used when they are too clumsy. Try to sell me a hand power drill that requires two hands to operate and I'll tell you to suck it. Sure if it was the only drill available I'd try to make it work but I'd drop it instantly the minute I saw a one handed version.

The interface is the tool. Without a good interface it's just a bunch of technology being under used.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[SpecBear]

The problem isn't the "lockin" part, it's the "Windows" part.
Apple wants is lock-in. But they recognized that the mobile, tough interface driven platform was a different world, so they didn't use OSX for iPhone, iPod, or iPad. They built a shiny new cage for their customers, specifically tailored to the new environment.
The folks at Microsoft don't just want to trap the customers, they want to do it using the same shackles they use in every other dungeon they run. But the shackles are ill-fitting for this purpose.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got a Lenovo X200 tablet with a multitouch screen running windows 7 and it's great. The surface apps show that microsoft could make it work.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Voyager529]

MS is so backward-looking they couldn't innovate, and, worse, they're so aggressive and powerful they managed to drive the competition away. The rewards are going to be plentiful for the few remaining mobile players... and be ready for a big laugh as WinMob 7 gets released. MS has, has had for a while, great stuff in their labs... They're just fearful or releasing innovating stuff that doesn't immediately work for they users, fit with their legacy stuff, and/or only makes sense with standards that competitiors could graft onto. Apple obsoleted PPC, MacOS pre-X, broke backwards compatibility, came up with the very different interface for their media consumption devices, bullied their devs to ensure control and consistency... MS never had the balls to do any of this, though I'm sure a bunch of Softies knew that was needed.

This is EXACTLY the problem. I own a WinMo 6.5 phone myself. It's laggy in comparison to the iPhone. Apps are, in many cases, written on a per-device basis, despite two devices having the same OS and similar-enough-to-technically-work input methods. I'm by no means blind to the issues it has. While I love my phone (HTC's SenseUI is sheer awesomeness, and there's no faster way to text than Swype), I doubt I'll be getting a WinPho7 device. It looks all nice and flashy, but I for one don't mind having a file explorer on my phone, or a mass storage mode, or the fact that my phone is QUITE usable without any data plan from the Cellco. WinPho7 is the cut-the-cord, Band-Aid ripping shift you're talking about. The problem is that since none of my WinMo apps will work on it, and it takes out many of the features that I DO like about the current WinMo release, it puts them on otherwise level footing with RIM, Apple, and Android. My next phone will likely be running some flavor of Android, because I'd be starting from scratch no matter which platform I end up on.

This is a problem in the mobile space, where Microsoft hasn't had a commanding market share and can afford to throw Jell-O at the wall. This is suicide on the desktop, where the most significant thing keeping me tied to Windows are the programs that run on it.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[jo_ham]

Not any more - except for the TV and movies on the iTunes store, due to content provider requirement.

The music has no DRM now, which they wanted from the start. On the whole, their formats are DRM free.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the Zune OS (at least the HD version) hit the touch market pretty well. If they can make a phone or tablet modeled after that, it would fare rather well.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[mgblst]

This is because they owned an advertising agency, called silverfish, that they used to make the crappy ads. They sold it last year, so now they might be able to go to another agency, one that doesn't suck.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[pantherace]

The point was that Windows itself is not a strength. Win32 (and prior interfaces), that's Windows 'Killer Application', compatibility with prior apps.

I'm probably one of the few anymore who has used mainline Windows (NT) on non-x86 processors, when it ran on alpha. (I pity the poor Itanic users.) The OS itself was fine, but aside from a very few programs, none were native. Digital had fx!32, which worked for some, and didn't work for other pieces of software. (Some it worked, on but was so SLOW, others it was faster than native x86s of the time.) However, Windows and the few native programs were nothing to write home about. Windows advantage is it's applications, without them, it's at best mediocre. (That said, it's true for most OSes.)

You'll notice that Apple, having had so many iphone apps, has realized this and is trying to push that program advantage heavily. "There's an app for that", "X applications and counting" sort of lines. It's the same thing. They recognize that their device isn't really that special, but because of position, they got a lot of applications. If they can hold onto them, and Android doesn't blaze by them, iPhone compatibility may become the win32 of the smartphone market. Where someone may have a phone that's massively more capable, has a better OS/GUI, etc, but lacks the app base of Apple.

That said, app compatibility doesn't seem to apply everywhere, for example, look at consoles. It was 'killer' for the PS2, but after everyone realized that PS1s were $20 used (if that), they kept the consoles or bought a 'new' one. The same (not yet as drastic) drop in price for PS2s and Xboxes is happening, so people who want to play their old games, will just keep them (or play them on emulators, which is what the xbox 360 does).

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[pantherace]

Funny how you mention file systems. Windows handles how many of those again? 4? (vfat, ntfs, iso9660, udf)

Not that I disagree about Apple making Microsoft look not as bad, nor that it takes a lot.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop making excuses for Apple. It isn't like Apple doesn't have its own proprietary formats explicitly intended to lock users in. You are using the open source / free software / anti-lock claims that are total BS to justify the BS they do elsewhere. They never even stopped trying to lock users in. They still have data lock-in. Just because they take advantage of free software to cut costs in developing their products and get better products for that matter doesn't mean they are against lock-in. They utilize different means to do it sometimes- but not always. They do have proprietary formats just like Microsoft and they do more in software to restrict users than Microsoft. About the only thing they don't do is demand a s/n for install Mac OS X and that mostly has to do with the fact they detect the hardware. Faulty it is. Yet it is no more faulty than Microsoft's systems of using s/n and phone/internet activations. Apple does still have activations in its products. From registrations to DRM.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Bert64]

All DRM schemes are proprietary by their very nature... Apple don't want DRM, they are forced to use it by the content providers or they won't supply any content. Their DRM scheme for music is gone now, and was always very easy to bypass.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[jo_ham]

What proprietary formats? I gave you specific examples. What proprietary and "lock in" data formats do they use?

What exactly do they "do in software" that restricts users more than Microsoft?

The provide *optional* software registration for OS X and several of their products - the pro apps are all optional registrations, it has nothing to do with activating or validating the installs.

The last bit of DRM on the data formats they use is on movies and TV shows from the iTunes store, which they are working on removing (like they did with music), but cannot do so unless the content providers (namely the movie and TV studios) agree.

They "take advantage" (you try to make it sound like adding commercial weight to an OSS project is a bad thing) of free software and yet still favour data transparency - there is nothing stopping them using a proprietary blob for their formats on the other side (for example, the mailbox format in Mail - they didn't have to use .mbox, or they could have used .mbox but wrapped it up inside an app bundle with Mac-only extensions, or their office formats (iWork etc) could have used a non-documented and difficult to reverse engineer XML format, instead it is well specced and open for anyone to write a full converter.

All you are doing is spreading FUD of your own. Apple are no angels, but your post is nothing more than accusations with no citation. I gave you examples, I expect them in return in a counter argument. Oh right, you don;t have any, you're just making it up.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

i do love the ipad for one thing.. that is it will force asus to a competitive price for their (better) products based on windows 7 :))

thats the only thing i like about the ipad.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Razorfish

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[babyrat]

. They just didn't have a chance to getting working along with everything else they had to make happen to get the iPad out in a reasonable time frame.

iPhoto, not so much...

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Try to sell me a hand power drill that requires two hands to operate and I'll tell you to suck it.

What about a hammer drill?

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[multipartmixed]

Maybe they should hire a professional top-tier comedian.. like Jerry Seinfeld.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Locutus]

"Does anyone remember Windows?" was something I've heard that Bill Gates said when Microsoft engineers and management were attempting to develop Java tools following Sun's rules. Bill Gates and others knew and know that without Windows, Microsoft is weak and can't control the market nor the developers. That is why they fought so hard to kill off cross platform C++ frameworks in the early 90s, why they went so far to kill off the Netscape Navigator browser, etc, etc. Their livelihood depends on Windows and any device which can be considered a computing device is a threat to their existence because of a theory and book called "The Innovators Dilemma". Little things grow up to become big things and replace old things.

In a way, Microsoft is a 'one trick pony'. They've only ever made any money off of Dos and Windows. So, it is indeed part of their DNA and their DNA sequence is very limited. Even I thought they'd have been smarter about Vista and designed it as a completely modular OS and was shocked when they didn't ship a Vista Embedded version. And even more shocked when they had to stop the End of Live for Windows XP to allow it on netbooks to fight off the growth of GNU/Linux on netbooks. Aren't they currently showing some new MS .Net stuff where applications specially written can run on Windows CE/Mobile and a Windows desktop? DNA is right IMO.

LoB

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[Patch86]

iPhone OS is basically Mac OSX, you know. Or at least is entirely derived from it. The UI, as any good Linux user knows, is not exactly a core part of the OS; the main difference between them is just the changed GUI and a swathe of limitations and disabled features to fit in the new device (not complaining by the way, it all works out well).

In fact, if I remember rightly, they even used to claim "the iPhone will use Mac OSX" during development until they got around to christening their new OS.

In any case, it seems to be pretty much exactly the same approach taken with Win7 / WinMob.

Re:Mobile and Microsoft

[masmullin]

OSX was not a complete "ground-up" rewrite. BSD existed, Mach existed, and NS existed.

It's certainly totally different from OS9, but it's very far from a "complete rewrite".

Been There, Done That

[s73v3r]

Slate tablets running a regular, desktop OS have been around for almost 10 years now. And they still have yet to gain traction or become popular. Mainly because people don't want a desktop OS in a slate form factor. Part of the reason why these new phone OSes are making inroads in the tablet space is because they were designed from the ground up to work in low power conditions (ARM processors) and work with a finger based input. What's more, the app catalogs of these OSes are full of apps that are designed with these limitations taken into account from the beginning.

People say they want a slate running a desktop OS so they can use all their existing desktop OS apps. But what they fail to realize is that any slate tablet is going to have the internals of a netbook or worse, and the apps they're gonna try and run are going to be designed with a keyboard and mouse in mind, which will make finger usage difficult. Sure, you could carry around a keyboard and mouse with you in case you need it, but then you've kinda defeated the purpose of a slate tablet in the first place (portability), and might as well carry around a much more powerful laptop.

Re:Been There, Done That

[Miros]

So is the problem that Microsoft wants to hold on to backwards compatibility too much? Why can't they do what apple has done with the iPhone, or Google with Android? They certainly have the resources (talent, cash). What's the problem?

Re:Been There, Done That

[Knara]

Mainly because general end users don't want a desktop OS in a slate form factor.

There are some domains where a desktop OS tablet is very desirable.

Re:Been There, Done That

[BarryJacobsen]

Mainly because general end users don't want a desktop OS in a slate form factor.

There are some domains where a desktop OS tablet is very desirable.

There are some domains where a Barium Enema is very desirable. That doesn't mean the general population wants one.

Re:Been There, Done That

[cowscows]

Microsoft's first answer to every problem has been to protect/promote Windows, even when that wasn't a viable strategy. At first they tried to ignore the internet because it conflicted with their idea of Windows, and then when that didn't work, they came up with IE and tried to use that to tie the internet to Windows. Windows is their biggest cash cow, it's their marketshare dominance, it's the heart of their company. (One big exception to this is the Xbox, which despite not making any money, has at least been successful in terms of marketshare. If the Xbox dropped you into a windows desktop when you powered it up, it probably would've failed pretty hard).

They're finally starting to get it, but at this point, they're years behind.

Re:Been There, Done That

[wondafucka]

Slate tablets running a regular, desktop OS have been around for almost 10 years now. And they still have yet to gain traction or become popular. Mainly because people don't want a desktop OS in a slate form factor. Part of the reason why these new phone OSes are making inroads in the tablet space is because they were designed from the ground up to work in low power conditions (ARM processors) and work with a finger based input. What's more, the app catalogs of these OSes are full of apps that are designed with these limitations taken into account from the beginning.

People say they want a slate running a desktop OS so they can use all their existing desktop OS apps. But what they fail to realize is that any slate tablet is going to have the internals of a netbook or worse, and the apps they're gonna try and run are going to be designed with a keyboard and mouse in mind, which will make finger usage difficult. Sure, you could carry around a keyboard and mouse with you in case you need it, but then you've kinda defeated the purpose of a slate tablet in the first place (portability), and might as well carry around a much more powerful laptop.

1) Something doesn't have to be popular (i.e. ubiquitous) to be purchased and make the manufacturer money.

2) The slate will have the internals of a netbook? Really? My slate has a core 2 duo and 8 gigs of ram.

3) I have a laptop that flips around to a slate. It would be worthless for drawing / video editing if it didn't have the full OS features.

Sure, there is a market for a computing device that is a slate. There is also a market for a slate with a full fledged OS.

Re:Been There, Done That

[Knara]

Nonetheless, the OP said "people don't want them". Some "people", however, find them very useful and do want them.

Re:Been There, Done That

[interval1066]

"So is the problem that Microsoft wants to hold on to backwards compatibility too much?"

Yes. The legacy of Office haunts them to this day. That is their bread and butter, and remaining compatible to that old productivity stack is the Prime Directive. And their ball and chain.

Re:Been There, Done That

[Anonymous Coward]

whisper_jeff is that you?

Re:Been There, Done That

[Anonymous Coward]

actually Office is MSFT's cash cow get your facts strait.

Re:Been There, Done That

[BlueStraggler]

The statement "people don't want them" in the context of mass-market products should be interpreted thusly: people is not simply a plural, but a mega-plural, referring to people in units of millions. Therefore "people don't want them" means: "when we round our sales projections to the nearest million, the total sales are zero." A few niche-market individuals may be interested in these products, but people are not.

Re:Been There, Done That

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonetheless, the OP said "people don't want them". Some "people", however, find them very useful and do want them.

I can't tell whether you are talking about the OS or the enema at this point.

Re:Been There, Done That

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the internet. Knara is not allowed to admit that he is wrong. SOrry about that. You'll be refunded etc.

Re:Been There, Done That

[Anonymous Coward]

...Windows is their biggest cash cow, it's their marketshare dominance, it's the heart of their company. (One big exception to this is the Xbox, which despite not making any money, has at least been successful in terms of marketshare...

I mostly agree with your overall point, but these 2 sentences are a bit simple. Office is their real cash cow. Windows is just a tool to help maintain dominance. Office is dominant and makes boatloads of money for MS. On this front, they're not years behind the competition they're years ahead of it.

As nifty as any touch interface will be, it will take a backseat to a keyboard and mouse when it comes to most business applications. Quick example... if I'm populating a spreadsheet table, do I really want the keyboard to pop-up/disappear each time I begin/end editing a cell's contents? Not really.

Re:Been There, Done That

[jedidiah]

> Sure, there is a market for a computing device that is a slate. There is also a market for a slate with a full fledged OS.

The slate du jour is a slate with a full fledged OS. They've just hidden away that fact and made it difficult for people to treat the device as such.

Key features have been gutted but can obviously be supported and the hardware in generally anemic.

However, it tends to make a good first impression and that's all that a lot of people care about.

Re:Been There, Done That

[cowscows]

Yeah, office is certainly big for them, no argument there.

You're also correct about certain significant computing tasks being tied to a real keyboard for all practical purposes. Microsoft could probably shut down all of it's consumer related divisions tomorrow, and continue to be plenty profitable for years just by selling office software to businesses. But even if they could stay afloat like that, being relevant only in the area of word processing and spreadsheets is a rather lame fate for a company that basically had a stranglehold on the computer world a decade or so ago.

While it'll never completely replace desktop machines, mobile computing is obviously the next big thing, and where all of the growth is going to be for at least the next few years. And microsoft has become all but irrelevant there. The only thing going for Microsoft in this case is that they pulled themselves out of a mildly similar position once before, when they finally realized that the Internet was a big deal, and they threw together IE to catch up with Netscape.

But that situation was only mildly similar. They've got more than one real competitor this time, and I don't think Apple or Google are going to sit back and relax for a couple years like Netscape did. They can't undercut google on price, and they aren't going to beat Apple at hardware/software integration. They can't bundle a mobile device in with windows, and the interface differences with a touchscreen basically throw out a lot of the software lock-in that might exist. I do not envy the position that they are in.

Re:Been There, Done That

[s73v3r]

Convertible laptops are different, as they are basically regular laptops with Wacom tablets built in. The article and discussion are about slate tablets, having the form factor of the iPad or the late HP Slate. Devices that don't have keyboards built in, and rely on either a pen or touch interface as the primary input mechanism.

Re:Been There, Done That

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually Office is their biggest cash cow, bringing in something like 70% of their profits last I checked. Windows is just the DRM-infested Microsoft-controlled platform that ties people to the cash cow, along with the poorly documented, impossible to implement file formats documents are stored in.

Re:Been There, Done That

[Eskarel]

Mainly because people don't want a desktop OS in a slate form factor.

This is actually patently incorrect. People do what their desktop in a slate form factor, they want all the power and all the applications they're used to running.

The caveat however is that they want all that with reasonable performance and they want their old apps to magically adapt their user interfaces so that they don't suck on a touch screen, and they want it at about a third of the price point most of these things hit.

The iPad, to the degree that it is successful for reasons other that "ooh shiny apple", is so because while it offers fairly limited functionality it does so meeting those three criteria. That doesn't mean that users don't want more than the iPad can offer them, it just hints that some of the functionality with those criteria is better than all of the functionality without it.

Microsoft is of course at a serious disadvantage here, simply because they're never going to be able to meet the user interface criteria for all the third party windows apps, and people will want all the apps which run on windows to run on the slate version thereof. Apple and Google on the other hand didn't have any software which runs on their Operating Systems(or any Operating Systems) prior to releasing their mobile offerings so they don't have that issue.

