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Ballmer Promises Microsoft Tablet By Christmas
judgecorp writes "Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told an audience at the London School of Economics, that there will be tablets running Microsoft's Windows operating system available by Christmas. 'We as a company will need to cover all form factors,' he told an audience of students and press. 'You'll see slates with Windows on them – you'll see them this Christmas.' Mind you, if he's talking about the rumoured HP Windows 7 slate, he may not be so pleased when it appears. A recent YouTube video showed a supposed prototype which has been described as a 'trainwreck in the making.'"
Coal is so old fashioned.
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Motion has 3 models available:
http://www.motioncomputing.com/
There's the Archos 9:
http://www.archos.com/products/tw/archos_9/index.html?country=us&lang=en
and the Samsung Q1EX:
http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/laptops/NP-Q1EX-FA01US
and the Panasonic Toughbook is available as a slate.
Sadly, Fujitsy quit making slates though (perhaps they'll go back to making them?) --- interestingly the selection of Windows slates has gotten so low that some people who want a larger format slate are purchasing the Axiotron Modbook (a converted Mac laptop) and installing Windows on it.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Or the bigger question - which of the big Linux distros have drivers for touchscreens? I can see Ubuntu being all over this one.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
To be in the stores for the holiday shopping season, it would already have had to be shown to retailers, the retail space booked and paid for by Microsoft, and the first containers of product on ships in transit from China. It's too late in the retail cycle for this season.
I'm betting that the tablet will be running the exact same bloated Windows OS that is meant for PC's. Ballmer still wants to see the same Windows start menu, etc. on every single device no matter how big or small. He should learn a lesson from Apple with the iPhone & iPad. What makes them so popular is that Apple did NOT take the Mac OS-X GUI and try to shoehorn it on a smaller device. The smaller screens necessitated a much simpler and more user friendly interface. Until Ballmer accepts this and lets Microsoft develop a new UI paradigm for portable devices they're doomed to failure over and over again.
It tickles me how Microsoft turned into a "me too" company. "Where do you want to go today?" is more like "Where were you a few six months ago?"
Hasn't Windows been on tablets since tablets were first sold, several years ago? Back when having no keyboard meant half your computer had fallen off, rather than being a selling point.
Windows has been on tablets for a decade, and they aren't at all bad.
Video has been removed, that could be a story in itself...
I can sell you a tablet *right now* that runs some version of Microsoft's "Windows". You just won't be able to do much with it. I mean, Windows CE 2.11 only does so much.
The problem with this promised Windows 7 Tablet is that it won't do much either. Great, you can surf the web..., what else can you do with it? Very few apps support touch interfaces, and Windows in general is not an OS suited to a tablet computer.
What everyone's forgetting is that Apple made a very smart move by NOT putting OS-X Tiger on the iPad, since that OS wasn't suited to a touchscreen system. Instead, they simply scaled up the iPhone OS which was already made for people with fat fingers.
I mean, can't you just wait for the tablet to prompt you to press CTRL-ALT-DEL? Or tell you that if you want to close the app, press ALT-F4?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Late? To the tablet market? Does the tech world have severe amnesia or something? It was called Windows XP Tablet Edition and there were plenty of devices sold. Microsoft just didn't anticipate that people would prefer having horrifically hobbled environments that can only execute approved farting applications downloaded through official sources.
My first Windows based tablet computer was the Dauphin DTR-1 which was released in 1994.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Microsoft a few months (years) late and a billion dollars short... and the market analysts noticing at long last
Shares in Microsoft have already fallen 23% since April this year, with analysts concerned that the computer giant is failing to assert itself in the growing smart phone and tablet computer markets.
Ballmer's just trying to prop the value of his share options up before they force him out.
Microsoft is anything but late to this party. They have been trying to launch a tablet for over a decade now. They've tried again, and again, and again, and they have failed every single time.
I've lost count of how many times they have tried, but it goes all the way back to Windows 95 for Pen Computing, or whatever it was called.
"Where do you want to go today? ....wherever Apple and Google are of course!"
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
But we won't get the Courier. Ballmer hasn't got the vision to sell something like that.
They also don't have the vision to design it. The whole thing was basically a video mockup, and if you really thought about it the design as it was just was not practical. There is a vast world of difference between what a video effects guy can come up with and what really can be made.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I seems like Microsoft has always been a "me too" company.
Where do you think "embrace, extend (and extinguish)" came from? Microsoft has always been late to the market with technology, and that technology usually takes a couple of iterations to become really usable. In some cases, the technology is becomes pretty good, in other cases it gets deprecated and thrown out because even they can't make it work.
