Apple iPad Mini Could Complicate Things For Windows 8 Tablets

Nerval's Lobster writes "Current rumor suggests that Apple is gearing up to unveil its iPad Mini Oct. 17, with invitations to media arriving Oct. 10. That's according to Fortune, which obtained the information from an unnamed Apple investor who, in turn, heard those dates from other unnamed sources. While that attribution might prove a bit too vaporous for some people, it does align with earlier reports from AllThingsD that Apple is planning to reveal a smaller iPad sometime in October. If those rumors prove accurate, the unveiling of an iPad Mini in that timeframe could prove very bad news for the upcoming Windows 8 tablets. (Gizmodo offers a pretty complete rumor rundown on the iPad Mini's possible features here.) Unlike the traditional PC market, Microsoft doesn't dominate the market for mobile-device operating systems. Windows 7 tablets never gained much of a toehold among tablet users, who prefer iPads and Android-based devices by wide margins. When it comes to Windows 8 (and Windows RT, the version of next-generation Windows for ARM architecture), Microsoft is starting out as the underdog."

Comments

Win8 tablets are vapor

[Anonymous Coward]

The promise of winRT is really MS office on a tablet. And nothing else. Windows 8 brings NOTHING else to the table that iOS or android doesn't already do better.

So, office.
Not some BS cloud hybrid, actual fully functional office. Excel, word, access, the whole nine yards.

Also not some BS psudo-laptop hybrid device that Microsoft has been failing to sell for a literal decade. An actual real tablet with a functional touch interface, long battery life, instant on, app store, all that. You know, like apple sells. Or something running andriod.

Here is why you will never buy a windows 8 tablet:
Office on Arm is a lie. Microsoft will never be able to port the full office suite to arm because the codebase is so bloated with decades-old windows specific bloat. You will never see a winRT port of office that you could ever call functional.

The alternative? One of those new custom "windows only" intel SoCs. - These tablets will never sell well. They'll cost 899, weigh twice as much, have a boatload of carryover pc-isims that will make them useless as actual tablets, and will run maybe an hour and a half before running down their battery. And intel based windows tablet will never be as functional as an arm based one.