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Bill Gates: iPad Users Are Frustrated They Can't Type Or Create Documents
An anonymous reader writes "While Apple views the tablet and PC markets as two separate entities, Microsoft takes the opposing view. During a CNBC interview this morning, Gates continued to toe the party line insofar as he praised the benefits of Microsoft's tablets and Windows 8 while explaining that iPad users are frustrated because they have trouble typing and creating documents. 'With Windows 8, Microsoft is trying to gain share in what has been dominated by the iPad-type device. But a lot of those users are frustrated, they can't type, they can't create documents. They don't have Office there. So we're providing them something with the benefits they've seen that have made that a big category, but without giving up what they expect in a PC.'"
And Microsoft keeps demonstrating that they just don't get it, that no one seriously expect a tablet to be a PC, and that no one wants their PC to be a tablet.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's true.
--Sent from my iPad
And yet you go to any business conference nowadays, and the place is littered with iPads and other tablets. How odd it is that, whatever your advice might be, businesses are buying tablets and they are being seen out in the field.
You can certainly argue that business are wrong, but you can't argue with the fact that the tablet has made major inroads into the enterprise world.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I hate apple products as much as the next guy, but I'm not sure I can agree with this. I see my coworkers typing on their ipads all the time with a dock-like keyboard that attaches to act like a cover when not in use (not sure what it's called or if it's an official apple product or 3rd party).
Microsoft is fustrated that still, no one gives a shit about windows 8, and no one wants windows rt, and they were all DOA.
As much as I despise apple products, no cult-of-crapple iPad users would ever think twice about anything else, and if they did, it would more likely be android.
Nobody wants a PC in the office. Users are frustrated that the punch cards and terminals that they depend on for data processing are just not available for the PC.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Like a start menu. oh wait.
Since ipad users are missing Office, we can expect to see a return of Office for Mac(now iOS)?
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
... generally I don't lug it around.
I evaluated the Surface Pro last month. We got a keyboard with it which I put in my office cabinet. It's still sitting there. I have a choice at work of what tablet I want to use, since I'm the product evaluator for that category. Right now I have an iPad, several different Androids, the RT (yuk), and this Surface Pro.
The keyboard just isn't that big a deal to me. The one that comes with it is nice in that it magnetically latches, but in terms of actual typing it's slower than a $7 generic one from Micro Center.
The reason I carry the Surface Pro is because my Windows software will run on it. Plus, it's got a USB port. If I care that much I'll just steal a full keyboard off someone's desk and plug it into the tablet. I'm in a corporate environment, it's not like USB keyboards are hard to come by. Crap, I keep one in my car...
Support microSD: in a post 9/11 world, it is unwise to carry your data on media that you cannot comfortably swallow.
Please use the device before actually criticizing it. Reminds me of so many C-levels and VPs, they don't have a clue about what's going on, but they claim they do!!
What OS is installed doesn't change that. Surface users are frustrated that there are no apps for their devices.
Touch UIs suck, and the proof is all over the internet. Every time someone posts something like "I would [something], but I'm on my [phone|tablet|mobile]" it is a damning statement on how limited touch is compared to keyboard+mouse. Even common desktop tasks are a chore in touch.
I realized recently that maybe part of the reason why Apple resisted putting cut and paste into iOS for so long was because they couldn't figure out how to make it not suck. That's something Jobs would have obsessed over.
Except that may not be a symptom of the businesses (at least the ones relevant to the conference) adopting them as much as the proliferation of journalists, bloggers, and marketeers who really don't directly DO much related to the business besides go to conferences. And that being said, if you look closer they tend to be browsing the web and checking their Facebook and Twitter feeds on their tablets and phones more than paying any attention to what's going on at the conference ;)
Ironically, these are usually the same journalists, bloggers, and marketeers claiming tablets will replace PCs for people who actually do real work as well...
. . . a lot of folks I see using computers can't do that with a keyboard either . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
While Apple views the tablet and PC markets as two separate entities, Microsoft takes the opposing view.
They were called netbooks, and they died a quick death.
I have an android tablet, not a ipad. I feel my experience is similar. Yes I can create documents. However, it is difficult enough that usually end up shutting off my tablet and get out the laptop (yeah yeah I have old hardware).
The software to create and edit documents on the tablet just isn't mature enough to do the things I am used to. Web based editors act weird. Apps miss a feature I want or whatever.
So, from that perspective, I think Bill is more right than wrong.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
So frustrated, that I have never bothered to even take the bluetooth keyboard I bought along with my iPad out of the box in the past two years.
If not, it is a design flaw
kb's can work through bluetooth.
but why do you think ipads would have regular usb host, when they can instead ask money from hardware developers?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
So according to Bill it boils down to MS Office (because you can simply get a keyboard for an iPad, just as you can for a Surface tablet).
The thing is however:
a) there's no native Office for Surface either (Office 2013 has no Metro-interface and isn't particularly suited for touch screens, even in touch-mode)
b) they are woking on a version of Office for iOS and Android
c) you can use Office 365 on whatever device that has a browser, which includes Surface, but also the iPad and all of the Android devices out there
How does that make the Surface any more attractive than the competition?
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Microsoft is a software company, right?
Users are frustrated because it lacks a keyboard? You mean just like Surface? Oh, but you can buy one as an add-on you say? You mean just like Surface?
Wow.. I'm not sure who I'm more afraid of now.. Ballmer or Gates, both seem pretty out of touch with reality.
Once again you have your finger on the pulse of what we want and need!
I still cant figure out why you let my two favorite Microsoft features go, Bob and Clippy, please bring them back!
The problem is that idiots run the world from management positions and tell us they don't care, just make it work.
Reference the guy who handed an iPad and an Office 2003 install disc and said get this working by tomorrow.
I 100% agree with him. I can't type /at all/ on my iPad 2. Because I'm not the disciplined type that raises their fingers 100% before hitting the next key I find the iPad trippng up a lot. It also doesn't keep up when I'm typing quickly and I'm not patient enough to slow down to wait for it. I've even tried two third party keyboards and wasn't impressed with them (1 because it was small and travel sized, the other is that new fangled overlay .. I can't remember the name but I was a part of the kickstarter). Anyway, when it comes to typing anything of substance I always put down the iPad and go to my desktop computer.
In the end my iPad 2 has become the samething my X-Box has become, a bad, over-priced Netflix player.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
iPad Jesus spotted on i50. iDetails on at 11.
I have an iPad, and Bill's right - it's no fun to type on. So what, though - I got it as a super-nice eReader, and it excels at this... A Surface device with keyboard is a solution, looking for a problem where none exists (for me, anyway).
They use it as a bigger smartphone. Check email, take some quick notes, read news between presentations. Works great and yet nobody expects you to get any real work done. Perfect for conferences or meetings.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Dear Abby,
Ever since we got my 13-year old an iPad, he's gone up to his bedroom after dinner each night and asked us to not disturb him while he "creates a document." Today I learned from Bill Gates that he can't actually create a document.
Should I knock before entering his room to ask about this?
Trying so hard to still be relevant.
He's trying hard to sell Balmer's terrible mistakes. Bill, I hope your money still isn't tied up in Microsoft Stock, as in 10 years it's gonna be over for you.
I can create documents on my phone. It's called a bluetooth keyboard and you can get one on Amazon for as little as $20 for a Chinese apple knock-off. (So cheap, I keep one at home, and one at work, so I don't have to carry the keyboard, just my phone).