Now, some of their stuff has gotten mature and fairly usable, but some rots on the vine and is mostly an expensive transitional technology that people buy and get burned with.
But, except for Clippy, I am hard pressed to think of many situations where Microsoft felt like it was innovating. Granted, some of that might have been behind the scenes in APIs the the like (eg .NET), but as an end-user, Microsoft has been rolling out features that Mac, UNIX (and now Linux) have all incorporated for a long time.
I don't hate Microsoft in quite the knee-jerk way I used to, and I honestly find most of their modern products to be pretty damned god and stable ... but it's hard to really think they've ever led the way in consumer technology that makes me say "ooooh, I gotta get me some of that".
For the last bunch of years, they mostly seem to be watching what others do, come late to the game and then throw resources at it until they get it right (Sharepoint) or throw it away (Zune).
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I, for one, would welcome a full-fledged OS on a tablet. It'd take a little longer to boot, sure, and demand more powerful hardware, but it's not like there isn't an upside. Desktop OSs are much less closed, with you tipically having a lot more control over your applications and preferences. In order to pay for the superior specs and remain competitive, battery life could be downgraded. Because, frankly, when are we that far away from a power source? Most of the tablet users I know tend to never take their gadget out of the house, anyway, so the battery could be entirely discarded. Then you could add a physical keyboard, because even the best virtual ones suck in comparison to any $5 real counterpart. All that's left now is to make it modular, so if my screen or processor malfunctions, I can simply replace it instead of having to redundantly rebuy a lot of components I already have. Now THAT'd be a useful device. I'd call it a "personal computer".
For the last bunch of years, they mostly seem to be watching what others do, come late to the game and then throw resources at it until they get it right (Sharepoint) or throw it away (Zune).
I don't anyone who administers Sharepoint will ever claim that MS "got it right." ;)
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
From T other FA (eWeek needs better people if they think they can stop me cutting and pasting... sheesh...)
The rest of the article is not worth looking at, let alone reading.
Free Martian Whores!
Video has been removed, that could be a story in itself...
Even a video of a Windows product can't stay up for more than a month!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The investment bank cut its rating of Microsoft shares from "buy" to "neutral".
It said Microsoft was being threatened by the rise of tablet computers such as Apple's iPad, which do not run Windows software.
So what he's saying is, we don't have a great idea for Windows on a tablet, but we know tablets are hot and we would look dumb if we don't make a windows tablet, so we're creating one just to try to look good. Of course, it will be a POS, but hey, we made it!
Well, that's the thing: Windows' best selling feature is it works on anything. Windows' (arguable) worst feature is that it wasn't designed to work with anything. The bad part of not being in the hardware business (in this context) is that MS doesn't really have the ability to drive the market in that regard. So they seem to be in the position of cajoling some hardware manufacturer into releasing a tablet. Now they can partner with that company to develop features that will work well on a tablet, but it's not the same as Apple deciding "we will make a tablet" and doing everything necessary to make it a success.
I don't know what the answer is for MS. Could be they need to acquire some sort of high-end, low-volume boutique PC manufacturer to serve as a marketing arm for new toys they want to develop. But for now they still depend on the manufacturers to decide what markets they want to get into.
Ding, we have a winner. Microsoft has had ample entry points into this market, and frankly the sales and adoption have been pathetic.
Don't get me wrong, people who have adopted them are satisfied with their pen computers, but the sales have been in the low 200K units per year out of the 40M laptops or so sold per year. A tiny fraction.
Repackaging WinMo or Win7 into an iPad like form factor will not result in success
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
It's windows 7 with some half-assed touch support bolted on. it will run your existing windows software but your windows software was designed for mouse and keyboard. I think you would need to be really desperate to go anywhere near it (this characterization applies to Microsoft, manufacturers, and consumers)
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
His sled will be propelled by eight flying chairs.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
No one cares Balmer. Get a new idea. Stop copying Apple. Apple is a dick company... Why cant Microsoft initiate, rather than follow Apple. By the time Microsoft copies Apple's inventions, Apple has already dominated the market and Microsoft's pathetic copy is dead before it ever comes out.
Microsoft is run by a fat fucking idiot. Lets face it.
I'd rather have the Vera Sans Mono.
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Still waiting on the mac version of directx
You mean OpenGL?
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Microsoft has always been slow to adopt new technologies until they've been proven. They like to see other peoples mistakes and learn from them (though they don't always do so). As the saying goes, you can tell the pioneers by the arrows in their backs.