Re:Been There, Done That

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonetheless, the OP said "people don't want them". Some "people", however, find them very useful and do want them.

Pedantic -1

Re:Been There, Done That

[Gilmoure]

I thought the Official Slashdot Terms of Service require all references to 'people', where they may find something desirable or appreciative of a steenkin' Apple product to be termed 'sheeple'?

And saying 'people' may not be enamored with a Microsoft product is tantamount to saying that Apple products ROCK!

Re:Been There, Done That

[Patch86]

They can't bundle a mobile device in with windows...

There's a thought. Free smartphone with every Windows 7 Ultimate licence. That'd certainly soften the blow to the wallet.

You may have just sole the WinMo problem AND the piracy issue all at once. Kudos!

Re:Been There, Done That

[Patch86]

Office isn't the problem. They own Office- they could compile it to work on any OS they choose to make. There is a Mac version after all- which actually came first, before the Windows version.

The problem is the 100,000 other programmes on the Windows platform, which MS don't own. They've no way of forcing the owners of those programmes to port them to their brand new OS. If they break backwards compatibility, it's that stack which won't necessarily transition smoothly- and which would cause migrating users the most theoretical pain.

Doesn't Win7 have a "tablet mode"?

[twidarkling]

I could have sworn I heard in the run up to release that there were tablet features built-in to Win7. Pare down the install footprint by ripping out unneeded drivers, and then you've got a full OS on a tablet. Sure, it's probably not as good as an OS designed specifically for a tablet, but you'd still be able to connect whatever peripherals you had ports for, and install whatever you wanted.

Or is the tablet mode just not that useful for
touch/stylus computing?

Re:Doesn't Win7 have a "tablet mode"?

[MBGMorden]

You basically repeated the summary. Yes, it has a tablet mode. Yes, some manufacturers are going to ship with it. Yes, it's going to suck.

As much as I loathe Apple's restrictions, they have the right idea with the iPad. As a device, the entire desktop UI metaphor needs to be rethought.

Microsoft is the type that's always going to throw a stylus and a full keyboard into the mix "just in case", and developers will enevitably end up writing with those in mind because it's closer to what they already know how to work with on the desktop. In short, Microsoft's products in new markets suck because they just don't have the balls to try something REALLY different. They take baby steps when they should be taking leaps.

Re:Doesn't Win7 have a "tablet mode"?

[jaavaaguru]

As much as I loathe Apple's restrictions, they have the right idea with the iPad. As a device, the entire desktop UI metaphor needs to be rethought.

The iPad has a desktop UI metaphor? I've used my friend's iPad a lot and to me it definitely doesn't appear to have a "desktop" UI. In fact I'd say it's UI is perfectly suited to the device, although it might benefit from multitasking.

Re:Doesn't Win7 have a "tablet mode"?

[dangitman]

The iPad has a desktop UI metaphor? I've used my friend's iPad a lot and to me it definitely doesn't appear to have a "desktop" UI.

That's exactly what the post you were replying to was saying. It was praising the iPad for not using a desktop UI. Basic reading comprehension is quite a useful tool.

Re:Doesn't Win7 have a "tablet mode"?

[adonoman]

I've had a Windows 7 slate for several months now (combo multitouch/stylus), and it works great for me. Windows 7's handwriting recognition is amazing. Multitouch gestures do leave something to be desired, but given that I have a directional pad on the side of the slate, I generally use those instead. With a full wacom digitizer, I can use photoshop and other pressure sensitive apps. It's bright enough that I can read in almost full sunlight. If I need to type, I just use a bluetooth keyboard. And of course, there's OneNote, which is really the single most important app I use. I've played with a friend's iPad a few times, and it really just seems like a cheap toy compared to what a real slate can do. The real reason PC-based slates haven't caught on (IMHO), is entirely based on the price point. A decent tablet costs $2000 or more - anything less and you're getting a piece of crap. Of course, at $2000, you alienate a very large portion of your potential market. Most PC manufacturers realized this, and stayed from tablets almost completely, not willing to make an expensive device that wouldn't sell, or an overly cheap device that wouldn't be worthwhile.

Apple's marketing magic has managed to create a market for cheap-ass crap slates, by not marketing them as computers, but rather as toys for grownups. They've lowered the functionality expectations, so people won't be disapointed with something barely more than a big cell-phone. I wouldn't even want to try Photoshop on an iPad if it were available. I'd give OneNote a shot if it existed for the iPad, but I wouldn't expect much from it.

Re:Doesn't Win7 have a "tablet mode"?

[twidarkling]

I don't think I repeated the summary. I said that it wouldn't be as ideal as a pure tablet-designed OS, but WebOS isn't that either, it's a smartphone OS, just like the iPhone OS.

This, however:

Microsoft is the type that's always going to throw a stylus and a full keyboard into the mix "just in case",

is something I didn't consider. On-screen keyboards still aren't that great, though I prefer stylus-use over fingers (I push at odd angles, so the "target" usually interprets my finger as just to the left or right of where it actually is). But a reliance on the part of program developers on keyboards and mouse-type input would severely hamper the experience since it's supposed to be a mobile platform. Point taken to heart.

Re:Doesn't Win7 have a "tablet mode"?

[MicrosoftAstroturfer]

I have to agree. The Windows 7 Multitouch experience really has to be seen to be believed.

Re:Doesn't Win7 have a "tablet mode"?

[Anonymous Coward]

You basically repeated the summary. Yes, it has a tablet mode. Yes, some manufacturers are going to ship with it. Yes, it's going to suck.

I think what you meant to say is "Yes, Slashdotters will automatically claim it will suck."

In practice, Win 7 is the latest and best in a long evolving Tablet computing environment. Unlike many posters, yes I have one, and yes, it rocks. It gives me everything a PDA does, plus -real- handwriting recognition, plus it's a real machine. I have half a dozen developer environments on it, because it -has- a keyboard. I also use it for most of my graphics work, because (swivel) it -is- a tablet. Inkscape and Art Rage are happy here.

And while my tablet is finger-friendly, fortunately, it's not finger required. Apple is responsible for the retardation of user interfaces in the form of capacitive touch. In case you haven't had both, cap touch is SLOPPY. Your gigantic fingertip is not and will never be the elegant tool that a stylus is. See for yourself - try signing your name. Of course the fanbois will look at their scrawl and say it's great, but most reasonable people will admit it's a butchered semblance of their real signature. With a stylus, this and a million other motor control examples aren't an issue.

Apple's idea of a tablet is to reduce the world to a toaster. Sorry, but some of us do real work instead of buying toy toasters to play with. And as soon as you want to actually do something instead of consume what other people have done, Win 7 is the tablet OS of choice.

Re:Doesn't Win7 have a "tablet mode"?

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like a great tablet. It's so great that you need to use a dpad with it because the touch interface doesn't work well, and you need to carry around a bluetooth keyboard in case you want to type on it. Awesome! Where can I get one?

Re:Doesn't Win7 have a "tablet mode"?

[Gilmoure]

Sounds like Homer Simpson's car.

Re:Doesn't Win7 have a "tablet mode"?

[Radiohead]

If only most people could go to a store where knowledgeable sales staff could demonstrate Win 7 multitouch on long rows of demo devices in a comfortable space. The computer stores around me with Windows PCs lock down the demo units with awkward devices, start trying to sell you instead of helping you explore, and don't have much patience/interest if you're "just looking".

Apple stores play no small part in the success of their devices.

Re:Doesn't Win7 have a "tablet mode"?

[adonoman]

I realize I'm just replying to a troll here, but whatever. I can to the little flicky gestures if I really wanted to, but it's so much easier just to rock my thumb up and down instead. I could use the onscreen keyboard if I so desired, but I'm more a fan of tactile feedback if I'm going to be doing a significant amount of typing. Most of the time, I just use the stylus and rely on handwriting recognition.

Why don't they...

[RingDev]

Build a tablet that can run .Net and Java apps native, can render CSS3 (gotta get at least 80% on Acid3), and can run both Flash and Silverlight in the browser. I'd be willing to part with some hard earned cash for it.

But for now, if my choices are between "be a tool, buy an Apple" iPad and a "more bloated than 3 day old roadkill" Windows 7, I think I'll wait.

-Rick

Re:Why don't they...

[Miros]

What about one of these? (dell tablet running android)

Re:Why don't they...

[ihxo]

Dude, you are getting a Dell!

Re:Why don't they...

[h4rr4r]

Not gonna happen. MS would never let .Net run anywhere else and the same will be true for silverlight soon enough. Note no play ready DRM for moonlight and the fact that the windows version is gaining features the mac one will never get. Microsoft would never do anything that does not serve to prop up their windows desktop monopoly.

Re:Why don't they...

[jaavaaguru]

At 1.5" bigger than the iPhone's screen, and being tied to a mobile carrier, this seems more like a slightly-too-large cell phone and less like a tablet.

Re:Why don't they...

[gbjbaanb]

what does Build a tablet that can run .Net and Java apps native mean?

Re:Why don't they...

[interval1066]

Screens too small. But too large to be a cell phone. LOSE.

Re:Why don't they...

[shutdown -p now]

the fact that the windows version is gaining features the mac one will never get.

What "Mac version"? Silverlight is the same between Windows and Mac, and there's no other version of .NET running on OS X. Or do you mean desktop .NET vs Silverlight? That's a meaningless comparison.

Oh, and GP is talking about a Microsoft tablet, which would, presumably, run a Microsoft OS - just not desktop Windows. So how is this all even relevant?

Re:Why don't they...

[Mike Buddha]

Perhaps you don't understand simple geometry? Adding 1.5" ot iPhone's screen nearly doubles the area. That, coupled with the much higher resolution of the Dell device makes for a very capable tablet.

Re:Why don't they...

[masmullin]

I think it means a tablet computer that can run .NET and Java applications w/o requiring any extra interpretation software (for the record, iPad does not run .NET or Java software).

WebOS

[codepunk]

So the slate is going to run WebOS instead? Good luck with that.

Apple may insist that developers use native C or Objective C for device programming but that is
exactly the reason that IPhone apps smoke any other platform when it comes to performance.

Re:WebOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when HP bought palm?

Re:WebOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Except, of course, that it doesn't.

Re:WebOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Hugh? You can use javascript or native C code to write your apps for webos too, so I fail to see your point.

Re:WebOS

[vivek7006]

You make it sound as if WebOS is slow and bloated, which it clearly isn't. WebOS is built on top of Linux kernel and is specifically designed for use on devices with touchscreens. Android and WebOS are a much better alternative than windows7 for slate devices and OEMs seem to be realizing that now

Re:WebOS

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Sounds like you missed the news of the availability of a native development plugin system...

Re:WebOS

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

that is exactly the reason that IPhone apps smoke any other platform when it comes to performance.

So why not let the consumers decide? If apps written in Objective C or C++ will "smoke" the competition, what does Apple have to fear?

Re:WebOS

[Rockoon]

Apple may insist that developers use native C or Objective C for device programming but that is exactly the reason that IPhone apps smoke any other platform when it comes to performance.

Did you know that C isnt some magical language that makes compiling easier or more efficient?

Re:WebOS

[intheshelter]

Except, of course, that it does.

Time will tell if Android will succeed

[Tibor the Hun]

Android market can get segmented quickly in terms of display resolutions and hardware capabilities, how do these "big players" expect to deliver quality apps to the Android devices?
I already have an iPad (that makes me a sheep according to some of you more "in the know" experts, I know) but I do like the idea of a strong competitor to Apple. Unfortunately, I don't think Android will deliver.
Had HP, Dell or anyone else had the balls to embrace Linux a few years back and deliver a few meaningful apps, I think they maybe would have a leg to stand on. But as it is right now, Apple provides you with all (well, maybe not all) your tunes, videos, pictures, comic books, books and a decent website experience, with some really nice apps, I think other manufacturers have a really steep hill to climb.

I am not convinced that the average consumer is interested in a fragmented (albeit "free") experience. Or to use a car analogy, at some point it was fun to start the Monte Carlo by sticking a pencil in the carb, but at this stage in my life, I just want the car to start when I turn the key...

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[MrHanky]

Your "car analogy" doesn't have anything to do with what you wrote.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[h4rr4r]

Android is selling more units than iphone at this point. It has already delivered. How is that flash video working out for you?

The android market is not fragmented in any meaningful way, if you target 1.5 or 1.6 it will run on everything later. This whole Android is fragmented thing is FUD from the apple camp.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[MrCrassic]

I disagree. Android is a multi-touch OS through and through, and its stock form is simple enough to be used by most people (or at least those who would purchase an iPad otherwise), but is flexible enough under the hood to allow curious types to modify to their heart's content. While it's true that Apple provides all of the apps most users will want to use the tablet for, Android does the same thing AND allows alternatives. Don't like the stock browser? Download another from the Market. Want a better eBook reader or camera app? Download them from the Market. iPad/iPhone users don't have that option.

Additionally, Android has another huge advantage in the tablet arena: it's capable of TRUE multitasking for all applications. This is somewhat detrimental for a phone since battery life and memory is already limited, but is not as much of an issue for tablets, which are expected to be way more powerful and don't have to dedicate resources to the cell phone component. Getting similar multitasking on iPhoneOS is only possible through jailbreaking, which is a concern for a LOT of people, considering they either aren't technical enough to do it (yes, I know it's super easy) or are afraid of potentially long-term consequences associated with it. Basically, it makes the tablet that much closer to a computer, without the extra overhead.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[gyrogeerloose]

Your "car analogy" doesn't have anything to do with what you wrote.

Sure it does. He's saying that he no longer wants to be forced into dicking around to get his tablet computer to do what he needs it to do, much in the same way that he no longer wants a car that requires him to pop the hood and stick a pencil in the carburetor in order to get the engine started. He's also saying that the iPad is the equivalent of a newer car that just starts when he turns the key.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[WiseWeasel]

"How is that flash video working out for you?"

It's blessedly absent, thank you for asking!

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[gyrogeerloose]

Android is selling more units than iphone at this point.

Not really. Roughly half of all those Android phones that were "sold" over the last quarter we're actually given away by Verizon.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[jbeach]

Almost all iPhones were given away by AT&T, by that criteria.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[WiiVault]

Yeah buy-one-get-one free tends to cause lots of units to move. That said the Droids are great smartphones and really don't need the desperate firesale to sell. The HTC Incredible lives up to isn't name indeed.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

And how many iPhones were subsidized by AT&T?

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[gyrogeerloose]

Almost all iPhones were given away by AT&T, by that criteria.

No they weren't. All last quarter Verizon was running a two-for-one offer. Buy an Android phone (with a two-year contract, of course), get a second one for free. AT&T has offered nothing like that with the iPhone.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[Anonymous Coward]

AT&T don't do the 2 for 1 deals verizon is doing. Also, re sales volume, we'll see what happens after the iPhone refresh next month...

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[sootman]

The android market is not fragmented in any meaningful way, if you target 1.5 or 1.6 it will run on everything later.

So I should ignore all the great new features that came out in 2.0 and 2.2? And continue to do so? What a fantastic solution!

From Wikipedia:

Issues concerning application development

• Developers have reported that it is difficult to maintain applications working on different versions of Android, because of various compatibility issues between versions 1.5 and 1.6,[112][113] specifically concerning the different resolution ratios of the various Android phones.[114] Such problems were specifically encountered during the ADC2 contest.[115]
• The rapid growth in the number of Android-based phone models with different hardware capabilities also makes it difficult to develop applications which work on all Android-based phones.[116][117][118][119]. As of May 2010, only 32% of Android phones run the 2.1 version, and 37% still run the 1.5 version[120]

Follow the links in the footnotes. This is not just "FUD from the Apple camp."

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[MrHanky]

No, he was writing about fragmentation of the market. He does not say a word about being forced to dick around -- which you correctly point out is what the "analogy" is about -- and neither does that have anything to do with the problems of the android platform. So basically, he plain forgot what his complaint was, and veered into the stale cliché of Macs "just working", and you support him because you're an idiot fanboy just like him.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Android is selling more units than iphone at this point

No. Android was the benefit of a carrier offering a buy one get one free program. It's a big leap from actually "selling more units."

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[Toreo asesino]

This is what I love about iPhoners.

"We don't want to be able to choose or not Flash video"

Seriously.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, the iPhone is a decent platform for running apps, and once in a while AT&T will give you enough signal to use it as a phone as well. Locking in (and even STAYING locked in) with AT&T was the worst decision Apple has ever made.

On the other hand, I wouldn't buy one even if were on a different network. It's still just locked down hardware sold at a premium to the trendy masses who don't know better.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[glavenoid]

Hence its appropriateness for slashdot!

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[JAlexoi]

Android market can get segmented quickly in terms of display resolutions and hardware capabilities

That is simply false. Coming from a person that does no know where the fragmentation comes from. Android's H/W issues are not issues for reasonably smart developers*, and those that have issues with screen sizes you don't want near you device.
The fragmentation is at the API level, that in some cases is very drastic... Though still manageable.
* - I've developed graphics heavy apps for Android that work perfectly well on different screen sizes, and the platform widgets are not affected by the screen size issues whatsoever.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[DragonWriter]

I am not convinced that the average consumer is interested in a fragmented (albeit "free") experience.

Android users don't have a "fragmented" experience, they have an experience of the particular device they choose -- and the greater diversity of Android devices on the market (currently the case with phones, and almost certainly the case in a short while with tablets) means that consumers are more likely to find an Android device aligned with their interest than an iPhoneOS device that is as well aligned with their interests.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[jo_ham]

That's slightly skewed - this is the slow time for iPhone, especially with the 4G around the corner. There is no doubt that Android is making huge gains (I was in the O2 store yesterday and they had some lovely HTC handsets out on display with Android) - the real crunch is going to be how sales stack up when the 4G comes out.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[Karlt1]

Android is selling more units than iphone at this point.