Bill, you're smoking crack and you've missed the boat again.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
are frustrated they can't play, watch videos, access their dlna servers, nor their web 2.0 sites... So let's all go Android ! :-p
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
A lot (a whole fucking lot) of "business" is email and web browsing. Many of those people you see are executives or management in some form so it works great for their use case. Most don't need an office suite, or use it so infrequently, they also have a desktop PC or laptop for when they need to. Shit our regional staff used to survive on nothing but a blackberry, don't ask me how. I mean, at this point, I don't see how people still wave the "it's a fad" flag. People somehow think it's a zero sum game. If you have an iPad you can't do any work. Sometimes an iPad is the right device, sometimes you need a full desktop PC.
People are used to Office being bundled with their computers. Sure we can download Pages on an iPad. But I don't think enough people know enough about that.
Probably because of a few things.
1) Tablets are generally light and very portable and easily held in one hand. If you're at a gathering where everyone is standing, it's easy to whip out a tablet and show people stuff - while still having your other hand free to gesture and communicate and other things. One-handed use is quite important when you do not have a surface to use as a stand. Holding a laptop in one hand is often awkward, clumsy, and until the recent touch screen ones, interactions are terrible.
2) Tablets have great battery life. An iPad or Android tablet will generally last all day even if you're showing lots of people your brochures and screenshots and stuff. PCs with such battery life usually have external batteries, making them really heavy and unwieldy, especially single-handed carry.
3) There is very little need to compose long documents while at the conference - you may need to type some stuff up quickly (like entering contact and calendar stuff), but that generally is quite minimal. If a document need does come up, it's often better to do it in a private hotel room to draft it and review it (only an idiot tries to compose it right then and there to get it signed - these things normally have to be drawn up and agreed upon and other things).
4) The most common use will probably be fulfilled by the tablet's default gallery application - load up product photos, slides, etc as images and then swipe through them. Add a bit more for product brochures and stuff and that's it.
5) Said gallery app is often useful to automatically run a slide show when placed on the booth, similar to digital photo frames.
Gates is probably looking for a reason to not justify releasing Office for iOS (and Android). I mean, his criticisms apply to every tablet as well, including Surface. That, and a touch screen demands a different user interaction than a keyboard/mouse, so UIs have to change to accommodate both. E.g., touchscreens, resistive or capacitive or inductive are imprecise (resistives can use styluses, but even then the point's inaccurate) making small targets hard to hit. A mouse is a lot more precise. A touchscreen doesn't have "right click", and likewise, Fitt's law doesn't apply to touchscreens. In fact, hitting edges and corners is harder on a touchscreen.
He's absolutely right. iPad users are frustrated at their inability to create documents without a hardware keyboard, and have been expressing their frustration by abandoning Apple and switching to Microsoft Surface tablets in droves*.
*For a sufficiently loose definition of "droves".
#DeleteChrome
People who use their PC for nothing but browsing the web, occassionaly sending email and posting to Facebook or Twitter are perfect candidates for a tablet. People who do real work use a "fully functional PC".
The problem here is that the popularity of limited-purpose tablets made it unprofitable to continue to produce a "fully functional PC" with a 10 inch display. A 10 inch laptop can be easier for a bus or carpool passenger to use in cramped quarters than a 13 inch laptop.
The Pages app is, if I remember correctly, $10. It's not as feature-rich as Office but it's a usable word processor. It does have the new document feature. Also I seem to recall that airprint technology lets you print over wifi from your iPad. I've never tried it.
Are you seriously implying that touchscreen is the new, better method of input?
What exactly do you do on a computer? Im gonna guess its not
Or anything, really, that involves rapidly moving data from your brain onto a computer. Or does the new Lightning connector have that capability built into it?
On what planet is this even approximately true? I can type and create documents on my iPhone (the only iOS device I own, but not the only one I've used.) Its, obviously, a rather cramped form factor for that, but the functionality is there. On an iPad, particularly with one of the many keyboards, this is even easier -- just as easy as it would be on a PC (or, presumably, a Windows-based tablet with external keyboard, like the Surface.)
That's more of a problem for Microsoft than for the users.
Thin keyboard covers, like those shipping with Surface, have been available for iPad for several years before Microsoft copied them.
and the place is littered with iPads and other tablets. How odd it is that, whatever your advice might be, businesses are buying tablets and they are being seen out in the field.
Now try to come up with a business justification for it.
Theyre littered all over because businesses tend to throw a bone to their employees, and because iPads are hip enough that everyone wants one. Youre going to have a really hard time convincing me that a laptop wouldnt have been superior in every concievable metric, though, from manageability to compatibility to productivity to price.
But I would really like it if I could use documents from my PC on my tablet, especially spreadsheets, which are great for doing things such as
* Tracking client appointments, pay, travel, expenses, etc
* Keep a budget
* Tracking mileage on my vehicle (granted there are separate apps for this)
Thus far all the apps I've used for that tend to be fairly limited
I don't expect my tablet to be a PC. I wouldn't expect to play PC games on a tablet, and I probably wouldn't do a lot of coding unless the horsepower/storage scale up a lot more, but editing documents... yeah, I wouldn't mind that.
We're so frustrated that we keep buying more and more iPads thinking it will fix the problem.
And of course, we would never do anything a stupid as use an iPad for what it's good for and a notebook or desktop for what they're good for. Nope. We assume every electronic device should do everything that our other electronic devices do. What I'm really frustrated about with the iPad is its inability to make toast or wash my clothes.
Get back to the fundamentals. Quit trying to copy Apple. You lost site of what made your ecosystem worthwhile on the desktop:
1. Hardware vendors that had to meet your standard, which was relatively open. Result? Lots of hardware that works with Windows.
2. I can develop anything I want without paying you anything except of course the OS and hardware. I buy your development tools because I like them, not because I have to buy them. I can develop with 3rd party tools if I want to do that. Result? Tons of software that runs on Windows.
3. Things take a long time to become obsolete. It seems like just yesterday that DOS applications still ran on Windows. I don't recall when this went away because by the time it did, all my DOS apps were gone because I didn't want them anymore; not because you forced my hand.
No, you're not Free/Open Source; but you're "open enough" and it was working.
You and your company got side-tracked by "app store envy". You thought you could be like Apple. You started clamping down on what was open, gripping too tight. Result? You have a lame Apple clone, and you alienated the people who liked you because of the numbered points above.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
He should check out windows users sometime. They can't:
- find the very files that they just saved
- or even just browse the contents of their machine
- switch between programs without a mouse (I alt-tab and they go "woah, how'd you do that!?")
- change the toner catridge in the network printer themselves
- climb under their own dirty desks to plug things in
- be trusted to install their own software
- understand why IE is a poor choice
Yes, I did work as a support monkey for a little while.
We recently went through a pretty agressive transition to google docs in my department. Approximately 40 people mostly accountants and managers who's marriage to office was extreme. There was extreme push back by the accountants for the very reason stated in the article. Android/Google aren't real documents. you can only view snapshots but cannot work efficiently. The collaboration was the sell, with the thinking being use your pc to edit in native office formats. At this point all the accountants have switched over to google sheets. I think the reason is Microsoft's definition of a document is this behemoth file with every option. I think Microsoft is backing the wrong horse here. I can accomplish the same amount on my android device as on my desktop at work. It may not have all teh graphic coolness but it does what it needs to do.
Bill, you're smoking crack and you've missed the boat again.
From the article http://allthingsd.com/20091005/while-fanboys-breathlessly-await-steve-jobs-apple-itab-they-should-probably-thank-bill-gates-too/ "Way back in the fall of 2001, when BoomTown was but a less-aged version of myself, I attended a keynote speech at the now-defunct Comdex show in Las Vegas, where Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates continued to bang the drum for one of his long-running obsessions: The tablet computer.