However, addressing the "trainwreck" article.. it's rather stupid comments...
"Why include a “CTRL-ALT-DEL” button on the device’s chassis unless you expect the software to crash on a regular basis?"
What century is he living in where c-a-d still reboots a computer? It's used for several tasks these days, like.. oh, i don't know.. LOGGING IN?
"What’s with having a mechanical button to activate a virtual onscreen keyboard?"
Maybe because onscreen buttons may be obscured by apps running?
"but an unmodified version of Windows 7 on a small touch screen translates into icons roughly the size of theoretical particles"
Obviously he's never used Windows 7 on a multi-touch screen. You can use multi-touch to pinch-zoom the icons to whatever size you want.
That's what causes a "trainwreck in the making?" Stuff that he simply doesn't understand.
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But the XBox is exactly what I am talking about when I mention throwing resources at it until it is relevant. The XBox cost them loads of money until it became profitable. Nobody else could afford to be "successful" the way Microsoft is since it takes billions of dollars to prop it up until it is viable.
Actually, I don't. I completely get why it is easier to deliver a good user experience by putting up guard rails and foam padding.
I'm not so sure ... I have seen more innovation and change in user interfaces from iPad apps than I have seen in the industry in 20+ years. It is the first time someone has fundamentally changed the way I interact with a computer.
How? I assume by making sure that the dev kit forall of their platforms is consistent? Is doing things the same way you've always done them "innovating"? Don't get me wrong, it's probably a good thing that people can use the existing APIs -- but that isn't exactly going to drive new ways of doing things.
I assume Kinect is trying to build on what Nintendo built for the Wii? Again, not pioneering anything. It's taking an idea that is now several years old, and putting a little more horsepower behind it.
And, it seems like Surface has been vaporware for a whole lot of years -- I rank it right up with that Microsoft Home of the Future or whatever it's called. It's a bunch of experimental tech that hasn't been ready for the consumer, and doesn't really seem to go anywhere. It's intriguing, but it doesn't seem to be tangible yet.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
That's largely because Apple understand something that Microsoft historically haven't.
A UI that works on a desktop PC does not necessarily work on a handheld device, simply because most of the assumptions made on a desktop PC (large screen, keyboard and mouse control) are no longer true. This has to go beyond just the desktop UI - applications must also account for this.
Hell, even Windows Mobile has historically not dealt with this terribly gracefully.
I'm puzzled why this should be modded off-topic: Microsoft were indeed ahead in terms foreseeing the tablet PC over a decade ago, much like the smart phone. Though, like many projects from Microsoft in the last decade, the ultimate execution and follow-through leaves a lot to be desired. (They were not the only ones to see ahead but they did invest significantly early on.)
I think corporate hubris has, in recent years, made Microsoft markedly ineffective at bringing true innovation to the marketplace, leaving it lurching from one me-too project to another, wasting vast amounts of money in a desperate attempt to find the next revenue stream to increase profits and ultimately satisfy shareholders.
I mean, if they were concerned about getting a serious toehold in that market they'd release something solid when its ready, not when its sales might artificially peak due to Christmas shoppers right?
MS has done this for years with consumer gadgets. For example, the Xbox and the Zune were pushed into the Christmas shopping seasons. Both allowed MS to claim that they moved millions of each when in reality, they simply pushed the quantities on retailers who would spend several months selling down their inventories. In the case of Zune, sometimes at bargain basement prices.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
It seems the 'Trainwreck'-movie has been removed by user from YouTube. Gosh, I wonder why!!
What person will donate an airborne act of love?
While the Xbox may seem to somewhat fit the 'throw money at it until it's relevant' idea you provide, Xbox Live on the other hand is innovative in many ways. It was innovative to include an ethernet plug on the original Xbox (ps2 offered this later, Dreamcast offered it as a separate $100 addon, etc), and then to have a network with gamertags and proper matchmaking. On the 360, Xbox Live is consistently ahead of the competition as well, offering in-game chat across games first, Live-only games for download with demos that always include the full version within them for a simple, in-game pay to unlock.. Etc.. Sony has been trying to catch up with PSN, but still doesn't offer some key features that Xbox Live provides, namely cross-game chat. For the most part, Sony has just been implementing whatever features of Xbox Live people seem to enjoy (trophies to replicate achievements, etc). They are also pushing the envelope with other services on Live... like Netflix support for Gold account holders and now the ESPN live functionality. They had TV episode and movie downloads prior to Sony, and Netflix long prior to Sony and Nintendo.