Only in the U.S. Apple is still selling more worldwide.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[Anonymous Coward]

The android market is not fragmented in any meaningful way, if you target 1.5 or 1.6 it will run on everything later.

Did you happen to work for MS back around the turn of the century? This sounds just like their marketing: "We just released Windows ME *and* Windows 2000 and have millions of NT, 98 and 95 machines still in service, but as long as you code everything for Win95, you'll be able to run on everything later!" Well, yes, as long as the features that you need aren't only available in a later version and there aren't any backwards-compatibility bugs (which *never* happen) that break that 1.5 app on 2.2.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[jbeach]

Never mind. : ) Didn't know about that 2-for-1.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[Draek]

But having the choice not to have the choice to choose is still giving you more choice than you'd have without it! or something.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[R3d M3rcury]

I still haven't quite figured this theory out yet.

Let's assume that's true (it's not like anyone else sells Android phones) and half of the phones were given away. Why did that happen and why is that a bad thing?

First, Verizon buys cellphones for wholesale and "sells" them at retail. So if they buy too many and don't sell them, they drop the price or include them in a buy-one-get-one free kind of deal in order to get them out of the warehouse so they can put newer and better ones in there. In this case, what they had was HTC Eris (branded by Verizon as the "Droid Eris") which is pretty wimpy by today's standards. So they gave those away.

If I'm a customer, I got an okay cellphone for "free." If I'm an Android developer, that's another Android handset out there, which means a potential customer. If I'm Google, it means one more person using Android and seeing my ads. If I'm HTC, I got paid a wholesale price for those phones that Verizon bought. So the only person I see being "screwed" by the Buy-One-Get-One-Free deal is...Verizon.

Another possibility, of course, is that it's HTC that got stuck with the huge inventory sitting in the warehouse and they decided to move those phones out so they sold them to Verizon at a deep discount, which gave them away in order to get more people to pay them $30 a month. This is the sort of thing that happens every day in a number of different businesses. Hell, even the all-mighty Apple has been known to discount last generation Macs. I even remember seeing last generation CRT iMacs being sold in CostCo! But when Apple does this, it's a good thing. When anyone else does it, it's a bad thing.

Now, if I'm an investor in HTC, it might make a difference to me (depending on how sales for the Eris were projected). But, again, as a customer, I got an okay cellphone for "free." As a developer, I have another potential customer. As Google, I have one more person who will see my advertising. As Verizon, I'm getting $30 a month from that person with the "free" cellphone. And, as HTC, I may not have made as much money on the HTC Eris as I thought I would.

I suppose my point is, why does it matter whether those phones were sold or were given away?

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[Totenglocke]

All last quarter Verizon was running a two-for-one offer. Buy an Android phone (with a two-year contract, of course), get a second one for free.

Close, but not quite correct. Verizon was running a two-for-one smartphone offer. It was not specific to Android, nor did the second phone have to be an Android phone even if the first one was.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[catmistake]

especially with the 4G around the corner

um... what? You are awefully confused... may want to get your eyes checked... becayse, sorry, that's 3G that's around the corner. Yes... in no time at all we'll have excellent 3G coverage in the US... just around the corner... coming soon to a provider near you.

By the time the US gets 4G (let's just say,"gets" means... say... 40% coverage nationwide), flying cars will be going out of style.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[gyrogeerloose]

I suppose my point is, why does it matter whether those phones were sold or were given away?

It only matters when it comes to someone claiming that the sales of the Android were greater than the sales of the iPhone. Since Verizon was doing the two-for-one and AT&T was not, the figures for the Android phone are not directly comparable with those of the iPhone for that quarter.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[R3d M3rcury]

I'm not sure about that.

Suppose Verizon had charged one dollar. Would it still be directly comparable? Must the phones be the same price in order to be compared? If Verizon started selling an Android phone for $49, would you say that those aren't "comparable" to the iPhone?

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[ppanon]

Not really. It only matters if it's not sustainable. If the costs on the Android are low enough that HTC and Verizon still make money (maybe just not as much), and if the promotion gets them word-of mouth advertising and mindshare that would have required more money to secure through just advertising, then it's still a win for them. Were Verizon hemorrhaging customers to AT&T iPhone contracts and did this campaign help them retain customers profitably?

To put it another way, Windows PCs outsell macs by a huge margin and the price tag is a big part of the reason for that. People don't argue that the sales prices on Windows PCs mean that their market share can't be compared to that of Macs. I don't see why that line of reasoning would apply any more to Android vs. iPhone.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[jo_ham]

I mean the iPhone 4G, which (if not the official Apple name for it) is how everyone is referring to the next release of the iPhone, due to be announced officially by Steve at the WWDC keynote next month.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a nokia phone, Nokia could have spared the working hours of their engineers to make it more usable than give it flashablility. A function that anyway is turned off.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[je ne sais quoi]

Have you even read any of the comments in this thread? Nearly the entire discussion has revolved around how MS tablets have never worked because they chain them to the windows desktop paradigm, i.e. stylus for mouse, small cramped keyboard. Flash is the EXACT same way. It doesn't belong on a phone, it doesn't belong on a touchscreen interface. If it were there, then a lot of companies would be designing shitty flash apps instead of dedicated iphone apps and the user experience would be downright awful and the ipad/iphone/ipod touch would flop. Apple wants to succeed with the ipad, not design yet another in a long line of tablet flops.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[intheshelter]

Incorrect on many levels. Current iPhone OS is capable of multi-tasking. I can listen to iTunes and browse the web. So it IS capable of multitasking, but it just does not allow 3rd party apps to multi-task. The next iPhone OS will allow multi-tasking on a wider scale for certain types of applications. That being said, your statement of "TRUE multitasking" is pure BS. It's only true multi-tasking because that is the way you want to multitask. That doesn't make it "true multitasking" but rather your preferred way of multitasking. Try not to confuse the two because they are not the same.

Your next error is "multitasking on iPhoneOS is only possible through jailbreaking, which is a concern for a LOT of people", which I highly doubt, and I'm sure you can't prove with any credible data. I think it is only a concern currently with a tiny minority of people, and that a LOT of people not only don't care, but they don't think about it at all (which is pretty much not caring since if it was an issue they would be thinking about it).

If Android floats your boat then get one, but don't assume that the way you want something done is the "true" way or the only right way. It's just your preference.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[MrCrassic]

Fail.

This is what I said:

Getting similar multitasking on iPhoneOS is only possible through jailbreaking, which is a concern for a LOT of people, considering they either aren't technical enough to do it (yes, I know it's super easy) or are afraid of potentially long-term consequences associated with it.

I never said it WASN'T capable of multi-tasking; I said that in order for iPhone users to enjoy similar multi-tasking privileges Android users currently have, they need to jailbreak their phone and install Backgrounder. Want proof? Get an iPhone and try listening to Pandora while browsing email in its stock form. HINT: it's not possible.

Additionally, the next version of iPhoneOS will allow more FLEXIBLE multi-tasking in that it will allow certain types of apps to run in the background (link). However, it's still not TRUE multitasking; by that, I mean that ANY app can run in the background when needed.

Again, that's fine for a mobile phone, but not fine for a more powerful tablet device. Considering that it was one of the more vocal complaints iPhone users had, I'd say that it's more than a minority issue at this point...

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[pandrijeczko]

Dear Web Developers

Now look, it *REALLY* isn't good enough. The iPad has been out all of two months and not one of you has made any attempt to take all the Flash code off of your websites so that all the rich Applites can enjoy the fulfilled browser experience promised to them by Uncle Stevie.

So please stop what you're doing, take down all your Flash-laden web sites and please have them rewritten and coded in HTML5 by close of business tomorrow.

Thanks.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[catmistake]

I mean the iPhone 4G, which (if not the official Apple name for it) is how everyone is referring to the next release of the iPhone, due to be announced officially by Steve at the WWDC keynote next month.

ah, I see. Allow me to educate you on how incredibly stupid it is to refer to the next iPhone this way, even if everyone, and this includes "intelligent" journalists, are calling it the "iPhone 4G"

First of all, and what I feel to be the most important, is that everyone, and I mean everyone, when speaking about cell technology, uses the capital 'G.' This is pretty much standard now, even if not official. If I say "2G," or "3G," or "4G," everyone immediately assumes I am talking about generations of cell technology. Someday, there WILL be an iPhone 4G. But it will not be in 2010, nor I doubt 2011.

Second of all, the next iPhone due to be announced next month, is not the fourth generation iPhone. Where everyone seems to make the mistake is in assuming that the original iPhone and the iPhone 3G are separate generations, but this is not so. The platform of these two phones is nearly identical, and even Apple considers them to be from the same hardware generation as is apparent from the way they are identified internally.
iPhone1,1 = orig iPhone
iPhone1,2 = iPhone 3G
iPhone2,1 = iPhone 3GS
iPhone3,1 = Apple's next iPhone

You see, the original iPhone was actually a 3G cell phone (EDGE is technically a 3G technology, 2.5G is a made up marketing term). The iPhone 3G updated the baseband radio and added a GPS chip, which is insufficient for a bump in generation. It's precisely the same hardware platform between the two releases. The 3GS added a faster processor, thus meeting the criteria for a generation bump. The next iPhone has done the same thing, making it the THIRD generation of iPhone from Apple. Also, it will be a 3G cell phone.

I hope you can see that many are making a mistake that will only serve to introduce confusion into language when talking about iPhone, which is a cell phone, and cell technology generations. Prior to the discussions about the next iPhone appearing online, NO ONE used the capital "G" to refer to Apple's hardware generations, and ALL used it when referring to cell tech generations.

So it really is your choice... do you want to sound foolish, and quite possibly confuse anyone who is listening? or do you want to be accurate?

Some suggestions: call it the "iPhone HD" or the "iPhone A4" or the "A4 iPhone," or maybe even confusingly the "iPhone 4," but please stop refering to it as something that everyone agrees it can not possibly be (there is no 4G network to speak of in the US, thus, there will be no iPhone 4G).

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[jo_ham]

Hey, don;t shoot the messenger - you're preaching to the choir. I brought up the problems with calling the 3G and 3GS iPhones by those names for exactly this reason.

I guess Apple hired the guys who decided on the names "USB Full Speed, USB High Speed", etc.

We are not sure what Apple will call it - it has not been announced, but we will find out at the WWDC keynote. All the tech journalists (and all through the gizmodo theft/buying stolen goods debacle ) everyone has been calling it the iPhone 4G, but it remains to be seen if that is the real name.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[jo_ham]

Prior to the discussions about the next iPhone appearing online, NO ONE used the capital "G" to refer to Apple's hardware generations, and ALL used it when referring to cell tech generations.

It is referred to as 3G and 3GS because those are the official Apple names for those version, with that capitalisation - they don't designate hardware generation, it's the actual name (albeit a confusing one).

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[Patch86]

Reading comprehension much?

He said that, because Android is becoming fragmented in terms of hardware, screen resolution, yada yada, he foresees it being difficult to have high-quality apps that work seamlessly from one Android device to another, comparably to how an iPhone app works seamlessly between different iPhone models.

Presumably, a trying to run an app written for Android on a different device, with different hardware, would require dicking around. He compares this with starting a classic car with a pencil, in comparison to buying an uninspiring new car that runs perfectly.

He also laments that it might have been different if a hardware giant had gotten involved earlier, although I'm not sure I follow the logic.

I'm not saying I agree with him (actually I'm moderately sure I don't), but the point of his post seems clear enough.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[MrHanky]

The OP: "Android market can get segmented quickly in terms of display resolutions and hardware capabilities." Look up the word "segment". The OP is right in that the Android market can segment apps so that if they don't work on small screens (240 x 320, for instance), they won't be available to install. And so, since understanding the OP correctly according to the dictionary, and the OP then being consistent with how the Android market works, and you being inconsistent with both the OP and the Android market, I suggest you FOAD.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[catmistake]

so... just because idiots call it that, you have to? Let them be idiots. You know better... call it something else. You could think up your own names, or I gave plenty of options that aren't patently false, like "iPhone 4G" is in at least 2 ways.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Apple, and everyone, would have been. better off if they just fucking used numbers. Why they just couldn't call the iPhone 3G the iPhone 2 is a mystery. Then the 3GS would have been the iPhone 3, and the next one no one would have trouble calling the iPhone 4, and even though it it is still a 3G phone, no one would get confused or need a clarification to clear the ambiguity. Someone was a total moron the day they named the second iPhone the 3G. A part of me wonders if they also worked on the genius marketing team that named the Rambo movies. We are missing Rambo II.

Re:Time will tell if Android will succeed

[Anonymous Coward]

lmao, 2 Rambo's and a Rambo 3, but no Rambo 2

I dare say I agree

[Toreo asesino]

Windows 7 is the first OS that "could in theory" work on a tablet/slate, but like TFA says, it's taking Windows and down-scaling it for a much lesser subset of it's design. Windows CE did this; tried to have the full/normal Windows desktop experience on a (much) lesser device and now they've scrapped it in favour for a massively redesign & specifically engineered mobile OS, because that too was ultimately a shit idea. Horses for courses.

I don't see tablets/slate as being productivity work-horses; you get a laptop if you want that. Tablets require something tailored, and as much as I hate to admit it, Apple have gotten off to a good start on that at least. I think it's way more likely Windows Mobile 7/8 would be a better fit, or indeed Android.

For the same reason

[Stan92057]

For the same reason Jobs wont allow flash on anything apple runs with a batteries?? It will suck the batteries dry too fast.

Archos 9

[riboch]

Archos 9 (http://www.archos.com/products/nb/archos_9/index.html?country=us&lang=en) ships with Windows 7, the older Archos 7 and Archos 5 shipped with Angstrom Linux and they even release the source code.

Re:Archos 9

[Anonymous Coward]

If Archos had put even a little bit more into marketing (back when it would have mattered), the iPod wouldn't have such a strong following, and there would have been no iPhone (everyone would have wondered what the hell Apple thought they were doing trying to break into the cell phone market). Apple hasn't been innovative since the days of Woz. They have one hell of a marketing department though.

Re:Archos 9

[man_of_mr_e]

I own an Archos 7, and while they may release the source, there is no authorized way to install another OS (or the same OS with new features). You have to physically hack the system and solder wires on to the motherboard to hack into it...

Not a good example.

Re:Archos 9

[Sabriel]

That's Windows 7 Starter edition, mind you. And I wasn't impressed by the factual differences between the Multimedia and Specs pages...

Big print on the Multimedia page: This device will play Full HD* Video (in 1080p resolution) on its magnificent touch screen. Thanks to the latest Intel ATOM Z series microprocessor and the built-in Intel® video chipset, all you have to do is hit “Play”, sit down, and enjoy the show on the beautiful 9" screen.

Small print on the Specs page: 8.9” LED backlight 1024x600 pixels

Dear Archos, x600 != 1080p...

Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[0xdeadbeef]

I see a lot of talk about it changes everything, but I found it to be nothing more than an giant iPod that is marginally more pleasant to use than a smaller device for surfing the web and watching movies. It doesn't replace a real computer, because entering text on it is a pain in the ass. You can't even put things to read on it without third party software and a ridiculous sync process in iTunes.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Plugging in a cable into a device is ridiculous for a sync process?

Someone's never used ActiveSync or whatever the hell Palm fed the general public before going to WebOS.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

For those of us running Linux or that choose not to install the bloatware that is iTunes on our PCs, yes...it is an arduous process. Simple documents such as music and pictures should have the capability to be dragged and dropped as if the iWhatever were just another removable drive.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[0xdeadbeef]

You have absolutely no clue of what I'm talking about.

Though it is funny you should bring up HotSync and iTunes. That is one of the many similarities between the iPhone and old-school Palm devices.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

No, no they shouldn't.

There should be no sacred cows with technology. Orthodoxy only encourages well, bland, useless technology that does very little.

Coding best practices? Sure. But, when it comes to the usability sphere, whatever man. I'd rather not manually reindex all of my music and videos. I'd rather have iTunes do it for me.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[Grishnakh]

Plugging in a cable into a device is ridiculous for a sync process?

Considering how ubiquitous Wi-Fi is these days, I'd like to know why it isn't used more for syncing.

But what he was complaining about was the need for iTunes software for syncing, instead of just being able to drag-n-drop.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[Azureflare]

Do you own one?

I do, and I haven't hooked it up to iTunes since I bought it. Everything I need on it is synced through mobileme. The iTunes store, app store and book store are all on the iPad and respond very nicely. I dunno about other people, but that's my usage pattern.

I mainly use the iPad for movie watching, browsing the web on the toilet, and book reading. Basically what I use my iPhone for, but with a bigger screen and more access to other apps.

I wouldn't say it's a killer app but it's definitely a nice luxury item

Where the iPad really shines is travel. It's much better than bringing a laptop if all you want to do is watch movies, read books, and use Pages to jot down story ideas (something I do).

It's actually pretty handy if you have an awesome dream that gives you a really good idea for a story. I actually used it for that. I picked it up right when I was still groggy from sleeping and the dream was fresh in my mind and started plugging away at the onscreen keyboard. Sure, I made some typos but the general gist of the idea was there.

I wouldn't say that it's really worth the price ( I got the lowest end wifi version and really don't miss 3g at all). But it is a nice product to own.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[NekSnappa]

I have an iPad. I'm using to enter this post. I also have an iPod touch that I used for about a year for web surfing and reading e-books.

It's not meant to be a replacement for a full on computer. In fact when it was officially announced, and people trashed it as an overgrown iPod Touch my first thought was, "Great. Just what I was hoping for."