“The tablet takes cutting-edge PC technology and makes it available whenever you want it, which is why I’m already using a tablet as my everyday computer,” Gates said at the time to the audience gathered at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. “It’s a PC that is virtually without limits and within five years I predict it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America.”"
Ironically Bill Gates say the future...he built the damn boat, ironically in the context of this article he just hitched it up to windows;intel...and in context of this article Office.
On a couple of counts: 1. For typing, I can use the built-in "keyboard" easily enough. When I know I'll have to type a lot, like at a meeting, I'll bring my BT keyboard. 2. For creating documents, there are a number of Word-sort-of-compatible apps: Pages; Office2; QuickOffice; QuickWord; Documents To Go; etc. Yeah, it's not 100% Office compatibility, but if I need to shoot off a quick doc with some formatting, a table or two, I can do it. I'd use it on the airplane, or riding along as a passenger on a road trip to put together a rough draft that I'd finish in the office, using Word on the desktop. I realize that the platform and apps are limited, and there's a time and place to do different kinds of work. It's a matter of setting expectations.
Clearly nobody in business ever needs to use reference materials.
No, wait, that's pretty much what everyone in a business does. It's more or less ALL management uses technology for!
Reference the guy who handed an iPad and an Office 2003 install disc and said get this working by tomorrow.
Would installing Office 2003 on a Windows PC and installing an RDP client on the iPad be a solution? I do acknowledge that it would fail in airplane mode.
Wow a minor miracle.
BIll Gates notices that IPhone users are frustrated because they have to buy a bluetooth keyboard to type a lot.
Too bad he didn't notice that for two decades that Windows users are frustrated because their computers keep crashing.
People somehow think it's a zero sum game. If you have an iPad you can't do any work. Sometimes an iPad is the right device, sometimes you need a full desktop PC.
And if you already spent your budget on an iPad, you might not have much left for a desktop PC when you do need one.
Different
Use
Case
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Or better yet, they could sell Windows RT for the iPad!
In Google play https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.microsoft.switchtowp8 Switch to Windows Phone App. After noting it doesn't run on any of my devices...a first. It actually manages to achieve 600 1* scores (the others are negligible)
What? Yes it does. Do you think Fitt's law was invented for mice? It predates mice. From Wikipedia: "Fitts's law is used to model the act of pointing, either by physically touching an object with a hand or finger, or virtually, by pointing to an object on a computer monitor using a pointing device"
You have a point about the corners, but not Fitt's law.
Ipads are wonderful reference devices and even better video game machines.
A Nexus 7 or iPad is wonderful for point-and-click games like Bejeweled or Fruit Ninja or Monkey Island, but not all video games are point-and-click. How would one play, say, a platformer or fighting game using only a touch screen? Does an iPad even let the user connect a gamepad or joystick?
And yet you go to any business conference nowadays, and the place is littered with iPads and other tablets.
To do all the things that they would normally do on their smartphones just on a bigger screen.
I would like to be able to type more on my iPad. I even got the iPad keyboard (stupid thing is in portrait not landscape) but that is not what small devices are for. Small devices are for content consumption. Large double/triple screened monsters are for content creation. By consumption, taking pictures or sending texts are at the small end and doing 3D animation is at the large end.
Even accountants need double monitors. I am mostly a C++ developer using 2 screens and wishing for 3. My iPad is for watching Coursera and other lecture videos. My iPhone is for texting, a tiny bit of email, a microscopic amount of browsing, and for listening to Audiobooks and lectures, oh and phone calls.
In a super emergency I use my iPhone or iPad for SSHing into my server; but that is purified suckage.
If I had to make a prediction it would be that many consumers won't even consider getting a home PC what they will do is get large screened smart phones. A possibility is that a good docking station comes out so they can have a laptop type interface where the vast computing bulk comes from the phone. This way they can type longer letters, write school reports, properly interface with a printer, and fill out complicated on-line forms.
I don't want my tablet/smartphone to try to be more and fail. I don't ever want to edit a spreadsheet on something so frustrating. Any attempt to make it less frustrating will just frustrate me more.
I've never met anyone with this complaint. I suspect that people who wan't a PC are choosing to buy those, and not iPads.
The problem is not the keyboard. It's been a long time since I've used a computer with fewer than two screens to do any real work. A tablet cold never be large enough to meet my work related needs, but small enough to be usable as a tablet, so there's no sense trying to find compromise between the two.
That's only half the story. When Android first came out on phones, they rapidly overtook Apple because there were a bunch of new players jumping into the game. Now that the market has stabilized, the pendulum is swinging back the other way. In the United States, iPhone sales are actually growing again, and now exceed Android phone sales. Worldwide, the numbers are also trending back in that direction. Chances are, the relative mix of sales will oscillate back and forth for a while before hitting some magic point of equilibrium in which a certain percentage of devices are iOS and a certain percentage are Android, and that won't change much until there is some major disruptive innovation. That's generally the way mature markets work.
Similarly, right now, Android is growing much faster in tablets because it's really easy to grow from zero to nonzero. Once that market ceases to gain new players (and eventually, it will pretty much stabilize), there's no reason to believe that we won't see the same pattern emerging.
You're half right. Microsoft wants their duopoly back. Right now, it's pretty much an Android/Apple duopoly, and Microsoft is just warming up the bench. As far as I can tell, Apple doesn't really care who their competitor is, so long as they have one. Competition drives Apple to provide a better platform, and in the end, that's good for pretty much everyone, whether you're an Apple user or an Android user.
If you honestly think that iPad is a dying platform, I have a bridge to sell you. Dying platforms don't tell 70+ WWDC tickets per second at $1,599 a pop.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I am not sure where the concept of a tablet being about passive consumption came about. The reality is the new breed of tablet that come with pens have the potential of being more productive. That is not to say your passive consumers on today tablets...that is simply not true.
If you had said a mouse makes a better better pointing device than a finger, or for a competent typist can type marginally faster than someone swiping with their finger. I'd agree, and for a single task computer that replies on these things...like a typist a computer is better, for everyone else its a trade on portability; storage; screen estate.(I personally think they Desktop & Tablet compliment each other nicely)
Personally I use a Desktop almost everything...but that is because of its great big screen, not any misguided belief in productivity.
Notes - Tap the + - Start typing. I'm guessing he's never seen an iPad.
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No wait: ;ivl grr;omh ejrtr upit gomhrtd str tr;syobr yp yjr pm=dvtrrm lrunpstf/
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Let me try that a third time:
Good luck feeling where your fingers are relative to the on-screen keyboard.
the Chairman of the company that has utterly failed at something criticizes the company that is making money hand over fist for not understanding what customers want?
There were some kind of MS Office for the I-Pad, that would solve the problem!
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Many people still like them, but when I can get a used Thinkpad X2whatever for cheap it makes no sense for me to buy one.
If you have to use a laptop in cramped quarters, such as a bus, airplane, or the back seat of a C-segment compact car, is there a noticeable difference between the 10" screen of a netbook and the 12" screen of a ThinkPad X200 series? Does the seat in front of you push the screen to an odd angle?
Bill, I don't have any problems creating documents using my iPad, or working on those documents on my Macbook Pro or MacPro desktop
Things just work. I update a document on one platform, and it appears on the others.
What I do have problems with is Visio under Windows -- damn, that's a hostile program! Even when trying to integrate Visio content with Office documents. Look on the bright side -- it's like opening Christmas presents -- you never know what you're going to get! But most of the time with Windows, it's not what you expected (or wanted).
But I guess that's because I don't understand, and haven't accepted the Windows hegemony and world-view.
Not that I'm singularly focused on Apple -- I do a lot of work on Linux-based platforms, and OSX plays nice with those as well.