So.. like it or not, Xbox Live is hugely innovative. Aside from Live, however... I completely agree with your argument. I used to work at Microsoft, and embrace+extend is definitely the name of the game. Their problem lately, in my opinion, is poor leadership. Steve Ballmer takes the 'me too' nature of the company too far, consistently looking to copy others that are making money even when Microsoft has no competency to beat that competitor. Bing is the perfect example... Microsoft continues to try to beat Google at search, when it's apparent to anyone that they won't ever accomplish that (and no one else will either). Lately they have at least realized that their massive cash cows in Windows and Office are what deserve the most attention, but the company still needs to do a better job (any job) of focusing on their competencies and delivering against those rather than simply trying to follow the money others are making.
But my hope was that it ran a modified version of OSX.
There was a survey that came out a week or so prior to the official announcement of the iPad - I heard about it on the now-defunct podcast "Network World's Twisted Pair". The survey-takers asked people whether they would prefer (on the iPad) a more-or-less standard OS X interface, or an iPhone-style (what Apple now calls iOS) interface. Something like 70% of the people stated they'd prefer the iOS style.
I'm not saying this in an attempt to invalidate your opinion; I'm just pointing out that, among the wider population, the majority of people don't seem to want a computer-like interface to their tablets. We probably could have deduced that even without that survey, though, given the tepid sales previous Windows tablets have seen.
I'd guess the take-away Mr. Ballmer needs to grasp is that the majority of people don't want a "Start" button on their slate...
#DeleteChrome
I'm not supper fond of Windows, but I loathe developing Flash.
I'm more brunch fond of Windows, myself .. gives it more time to digest before bed
antipaucity
I guess as a non-gamer, I don't track these things. So they don't register for me. I don't doubt that they are pioneering the on-line parts of gaming, I'm just oblivious to them.
*laugh* Depends on your perspective -- I view it about as innovative as eventually adding TCP/IP to Windows. It seems like it was more inevitable than revolutionary. :-P
But, maybe I'm just old and cynical about these things. ;-)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
These devices look sooooo sweet, I am going to get one on lunch day.
What people failed to see was that a tablet should not be a old tech feature like a laptop with a rotating screen. A tablet is an entirely different device, a totally new market. Not a bolt-on feature set for an OS.
Why include a "CTRL-ALT-DEL" button on the device's chassis unless you expect the software to crash on a regular basis? What's with having a mechanical button to activate a virtual onscreen keyboard?
I hate coming to the defense of Microsoft, but "CTRL-ALT-DEL" hasn't been a hard-reboot sequence since WinME. It's been used in WinNT/2K/XP/V/7 as a way to access the login prompt because IIRC it's a special sequence that only the kernel is allowed to listen for, so you can ostensibly be assured that no program other than the login prompt is accepting your username/password. A soft-keyboard version of "CTRL-ALT-DEL" would defeat that "security" purpose.
Foreseeing something and actually doing it are two very different things.
Apple released the first version of the Newton almost two decades ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MessagePad
Microsoft's PC operating systems divisions, with its internecine management wars, has managed to produce uninspired designs, solutions that have more security holes than a sieve, and has generally stagnated in the arena of innovation.
Microsoft doesn't have a technology problem: they've got a cultural problem. Like Xerox PARC of the days of yore, Microsoft's Research division cranks out all manner of bankable ideas--yet their corporate patrons fail to see the need to actually implement these things to any serious degree.
Microsoft has always been slow to adopt new technologies until they've been proven. They like to see other peoples mistakes and learn from them (though they don't always do so). As the saying goes, you can tell the pioneers by the arrows in their backs.
Except for the fact that MS has been one of the pioneers in tablet computing since 2001. Despite having started about a decade ahead, they've never seen the success Apple has with the iPad. And MS has had multiple attempts at tablet computing. I would venture to guess that Apple has sold more iPads this year than MS has sold tablets all decade and the year isn't over yet.
It's the same with Windows Mobile. Windows Mobile preceded the iPhone by a decade. MS laughed at Apple and said the iPhone would never get any marketshare only to see their own marketshare dwindle in the single digits thanks to Apple, Android, and RIM.
In both cases, MS was the pioneer and got beaten by an upstart. It must burn Ballmer that this happened under his watch.
What century is he living in where c-a-d still reboots a computer? It's used for several tasks these days, like.. oh, i don't know.. LOGGING IN?