As far as needing

third party software and a ridiculous sync process

to add something to read. You're just wrong. I can download books from Amazon, or the book section of the iTunes store straight off of Wi-Fi or 3G on to the iPad.

I rarely use my home commuter for anything other than as an HTPC anymore. It fulfills my home commuting needs nicely. While at work I have a very powerful desktop to do my job. At home I have a tablet that allows me to surf, do personal email, and read books in any room, or on my deck, or in the parking lot.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

What's wrong with wanting both? I prefer to manually index my files, you prefer using iTunes. How difficult is it to simply allow both options?

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[0xdeadbeef]

I can download books from Amazon, or the book section of the iTunes store

Are you really so dense, or just trolling? I'm talking about putting existing media on the device to read. PDF files. Text files. Documents in a myriad of formats that Preview supports natively in Mac OS, but the iPad doesn't support.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who has used an iPod, iPhone and several Mp3 players which, spec-wise, were "better" than the iPod, I couldn't possibly disagree more.

Having a sync process with some dialogs that say "sync this if it's checked" "don't sync those" "put in 3 of these I haven't heard yet" etc etc is very valuable. I don't want to fuss over my Mp3 player or (in the future iPad). I want to plug it in, know that I backed up, know that anything needed syncing did so, and be on my way.

I do not want to drag anything over to my iWhatever

The best UI is not having to do anything because the device did it automatically as soon as it was plugged in.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[pizzach]

People say that, but isn't it possible to format iPods with different filesystems? How well would a Windows machine deal with a native Apple filesystem like HFS+. ...or worse ZFS?

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another iPad user. Other than the name it's a great device. I can type nearly as quickly as on a keyboard with it and often will use for corresponding, updating records in salesforce, etc.

  Ultimately this is an output device though, but until I got one I didn't realize how little input i actually do sitting on my couch with the laptop.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[sootman]

I'm looking forward to getting one. One reason is that I'd like to be able to read sites like Slashdot comfortably in and on the couch. A laptop is a bit unwieldy and my iPhone is a little too small, plus it's a pain to type on. Even typing the first couple lines here would have taken a few minutes. I do a lot of "moderate browsing and light typing" and for me, I think the iPad will be do a lot of that really well. Certainly not ideal for all tasks, but really great for some. And you can get books on it right over the air with several apps--and who cares if they're third-party or not? You install them once, update them OTA, and then they're just another button on the home screen.

I'm not saying the iPad WILL change the world, but I would like to point out that a lot of devices DID change the world and it wasn't obvious that they would in the beginning.

And as far as it being "just a giant iPod"--remember, a swimming pool is just a giant bathtub. :-)

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can "drag" to a regular folder, you can sync.
Everything iTunes syncing does I can do with rsync and MORE. I can sync my mp3 player on both my desktop and laptop and can mirror the changes from one to the other. If I delete an mp3 on my desktop rsync will mirror it to my mp3 player and next time I connect to my laptop I can mirror from the mp3 player to the laptop.

iTunes won't allow you to sync to more than one computer at a time, how's that for you ? crippled piece of shit.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[drinkypoo]

There should be no sacred cows with technology. Orthodoxy only encourages well, bland, useless technology that does very little.

And that is what is wrong with the iPod. They force you do to things their way, when other ways would be just as good. The dependence on iTunes tells me that if the iPod ever gets confused about what media is actually on the device, you're going to have a hell of a time reclaiming the space. You'll probably have to transfer the same content to the pad again before you can delete it. But more to the point, if I want to add an mp3 or a PDF to an iPad, I can't do it without buying it through the device or using my PC, which sharply deprecates the value of the iPad's mobility. Meanwhile I can do this with any Windows Mobile phone without any trouble.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[pandrijeczko]

Sorry, but the iPad is totally useless to someone like me.

I already have servers, desktops, laptops and netbooks communicating with each other on my home network with the ability to transfer all my existing music, movies and eBooks between each other - Windows or Linux, they can transfer files between each other using open established protocols like SSH, NFS and SAMBA, plus all of them have at least one USB port so I can plug in a USB stick or drive and transfer stuff to and from them portably.

So where does the iPad fit into all of this? Okay, it will take my MP3 music and play it pretty much piecemeal but if I want to play movies on it then I'll either have to sit here for hours picking my nose while it converts it to an acceptable format or re-buy if from the iTunes store.

And as the owner of a (free) iPod Touch, I've never found an easy way of transferring documents to or from it, unless I feel like jailbreaking it and putting an SSH client on it...

It doesn't *REPLACE* what a computer can do because it cannot *DO* a basic task of what other computers can do, namely exchange common format files using common protocols.

It's a white elephant that's only sold so many so far because fanbois will pay good money for anything with the logo on it that appeals to their need to be in an exclusive elitist club.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[Anonymous Coward]

I plan to get an iPad this Friday, so this is not intended as trolling, but the fact that you claim the iPad fulfills your "home commuting" needs better than a "home commuter" probably means you might want to keep an eye on that auto-correction.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[NekSnappa]

I'm neither dense nor trolling. Simply replying to your words. So this time I'll reply to the whole sentence, instead of just the part that made you sound dense. And emphasize the part that you bring up now.

You can't even put things to read on it without third party software and a ridiculous sync process in iTunes.

To me that means that you think the only way to put info on the thing is through a wired sync. From now on before you accuse someone of being dense or a troll, maybe you should go back and make sure that you wrote what you meant to say.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't personally have one, but my son is in college and there is a guy on his floor that has one. The college he goes to is a paper writing college and he does ALL his papers on the iPad. Quite impressive...

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree in principle I suspect Apple has to pander to the DRM hungry enertainment industry in order to keep the iTunes store stocked with new content. And since their buisness model requires a well stocked iTunes store to sell their hardware they can't afford to take every moral stand we'd like them to.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[NekSnappa]

I think that a couple of IPA's had something to do with it as well.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[intheshelter]

And how exactly do you do it with your mythical Windows Mobile phone without buying it through the device or using another PC? Does it magically appear? I can't wait to find out how you've circumvented the laws of physics by making mp3's or pdf's appear magically from another dimension and show up on your Windows phone.

I call bullshit!

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[intheshelter]

What are they "forcing" you to do exactly? That's a bit of hyperbole, don't you think? You are FREE to buy the solution that fits your wants/needs best. If you buy an iPod that doesn't fit your lifestyle then isn't that YOUR fault? It is not Apple's responsibility to come up with every possible syncing scenario. I don't see you complaining that all other MP3 players don't offer syncing via iTunes. Apparently you're only for choice and freedom when people are free to choose the solution YOU want? You ignorance on this is staggering.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[intheshelter]

So why don't you freedom fighters "choose" to develop your own syncing software for the iPod? You seem more interested in whining that someone else doesn't develop things the way you want them than going out and fixing it yourself. And therein lies the issue. You want everything handed to you. Apple wanted things done a certain way so it is easy for average consumers to use and they have accomplished it. If you want a different solution then get off your ass and make it.

" Simple documents such as music and pictures should have the capability to be dragged and dropped as if the iWhatever were just another removable drive."
- Why should they have this? You make a grand statement like it is one of the elemental truths of the universe, but in the end this is just your opinion and what YOU want. Again, if you really want it so bad then get off your ass and develop your own MP3 player ecosystem and I'm sure you'll be able to do a better job. Until then shut up and quit whining.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[drinkypoo]

And how exactly do you do it with your mythical Windows Mobile phone without buying it through the device or using another PC? Does it magically appear? I can't wait to find out how you've circumvented the laws of physics by making mp3's or pdf's appear magically from another dimension and show up on your Windows phone.

Obviously, you've never owned a Windows phone. It's just a little PC running Windows CE. You can copy files to it and such. Numerous WinCE phones have USB2 OTG, meaning they can serve as a USB host, and you can plug a flash drive into them. Microsoft has announced that there will be no file manager in Windows Phone 7, but there is clearly a filesystem explorer in the OS, and it is also highly unlikely that the user will not be able to download an actual file.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

And that is what is wrong with the iPod.

No, no it's not. I plug my ipod into a usb cable in the morning, and while it downloads the newest podcasts I run off to shower. I unmount it and head to work.

Screw manually reindexing files. I've got things to do with my day(like post on Slashdot and listen to podcasts).

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

802.11g's max throughput: 54mbps
USB2.0 high speed max throughput: 480mbps.

Besides, you can't charge off of Wifi. Plus, wireless syncing is insecure.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[Grishnakh]

Depending on exactly how much you need to sync, the speed might not be that much of a problem. Sure, it's slower, but people watch Netflix movies over much slower connections that 54 Mbps. No, you can't charge with Wifi, but you can make it secure with WPA2.

I'd think it'd be pretty convenient for your device to sync automatically anytime you're even in the house, instead of having to go to your computer and connect a cable and mess with some software.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I usually update about 50 to 100 megs of podcasts a day onto my phone. Possibly more depending on who updates what.

I don't think so. You'd still either have to mess with the phone or mess with iTunes if you wanted to manually resync anyway.

While WPA2 makes Wifi secure, I'm not thrilled with the idea of having a port open no matter where I go that could be hijacked and my phone bricked.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[Gilmoure]

And therefore, useless to anyone else as well?

I mean, a motor-scooter is totally useless to me so why the hell would anyone else want one?

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[pandrijeczko]

And therefore, useless to anyone else as well?

Yes, pretty much so. Once you realise the iPad's actual capabilities compared to a netbook that's half the price, it's useless - except for pumping up the egos of people who want to be seen posing in public with one.

Like I said in other replies, it's a status symbol designed to make fanbois feel part of an exclusive little club.

Re:Does anyone praising the iPad actualy have one?

[jstomel]

And as the owner of a (free) iPod Touch, I've never found an easy way of transferring documents to or from it, unless I feel like jailbreaking it and putting an SSH client on it...

Really? Hmm... I don't have an iPod Touch, but I do have an ipad and I have several apps that allow me to move almost any file I want on to it wirelessly. There are several methods, but my preferred one is to start the app on the ipad and then point the browser of the computer with the media files on it at a supplied IP address. Then you just select the files you want to transfer and push "upload" and boom, they are transfered. Transferring files from it is more difficult. Best solution is usually either to email them (for small files) or use one of several apps that allow you to mount your ipad as an external hard drive and grab the files off.

Or rather, anything Jobs says, goes.

[Shados]

At this point, while the products Apple is shipping obviously have good points (many of them) and in many ways are going in the right direction, it still wouldn't matter. If Apple had released an e-Ink tablet, we'd be reading how anything non-e-ink is bound to die and that backlit tablets are dead. If they released something that is in every way opposite to the iPad, we'd be reading about how anything close to the current ipad is dead and simply "not the right tool for the job".

Apple, the greatest marketing company in existance. A company that can make the most closed product ever, and have even OSS advocates embrace it as the holy grail.

Windows 7's issue here isn't anything based on capabilies, design, or limitations. Its that "It wasn't approved by Apple fanboys" and nothing else.

Re:Or rather, anything Jobs says, goes.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you acquire a string of people saying I hope you acquire a string of people saying you are talking total wank. Anyone who agrees, copy and paste. Madness. Does it prove anything? Nooooo...

Re:Or rather, anything Jobs says, goes.

[dangitman]

Windows 7's issue here isn't anything based on capabilies, design, or limitations. Its that "It wasn't approved by Apple fanboys" and nothing else.

Funny how not so long ago, Apple and its users were insignificant and doomed to obscurity, irrelevant in the face of the Windows behemoth, but now somehow "Apple fanboys" wield immense power to control entire industries.

Alternatively, it might be that your analysis is way off and not really based on reality. I wonder which is more likely?

Re:Or rather, anything Jobs says, goes.

[Gilmoure]

If Apple fanbois say Windows 7 is dead then yeah, it's dead. Don't cross Apple!

Only Apple could convince the industry that...

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Only Apple could convince the industry that limiting features is a good idea.

I wont touch the iPad... not until v3.. and until it can sync in other ways without itunes etc.

Re:Only Apple could convince the industry that...

[Locke2005]

I won't touch the iPad until it has a USB interface. Sometimes being able to add flash memory or a real keyboard is a good thing...

The problem with adapting Windows 7 is that apps designed for WIMP need to be completely redesigned for a tablet anyway, so keeping a common GUI API buys you nothing. Tablets don't support right click, scroll wheels, shortcut keys, tool tips... e.g. many of the UI conventions that PC software designers take for granted. Mac software is a little easier to port because it assumes only a 1-button mouse, but it is still a different paradigm; a touch screen is like using a mouse where the computer has no idea where the mouse is unless the button is pushed! Most games also suck on a tablet, simply because most games are designed to need more than a single button for input.

Re:Only Apple could convince the industry that...

[gyrogeerloose]

I won't touch the iPad until it has a USB interface. Sometimes being able to add flash memory or a real keyboard is a good thing...

I agree that a real USB port would be a great addition to the iPad. In the mean time, however, any standard Bluetooth keyboard will work with one and Apple also sells one that will plug into the docking port.

Re:Only Apple could convince the industry that...

[BlueStraggler]

Only Apple could convince the industry that limiting features is a good idea.

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 16 years before Steve Jobs was born. Apple may have good taste, but they didn't invent it.

Re:Only Apple could convince the industry that...

[jo_ham]

It has a real keyboard already - they sold them at launch. It also has USB - the dock connector has pinouts for standard USB, you just need an adaptor.

It should have had an actual USB port on the side though - I agree that was a silly omission.

Re:Only Apple could convince the industry that...

[guyminuslife]

I have devised the perfect counter for that argument, marred only by this sentence.

Re:Only Apple could convince the industry that...

[guyminuslife]

I won't touch the iPad until it's something else.

Re:Only Apple could convince the industry that...

[sootman]

Then why is it that it was only Apple that "[convinced] the industry that limiting features is a good idea"--exactly as the GP said?

In other words, Antoine might have been the first to say it, but it was Steve Jobs (and J. Ive) that proved it. Antoine, evidently, didn't convince anyone of anything. (Except for Steve.) I would say the GP's point stands.

Re:Only Apple could convince the industry that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Both Steves are rumoured to have questionable traits, whether anger management or personal management styles. However Steven Ballmer is a balding manager of a company that focuses on putting out products that are "good enough" for the largest segment of the market, and is considered an also-ran to co-founder Bill Gates. Steve Jobs is an Apple co-founder and a showman who drives Apple to make products that are "Insanely great". Which would you rather write about? Which is going to naturally make better copy and sell more publications?

Re:Only Apple could convince the industry that...

[Aladrin]

That quote is only true when the features are there in the first place.

It's a great quote for Agile programming and design of things in general, but you have to keep the requirements in mind.

Re:Only Apple could convince the industry that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only Apple could convince the industry that limiting features is a good idea.

Yes, because we all know you'd be crazy to buy a box of dedicated 'feature limited' tools when you could get a Swiss army knife that has all those tools in one device.

Re:Only Apple could convince the industry that...

[MtViewGuy]

My gripe with the iPad comes in two parts:

1) You can't print from an iPad directly to a printer even through a Wi-Fi connection to a Wi-Fi-enabled printer. Apple promises a fix, but who knows when will that happen.

2) The lack of Flash means many web sites are unreadable or forces webmasters to do the expensive process of completely re-writing the web site to be HTML 5.0 compatible.

3) Apple should have incorporated iTunes itself into the iPad. That way, you don't need a second computer to buy music, video and e-books that work on the iPad.

Re:Only Apple could convince the industry that...

[drinkypoo]

I agree that a real USB port would be a great addition to the iPad. In the mean time, however, any standard Bluetooth keyboard will work with one and Apple also sells one that will plug into the docking port.

That helps with the keyboard, but not with accessing flash memory. Apple wants to encourage users to buy new media rather than loading their old media, so they made it arduous to load your media. Oh sure, it's easy to load media from iTunes, but that's just another way to show you ads. It would also be nice to be able to print through it. A $130 tablet running Android 1.6 can handle all of this, why not the iPad? Answer: Apple deliberately crippled the device to promote their online store, and force users to install iTunes so they can show them ads and thus spy on them.

Re:Only Apple could convince the industry that...

[Anonymous Coward]

2) The lack of Flash means many web sites are unreadable or forces webmasters to do the expensive process of completely re-writing the web site to be HTML 5.0 compatible.

Which is a good thing because it also meets the various Accebility requirements for Disabled Visitors.

Simply put, "FLASH" (tm) does not and can not meet any disability access requirements as issued by any government at this time and Adobe does not give a rat's ass about it. So I'm quite pleased that the Ipad is forcing a rewrite of websites to meet HTML standards instead of using flash - especially commercial/business websites.

Re:Only Apple could convince the industry that...

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

so we're using the handicapped now to bad mouth adobe?

Really most of computing is not very handicap accessible once you start using applications other than an OS.

Re:Only Apple could convince the industry that...

[Gilmoure]

But now, Mac laptops don't have any mouse/trackpad button. It's all done with gestures. 1 finger click for left click, 2 finger click for right and so on. I haven't tried out a tablet yet but would be interesting to see if they carry over to iPhone OS.

Re:Only Apple could convince the industry that...

[Gilmoure]

3) Apple should have incorporated iTunes itself into the iPad. That way, you don't need a second computer to buy music, video and e-books that work on the iPad.

Uh, it is. Same as on iPhone and iPod Touch.

Re:Only Apple could convince the industry that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Being French, He probably attributed this quote to himself, although Michelangelo illustrated the intent about 400 years earlier.