No problems creating and editing documents using my iPad... I hear the shrill cry that the iPad tools don't have the "richness" of MS Word, or Excel, or Visio...
About that "richness" -- my guess is probably 80% of the "features" in those programs go unused. Most of the time when I run into one of those "features" it's because something popped up and now I'm searching for how to turn it the hell off.
And what apps such as Pages and Numbers don't offer, apps such as Evernote and Skitch do -- and they work, across platforms (even Windows).
And don't worry, Bill -- these things are just fads anyway. Don't RIM and Dell say so?
a nice big monitor, a real keyboard and a real mouse. Tablets will never have that
How not? When you want to create a document, you connect the tablet's HDMI out to a 1080p monitor, pair a Bluetooth keyboard, and turn the tablet's screen into a real trackpad. True, Apple sort of flubbed up with video over Lightning, having to put half the guts of an Apple TV in the Lightning-to-HDMI cable, but that's probably fixable in the iPad (5th generation).
Tablets are for content consumption. The interface needs to be toned down, with larger buttons and/or gesture interfaces to interact and multitask (Like WebOS). The interface doesn't need to be as flexible, but it must be consistent.
Laptops/PCs are for content creation. You type a lot here. You don't reach out and touch the screen. You also don't want huge buttons and gestures, as they are a poor interface on these devices. The interface must be FLEXIBLE, but CONSISTENT. It must be adaptable to a workflow. The direction all modern interfaces are headed are failing miserably at this.
Ubuntu and Gnome3 don't get this either. It's annoying.
One thing I've noticed since switching to a Windows tablet is how lousy the onscreen keyboard is. On most platforms, touchscreen keyboards try to incorporate things like predictive text, auto-capitalization, etc to help you type, because they realize that a touchscreen with no tactile feedback is a less-than-idea way to type. The Windows onscreen keyboards have none of that. What's more, they seem wildly inaccurate ... the visual feedback seems to be telling me that I'm hitting the right keys, but when I look up at what I entered, half of the letters are keys right next to the ones I thought I was hitting (and although I can touch type on a physical keyboard, I do have to look at the keys on a tablet).
What exactly do you do on a computer? Im gonna guess its not
Writing proposals
Writing code
Doing financial work
Doing systems administration
Screw all of that. Before you can do any of that, you have to enter your password to login to the system first. Try that when you have a strong password and you can't be totally sure what keys you're pressing.
Breakfast served all day!
That's only half the story. When Android first came out on phones, they rapidly overtook Apple because there were a bunch of new players jumping into the game. Now that the market has stabilized, the pendulum is swinging back the other way.
...the other half of the story I'm afraid to tell you is a whole lot worse here are the latest figures for Apple smartphones http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24085413 The short version is Apple dropped in one quarter from 23% to 17.3%. Year on Year it had single digit growth of 6.6% in a market that grew 41%. What your saying in not only off-topic but not true.
I'veI seen people bumbling around with smartphones, tablets and PDAs trying to take them to meetings and conferences, and use them to take notes. They all suck. The iPad keyboard is not "like a dream" to type on no matter what Steve Jobs said.
I know one guy who has a surface pro - I asked him (as a joke) how he liked it. He said "it's great - I grab it on a way to a meeting - I can type - take notes, write docs, do spreadsheets."
It's not about replacing the desktop - but being able to do some work while your not at it.
I hate MS just as much as the next guy (I'm actually a Linux and iOS zealot) - but I believe microsoft's biggest mistake was showing those commercials with stupid people dancing around clicking their covers on-and-off and not showing what the product could actually do for you.
I use the Asus TF300t for much of my "office" work. I can fill out my forms, print them while maintaining a conversation via messenger. Watch some youtube.com or cracked.com on breaks. A 32GB MSD is used to house my files, pdf books and mp3s while the on board 12GBs strictly holds my apps. What I'm saying is... outside of hardcore computing the tablet has been able to handle my superficial office work. The set-backs are in the touch screen typing and no flash for Android but I have become highly skilled typing on the touch screen.
I'm not trying to make any kind of a business justification. I'm telling what I'm seeing, and what's lots of other people will report to. The tablet is already in the enterprise. Clearly whoever has authorized the purchases of these devices has had a business case made. You can disagree with it, but you can't really argue that the decision hasn't been made.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
the Chairman of the company that has utterly failed at something criticizes the company that is making money hand over fist for not understanding what customers want?
I think you need to look at Micro$ofts Financial statements. It makes money hand over fist despite turning its profitable PC business into a touchless tablet...While not selling any actual tablets. Financially its been a success...and by the market it is seen as one going forward Its why its share price is up 25%...and Apple is buying back shares after its shareprice has dropped 45%.
If you are sill defending your mega corporation on profits alone you need a better argument. (It was always a little silly)
Bill, if people want a laptop, let them by a laptop. If they want a keyboard for their Surface or iPad you pay more and there are plenty available. The PC World is not the Tablet world and the Tablet World is NOT THE PC World. It is a new category of device and people really seem to like them. Oh, and if you get a keyboard for your iPad I recommend the Zaggfolio. I am not sure what to do about the mouse. I am sure that the lack of a extra thing on the desk is really frustrating people as well instead of just touching what you want on the screen.
In case you miss it you can get a mouse of for the Surface and turn your tablet into a laptop, with the same battery life as a laptop vs. the 10 hours on a real tablet.
Oh and if you get a mouse, I recommend the Logitech Performance MX.
Yes, with the USB port on the camera connection kit.
What scares me about it is that the major player in the space (Apple) is choosing to lock the general-purposeness of their devices away;
For the average consumer how has Apple chosen to lock any general use away? You can buy apps for pretty much any purpose. You can attach standard keyboards, you can attach standard computer media, you can add MIDI interfaces or attach to Bluetooth devices of all kinds.
From a more technical stance, Apple has made it very, very easy for anyone to develop for iOS. For just $100 a year you can develop and run whatever the hell you like, and break all kinds of rules that would mean things could not go in the app store. They have supplied vast amounts of information on iOS development and also provide WWDC videos for free to all developers, this year even as the conference is ongoing.
And for the even more deeply technical users, there is jailbreaking. The jailbreaking community has said repeatedly that there are steps Apple could take that would in fact make jailbreaking impossible - but Apple has not and will not take those steps. They like to pull ideas (sometimes people) out of the jailbreak community, and furthermore have nothing against those that want to hack a system out of technical curiosity.
The only limits Apple have ever put in place were there to help non-technical users have a more usable system, but easily bypassed if you chose to - and over times as mobile devices have become more powerful and interface standards evolved, Apple has loosened even those restrictions (for instance any app in the app store can support background BTLE communications, and BTLE requires no custom license the way older Bluetooth devices did).
Apple is supporting a layered approach to access that makes a ton of sense, because it gives non-technical users a nearly virus/malware free experience while letting technical users go to town.
If you had the iPad as a kid today, there are a lot of coding options on an iPad that would let you learn and explore programming.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Are you seriously implying that touchscreen is the new, better method of input?
What exactly do you do on a computer? Im gonna guess its not
Or anything, really, that involves rapidly moving data from your brain onto a computer. Or does the new Lightning connector have that capability built into it?
You don't need a keyboard to post cat videos with your iProduct.
the sub-14" all seem to be unusable for touch-typists.