Depends on the paradigm. The problem is MS still regards everything as a computer whereas Apple, RIM, Android consider mobile devices as appliances. And the paradigm suggests appliances do not need to be rebooted unless there was something seriously wrong. Putting in a reboot button highlights the fact that the OS is not as stable as it should be. Also only in the Windows paradigm does logging in require the three finger salute. Other systems do not require the keystroke to log in and have other ways of handling it.
Maybe because onscreen buttons may be obscured by apps running?
If that's the case, the OS isn't designed well. Again what kind of device is it? Computer or appliance. Also why hasn't the applications and OS been designed not to overcome this problem.
Obviously he's never used Windows 7 on a multi-touch screen. You can use multi-touch to pinch-zoom the icons to whatever size you want.
I think the reviewer is referring to the fact that OS is not optimized to the screen for touch. For other devices you don't need to ever zoom on icons or buttons; they should be properly sized already. You do need to zoom for content like a web page or a document. This gives the impression that sizing and scaling are bolted on rather than built-in.
That's what causes a "trainwreck in the making?" Stuff that he simply doesn't understand.
The problem is that he's reviewing it as a normal consumer who won't tolerate these issues from a device whereas you're reviewing from a geek who expects it of a Windows computer. Most consumers barely tolerate computers and don't want another device that reminds them of their computer.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Exactly, the appeal of the iPad (or any tablet) is a smaller, simplified interface that is well suited to the form factor, with a user interface that is suited to the device.
All of the complaining that people won't be able to use it as a "real" computer is tech geeks thinking the rest of the world wants the same kind of machine they do.
Taking a desktop OS and putting it on a tablet and not actually changing much isn't really much in the way of progress -- it's repackaging 20 year old tech in a new box and not really taking advantage of it. If Microsoft just wraps up their existing OS, then it doesn't stand a chance of competing with the iPad.
As has been pointed out, Microsoft has been on tablets for a long time, and haven't really captivated people with it.
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Repackaging WinMo or Win7 into an iPad like form factor will not result in success
This is a very good point. I've actually used Windows 7 on a tablet PC, yes, complete with touch screen. It's horrible!
Imagine having to do window management on a device like that, stuff you don't even have to bother about on iOS or Android OS. Imagine an OS where lots of apps aren't designed for e.g. changed dpi settings (to at least be able to put your thumb on a maximize widget and not hit the restore widget!) and have their UI's crap out completely at that. Imagine how no text box in the OS will automatically pop up a virtual keyboard, and that the built-in Windows 7 virtual keyboard that's there consumes a third of the entire display on a 1024x600 touch screen. It's like how polished Windows XP 64-bit is for 64-bit apps. That's where Windows 7 is today, at best. They haven't even thought about how you're supposed to *use* Windows 7 as a touch OS yet, it's just a cobbled together mess of mouse interfaces, touch-oriented keyboards, small widgets, and API's for multi-touch features, for the 0.32% that use such devices on Windows 7. And they're already talking of a HP Slate this christmas. This will risk ending up a huge disappointment for HP.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Yes, clearly the tablet market is is a bolt-on feature for a cell phone OS, only with limited cellular features. Microsoft tried to make a PC smaller, Apple made a cell phone bigger. Clearly Apple won but it's not as if one direction is obviously superior to the other from an objective viewpoint.
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MS got the marketing right, and the execution wrong, as usual. Wanting to shoehorn a desktop OS and hardware into a tablet yields horrendous results in terms of battery life, ergonomics, and looks. Leveraging Users' training, Apps name brand, file formats and OS design works up to the point where someone comes up with a brand new design tailored for tablets, and another one for phones ...
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Yes, when you deliberately break the standards and go your own way, you can consider that "done first", since everyone else is doing it the right way.
... unless it was during the several year period in which they were the only free-as-in-beer graphical web browser of consequence, in which case whatever they were doing was the real standard, and anything else claiming to be one was nerd masturbation.
We have to be at least a little pragmatic.
What makes you think MS will attempt to honestly compete in the slate/phone market? I expect they'll use the same tools they used in the PC market.
"Clearly Apple won but it's not as if one direction is obviously superior to the other from an objective viewpoint."
I'm not sure about that. I would think a small screen is simply not going to lend itself to head-shrunken Windows. The size changes the paradigm, that's what Apple got but they didn't get it in a flash. It came because the way music is bought for iPods. Music, to Apple, is mere software. People seem to like a lot of choices as long as they are well organized. That's the problem with the Windows world, it isn't well organized. It's a polyglot that makes most owners scared to death they might have to upgrade their OS. Apple figured out it was the closed garden that makes owners feel safe from the horrors only an OS screwup can inflict.