Now if they would only take Steve Jobs away...

ive noticed recently

[nimbius]

it either feels like microsoft isnt driving alot of this casual, tactile technology...either that or they just arent getting the same level of coverage as Mac (which is certainly entirely possible.)

another point...Being a techworker i also feel like most of the tablet, slate, plate, and whatnot technology doesnt have anything to offer me, or is flat out just not designed to be something for me. id like something ssh/vi/telnet/fluxbox and FLOSS if possible but it just feels like alot of the cutting edge stuff is also horrendously proprietary and places the user at an egregious loss in terms of privacy and cost. Whats on the horizon to fix those issues? i guess if i ask it another way: when do i get my content back?

Re:ive noticed recently

[h4rr4r]

An android device that lets you load your own roms should be fine for that. Well there are some closed drivers, even the N900 has those.

Re:ive noticed recently

[Grishnakh]

another point...Being a techworker i also feel like most of the tablet, slate, plate, and whatnot technology doesnt have anything to offer me, or is flat out just not designed to be something for me. id like something ssh/vi/telnet/fluxbox and FLOSS if possible but it just feels like alot of the cutting edge stuff is also horrendously proprietary and places the user at an egregious loss in terms of privacy and cost. Whats on the horizon to fix those issues? i guess if i ask it another way: when do i get my content back?

These devices aren't replacements for your laptop computer; they're really more like appliances. You're just supposed to use them for tasks that regular consumers like to do: watch movies, listen to music, play games, etc. They basically combine multiple separate devices into one: in the past, we had separate mobile phones, portable video games (GameBoy), movie players (portable DVD players, and later dedicated ones like the iriver PMP and PMC), music players (iPods and WalkMans before that). Then, the iPhone came along and combined all that onto one device, but it kinda sucked for movies because of the tiny screen. So now, they've made the iPad, which eliminates the phone function (since that would be awkward on such a large device), but gives you a nice big screen for watching movies.

If you want to do real computing tasks, and want the versatility of a real computer, then just get a notebook computer, or a netbook if you want something smaller and lighter. These mobile devices may be "real computers" underneath, but they're so locked-down that you're very restricted in what you can do with them.

As for "your content", that's another problem with these devices. If you want total control over your files, don't use one of these things.

Re:ive noticed recently

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the Touchbook as it's a Debian Linux based Tablet. Might be exactly what you're looking for.

Re:ive noticed recently

[Gilmoure]

Actually, the form factor is pretty cool and some kind of console/VNC/Terminal device in this form factor would be cool. Maybe Cisco will make one.

Probably off topic but

[Stan92057]

Probably off topic but, i think way too many are expecting too much for a tiny tablet.Its not a computer,its an Internet device. For it to do everything everyone thinks it should do you need a full sized laptop. Until there is better batteries technology,windows would have to be way stripped down to work,and i don't think MS wants people to have a stripped down windows experience. Why do you think jobs controls what goes into an iphone or ipad.

Re:Probably off topic but

[pandrijeczko]

Why do you think jobs controls what goes into an iphone or ipad.

Because wads of money make him stiff as a board?

Why? Cause nobody will buy them

[WillAffleckUW]

All your future is belong to iPad.

Get used to it.

Re:Why? Cause nobody will buy them

[WillAffleckUW]

LOL. For techies, sure.

But the rest of the world doesn't care.

Apple ftw.

Get used to it.

How's your Betamax holding up?

Re:Why? Cause nobody will buy them

[DragonWriter]

LOL. For techies, sure.

But the rest of the world doesn't care.

Apple ftw.

With smartphones, I've heard from plenty of non-techies -- who are current iPhone owners but not Apple cultists -- expressing jealousy over various newer Android phones that they've run into people with.

The greater diversity of Android devices resulting from the absence of central control may make it more likely that any individual consumer will find one that is too their liking than the handful of iPhoneOS devices available -- and there is no reason this would be any less true for tablets than it is for phones.

I suspect Apple will, in the mobile market, end up the same place they are in the traditional desktop and laptop PC market -- a large successful player with a very vocal and devoted fan base and a substantial, but nowhere near majority, share of the market.

Re:Why? Cause nobody will buy them

[pandrijeczko]

So in your words then, Apple products are designed for non-technical people who have no idea about product specifications or capabilities, and therefore no idea what they're actually buying.

Well at least we agree on something...

Re:Why? Cause nobody will buy them

[Itninja]

Android is superior to iPhones in many ways.
Betamax was superior to VHS in many ways.
Then the porn industry went with VHS because it was cheaper.
VHS became the standard.
So maybe he was saying that the iPhone is doing well because it's the choice among porn distributors???

Re:Why? Cause nobody will buy them

[WillAffleckUW]

Thanks, I'll tell Apple their stock shouldn't be up 2 percent today and deny reality just for you.

The market cares nothing about what you "want", only the most optimal solution that clears transactions for both buyers and sellers.

Re:Why? Cause nobody will buy them

[WillAffleckUW]

Do you understand the actual inner device workings of the electronics in your HDTV set?

I used to hand-crank chip designs using oscilliscopes - most "tech geeks" today have no idea how that works. We also used to hand-tune our floppy and hard disk drives.

Re:Why? Cause nobody will buy them

[pandrijeczko]

Do you understand the actual inner device workings of the electronics in your HDTV set?

You're doing the typical fanboi thing of sidestepping the issue... but I'll bite anyway.

If I took it apart I could start to work out what bit did which and with an oscilloscope and good enough recall from my electronics and microprocessor days (as well as enough time) I could find out a lot more about which component did what. Even without that I'm knowledgeable enough in the technology to know what I am looking for when it comes to HDTV, to the point where I have help friends and relatives make decisions about computers, TVs, DVD players, etc. etc.

I can also pretty much build a Linux machine from source code and would have no problems building the PC to run it on from a pile of bits on the floor - again, I'm the local techie that always has somebody else's PC in my hallway which they've dropped around for me to fix or rebuild Windows on.

So, yes, I consider myself knowledgeable enough in consumer electronics to know what I'm looking for and anything I don't know, I know what questions to ask & where to find the answers.

Re:Why? Cause nobody will buy them

[WillAffleckUW]

Great, so then, you're NOT the target market for these devices.

Now, go get a degree in Sales and Marketing, and you might understand what that means.

Most people today can't tune their own cars, due to the changes since the old days. It makes little sense to market tablets to geeks - there just aren't enough of us in comparison to people who just "consume" and don't want to know how things work.

You've run up against the problem - you want the market to deliver products that you want, in a form factor you want, at a price and time that you want. But the most optimal solution for market clearing of buyers and sellers is to deliver them to non-geeks who just want to use them and will be easier to "service".

Markets are like that. And, nowadays, so is technology. The optimal consumer is a teenage Japanese girl.

Re:Why? Cause nobody will buy them

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple surpassed Microsoft for market cap today.

The market made it's choice.

Tablate to Slate config??

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree to a point. I am using a Tablate PC's right now and with no bloatware to support the touch screen Windows 7 does the job very well as per touch design of Windows 7. Where I agree is I think the "Slates" today just simply don't have the power to run Windows 7, thus the Atom CPU. HP EliteBook 2740p is running Windows 7 just fine and its not any bigger then a Slate. I think the way to go is make these tablates more like "Slate" configurations and it will work perferctly.

The problem isn't the OS

[WillyWanker]

The operating system isn't the problem. It's the GUI. There is no reason why you can't run Windows 7 on a slate with a different GUI that is custom-tailored to a touchscreen environment.

If slates are going to stand any chance of being successful they need to be full computers running a full OS (even if it's Android) that have a properly-designed GUI. Smartphone OSs just aren't going to cut it.

Re:The problem isn't the OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I checked, Windows 7 requires about 4GB of ram to run well, yes it CAN run with 1gb or even 2gb, but it's slow as sh*t, even with most services turned off it still runs like dirt on a 1.6 Ghz with 2GB of ram netbook.

Now imagine a scaled down mobile 1ghz processor like the snapdragon with 1GB of ram trying to run Windows 7? I don't want to wait 2 minutes for my device to boot up, and then another god knows how much longer for my Internet Browser and Email programs to load. Desktop applications are bloated with crap features nowadays, and are not meant to be run on lower powered devices, and just imagine cleaning up spyware and viruses on a tablet... yay fun!

Now put Windows 95 on a tablet and I'm down.

Re:The problem isn't the OS

[0123456]

There is no reason why you can't run Windows 7 on a slate with a different GUI that is custom-tailored to a touchscreen environment.

Sure. You just can't run any Windows applications without rewriting them to use the new GUI.

In which case, what's the point of paying the Windows tax?

Re:The problem isn't the OS

[RoboRay]

Your netbook doesn't run Windows 7 "slow as sh*t" because it's only got 2GB of RAM... It runs "slow as sh*t" because you're running it on an Atom processor.

Windows 7 performs perfectly well on my 5 year old 2GB laptop with a Core Duo (yes, that's CD, not C2D!) processor.

It would run "slow as sh*t" on a Snapdragon too, but that doesn't have anything to with your statement that you need 4GB of RAM to run Win7.

Re:The problem isn't the OS

[WillyWanker]

Not necessarily. It would depend upon the app. Obviously certain apps are going to be less suited for a slate than others, but that's going to be true no matter what the OS.

And if there is broad enough support for the new GUI, app developers shouldn't balk so much if they do indeed need to rewrite parts of their code to make it better suited for the slate environment. Much like how some apps simply won't run or look right under Vista or Win 7 but were fine in XP. This is nothing new.

Re:The problem isn't the OS

[thatkid_2002]

No... as far as Windows goes - the OS is still a problem. Sure, you COULD make a pretty GUI overlay but the facts are:

• Previous attempts at overlays have been extremely buggy and sucky. Though you could write a whole new shell or use KDE4 (yes, you can use it as a shell on Windows) or BlackBox... But companies simply are not that clever!
• The Windows OS itself is just to heavy and degrades too fast.
• People will know it runs Windows and will want to load their usual applications onto the device - these interfaces just put you back to square 1.

At the end of the day these devices are going to be in the hands of those treacherous users who will try do infinitely stupid things with them. Windows simply will not stand up to that beating.

Re:The problem isn't the OS

[WillyWanker]

Then they will fail. No one other than a small number of tech minded people will buy them. And there aren't enough of us to support the entire tablet market. It's that simple.

Unless they are dirt cheap (and we know they won't be) people are going to expect them to work like a computer, not a smartphone. Apple flunkies are used to paying 3x as much for a sub-standard product. PC users won't tolerate that. You can't offer them a $500 tablet running WebOS and expect them to buy it. The first question is going to be "what the hell can I do with this if it doesn't run Windows?"

Who in their right mind will pay that kind of money for a tablet that does 1/10th of what a laptop does for the same price or more? You'd have to be really retarded (or an Apple fanboi, or both).

You have to remember that 90%+ of people that use smartphones have the costs subsidized thru their carrier. This is going to be another barrier as they think to themselves "gee, my Android smartphone only cost me $100, why would I spend $500 on the same thing just with a bigger screen?"

I really don't see how you're going to get enough people excited about an expensive, limited-use device to sell the kind of quantities needed for them to become a viable, lasting product.

And these aren't my own personal feelings. Hell, I'm frothing at the mouth at the thought of an Android tablet. And I have no qualms about paying $500 for one. But I'm in the minority, and I fully understand that.

If you want your target audience to be as large as possible you need to appeal to as many people as possible. And that unfortunately means Windows.

Re:The problem isn't the OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. The OS (the NT 6.1 is the OS in the Windows 7) is not the problem at all. The Windows 7 desktop is because it is not designed for touchscreens. YES. OS has SUPPORT for touchscreens, but the GUI is not designed for such. The superbar is the only part of Windows what actually is something what was thought for such use. And it is for starting applications and then getting a pop-up when you swipe finger up.

Check out the KDE SC 4.x series. We all know how KDE SC is designed configuration possibilities in mind. Many say it is weakness and nerd thing. But they do not understand it is the usability what others do not have. User can tweak the UI how THEY need and want. If the sane default do not please, just turn it how it is needed/wanted.

Plasma Desktop (Replaced KDesktop. There is two versions from it to different purposes. Plasma Netbook and Plasma Mobile) is designed from the beginning to be finger friendly as well.
KDE applications can enjoy the power of KDE platform, where you can just resize toolbars, customize the functions to them and actually tweak them bretty well how you want.

When it comes to touchscreens, KDE SC wins Windows 7 down very easily, even KDE SC has it own bugs about touchscreens (like you have problem to select file when having single click, because you can not hover finger over icon to get the + sign top left corner. There is coming a change where the + signs are by default optionally shown when using touchscreen so you can just select punch of files very easily.)

When I got tablet-PC in my use for a week. I played around with Windows 7 two days. Then I installed Mandriva with KDE SC 4.3. Suddenly I noticed that I can tweak the UI exactly how I want and I need. And the whole GUI turned to be almost perfect like Apple would be designing it, but I had the power. You only need to install few replacements for tasksbar and you can get same effect as Windows 7 superbar (the previews, easy closing etc). Otherwise all my normal applications were just perfect. No WIMP UI. KWin allowed to have every window in fullscreen without borders. So user do no need to do window management like when using Windows 7.

Re:The problem isn't the OS

[david_thornley]

If slates are going to stand any chance of being successful they need to be full computers running a full OS (even if it's Android) that have a properly-designed GUI. Smartphone OSs just aren't going to cut it.

In other words, the iPad not only isn't successful, it has no chance of ever being successful. Despite having sold over a million units so far, with international sales just starting.

I think you have an odd definition of "successful".

Re:The problem isn't the OS

[WillyWanker]

1 million units is a drop in the bucket. And I can guarantee you that 1.) These numbers, given out from Apple, are grossly exaggerated, and 2.) Sales for the iPad will slow dramatically over the next 6-12 months.

Compare this to the 85 million or so netbooks that have been sold. 1 million units is not a success. It's pretty anemic, especially when you consider it has NO significant competition.

The iPad proved what??

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing's been on the market for like a couple of months, and it's already proved something other than that Apple knows how to sell hype? Feh.

Multi-touch, Multi-touch, Multi-touch....

[rothstei]

A guy in my building was showing me his Fujitsu multi-touch tablet the other day. Running Windows 7. Looks pretty sweet. But here's the deal:

hot-off-the-assembly-line Intel SSD
4 Gigs of RAM
Microsoft Software ONLY

Microsoft software only, because nothing else was designed for multi-touch. Without multi-touch, your finger's just a mouse. With multi-touch, everything is "iPad magic".

I think this lays bare the reason the iStuff is so successful: everything is designed for multi-touch, and the system is designed with a processor and RAM to match what it is trying to do. You want to run a souped-up smart phone, you end up with an iPad. You want to run a laptop with a full operating system, you end up with a $2K+ laptop, running only Microsoft software.

But believe me, you make your system suit the needs, and Windows 7 looks just like an iPod. The transformation is pretty amazing. But you run it on a cast off Dell, and you get the Windows we all know.

I think the crux of the matter though, is multi-touch. If only let in apps designed for multi-touch, everything looks slick, even if you run lame little apps. You try and open it up to the widest development platform, you end up with regular programs, "regular computer style". Which is not what people are apparently looking for on a tablet.

Conclusion? I don't know, but Apple seems to have the sweet spot of hardware and operating system match, plus the market to force developers to work in their system. Microsoft can't expect Windows to fill the same OS balance with a tablet, unless they close it down.

But then again... if a browser is designed with multi-touch, any web app that works in the browser should meet the bar, and be pretty tablet friendly. I wonder if there's anyone out there designing ONLY a browser as an OS. I wonder if it will be multi-touch capable....

Re:Multi-touch, Multi-touch, Multi-touch....

[adonoman]

Of course, the Fujitsu tablets also have styluses, so you get a proper mouse-type interface with hover and right click in any non-multitouch enabled app. Windows 7 also translates certain multitouch gestures into keyboard./mouse input for those apps that don't support multitouch explicitly - it's certainly not as nice as native multitouch support in an app, but it's at least something.

Some common sense is starting to show

[Whuffo]

The input method for an OS or its applications is very basic stuff; what works well for input from a keyboard doesn't work well with a mouse. Try operating programs in a Windows CMD window with your mouse and see how far that gets you. Operating Windows from a keyboard is possible but you wouldn't want to try to do serious work this way - and even today there's important menu functions that don't have keyboard equivalents. Neither of those designs is wrong, they're just designed for a particular input method. You can attempt to patch things so that the support for a wrong input device is a different kind of wrong but the only way to do it right is to start from scratch and design from the ground up for the input method.

A touch screen interface - especially multi-touch - is also a different input method. Your finger isn't a mouse and while you can try to emulate a mouse with a finger you'll quickly find that there's information a mouse supplies that a finger can only do awkwardly if at all. You'd think that Microsoft - who was right there in the thick of the battle to change input methods from text to mouse - would know these things. I suspect their engineers do but their marketing people apparently don't.

Anyone that has a digitizer tablet connected to a Windows box can easily verify that attempting to operate Windows with nothing more than "point" and "click" is a frustrating experience. Everything is much more difficult to do until you reach a critical point where you won't be able to proceed any further. Their tablet add-ons try to address these fundamental problems but they can only do it imperfectly - Windows is designed from the ground up to be operated with a mouse / keyboard. The companies making tablet PCs have known this for years and you might note that they include a detachable keyboard and a PS/2 mouse port in their designs. Their hope was that your in-house programs would be good enough to work from the touch screen and that this would make their product truly useful. Trying to use Office apps on a touch screen just doesn't work well enough to be usable.

Apple's success with their touch screen devices is largely due to the simple fact that the OS that runs them was built to use a touch screen as its primary input device. And much of their app approval process is there to insure that quickie ports of mouse operated apps aren't inflicted on their users. Touch is another different input method and like the others, only works well when the system is built from the ground up to be operated in that way.