I learned to touch type in sixth grade, and I still touch type to this day. Yet I adjusted to the cramped keyboard of a 9" Eee PC for a year and a half, and my current laptop is a Dell Inspiron mini 1012 with a 10" screen that gives me no problem, though I did have to return one Bluetooth keyboard that I mail-ordered for my Nexus 7 because the right side of its space bar wasn't long enough. (I press space roughly below the line between N and M.) The difference between these and the iPad's on-screen keyboard is that the keys on physical keyboards have edges that the fingers can feel so that the typist can adjust how far the fingers are spread apart. A flat sheet of glass doesn't offer that sort of landmark. Video games have similar issues: the button spacing differs among different brands of gamepad, but the player can feel where his thumbs are by the edges of the buttons. The on-screen gamepad of some iPhone and iPad games lacks that too, which breaks video games that aren't point-and-click.
While Apple is focused on frustrating people using iPads, Microsoft is working hard to bring a similar level of frustration to the PC and laptop markets!
What you're saying is that Apple isn't doing as well as Android on the world stage. What I'm saying is that Apple is solidly regaining its lead in the United States. Both statements are correct.
No he didn't he said "iPhone sales are actually growing again, and now exceed Android phone sales. Worldwide, the numbers are also trending back in that direction." its just a lie the reality Apple’s global market share is plummeting.
Android still has a healthy margin over Apple in the US .This is a nice article that states how it is http://bgr.com/2013/05/06/smartphone-market-share-us-q1-2013-comscore/ "Android is eating everyone’s lunch in the U.S. – except for Apple’s"...and that is Apples strongest market. But the idea that Apple is regaining a lead...because the market shifted 2-3% is a bold statement ;)
Yet again Microsoft finds itself so far behind that it is trying to push something that doesnt equally work well in either of two areas.
They tried shoving a Desktop OS on a Tablet before and it failed miserably. The tablets were too under powered to run desktop applications (nor could most of the tablet processors). We are seeing that again with the ARM/RT versions unable to run the standard x86 software. Developers already balk at writing two versions of their applications for different CPU families. So again Microsoft ignored its past failures.
Instead of learning from one mistake, they are taking the same mistake to the other extreme. You dont want a desktop OS on your tablet? How about a tablet OS on your desktop! Again Microsoft missed the boat. Most people do not have a touch screen monitor at home. And with the economy the way it is, everyone that is out buying a new laptop are looking at the ~$500 to ~$600 range. And those dont have touch screens either. And without a touch interface, Windows 8 gets in the way of itself. You have to install 3rd party software that Microsoft has threatened to block, just to get the system working decently in a touchless setup. And to log out you have to go through three screens and menus. Who's idea was that? I know it wasnt anyone in the security industry. They would make it as easy and fast as possible to shutdown or lock your system. Not impossible.
A tablet is a tablet. A desktop is desktop. How about remembering that and supporting what the world wants instead of trying to force a false single version that doesnt work for either.
And another thing. If I am paying $150 for an operating system, I expect my system to be ad free, not burried in all my screens and apps, getting in my way and annoying me.
consider moving in closer to work
Not everybody lives alone. Moving everybody in the household closer to my work would disadvantage others in the household.
A bus? Come on, nobody can actually get any work done on a bus.
Then I guess I should change my name to Nemo because I must be nobody. I routinely work on hobby programming projects, building a portfolio that could be valuable for landing my next job, during the half hour each way that it takes the city bus to get me to and from my current job. Could you explain how that's necessarily ineffective?
Yep. The new Lightning connector is now able to read your puny mind. Of course, it also has the tendency to reprogam that puny little mind to always buy iCrapple products. "We are Apple. Resistance is Futile! You will eat the rainbow!"
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Right thumb, one stick, left thumb, second stick.
I'll grant that using the vector from each thumb's initial point of contact to the current point would probably work great for Robotron 2084 and Robotron clones such as Smash TV, Geometry Wars, and Dead Ops Arcade. What works for games that have, say, jump and fire actions like Mario or Mega Man or Contra or Castlevania? Or attack, special, jump, and guard actions like a fighting game?
I dunno. Some years ago I had a successful business doing field data collection software on Windows CE, later Windows Mobile devices, and for the most part those devices were sold as semi-useless executive toys.
In an ideal world, form follows function; in the real world vendors create form factors and user try to figure out what the can use those form factors for. Many developers tried to shoehorn desktop style apps onto PDA with limited success, but it turned out that besides looking up phone numbers and appointments, the PDA form factor was ideally suited for the kind of app where your field workers hop out of a truck, note some exotic invasive plant, and record spraying it with Roundup. A laptop, or even a tablet is too bulky; you want something you can carry in your pocket. On the other hand, it was painful to type more than couple of words on a PDA using a stylus (things have got somewhat better with predictive text entry).
When you say "there aren't many places I'd recommend them [tablets] for business," you obviously have a set of applications in mind, and of course if they're typical desktop apps you wouldn't recommend tablets. Tablets are poor choices for content creation. The lack of keyboard means they're not very good for text-centric content creation, and the tradeoffs of performance, I/O capabilities, and storage needed to achieve good hand-holdability and battery life mean that other kinds of content creation aren't going to be their forte, either. What tablets are good for are the very task we saw them used for in Stanley Kubrick's 2001 or in Star Trek TNG: information retrieval, presentation and playback. There's plenty of business applications that fit that bill. Furthermore the middle ground tablets occupy between notebooks and PDA means that while they aren't pocketable like a PDA, they have potential data entry applications where the screen size of a PDA is an important limitation, on one hand, but the bulk of a notebook is inconvenient. For example apps where you retrieve and configure things and then hand around the result (e.g. high end point of sale).
Personally, I like the idea of a tablet with a detachable hardware keyboard. But keep in mind most product developers are unimaginative. They don't redesign their product to take advantage of a form factor, they simply bring their old apps up on the new form factor and expect magic to happen. It doesn't. You have conceive an app around a form factor's potential, and design the app around it's strengths and limitations.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Most of the tablet seems to be to entertain children between the ages of 7-14, when I go to any restaurant a fair number of kids are playing games on a tablet, while very few adults are using a tablet.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
That's because adults realize it's rude to play with their tablets at the dinner table.
To me this just boils down to... people want Office on their iOS devices. Rather than make the _hundreds of millions of dollars_ they would earn by delivering versions of Office for iOS, Microsoft has instead been content to use it as a carrot to try to get people to use Windows Phone and Surface devices. Whenever they learn that that strategy is stupid, they will make a ton of money. Until then, they're just leaving money on the table and alienating precisely the people that are trying to give them money. Microsoft: you _are_ Office. Put it on every platform, iOS, Linux, whatever. Get over yourselves. People want Office on whatever device they're using, give it to them and make the money. BTW, Excel on Mac is crap. Fix it. I'm not going to switch away from Mac OS, but I will keep entertaining alternatives to Excel until you quit providing crap versions of Excel on Mac. Office should be awesome on every platform, and available on all platforms. Quit trying to push MS products with Office, just make Office great, and you will make tons of money.
You can't really create spreadsheets on an iPad.
But who are the people trying to do this?
Looking at my friends and family with iPads, this just isn't the use case.
None of them is trying to do office work on an iPad.
They use it for games, checking email and browsing the internet.
I haven't seen a single person at work trying to do his work on an iPad (or a windows tablet for that matter).
I guess Bill is still drinking the Redmond Coolaid... if you can use an iPad you can use the app store, if you can't work out how to do that... maybe you should send it back for a refund.
There's not exactly a dearth of word processing programs for the iPad, yeh you have to pay to get one of the good ones but hey! you legally have to pay for the bloatware called MS Office (which I would never want on a tablet of any brand or OS). Transferring documents between iPad desktop should be more transparent but that's more slack arsed cloud vendors, including iCloud, than anything inherent with the iPad.