That said, Apple's machines are not for geeks who revel in a freewheeling environment because they know how to navigate it. Instead of a horror they see an interesting challenge. MS has corrupted that experience, Linux is attempting to give it back. But then Linux runs up against the mass market which doesn't care about computer challenges. So the trick for the Android devices will be to neuter the free-wheeling environment that scared the hell out of most people yet still allow for a geek-appeal to get under hood. The later will help encourage apps to be produced for it...as long as those apps don't reopen the box of horrors users do not want.
Well, to be fair... Microsoft demo'd a lot of features in Longhorn back in 2002 that apple copied and was able to get to market with faster (due to Micorosoft's major screwups in developing Longhorn). Microsoft showed stuff like 3D Window managers with wobbly windows, instant search, etc.. long before they were in other products like Compiz/XGL or OSX.
I think you have your history a little screwed up. Apple released hardware accelerated version of their compositing rendering engine Quartz back in August 23, 2002 (10.2 Jaguar). Previous to that, they had software based Quartz in 10.0 and 10.1 and Quartz evolved out of Display Postscript on NextStep. Apple and Next had been working on search for a long time before that as well.
The taskbar in Windows 95 and quick launch was stolen from the NextStep dock.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I disagree.
First off, calling iOS a "phone os" when its core is the same as that of Mac OS is showing that your not really thinking about the difference. The difference between the approaches has nothing to do with the core of the OS and everything to do with the displace and interface levels of the OS. That is where the difference is between iOS and Mac OS X and, in so much as OS X and Windows are similar, it is also the difference between iOS and Windows.
So given that the basic difference is in the UI layer I think its pretty obvious why iOS is better suited to tablets than windows. Windows was designed for mouse interaction and iOS was designed ground up for touch interaction. From a design standpoint, there really is no doubt which tactic is better for designing an OS for a touch based device.
Now that said, design isnt everything. Microsoft wanted full windows on their tablet so that they could leverage a large library of applications for the platform, even though those apps would not be easy to use with a touch interface. Apple managed to get the best of both worlds by releasing the iPhone first (the first phone that provided an easy way for people to build and, more importantly, market phone applications) and then was able to leverage those applications on the launch of the iPad. I suspect if the iPad had come first Apple would have faced an up hill battle trying to get developers and users on board at the same time.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Hm, not to me. Or do you consider the gesture support for modern capacitive multitouch systems to just be "an improvement over", say, Graffiti on a stylus-required pressure-sensitive single-touch screen? If so, okay, then you and I set the bar very differently.
Multi-actor mo-cap without a special mo-cap suit, coupled with facial recognition, coupled with voice recognition... to me, it doesn't sound fair to dismiss that as a late-to-market incremental evolution of what Sony and Nintendo did. I mean, with one of these plugged in, you can be playing a movie on your XBox, and when the pizza guy rings the bell, you can just say "xbox, pause" out loud without hunting for the remote or controller. That's a bit more than a wiimote waggle game, or an EyeToy bubble-popping game, or an iSight "laser harp" toy. (In fact, I can't think of an existing mass-market gaming console, or any other living-room set-top box, with infrastructure for speakerphone-style no-headset voice commands.)
First off, calling iOS a "phone os" when its core is the same as that of Mac OS is showing that your not really thinking about the difference. The difference between the approaches has nothing to do with the core of the OS
/contradiction
It was pretty clear he said that calling iOS a "phone OS" misses the fact that the core of the OS is mostly the same as Mac OS X, but it's the interface that makes the difference.
You know how I figured that out? Because I read the rest of the sentence you cut short. It continued:
and everything to do with the displace and interface levels of the OS.
You don't get to just chop people's sentences apart and pretend like they said something completely different.
You don't have to imagine. Grab a free VNC app for an iPad and try it out for yourself. It's horrible. OS X on a tablet is pretty painful too.
Courier is an IBM thing from the 50's. I guess courier new is MS, but it isn't all that different.
Sent from my PDP-11
The problem is that they're getting to the point where software lock-in, strong-arming OEMs, making vague unspecific threats about patents and generally acting like a street thug isn't going to work.
If everyone is using an iPhone or an Android device, what's Microsoft going to do, hire people to break their phones? Wait, they might just...
They've been coasting on Windows and Office for 20 years, but that ride is almost done. They'll have to compete for real now, and it will be pretty amusing to watch, since they have clearly forgotten how to do it.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.