If Microsoft wants to play in this market they're going to have to break away from tradition and build a lightweight touch operated OS - they've got the talent to do it but I'm not sure if they have the willingness to do it. I suspect they'll just keep on pushing their desktop OS on tablets and watching them fail in the market.

Linux on tablets is going to face the same challenges. To operate not just the kernel but the applications using an interface that reports nothing more than a "click" at a screen address and do it well will require some very serious effort - and a willingness of the various programmers to support not only the keyboard / mouse version but the touch version as well. If we want to see successful Linux tablets this will need to be done - or else Linux can follow the Windows model and suffer the same fate.

Re:Some common sense is starting to show

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux has no problems for multitouch screens. Xorg does, it only supports multipoint currently. There is as well problem that the cursor is shown (you could use a blank cursor theme) when using touchscreens.
I have touchscreen and I run KDE SC 4.3. It works much better than Windows 7. It accepts only the "click" functios. There is no such need to hover or drag anything. Example of menu. KickOff is designed for mouse use, but it was not designed for young FPS gamers with 1px accuracy. It was designed for all users who can even suffer Parkinson syndrome but they can use mouse to click wanted functions with much better accuracy than what Windows 7's menu ever allows. But same time, the KickOff is 100% touchscreen friendly. You have big buttons, tabs, functions and scrollbars (depending theme configs). Panels you can set so big that even 24" touchscreen you would have so easy to "click" them. Set all windows to go fullscreen, hide the window decoration and customise the toolbars to have wanted functions (you can even add D-BUS signals to own buttons if wanted!). Hide menubar, make tabs bigger, make fonts and other functions bigger. Lock toolbars and very easily you have 99% touchfriendly workspace without need to do window management (WIMP) but just task management (a lá iPhone OS).

Most people just do not know what KDE SC allows user to do. And more often they mistake the OS to the user interface (like Linux to CLI, GUI).

Re:Some common sense is starting to show

[master_p]

I don't get it why Microsoft should enter the Slate market. It's not that Microsoft is going to be irrelevant in the future. Desktop PCs will always be around to do serious work which can't be done on a Slate.

A Touch interface is good for browsing and playing some basic games, but it is no match for a real keyboard and mouse. Microsoft shouldn't have to be afraid of anything.

Re:Some common sense is starting to show

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux on tablets already exists... Android is Linux with a Google GUI. Will Linux with a Gnome or KDE environment work? Hell no, but that's not the purpose of those GUIs.

it may work for me

[bugs2squash]

Truth is, I'm not looking for a replacement to my Laptop. I want something robust and minimal that I can take on the road from time to time. Maybe watch a movie or read pdfs on the plane, use to deliver my pre-prepared powerpoint, maybe touch up the powerpoint a little the day before the presentation when I find out I have mis-spelled someone's name. Allow me to keep some notes perhaps. Let me ssh into the servers at work if one of them needs attention while I'm travelling, maybe let me skype home from the hotel.
My needs are quite modest and, frankly, are tied to the application stack and the standard list of PC ports (VGA, USB etc.)
I'm not looking for a new computing paradigm, just something to fill a niche. Hell - I'm not so pure that I can't plug a wireless mouse into the thing if it helps. Something a little slicker than my netbook would be nice.

Re:it may work for me

[adonoman]

If you're willing to pay through the nose ($2K+), you can get some extremely slick tablets - MotionComputing, Fujitsu and Lenovo all have some pretty nice systems. If you don't want to spend that kind of money, you're just going to get low grade crap that will sour you on the whole tablet idea. You can pick up some decent sub-$1000 slates if you go the ebay route and pick up a new battery and install Windows 7 on them manually.

Re:it may work for me

[Anonymous Coward]

An iPad is just right for your, only thing that I'm not sure of how to make it work is the presentation part. Vould need a VGA or HDMI/DP enabled gadget to plug into the iPad. But the iPad surely does the rest of what you described.

Management upheaval.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey now that MS has *retired* lots of senior VPs today, you can expect the development teams to spend 100 of thousands of hours doing PowerPoint presentation to the newly appointed Czars. Lots less time actually producing a workable product. So kiss that vision of having a mobile windows 7 OS (whatever) for smart phones available for Christmas. In a week Apple will be showing off new gems at WWDC as MS attempts catchup to iPhone OS 1.x, so there be another round of hung heads at MS. Not helpful that the Supreme Court has told MS they just can steal people's patents either, makes their copy machine malfunction I think.

Re:Management upheaval.

[pandrijeczko]

So by the same logic, since there are far fewer OS X users than Windows users, then OS X must be attempting catchup to Windows.

Braindead Slashdot story

[nnnnnnn]

The primary function of a tablet is web right? Pray tell what kind of touch interface/ease-of-use the iPad Safari browser provides that you can't do in a Windows Firefox or even IE?

iPad gives you touch apps? How long would it take a high school student to write a CNN/NY Times/generic-web-parser iPad app in C#?

Oh irony.

[WiiVault]

How is that whole Flash thing working for us on Android 1.5 or 1.6? Maybe the Apple fanboys have a point....

Re:Oh irony.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, right? I mean, all new platform features should be back-ported to prior iterations of said platform bar none regardless of the suitability of the hardware that said platform resides on. Speaking of which, when the hell is MS going to backport Aero and DX11 to my Pentium II laptop running Windows 98?

'The iPad proved a ....

[santax]

'The iPad proved a tablet shouldn't be a portable computer that happened to have its screen always exposed.' Oh, that's why I didn't buy one. If anything the iPad proves that the weight of a screen can actually be less than the weight of the money in single dollar bills you had to pay to get one.

The HP TX2 running Win7 tablet is very good

[irishatheist]

I have been using the HP TX2 1020ea tablet for a year, first with Vista then with Win7 32 bit ultimate It was only reciently that the multitouch drivers for Win7 kicked in, but regardless it worked well with stylus input. Don't take these criticisms as rejecting win7 tablet by faint phrase. The onscreen keyboard for the stylus improved with some text prediction over vista. Under both operating systems, to enable full screen text recognition, I used ritescript. Mindjet Mindmanager is the killer app for this platform. There's lots of other configuration changes, utilities, ect I needed to do. The bios/multiio chip for the TX2 is flaky, sometimes not responding to the keyboard, sometimes the stylus requiring removing battery and power supply and awkwardly holding across sliding power supply button, probably to discharge a capacitor to have things recognised again on a clean boot The machine is in for repair after the screen was cracked. The upgrade to Win7 was in no way smooth. Too many windows applications assume a horizontal screen resolution of 1024 and when in portrait mode the screen width of 800 is frustrating. The clunky new interface to Office 2007 was intended to make it tablet and finger friendly, but the criticisms in the article above are correct once you have to start navigating dialogue boxes etc. Onenote also starts to become useful. It would be a better laptop if the onboard sound card worked better with Dragon dictate, though it can be persuaded to do so with tweaking. In summary, long term I agree with the article because of the drag of pc architecture and windows adds to the expense in consumer hardware but I disagree in the short term, as the HP tablet's got me through two semesters with almost exclusively stylus input (I've other machines too, with other adaptive technologies like maltron keyboards)

People Without Good TabletPCs Say TabletPCs Suck

[meehawl]

I have a HP Tm2 tabletPC that converts between laptop and slate mode. 10W CULV Core2. Discrete/hybrid Radeon/Intel gfx. Wacom 512-pressure sensitive screen/stylus and capacitive multitouch screen. Total cost $900. Came with Win 7, which is much better at the whole tablet experience than most of the haters say and it seems to me that many of them have not used Win7 on a tablet or some of the touch-specific apps or the Microsoft Surface apps or the touch-loving apps such as OneNote. The whole package is actually quite pleasant to use... Especially with touch-aware apps it's a whole new experience for casual computing, and it amuses me when I read all these new iPad owners writing like they've discovered heaven in their fingers when in fact casual touch has been available for the best part of a decade... as long as you were prepared to go outside Apple's walled garden to look for it.

Just for kicks, I installed Ubuntu on it... touch experience is less pleasant and reminds me of WinXP. Installed OSX on it. Apple's PC OS's support for touch is currently also crap... even worse than WinXP/Ubuntu. Maybe it will change this if it percolates some of the handheld UI touches up into its PC line, but right now the Mac touch experience is seriously deficient.

Disclaimer: I wrote my first touch-enabled UI app (a beauty store sales kiosk) way back in 1991, so the current vogue for bizarrely UI-dissimilar iPad apps is just so ridiculously familiar in terms of touchscreen and CD-ROM development in the early 1990s.

Windows Mobile 7

[1000101]

Windows 7 is great for laptops and 'netbooks' but I would think that Microsoft would be pushing Windows Mobile 7 for 'slates' once it is released. Isn't this the proper comparison for the iPhone/iPad OS anyway for these types of devices?

MS always has a keyboard/stylus?

[daemonenwind]

Have you ever checked out a Zune HD?

I mean, really - there isn't any such concept there.

It's possible, but prejudices like this make the pitch hard.

Re:MS always has a keyboard/stylus?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many ZuneHD's have sold? Now, how many iPod Touches have sold? MS is a failure in mobile devices and always will be.

Where have we heard this before?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Oh yes... Netbooks. With such a bloated Vista, and with the price of Windows often being as much as the entire price of a netbook, it seemed like Windows was completely unsuitable -- only Linux could survive in such an environment.

Then Microsoft made the tiniest of changes -- they extended support for XP, and offered it cheaply enough to be compelling. It's still a horrible choice, but people use it anyway, because it lets them run Windows apps.

Now people are saying Windows is the wrong OS for tablets. I predict more of the same -- yes, Windows is the wrong OS for tablets, but that won't prevent it from being fantastically successful.

Fail @ Comprehension

[Myrcutio]

The only thing the ipad proved is that the tablet market has been sorely neglected; the pent up market demand is palpable. There are still some very basic tasks that are well suited to a portable touchscreen device.

Printing is a big one, its not that hard to detect and download a printer driver automatically, every desktop OS does it and it's great.

The USB functionality, at the very least for (you guessed it, printers) and flash drives would make this the primary tool for a great many college students. Why tether a device to a desktop when the device is perfectly capable by itself of handling all kinds of file manipulation.

That last point is the singular reason i have no interest in owning an ipad, the network device and file support is in the dark ages. Even apple supported apps like the vaunted keynote remote are horribly buggy, slow, and unintelligent, often requiring router configuration without the help of man pages. Is it really that hard to believe that offices WANT a slick, intuitive interface for accessing and manipulating documents on a local network, a flash drive?

There's still alot of untapped market demand, the ipad only scratched the surface.

If is a very big word.

[symbolset]

There are already thousands of apps for iPad and Android. If you buy one of those you don't have to worry about this "if".

We've tried Windows on tablets, over and over for the past 15 years. It doesn't work. It never gets popular enough to attract the developers who write the apps that make it take off in the market.

Hoping that this time it could be different is a waste of time and money. There are a lot of reasons for the failure of Windows tablets, and the fine article only points out a few - but these few will do. Don't bother trying to imagine your way around these, as the others are even more difficult.

Re:If is a very big word.

[WillyWanker]

A phone OS is not going to work on a tablet. People will expect more. It's not gonna fly. They won't sell.

If the Windows GUI was altered to conform to the limitations of a tablet it wouldn't matter what the underlying OS was. As long as it was compatible and ran the apps people wanted. The problem with Windows on a tablet is the GUI, not the OS.

It's not a "hoping this time will be different", it's "do it right this time and it WILL be different". Doing the same thing again will result in the same failure. We know the standard Windows GUI doesn't work. Fix that, and it's a different ballgame.

Re:If is a very big word.

[0123456]

The problem with Windows on a tablet is the GUI, not the OS.

The problem with Windows on a tablet is that people only buy Windows to run Windows apps, so with a new GUI that doesn't run Windows apps there's no reason to buy a 'Windows' tablet rather than one that runs MacOS or Linux.

Re:If is a very big word.

[WillyWanker]

Why do you assume a different GUI means it won't run the same apps? That's not true. Apps may look different but they will still run exactly the same way.

Hell, alternative GUIs are nothing new. They already exist for Windows. Using one certainly doesn't stop programs from running.

Re:If is a very big word.

[0123456]

Why do you assume a different GUI means it won't run the same apps?

How are you going to take a mouse-and-keyboard GUI and magically turn it into a touch GUI without rewriting any code?

Sure, you can use a finger to move a mouse pointer and a pop-up keyboard to type, but the whole point of the thread is that that is a lousy interface for a tablet.

Re:If is a very big word.

[WillyWanker]

It's not magic. You write a GUI that is designed for a touch screen. Applications communicate with the GUI thru API calls. If you're writing a new GUI you can make the results of those calls be anything you want. It doesn't affect the ability to run a program. Windows 3.11 had a radically different GUI than Windows 95, but all the apps ran just fine.

Look at Linux. There are a bazillion versions of Linux and a dozen or more different GUI shells available. Hell, Android is Linux-based. There are Linux versions designed solely for the smaller screens of netbooks. And guess what? They can run all the same programs (porting and re-compilation aside).

Here's the bottom line: no one will buy a tablet running Linux or a smartphone OS. They just won't. They are too big to tote around with you like you would a smartphone or music player. And if they don't integrate into your network and can run/share the same apps and data what good will they be? Much like netbooks they'll have a tough time being someone's primary computing device. So if they don't play well with other computers in the environment no one is going to bother.

Look at the ratio of Linux netbooks compared to Windows netbooks. Do you think the netbook would have been as successful as it was had they not run Windows?

Manufacturers better find a way to make these things run Windows or tablets are going to stay an Apple niche.

Re:If is a very big word.

[TyreeJackson]

Simply changing the core GUI for windows will not result in apps being pleasant to use via touch. I used to want a full blown OS for a slate. I was one of the people hoping that the iPad was going to run full OS X. Even after it was announced, I held out hope that some sort of iPad Pro running OS X would be announced later. However, I still pre-ordered the iPad. It has now been well over a month and in that time here are my observations: 1. Applications for a touch based device have to be rethought from the ground up. 2. This device serves mainly consumption use cases. 3. A full blown OS would likely not respond quite like a mobile one does on a device like this (not without generating major heat, using major electricity, and requiring components that weigh more) As a software developer, I spend all day at work in front of my pc at work. I have found, since getting my iPad, that I went from spending an additional 4-6 hours daily on my desktop/laptop at home to less than 1 hour a week. The iPad has allowed me to do virtually everything computing related that I am interested in doing at home without having to go to my study or pull out my laptop. Yes, that even includes typing up is comment. I am no longer waiting for a full blown OS slate, as the iPad does more than enough already, and I really don't need more reasons to spend time using it. In fact, we are getting two more iPads soon. One for my wife and one for my daughter. By the way, though somewhat off topic, I would like to point out that the costs for apps for this thing are very reasonable. They are often free. And for the ones that I have already purchased, it is really nice to know that I won't have to repurchase them for the next two iPads.

Re:If is a very big word.

[WillyWanker]

You do realize the iPad is running a modified version of OS X right?

The iPad also benefits from the established framework provided by the iPhone and iPod. Such a framework does not exist outside the Appleverse. You can't compare Apple products to non-Apple products any more than you can compare the Asian market to the US.

We've already gone thru this with the netbook. Linux netbooks didn't sell. Not because they didn't perform well but because people wanted a platform they were familiar with and that was compatible with the software they already own. Why does anyone think it's going to be any different with tablets? You think people are just gonna say "hey, so what if I need to learn to use a new OS, can't run any of the programs I normally use, and have to buy all-new apps from a locked down store?" No, they're gonna go "what the hell am I supposed to do with this thing that I don't know how to use and isn't compatible with anything I already own?"

Why is this so difficult to understand? The tablet market is already a limited one, much more so than the netbook. Why do you want to further marginalize it with the use of crippled OSs?

Re:If is a very big word.

[Anonymous Coward]

And OS X is branched off of unix. Doesn't change the fact that apps either had to be ported for the iPhone OS or written from the ground up. There is no notion of the mouse, and limited use of the keyboard in most of the apps that I downloaded. The way a user interfaces with the iPad is same as the iPhone/iPod Touch, so it makes sense to use the iPhone OS. And I certainly can compare Apple products to non-Apple products if they allow me to accomplish similar activites in a more enjoyable way. Your statement about not being able to is as ridiculous as saying I can't compare riding a bike to driving a car. I don't think that most users care that they can't use their old programs on a device like this, because it's a whole different kind of device! Using my desktop apps as they are are currently written would be horrendous via touch. I couldn't see that before, but now that I actually own a device this, I can. If you are unable to see that, then I recommend you borrow one for a few days. It doesn't take long to realize that a clean break is exactly what was needed for this new computing segment. I don't think that the iPad is going to marginalize the tablet market, because it is in a different market, the slate market. It is exactly what was needed for firing up a slate market, a clean break from the old one. Thankfully, HP realized this in time and switched WebOS. I look forward to seeing how Google and HP(Palm) compete here as well with their "crippled" OSes. Once again, it took Apple to make the other players realize that a different approach was required. I'm not betting that Apple will dominate this market in the end, but I certainly believe that Microsoft won't with its current version of Windows.

Re:If is a very big word.

[Gilmoure]

Without a terminal and command line, they're all DOA.

Windows 7 and the finger

[dingleberrie]

I have one of those Lenovo tablet/clamshell PCs with a multitouch display running Windows 7.

It's no surprise that there are only a few uses for multitouch on the PC (e.g. the zooming is stepped in most programs and just doesn't work as you would want).
But one of the fundamental issues that you would think is easy to solve is that there is no Windows theme for touch. The menus, the minimize/restore/close areas... they're all too small. I haven't easily found on the web or in the Microsoft site any theme that could solve this utterly simple issue. It seems that the touting of Windows 7 as tablet ready was thought through in typical responsive fashion, with no fundamental understanding of what that entails.