As for the keyboard? I sit in meetings with dozens of people who, like me, have had no problem learning to use the screen keypad efficiently enough for good note taking.
however if I'm the designated minute taker at what I know it's going to be an extra long and verbose meeting I sometimes break out the Bluetooth keyboard (which was brought for controlling my laptop from a distance in training classes, using it with a tablet is just an occasional bonus utility)
You can always dictate. Newer devices are pretty good at understanding what you're saying. For the rest, there's always good old full sized computer with a full size screen. In portrait mode of course.
About that Microsoft tablet, they tried to make it (but not entirely) something it can't be. Tim Cook was right when he said it was a compromised and confusing product.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
Am I missing something in Gates comment? is he saying the apple is bad because it lacks a keyboard when you buy it? well there's lots of KBs for ipads. they are cheap.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
My dad is an iPad user and his one complaint is that he can't save documents.
The clock is turning back: we used to call these things "workstations," a name that stood for a powerful but small computer sitting on a desk somewhere, definitely not something that everyone had or needed. We should call them that again: most of us won't need "workstations," but some us do.
The word "PC" has run its course. Tablets and phones are far more "personal" than a big clunky desktop would ever be. So, yeah, I would say that conceptually the PC has died, or rather has become a workstation again.
By the way, I'm one of those people who will always need a workstation... :) But it doesn't mean I begrudge or don't understand the changes in the industry. My mom sure as heck doesn't need a workstation for her email and web browsing.
when I go to any restaurant a fair number of kids are playing games on a tablet, while very few adults are using a tablet
When I go to a restaurant, people tend to be eating. But that's just me.
Of course you can type and create documents on most tablets a standard KB. Frustrated by *not* having ms-office? That'll be the day.
written on an iPad.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
the use case being "output only"
(1) Go to Amazon.com
(2) Search for "Android Tablet"
(3) Buy ICS Android tablet @1GHz/8GB/SD-slot/Dual cameras/7" for $80 or less new
(4) Profit
Bought one for wife, one for each kid. Fast, stable, functional, cheaper than dining out as a family @a diner or casual joint.
Freakishly expensive? Methinks not.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Wii console controllers, including the Classic Controller with dual analog sticks, can be easily connected via bluetooth if you install a free app from the Play store
This application is not compatible with the Nexus 7 or any other device that has received the Android 4.2 update.
The point is not to pretend that the tablet is something that it is not.
Buying a tablet and using it for what it is is perfectly fine. That is, until your needs change to include something that a tablet is not. At that point, will a PC still be easy to get?
The problem with the Apple approach is it lowers the bar for geeky.
I forgot to respond specifically to this point, which is the most incorrect statement in the whole thing.
Basically, it comes down to Apple supports all users well - including the geeky.
Android's problem is that it supports ONLY the geeky, at the expense of all other users.
I own Android devices myself. They have some nice abilities, but I consider it morally wrong to steer anyone who is not technical into buying an Android device. They will be burned at some time in some way, and if you helped convince them to buy an Android device you are in no small part responsible for what happens to them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Or anything, really, that involves rapidly moving data from your brain onto a computer.
Swype on Android is already faster than typing for most people, with 20-40wpm common, and alt least one person getting close to 60wpm. I h ave no doubt that refinement of Swype and similar tools will mean that onscreen writing will soon be faster than traditional keying.
In many business contexts, (site works, parts ordering, inspections, audits etc) it's already a better input method, no matter how fast it is.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I'm not saying there aren't lots of things you can't do by clicking boxes on a web portal. But if you're really doing real office work you're not doing that. You're working with spread sheets, large text documents, and lots of other applications.
Tell me this... who wants to program ON the ipad? Anything that involves real work on the machine is a pain in the ass on an ipad. Its fine for light work where things have been streamlined for its use. Otherwise... *laughs*... No.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
One thing I've noticed since switching to a Windows tablet is how lousy the onscreen keyboard is. On most platforms, touchscreen keyboards try to incorporate things like predictive text, auto-capitalization, etc to help you type, because they realize that a touchscreen with no tactile feedback is a less-than-idea way to type. The Windows onscreen keyboards have none of that. What's more, they seem wildly inaccurate ... the visual feedback seems to be telling me that I'm hitting the right keys, but when I look up at what I entered, half of the letters are keys right next to the ones I thought I was hitting (and although I can touch type on a physical keyboard, I do have to look at the keys on a tablet).
When you say "Windows tablet" do you mean Surface? Because there are a lot of other products out there that run Windows 8. In any event, predictive text IS available in the vanilla Windows 8, you just have to enable it in the "Ease of access options" app. Here is a video that shows how: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60zFkIOzvTo
Screw all of that. Before you can do any of that, you have to enter your password to login to the system first. Try that when you have a strong password and you can't be totally sure what keys you're pressing.
In Windows 8 there is a small eye icon in password fields when they get the focus, if you click on it you can see the field content in clear text.
Seriously, WIndows 8 has plenty of issues but people who can't STFW for basic tutorial information are just adding noise to the discussion.
lucm, indeed.
Most tablet users own a laptop. They rather use the full laptop to do actual office work and use the tablet for media consumption and touch screen apps. Sales of the different devices clearly show that the vast majority of people isn't interested in hybrids, regardless the OS or applications on them. Windows 8, Android and iOS all have a very limited amount of users working with a tablet-with-keyboard style hardware device.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
The use case you described was about data processing.
The use case LordLimecat described was about data processing.
How exactly are they
different
use
case?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I was just off by a quarter with my statement. Apple commanded 51.2% of the U.S. smartphone market in the 4Q 2012. In 1Q 2013, Apple was 43.7%, and Android came in at 49.3%. Like I said, they're oscillating back and forth.
No, it really isn't. Apple's worldwide smartphone percentages this quarter are up 1% from two years previous. You only think sales are plummeting because 2012 was an unusually good year for Apple and the worldwide numbers are down from there.
Either way, whether Apple is or is not regaining the lead is completely beside the point. The point was that Apple's sales are most certainly not collapsing, as was previously claimed. Rather, the phone market is rapidly headed towards a state of equilibrium (and has basically reached that point in the U.S.), as all mature markets eventually do. Neither Android nor Apple is likely to destroy the other at this point. And claims that the iPad is a "dying platform" are completely unsupportable by facts.
BTW, the biggest reason Android growth exceeded iPad growth so much in the past year, to be frank, is that Amazon (at least based on iSuppli's cost estimates) has been dumping their products at or near cost in an effort to sell more eBooks. Eventually, one of two things is likely to happen: Either the U.S. government is going to smack Amazon with antitrust sanctions for dumping, or the other Android makers are going to convince Google to apply pressure to force Amazon to raise their prices back into territory where they actually make a non-negligible profit on their hardware sales.
Either way, though, even without Amazon, the Android hardware market is a race to the bottom in terms of profit margins, because there's basically no other way for phone makers to compete with one another. The feature differences between one Android phone and another are pretty much limited by the state of the art in camera tech, display tech, and battery tech, and none of the phone manufacturers are actually designing that tech, so the only way they have to differentiate themselves from the pack is by undercutting one another.
As a result, although Android is turning over greater sales volume, Apple is making far more money—57% of smartphone profits in Q1 2013—because their hardware and OS are different enough to allow them to compete on more than just price. This is what allows Apple to develop their own OS, rather than relying on Google's charity. In the end, the companies that are making money are the ones who are likely to stick around, not the companies who are selling the most units.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I have noticed that, on many devices, when you enter the Wifi Key, you have the option to view it why the hell can't I have that for passwords? (especially on my Andoid Phone) If I am the only person in the room, it doesnt need to be converted to asterisks. (and if I am tyuping it over a 300 baud acoustic coupler in plaintext, hiding the echo won't help either).
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Only if you have an American accent
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
You are an idiot, and you have no idea what you're talking about.
Yours,
an iPad user who isn't frustrated at all, and can type or create documents just fine.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
For the Apple products I use I can't remember the last time I had to search the web to figure something out... two instances come to mind: command-tilde was a tip from Woz, and somebody on /. suggested turning on a system option that allows me to navigate GUI menus with the KB. But both of those are years ago. Other than that, I've figured out every gesture, hot key, navigation technique that I use on the OS X and iOS products.
Coming from that world, I don't really think to search the web when I have a problem like this, I just assume that the OS is broken.
An "office" computer and thin client is a different use scenario from a server. Yeah, he did make a bad comparison, but don't let that steer you off into the weeds. "Real work" and "PC replacement" as he termed it is meant to describe "office" activity. I use my desktop to do email and office document handling and to connect to servers. I don't run servers on my desktop (at work).
The point he's making is that the work he does is handled fine by smartphone-level computing power. You just need good Human Interface Devices and display.
http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow_viewer/0,3253,l=208344&a=208341&po=8,00.asp
Methinks Bill is making it up as he goes along.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I do not see any technical reason why this cannot work. Take for example the Lenevo Helix. In tablet mode, the processor is clocked down to something like 7 watts of power draw since the battery life and heat output would make it unusable. However, when it is docked, it goes up to full speed with the help if some additional cooling in the dock which pulls air through the tablet.
I think there are several people like me, who have no interest in buying a tablet for media consumption, but rather for working.
I work in a laboratory environment, in which I create several reports each day, which others and I must sign. My ideal is that I just pull the "tablet" out of the dock and walk over and have the other person sign the report with the stylus.
If I have a tablet, I expect to be able to work on it. I expect to be able to pop in my USB stick or SD card to adjust some photos I took while on holiday.
Why should a tablet not be an ultra portable PC? Why should it only be for consuming?
So, Yes Windows 8 UI is crap. I admit it. BUT, it is STILL windows and with Windows I can create content in a meaningful way that I cannot do on iOS or Android.
I guess I am just too "old" and don't "get it".
Because a fully functional PC is for content creation while a tablet is for content consumption. And many people don't understand the difference.
That is exactly his point! Not everyone wants to ONLY consume! That is the point of the Windows tablet. I can create. Will the battery last as long as an iPad? No, of course not. Will it be as powerful as a desktop? Again, no.
Will it give me the same experience as an ultrabook? Yes. So, why not? Why are you against having one device in which you can consume AND create?
Using Skydrive via Safari lets you create MS Office documents. I do it all the time and find it quite useful.
Try that when you have a strong password and you can't be totally sure what keys you're pressing.
QFT.
I have no problems with passwords and encryption keys on a keyboard. But entering them on a touch screen (especially if the input is hidden) is a slow, tedious and error-strewn process.
Clearly whoever has authorized the purchases of these devices has had a business case made.
Uh, sure. The business case is that they have a $50M annual budget, and an iPad costs $600, so I'll go ahead and buy one. At my workplace at least they've tended to proliferate first at the senior levels of management, and I doubt that senior executives spend time typing up business cases before they go spend $1000 on something. Business cases are things that people making $75k/yr need in order to buy some tool completely essential for their work, not for executives whose job it is to read business cases and decide if they should make the person writing it jump through more hoops.
But, I'll tend to agree that a tablet makes more sense for the people who tend to go to conferences. They tend to be managers, and that means that for the most part they are data consumers, not data producers. At my work the typical manager reads 300 word emails and replies with 10 word emails, they read 14-page slide decks and reply with one sentence comments, they read 14-page business cases and reply with go ahead, or more often just don't reply. They're given 75-page documents to review, and then they hit the approve button. The type of work they do lends itself to tablets fairly well.
On the other hand, the people who create all that stuff that the managers read are almost certainly doing that work on typical PCs.
I think the issue is that managers are decision-makers and they assume that because a tablet makes sense for them that it will make sense for everybody. That isn't necessarily true.
You mean, the things they used to do on a smartphone that they previously used to do on a Laptop? Do you see how this is going?
Carol vs. Ghost
Nice channeling of Douglas Adams.
Apple commanded 51.2% of the U.S. smartphone market in the 4Q 2012
No it doesn't.
http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press_Releases/2013/5/comScore_Reports_March_2013_U.S._Smartphone_Subscriber_Market_Share
"Google Android ranked as the top smartphone platform with 52 percent market share (71.1 million subscribers), while Apple’s share increased 2.7 percentage points to 39 percent (53.3 million subscribers)"
I am not sure where you are getting your data, but its different from everyone else, considering America is Apples strongest (only) market it does not look good,
I
Costumer are frustrated Microsoft can't create a proper application for iPad for years.
LMOL yeah Bill that's why Apple sold all those iPads and your tablets have been remainded.
Are you seriously implying that touchscreen is the new, better method of input?
What exactly do you do on a computer? Im gonna guess its not
Or anything, really, that involves rapidly moving data from your brain onto a computer. Or does the new Lightning connector have that capability built into it?
I write code, and do system administration. Obviously I prefer my trusty thinkpad with linux on it, however when I get a phone call with a problem, I love the fact I can ssh in from my phone and restart apache or similar. I've gone as far as using vim to create perl. Once I even ran a debugger.
Obviously a PC is better than a laptop, a laptop is better than a tablet, and a tablet is better than a phone, however the chance of me having access to those devices is inversely proportional to how comfortable it is to use.
What's better, going home from the pub to log on to a 3-screened workstation with all the input you could possibly want, or quickly fixing a problem while your mate gets the next round in?
What Bill Gates is saying is that right now there is a very small market segment for MS for targeting people who want to use office without carrying a laptop and that if Apple or any developer can create a competing office product which also supports MS format it can kill Surface totally because then Surface has nothing to compete against iPad.
.... that in the days before the IPad and Android tablets, there WERE tablets that were being sold in stores such as CompUSA and Best Buy and others. And these were tablets that were essentially scrunched down laptops, even to the inclusion of the occaisonal keyboard.
.
.And what did most of the units do.....? Gather dust as they lay unsold on bins. As relatedm there may be about 5 or ten people where the tablet as scrunched down laptop was a perfectly viable solution.
.
.For the bulk of the market however these units were an absolute failure in terms of the user experience, so much so that most folks had written off the tablet as of being any good for anything other than a few specialised users.
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.And then came iOS and Android, UI's organised around touch, and the recognition is that the primary purpose of a tablet is that of a third space, a unit for consumption of data and content, rather than creation. It's this revelation and revolution alone which made tablets into the force they are today.
.
... just put iPad users in the same boat as MS Office users after a new release?
This. And seriously, don't do a half-assed job of it either. Don't try to find the "One True Interface" that will work for all platforms. Make your iOS and Android version with a touch-friendly interface. Now, and this is very important: Don't use the touch-friendly interface on the desktop version!! If you want to have it as an option, fine. Maybe even an option to automatically switch to touch mode when there's no mouse, but stop trying to cram a touch interface down the throats of your desktop users. That's a pretty sure way to guarantee that a whole lot of business users will hold of on upgrading as long as possible, and when it comes to Office, business users are your bread and butter.
I think that the DOJ would have been doing Microsoft a favor if they had forcibly broken up the company into separate OS and Office divisions years ago. The Office division would be free to realize, "Hey, lots of people have iPads, let's make a really great version of Office for iOS." Instead, Microsoft looks at the tablet market and thinks, "Hey, people are buying tablets. We should make a tablet too, and try to use our Office dominance to convince people to buy our tablet instead of Apple's or Samsung's or Amazon's."
Redundancy is good And also good.