Re:Windows 7 and the finger

[drinkypoo]

The menus, the minimize/restore/close areas... they're all too small. I haven't easily found on the web or in the Microsoft site any theme that could solve this utterly simple issue.

I shouldn't even tell you, because the answer is so fucking obvious. Increase the font size for windows and for menus. Windows since 3.0 scales the title bar and menus to match the font size. Haven't used many computers, huh? Unless, of course, they changed this in Windows 7 (but I doubt it, since they didn't change it in Vista) in which case I apologize... but I don't expect that part of the sentence to require evaluation.

You know what this means

[roc97007]

Say it with me. "Windows Mobile on the tablet". You know it'll happen.

I didn't say it'd SELL.... but it will happen. You know Microsoft has to dominate this market or find a way to destroy it.

Odd

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found the multitouch api in for XNA 4.0 ctp (for phones/tablets), and WPF's Ink to be quite intuitive and developer friendly. In fact, I much prefer developing Windows Phone 7 over Android, from a "i want to get shit done" POV, anyways.

Just because HP decides their latest acquisition needs a raison d'etre doesn't discount Windows 7 or slate.

windows and right?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, windows 7 isn't the right operation system for anything...

What's Hypothetical about a Windows 7 Tablet?

[fm6]

I'm writing this on one of them. Specifics:

http://www.motioncomputing.com/products/tablet_pc_le17.asp

True tablet, no keyboard, though it supports most USB keyboards (obviously). Runs Windows 7 just fine (ran Vista when I got it, which was a nightmare), and has really good handwriting recognition. Great for reading in bed. And being able to play Plants vs. Zombies with a stylus instead of a mouse nicely offsets my hand-eye coordination problems.

Which is not to say that I disagree with TFA about the economic viability of the thing. It's way too expensive, and if I weren't an overpaid geek who's willing to pay a huge premium just to have certain ubercool technologies, I wouldn't own one.

The iPad is overhyped, as are all Apple products. But so what? Even if it's just an overgrown iPod Touch (which means it's something I'd never bother with), there's obviously a market for it. On the train to work this morning, half my fellow commuters were passing the time on some kind of pocket device, and maybe a third of these were iPhones or iPads. Take one of these and give it a half-decent screen, and I think you've got a winner, even if it is a product most geeks would sneer at.

Re:What's Hypothetical about a Windows 7 Tablet?

[bugs2squash]

Yeah, but...

• it is $2200, anything that costs that amount of money needs more cossetting that I'm prepared to give it on a trip
• I don't want "all day computing", I want damn near "all week computing" (always on, but used for processing only for sporadic sessions sessions) on a charge
• I want to be able to recharge the device through a USB mini conector just like my cellphone, so that I only need to carry one charger or can borrow one while on the road

I want something smaller, cheaper, similar in ruggedness to a cellphone and more lightweight in every sense than the le17, that to me epitomizes the tablet idea

Re:What's Hypothetical about a Windows 7 Tablet?

[fm6]

Like I said, the thing ain't economically viable. But it does exist.

Then again... why do I need a tablet?

[Anonymous Coward]

I looked at the iPad over the week-end, and I fail to understand why would I want to use it.
It is too big to be a casual browser (iPod touch is better at that), and as a laptop replacement is useless.

Now, you guys talk about others trying to ape it.

Can someone explain me what it is good for to start with???

Re:Then again... why do I need a tablet?

[grandmasterlee]

you looked at it or actually used it? It is a fantastic browser experience, I'm not sure I would ever call it too big. It can do everything if needed, but doesn't try to be a laptop replacement. If you need to do some complicated spreadsheets or any "real" work you shouldn't be on a tablet to begin with, its just not a form factor or physically something that fits well for that. But if you need to, you can. I was with a friend in new york last week and while she was driving around I handled two client issues with the logmein plugin easily which I could have done via a laptop or netbook. Ease of use I suppose. I own a 3G and a wireless model and if people are over they are always in use. Pros: 10 hours of battery life (enough to watch two full length movies in high def, read and browse all day, easily). My laptop will last about 2 hours max. Addicting multitouch, nothing different than the touch or iphone, but a nice big screen iBooks is great, i've tried the nook and kindle and like a backlit screen in bed PDFs actually work, never could get technical diagrams to show right on other readers Cons: no multitasking, yet no flash you need a third party app like goodreader (99 cents) to download and manage files

Re:Then again... why do I need a tablet?

[pandrijeczko]

A netbook with one or two spare batteries would give somewhere near 18 hours battery life for half the cost of an iPad - and play and store all the stuff I already own without my having to re-buy it on the iTunes store.

Re:Then again... why do I need a tablet?

[intheshelter]

You're so full of shit. You don't have to re-buy it on the iTunes store. You're either lying or ignorant beyond belief.

Re:Then again... why do I need a tablet?

[pandrijeczko]

No, that's right. I can sit here picking my nose for hours while I wait for all the movies I've already ripped to DivX or Xvid to be converted...

Or Perhaps

[codecore]

Consider a nice Android xPad like the ADAM. Native Java, and once Mono-Touch is implemented, .NET. This will rock.

Actually it does demonstrate that

[SuperKendall]

Agreed; there seems to be a false assumption here, i.e. the is iPad is marketable/sells/works therefore Windows 7 cannot be good on a tablet.

The facts are, that the iPad is selling, and also that there have been Windows tablets to date, from many hardware makers, which have not.

So you have a tablet with a different OS selling well, how does that not demonstrate that Windows does not in fact work well on tablets? It seems like at this point we have enough of a Windows tablet sampling.

Re:Actually it does demonstrate that

[Alphathon]

All that shows is that the iPad sells well, and that previous windows based tablets did not. Is the only possible reason for this that the iPad OS (i.e. iPhone OS) is good and Windows is bad? No. Maybe Apple is good at marketing (they are). Maybe their device is prettier than the previous brick-like Windows tablets that (it is). Perhaps they are targeting a different demographic with the iPad (they seem to be). There is more I could list.

So you have a tablet with a different OS selling well, how does that not demonstrate that Windows does not in fact work well on tablets?

A tablet running one OS that sells well does not mean that a different OS is bad. Lets use a good old car analogy...in America automatic transmissions seem to be more popular therefore manual transmissions don't work well on cars. That is patently false (I live in the UK and manual is much more popular here than automatic), but is equivalent to what you are saying. Saying one thing is good does not mean an alternative is bad. On top if that, sales do not equal performance, so you fail on two levels.

The only way your argument would hold up is if Apple released (at the same time and for a comparable price) an iPad with Win7 on it rather than iPhone OS, but it sold poorly. Even then it would only be an indication, not proof (the full OS version would likely be more expensive - I did say comparable price - and wouldn't be as pretty, so no "I want it!" impulse buyers).

I am not saying that Win7 has a better tablet interface than the iPhone OS on the iPad. What I am saying is that your argument is fundamentally flawed on several levels. There are many factors here that would effect sales, such as brand loyalty, aesthetics of both hardware and software, price, marketing, novelty factor, target demographic, size (windows tablets I have seen in the past have been quite a bit larger than the iPad) and so on, therefore you cannot draw the conclusion Windows doesn't work on tablets from multi-vendor sales comparisons. As a side note, do you know how many Windows tablets have been sold? It wouldn't surprise me at all if all the Windows tablets on the market well outstripped the iPad in sales...you just wouldn't notice it as it would be spread across multiple vendors and models. Incidentally, I think Apple is leading computer manufacturer, or at least up there but they still have a minuscule amount of the OS share since so many companies (and individuals) make Windows machines.

Re:Actually it does demonstrate that

[SuperKendall]

Is the only possible reason for this that the iPad OS (i.e. iPhone OS) is good and Windows is bad?

Yes, it is. Because it can be done, Windows has not done it through multiple iterations, that is exactly what it means.

Note that the fully qualified statement is really "Windows is Bad - for tablets".

There are other reasons that are also possibly true, but through each failed iteration they all became exceedingly unlikely. Now the essence of the thing has been boiled down, and even HP is fleeing Windows on tablets. If that doesn't complete the picture for you, you are staring too hard at the lines between the pieces and not looking at the image they make...

Re:Actually it does demonstrate that

[mwvdlee]

I wonder how well OS-X will fare on a fully-featured tablet en how well Windows Mobile works on a feature-poor iPad-style tablet.

All it proves is that the iPhone OS works on an iPhone-without-the-phone and that Windows doesn't work on laptops-without-a-keyboard.

Re:Actually it does demonstrate that

[Xest]

Apple could sell a lump of turd and call it the iTurd, advertising it as a magical new turd and a good portion of Apple's core few million fanboys would still buy it.

That doesn't mean it's going to achieve acceptance amongst the general public though, and that's really the key test, because that's where Apple really makes it's profits. For every success such as the iPod or the iPhone, Apple have had just as many flops with pretty much no take up outside the fanatical core such as the MacBook Air or the AppleTV.

It takes quite a leap of the imagination to jump from Apple selling units to their core userbase to Windows not working well on tablets, in fact, that makes no real sense at all. Part the issue with failed Windows tablets in the past is that the technology simply wasn't up to it, last time there was a real push for tablets we simply didn't have the technology to make them thin enough, they were bulky, battery life was lower and so on. I was working in IT support for schools at the time and we were trialling them there as they were being sold as the next big thing at the time, but tablets there are very different to tablets now in terms of hardware size, weight, and performance. What's more, they were XP based and XP was never initially designed for touchscreen use whilst Windows 7 has had touchscreen usage taken into account from the start.

GP is right, their conclusion is based on entirely flawed premises, but then it's InfoWorld, we already know enough about their journalistic integrity, i.e. they have none.

Re:Actually it does demonstrate that

[Serious Callers Only]

I wonder how well OS-X will[sic] fare on a fully-featured tablet en how well Windows Mobile works on a feature-poor iPad-style tablet.

Full OS X with the aqua UI will never appear on tablets because that wouldn't work. I imagine Apple tried it years ago and that was the impetus for coming up with iPhone OS. Windows mobile would work as well as it works elsewhere - poorly. There's a reason Windows Mobile is bleeding marketshare in the smartphone segment.

All it proves is that the iPhone OS works on an iPhone-without-the-phone and that Windows doesn't work on laptops-without-a-keyboard.

Well, yes. Exactly. Ergo Windows 7 slates won't work well.

Re:Actually it does demonstrate that

[Fross]

This is absolutely disingenuous. Are you saying the only reason the iPad succeeded was that it didn't have Win7 on it?

I mean, if you're operating at that level, you may as well say the iPad succeeded because it was a different colour. Just because they have one thing in common, does not mean that's the reason. Sheesh, never heard of correlation versus causation?

The iPad is successful because:

  - it had the Apple hype machine behind it
  - sleek, thin design
  - large established app base
  - good multi-touch screen
  - low price point (compared to other slates, at least, and definitely lower than people were anticipating from Apple)

It was nothing to do with Windows 7. Hell, if the iPad DID run Windows 7 and gave a comparable experience, it would still have sold well, for the reasons above.

Re:Actually it does demonstrate that

[drinkypoo]

So you have a tablet with a different OS selling well, how does that not demonstrate that Windows does not in fact work well on tablets?

This is the stupidest thing I've ever seen you say. Please don't do it again.

So you have a car with a gasoline engine selling well, how does that not demonstrate that diesel engines in fact do not work well in cars?

So you have a blender with white paint selling well, how does that not demonstrate that black paint does not work well on a blender?

I can say shit this stupid all day, but I can feel my IQ dropping.

Re:Actually it does demonstrate that

[LordLimecat]

All that shows is that the iPad sells well, and that previous windows based tablets did not

You'll be touting the merits of communism next, with that sort of logic.
I do not see anything wrong with saying " X has failed miserably so many times in the past, perhaps its time to try something new."

Re:Actually it does demonstrate that

[voidptr]

You can get a Desktop OS X powered tablet from a third party: http://www.axiotron.com/index.php?id=modbook . They take a normal MacBook or MacBook Pro and mod it.

It suffers from the same problem Windows has though. There's a limited subset of users who really have a use for a desktop OS in a tablet form factor, which is going to relegate those products to niche status forever. Touch-oriented OSes on lower-powered devices that trade compatibility and advanced capability for ease of use, portability, and battery life are going to own the majority market share.

Re:Actually it does demonstrate that

[Alphathon]

There is nothing wrong with saying that. That is not what was said though. It was more along the lines of "X has done well, therefore Y is bad". The fact that Windows tablets have done poorly is certainly reason to think windows doesn't work well on tablets (although to be fair, I don't think there have been any/many Win7 tablets, so it's not completely fair).

To quote the original parent:

...the ipad has already demonstrated that Windows 7 won't work.

Or, in more general terms: "X has demonstrated that Y won't work.". Now for a quote from a reply to my post:

So you have a tablet with a different OS selling well, how does that not demonstrate that Windows does not in fact work well on tablets?

Which translates to: "Y is selling well. That means Z does not work well" Another analogy, this time with fruit: "people like apples, therefore oranges are bad", or to take the comparison a little further "people are buying apples, therefore orange skin is bad". The skin in this case represents the OS, so clearly demonstrating that iPad!=iPhoneOS (so you can't say iPad sales purely means that the OS is good) and that sales of one thing does not make another bad.

What many of you don't seem to be realising is that I am not arguing that Windows is good on tablets, that iPads are bad, that Windows>iPhoneOS or whatever, I am simply pointing out that the original parent has fatally flawed reasoning/justification.

Re:Actually it does demonstrate that

[Alphathon]

Is the only possible reason for this that the iPad OS (i.e. iPhone OS) is good and Windows is bad?

Yes, it is. Because it can be done, Windows has not done it through multiple iterations, that is exactly what it means.

That is patently false. I have given examples of many other reasons why it might be the case. If one of those reasons contributes even a little then it clearly isn't the only possible reason and the fact that other possibilities can be presented proves that it is not the only possible reason. I'm not saying it's not the only factor contributing. I'm not saying it's not likely that the main reason is people don't want Windows tablets. All I'm saying is that iPads selling more than Windows tablets doesn't demonstrate anything other than how well they sell. It may suggest or imply that the OS is better for tabets but it doesn't demonstrate it.

even HP is fleeing Windows on tablets

To be fair they just bought Palm, so they'd be pretty stupid not no capitalise on WebOS.

Also, you (along with so many others in this thread) seem to be under the impression that I'm saying Windows works well on tablets. I AM NOT. What I'm talking about exclusively is the arguments used by the GP to my original post and those used by you and others in reply to me. I am pointing out and explaining flawed logic, reasoning etc, nothing more.

Re:Actually it does demonstrate that

[SuperKendall]

That is patently false. I have given examples of many other reasons why it might be the case.

As I said, the market has proved all those other reasons to be exceedingly unlikely. They simply do not matter because the permutations have been tried to death now.

To be fair they just bought Palm, so they'd be pretty stupid not no capitalise on WebOS.

Chicken/Egg. You are saying they bought Palm for no reason on a whim, and hey now that they have it, why not try it on a tablet. I am saying the bought Palm BECAUSE they realized Win7 on a tablet would not sell, and they needed a strategic touch-oriented platform of their own, and that obviously they bought Palm because they wanted a tablet that would NOT run Win7.

I wonder which is more likely?

What I'm talking about exclusively is the arguments used by the GP to my original post and those used by you and others in reply to me.

Yes, I know. I just think you are wrong.

am pointing out and explaining flawed logic, reasoning etc, nothing more.

Same here.

Re:Actually it does demonstrate that

[Anonymous Coward]

As I said, the market has proved all those other reasons to be exceedingly unlikely

Yes, exceedingly unlikely. I wasn't talking about probability, only possibility. While the probability may be near zero (not enough to discount as impossible, but enough to ignore in every day life) it is still a possibility. Remember, this was in reply to another comment by you:

The facts are, that the iPad is selling, and also that there have been Windows tablets to date, from many hardware makers, which have not. So you have a tablet with a different OS selling well, how does that not demonstrate that Windows does not in fact work well on tablets? It seems like at this point we have enough of a Windows tablet sampling.

...Is the only possible reason for this that the iPad OS (i.e. iPhone OS) is good and Windows is bad?...

Yes, it is...

The sales do not demonstrate that Windows does not work on tablets. The comparison suggests it, but does not demonstrate it. Demonstrate = prove, suggest/imply = supporting evidence. Also, by works, it is meant works well from a user standpoint. If we are talking about from a financial standpoint then sure, it demonstrates that something else works better but still not that it in itself does not work (on a per-tablet basis). Again, it is highly implied.

As for iPhoneOS>Windows on tablets being the only possible reason for iPad sales trumping previous windows tablets (notice taking them on a per-tablet basis) there are many factors, however small. The largest is probably that Apple products are incredibly desirable - they have a kind-of "I want it!" value to them that no other computer manufacturer has to any meaningful level which will certainly drive sales. The only fair test would be if a second iPhone OS tablet were released by someone other than Apple, since that removes any brand loyalty and "I want it" factor from the equation. I know that isn't going to happen, but it would be the only fair test. To put it another way, how do you think MacBook Pro sales compare to individual other laptops/notebooks/whatever you want to call them? I would estimate that it outsold all or most of them through a combination of "I want it", brand loyalty and the fact that OS X is not available from other manufacturers. When you combine MacBook Air, MacBook and MacBook Pro sales and compare with all Dell sales say, I would image Dell would come out on top, since they have more models available. Does either of these demonstrate that either OS X or Windows does not work on computers? No. Basically, unless you are comparing like-for-like, you can't demonstrate anything other than "all factors combined on X = better than Y".

I am saying the bought Palm BECAUSE they realized Win7 on a tablet would not sell

How can you draw that conclusion? As far as I know they haven't said that. Sure, they probably bought Palm to use WebOS, but was the motivation to get away from windows or to get WobOS (if you see the distinction)? If they can sell an OS that no-one else can, much like Apple do, their sales are likely to be higher regardless as people won't shop around for different providers. They will get more profit since they don't have to pay MS licensing fees. It's desirable to have complete control over a product you are selling and owning the OS brings them closer to that (they don't have complete control until they start making their own chips etc, but you get the idea).

Again, I am not saying anything that you have said is false other than your assumptions that no-other possibility exists or that only one can be true at once. You are asserting things as absolute truth that you have no justification to assert. They are likely explanations and/or large contributing factors, but not cold, hard facts and so shouldn't be asserted as such. In order to prove that something is the only possible explanation, you m

Wait, what?

[symbolset]

The iPad by itself is moving a million units a month. They can't make them fast enough. Apparently the 7" Android slates were all over Asia, but we couldn't get them before - but now we can get them on Ebay for $120 and all the major vendors are bringing out their own versions with the newer better processors, video and ports. The app stores and content stores are booming like it's 1849.

It's not broken. There is nothing to fix.

Re:Wait, what?

[WillyWanker]

Believe what you want. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Router config???

[SuperKendall]

I have an iPad, which I have used on wifi in a range of locations - home, hotel, airports, etc. I have never had to adjust a router...

Have you actually used an iPad, or are you just repeating the hater line?

IMO: iPad/iPod are good, but beatable

[walterbyrd]

I bought an used iPod touch from craigslist for $85, it's great, I use it all the time. The iPad looks great also.

But, it's easy for me to believe that another tablet device could be better. Apple's strong-arming, and lock-down, are a total PITA.

I can easily believe that an android device could be more functional, just as easy to use, and cost less than what Apple offers.

Of course, the high-fashion, trendy, Apple zealots will continue to stick their up at anything that's not apple. But, I'm okay with that also.

Again JMHO.

Re: The true value of Windows...

[Douglas Goodall]

That is intriguing. It sounded for a minute like you said that the value of Windows was in the extent to which the developer and user community embraced it, and that the applications are what is important, and not the branded name on the shiny sticker. Back in the day when I sold operating systems, I taught users that the formula for buying a computer was like so... Identify what you need to do. Identify the program that does that. Identify what operating system runs that application, Identify what hardware runs that operating system. If the current users are buying Windows because of the software available on the platform, not because they Like, Trust, or believe in all things Microsoft, but rather because it runs on contemporary hardware, and supports the applications people want to run. Unfortunately, the compatibility that allows the multitude of software to run on their current offerings of Windows, brings with it the vulnerabilities to malware and viruses. I say, GO MICROSOFT. Write a new operating system that looses the backward compatibility but is technically superior (so you say), then hopefully, the causal chain will break, and the software people need will run on something else, and the reasoning that locks in the multitudes will fail, and we will be free. I don't know what can be done for the server market, but I have hopes to see an alternative OS on the desktop in this lifetime. And in the long term, I cannot wait to see if Microsoft has really earned the loyalty of the public or not.

Microsoft has failed to understand its developers

[caywen]

Microsoft just never quite understood its developer base as well as it should have. For decades, they kept API's incredibly archaic and unchanging because they fear abandonment. They were scared to death of putting out a brand new OS because they fear abandonment. That fear drove their decision making process.

So, it must have shocked them greatly that so many Windows developers just went ahead and wrote a ton of brand new code for iPhone. Like, 100,000 apps worth of code.

They never got it - developers *like* to write code. Just give them decent something to write *for*.

Forgive me if I'm "wrong" but

[Kr4u53]

Wasn't all of the cool hype of the new taskbar crap in Windows 7 touted as being more touch friendly?

Holm

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.archos.com/products/nb/archos_9/index.html?country=us&lang=en

More likely place for his tongue

[SmallFurryCreature]

I think from the tone, his tongue is firmly up Balmers back side.

too open

[StripedCow]

But those products will go nowhere, because Windows 7 is simply not the right operating system for a slate.

Yeah, I guess windows 7 is too open.

--
while [ 1 ]; do curl "http://apple.com" > /dev/null; done

Re:Microsoft has failed to understand its develope

[bloodhawk]

You seem a little confused, MS didn't keep archaic API's for fear of abandonment, they kept it due to one of there biggest mantra's (wrongly or rightly) has been backwards compatibility. There is so much cruft left in just about every piece of there software because of this and that same commitment to backward compatibility has what has allowed them to take such a huge piece of the corporate pie. They do a lot of dumb stuff but from a financial and adoption perspective the keeping of the old cruft was a brilliant move.

Thanks, But No Thanks

[rsmith-mac]

Converse to the OP, I would appreciate it if the editors and submitters did not link to the print view.

My work monitor is a 27" 16:9 monitor - without table boundaries imposed on the text, the article is one giant mess because it's meant to be printed out on A4 paper in portrait mode, while my monitor is landscape and then some. The print view was never made to be read in a browser, which is why it not only breaks all the proper conventions of how to best layout text for reading, but it loses a lot of the formatting cues too such as blue hyperlinks.

Or to put it in more traditional Slashdot terms: my monitor is not printer, you insensitive clod. Please stick to using the human-readable view; if I want to use the print view I'll go there myself.

The iPad "proved"???? Past tense?

[brunes69]

The thing has been on the market all of 1-2 months. I don't see how it has even "proven" itself to be long-term viable, let alone anything about the tablet industry.

Not sure I can agree with this...

[Fross]

Just because the iPad worked as a slate, does that mean nothing else can work as a slate?

Surely, the iPhone working didn't mean the blackberry, treo or anything else didn't work.

I'd need a better reason for Windows 7 (or any other OS) being unsuitable for slates, than just "because the iPad already did it".

Personally, I want a full OS, proper processor and the ability to install any application, before I acquire a slate style computer.

"familiarity" with the gui isn't working ...

[Anonymous Coward]

for microsoft in mobile. this is something they're desperately trying to cling to. thats why windows mobile looked like windows for workgroups.

You all need another angle.

[pizzach]

Perhaps, but there are enough exceptions. Was the first netbook by Asus hyped to extreme proportions? Is the Macbook Air selling wildly or is it eventually going to be quietly discontinued? Hyping isn't everything, but it helps. Now please, read my reasoning below.

Let's look at this from an interestingly different other angle. Here on slashdot people blame Apple for advertising they have a tablet whose main feature is that it is more of a flexible appliance than a computer. If you go to a video game website, when a good game doesn't sell well, all the gamers start blame the company for not advertising enough. (Particularly on the Wii.) Both Dell and Microsoft are much larger than Apple. They regarded tablets as niche for all these years and done their best to avoid advertising them all together. Apple did too considering a third party company started making the ridiculously expensive "Modbooks".

Why are people not blaming Microsoft and the computer makers for sitting around doing nothing for 10 years? Apple hypes their new products much like a console maker, but come on guys. You don't take the initiative, you don't get the cookie. If it wasn't Apple with the iPad, it was going to be Amazon with a future revision of the ereader. PC industry have their heads so far up their asses with the status quo they didn't have a chance in hell of making a breakout product with the public in this segment.

Re:You all need another angle.

[Xest]

Dell isn't bigger than Apple, it's quite a bit smaller nowadays. In fact, Apple has enough cash sat lying around to buy it outright twice over.

People do blame Microsoft for a lack of innovation, particularly when their R&D labs produce some amazing stuff, yet that never ever reaches the marketplace. There have been a few stories this last year alone here on Slashdot discussing this.

You're absolutely right the market only has themselves to blame, but the arguments against Apple don't tend to come from a market point of view, but from a consumer perspective.

Re:You all need another angle.

[vijayiyer]

The arguments against Apple definitely don't come from a consumer perspective, or they wouldn't be wildly profitable. They come from the perspective of a Slashdotter trying (and failing) to think like a consumer.
e.g.,
"The consumer wants to browse the web with emacs instead of of Safari and they don't want to pay $99! Oh, the horror!"

Re:You all need another angle.

[Xest]

Even now Apple has shifted only about 50 - 60 million iPhones, do you realise how small a segment of the mobile phone market that is?

The fact is, by far the vast majority of consumers don't even touch Apple. This is really the problem with Apple fanboys and zealots- they actually grossly over-estimate Apple's reach. It's a big successful company for sure, but that money still comes from an extremely small segment of a lot of the relevant markets Apple is in- the personal music player market is about the only one where that's different, but if you look at personal entertainment devices in general (i.e. those that can do games, music, movies like the iPod has done for a few years now) then it's up against the DS and the PSP, and so still only holds a minority share of the market.

So the point is that whilst Apple unquestionably does well, for every consumer of their products, there are tens of consumers who do not care about, or do not want Apple's products. This is why the complaints about Apple very much come from the consumer market, because Apple is only succesful in a niche segment of it, albeit a highly profitable segment of course.

congradulations!

[Anonymous Coward]

you only use a computer for three things!

Re:congradulations!

[NekSnappa]

you only use a computer for three things!

At home? Yes. Other than doing some audio editing once or twice every couple of weeks I don't want to dink around with a computer.

I sit at a computer 8-9 hours a day doing CAD, and graphics work. When I'm at home I'd rather be playing music, listening to music, doing restoration work on my old Jaguar, or running off to one of the many local waterways to kayak.

Re:Microsoft has failed to understand its develope

[caywen]

Backwards compatibility? You mean, like how Windows Mobile inherited the incredible amount of cruft in Win32 even though compatibility is already out the door?

Re:Microsoft has failed to understand its develope

[pandrijeczko]

Hang on a second here... I'm no great Microsoft lover by any means but this is a case of "damned if you do and damned if you don't".

The Windows bloat and "strange architectural decision that is The Registry" is down to trying to maintain compatibility with older software, and when they strip the bloat out of Windows so it's small enough to go on a mobile device, then naturally compatibility is out the window.

This is precisely why an Open Source OS is so good at running on anything from the biggest servers to smallest embedded devices - if you have access to the source code then you can compile it against only the libraries that you need rather than having to provide countless compatibility and emulation layers.

Author misunderstands what iPad proved

[harlows_monkeys]

The iPad proved a tablet shouldn't be a portable computer that happened to have its screen always exposed.

No, the iPad proved that a table doesn't have to be a portable computer with its screen always exposed. It doesn't prove that it shouldn't be.

I would buy it if it runs Windows 7

[Ilgaz]

Well, I hate the idea of iPad but I hate the idea of relying to HP for a brand new OS more.

MS should have been wise to prepare an edition of Windows 7 for such constrained devices, just to show Apple that it is indeed possible to have a real, unlocked desktop OS running on a tablet. It would cost a lot less than 10 days of advertising for them. That is a complete missed opportunity for MS and Adobe if you ask me.

WebOS? I know it is based on Linux but, even the name is sounding unfit, web Widgets... There is a Norwegian company who are known to create miracles on such technologies and even their own W3C based Widget engine for Mobiles is at alpha stage now. I mean the Opera Widgets for Mobile.

HP better keep on selling overpriced ink, plastic printers. I know they are a great server company but they got to get rid of that pyramid scheme like "business" if they want people to buy their consumer products. Scanners can't scan when there is ink missing in printer, give me a break really. I bet that tablet will refuse to run when you don't pay contract whatever they dealt with.

iPad sales skyrocketed because of HP

[Ilgaz]

I know a lot of people who hated the idea of "oversized iPod" and they were waiting for HP Slate, they said "at last resort, we run some kind of Linux on it". As HP canceling Windows 7 tablet verified, they all went to store.apple.com and ordered iPads.

A tablet running a compatible (sorry to say as a PPC user) X86 and generic GPU was a big deal. Being able to run same apps was a big deal... They are so stupid really...

Windows is fine, but not the hardware it needs

[jpc1957]

No reason Windows can't have a great touch UI. Apple grafted it ontop of osx and Microsoft could do the same. I develop apps for iphone, windows mobile and native windows. The applicable APIs in each of the SDKs are much more alike then not. And with Windows Mobile 7, Microsoft is showing they aren't that concerned about a graceful shift for developers. But the hardware to run windows can't compete with the ipad. The ipad is simply a screen, huge battery and one tiny circuit assembly. I use my ipad for days at a time without plugging in, not a speck of heat from the device, doesn't matter which way you hold it. It really is in a whole different class, truly beautiful. Compare that to the internals of any windows netbook or upcoming tablet. Packed tight with boards, small space for battery, and even a fan or two! Any device with a fan isn't going to stay on your lap very long, and will be easily blocked in the tablet form factor. I'd love to see competitive hardware with Windows, got lots of industrial customers that would jump on that. The ipad has a huge cost/benefit increase compared to existing tablet hardware in use, and it's only going to get better. As it is now, we are struggling with an apparently dead end Mobile Windows 6.5, customers with hundreds of industrial devices. I'm hoping Android gives us another option for industrial/clinical applications, but haven't seen much indication yet. Everyone is just fighting over the smartphone market.

Poorly

[SuperKendall]

I wonder how well OS-X will fare on a fully-featured tablet en how well Windows Mobile works on a feature-poor iPad-style tablet.

It would have the same problem, the apps nor the application stack would really support touch input well so the whole thing would be kind of annoying to use and see little market traction over a laptop.

For a device that is intended to be primarily used by touch, you need to rework the UI stack and applications so they think about touch primarily. Just ask Microsoft; it's what they are doing with Windows 7 Mobile.

No

[SuperKendall]

This is absolutely disingenuous. Are you saying the only reason the iPad succeeded was that it didn't have Win7 on it?

You have it backwards (or at least your understanding of what I was saying is not right); it succeeds because it has an OS tailored to the start for touch interactions with the screen.

Android would have the same benefit, though they have an issue with the need for multiple hardware buttons. It throws a small wrench in the works, not one that cannot be overcome.

I was simply explaining how tablets can succeed, just not with Windows 7 on them (now Windows 7 mobile, that might be a different story).

Re:No

[Fross]

I'm afraid you have it backwards - you are saying above that any tablet with Windows 7 must fail. Neither the OS nor, crucially, the market are mature, there will be a lot to come yet.

I gave the points that made the iPad successful - the OS was not important except, obviously, that it is a GOOD OS for the purpose.

You may think Windows 7 does not have the potential to be a good tablet OS - I am not defending it but simply pointing out that given there have been no windows tablets launched on a similar magnitude, that we can't know. The market is so immature - hell, the iPad isn't even released in this country until later this week, how can anyone know how it will end?

Re:No

[SuperKendall]

I'm afraid you have it backwards - you are saying above that any tablet with Windows 7 must fail.

That is in fact a valid statement.

Neither the OS nor, crucially, the market are mature

Then the OS never will.

the OS was not important except, obviously, that it is a GOOD OS for the purpose.

But you can't except the only reason it works!

You may think Windows 7 does not have the potential to be a good tablet OS - I am not defending it but simply pointing out that given there have been no windows tablets launched on a similar magnitude, that we can't know.

I get where you are coming from but I am saying the market has sampled many variants of Windows on tablets and they do not like them, as would be true of any desktop OS moved into that space (unlike many people I had no fondness for the idea of desktop OS X on a tablet). Yet another variant on the attempt will simply make no difference.

The market is so immature - hell, the iPad isn't even released in this country until later this week, how can anyone know how it will end?

But the market is not at all immature. There have been tablets being sold for well over a decade now. The only thing not mature is trying to work the space with OS's tailored for the space, but fundamentally desktop OS'es on tablets have been well tried and totally rejected. Can you honestly imagine a single Windows 7 tablet have any success whatsoever in a market where the iPad and various Android tablets duke it out? There's just no scenario where that ends up working.

on the suitability of Win7 for a tablet interface

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want to say that this reply is handwritten through a used Toshiba M750 I purchased for 600CDN from eBay.

Re: The true value of Windows...

[Patch86]

If they broke backwards compatibility, they would soon start haemorrhaging business customers. My employer sticks with Windows mostly because they have a colossal stack of legacy and/or custom software that would cost a metric fortune to replace. If they absolutely had to replace it anyway, there's no guarantee they would pick the newest Windows offering, instead of properly considering the alternatives.

And once people are using something different at work everyday, the knee-jerk loyalty to Windows would disappear. After all, people getting used to it at work is often cited as one of the big factors in Windows adoption way back in the day.

webOS tablet

[DrYak]

Android and WebOS are the only real competition for the iPad going forward. This year, there's no chance Android or WebOS tablets will outsell the iPad,

Though HP is saying they are fast tracking a webOS tablet. This isn't that much difficult (provided they can recycle huge chunks of previous Slate and WebOS designs, which sound realistic), and could hit the christmas deadline by pouring enough resources onto it.

and further down the road, I don't see people buying either over the iPad, as there's pretty much no compelling reason to.

Well there's a huge reason :
- the iPad is running the iPhone's OS X, meaning that it can only do what apple decides to approve (and they don't approve porn and flash, among other).
- HP announced switching to webOS, which (like almost anything on the market beside iPhone's OS and the latest iteration of Windows Mobile) lets you do what you want with the device. Either you use your webOS device as-is (and have a controller/doctored walled garten "no risk of bricking your phone" where to play) or you just type-in the proper command (a spoof of the Konami code in earlier version, got an easier to type alternative in more recent versions) and can install everything that you can think of. (And if you ask : yes, adult themed application are available).

Well, just hope that the HP acquisition won't cause all hobbyist-friendly features to suddenly disappear.

If porn is only available on one of the two, guess who'll win ?

I thought:

[Anonymous Coward]

that windows 7 was bad for tablets because we had already decided that windows (any) was bad (period)