Walking around? Seems to me that sliding your finger slowly around the screen along a viable path should work for that.
Sliding along a movement path might work in a game that doesn't scroll because the scenery acts as a frame of reference for the gesture. I don't see how it would work so well in a scrolling game where the camera follows the player's character. Besides, the hand blocks the player's view of the action. Or is the fact that the hand blocks the player's view of the action intended to be part of the challenge?
My Touchpad has had those capabilities for a couple of years now.
Not that I ever use it for that. A tablet just isn't the right platform for that kind of usage IMHO.
some games offer multiple buttons that when pressed performed different functions
The problem is hitting multiple buttons without looking at them. That's easy on a gamepad and hard on flat glass.
some games even make the distinction between a press-and-slide (move) and a tap (fire).
That'd be fine if there were some sort of standard for what each press-and-slide direction for the left thumb and each press-and-slide direction for the right thumb is supposed to do.
Clearly you have not tried any of this
By "tried" do you mean from the perspective of an end user playing well-known games or from the perspective of a developer play-testing his own work? I will try it once I find a list of reviews of Android games that implement this control method well. The only Android game named in this discussion as a good example was Cordy 2, which brentrad mentioned in this comment. Someone else recommended one of the Sonic 4 Episodes, but it just force-closed on my Nexus 7.
Bill Gates frustrated because Microsoft is irrelevant in mobile.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Does the operating system that came with your Asus Transformer Pad support opening two applications side-by-side, even if the applications are capable of working with a phone-sized window? I was under the impression that this feature was exclusive to Samsung devices, and even then only for applications that Samsung has approved for multi-window mode because the Android CDD specifies that applications are allowed to assume that the screen size shall remain fixed after installation.
Thereâ(TM)s two things the iPad is missing that would greatly extend its flexibility.
The first thing would be a central file system, a place similar to âoePhotosâ where apps could load and save documents of an arbitrary type and where other applications could open them. The current file sharing system of âoeOpen Inâ is unwieldy and creates a lot of copies. Appleâ(TM)s big on sandboxing, so there may be some requirement when saving a document to make the user explicitly save in the common store as opposed to an appâ(TM)s private store, as well as granting an application rights to access the common file store. Thatâ(TM)s the simple version; the more complex version might involve external storage but I doubt Apple will go there any time soon without extreme pressure.
The other thing would be Bluetooth mouse support. Some UI operations may not translate to a mouse, which is fine, but I donâ(TM)t think the touch screen interface is as precise or flexible as a mouse is. I have a bunch of drawing apps for my iPad that seemed promising, but the touch interface just makes it too hard to do much beyond the most basic drawings. The same is true of selecting text.
A lot of people are hung up on making a tablet too much like a PC or scream âoeI hate apple, the iPad is stupid, even you wish it was the laptop you should have bought.â I think this is silly â" I think a certain amount of convergence between laptops and tablets is inevitable, and it seems likely that in the future there will be more devices that look and act like tablets but transform into laptops, with hybrid UIs that can be touch based or mouse based, and way into the future it seems likely that phones will be our computers with how we use them dictated by what devices we have them connected to.
Does this mean we're going to start seeing Windows phones with hardware keyboards? I hope so. That would cause some market pressure for Android phone manufactures to start selling phones with keyboards again. Until then, I'm stuck with an HTC G2.
Oh, shush you! If you don't have to search for trivial information on how to use your OS every 30 minutes, you're not using a REAL OS. /sarcasm
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
He was the master of leveraging monopolies and pushing crappy products on dimwitted comptuer users but he's never had a clue as to what people wanted and creative enough to put out great products. Check your history. Gates thought the internet was a passing fad. It was only thru his crappy windows that he embedded into Win* it forced people to use it. Anyone in their right mind now switches to Chrome or other better alternatives.
When you say "Windows tablet" do you mean Surface?
No. A Samsung device.
In any event, predictive text IS available in the vanilla Windows 8, you just have to enable it in the "Ease of access options" app
So you're telling me that in order to get a feature that's standard on many platforms, I need to find the control panel that historically has been used to switch on features for the disabled? Why isn't there an option in the keyboard itself, instead of forcing me to go hunting all over creation to find it?
In Windows 8 there is a small eye icon in password fields when they get the focus, if you click on it you can see the field content in clear text.
That's only of minimal help when I'm trying to enter a mix of letters, numbers, and symbol characters and the keyboard is finicky.
Seriously, WIndows 8 has plenty of issues but people who can't STFW for basic tutorial information are just adding noise to the discussion.
And as others have noted, searching the web to find techniques that should be intuitive is not a good solution. I think you're going out of your way to apologize for poor usability design. The tablet experience on Windows 8 is just not particularly great, and it only gets worse when you want to use desktop apps (such as Office, which is what Gates was bragging about).
Breakfast served all day!
I think you've just demonstrated that Bill Gates is right on this one.
You see, people want smaller lighter devices that are easier to carry around. This is why for example, the ipad sold well, and then the smaller tablets sold even better. However these smaller devices pose a problem: their form factor mostly delegates them to content consumption, with very limited content creation.
And what is it that engineers do? Solve problems. Does that mean the solution is with Microsoft? Not necessarily. But the next "killer device" could be something that lets you have your cake and eat it too. Remember, apple assumed that nobody would want tablets smaller than 9". Turns out they did. Really, really did. Apple is also assuming that people don't want to be very productive on a tablet. Bill Gates is simply saying that the later assumption is wrong, and if you read most of the comments on slashdot, he's right because that is the number one complaint about these devices.
Likewise, Bill Gates suggests that Microsoft is pushing in that direction. In my opinion, the current Microsoft implementation does nothing to solve this problem. Namely, the surface is neither a laptop nor a tablet. It tries to do both, and doesn't do either particularly well. Unlike a laptop it doesn't work when its on your lap, and unlike a nexus 7 or ipad mini it doesn't fit in your pocket.
Although, GP is only kidding himself if he thinks the demand for MS Office isn't there (as opposed to say libreoffice, which while good, apparently isn't enough for most organizations out there - in the words of those organizations that is.)
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
searching the web to find techniques that should be intuitive is not a good solution. I think you're going out of your way to apologize for poor usability design.
Now proven wrong, you adjust your complaint from "non-existing predictive text" to "non-intuitive default options". Basically you don't have an actual issue, you are simply going out of your way to bash Windows 8. Very brave to do so on Slashdot.
For the sake of discussion: default options in Windows 8 are a mixed blessing. As an example, in previous versions of Windows one could pick the timezone during the setup; now like a lot of options it's set by default (silently), which can be annoying. It looks like Microsoft decided to make the setup a lot more straightforward, and this design decision is also reflected in the very basic and user-friendly "PC Settings" page. It has the same feeling as on other OS where a lot of stuff is hidden under the hood. Computers for dummies.
However there is a minor benefit to that approach: since user settings are stored in the cloud, when an option is changed on one device it is changed on all devices where the user logs on. This is no innovation as this was already available on other devices (like Google Nexus) but it makes the issue of default options a bit less annoying; it can actually be very convenient not to have to answer to the same questions every time a new machine is configured.
The tablet experience on Windows 8 is just not particularly great, and it only gets worse when you want to use desktop apps (such as Office, which is what Gates was bragging about).
Windows 8 has two modes: Metro and Desktop. On a tablet, the Metro (RT) mode offers more or less the same experience as other tablets like the iPad or Nexus (all swipes and gestures), but with less apps in the Store. It's not unpleasant to read news, watch movies or keep an eye on the stock market on Metro apps; it is very smooth, it's visually interesting and the context-aware Charms bar is convenient once you get the hang of it. The biggest issue on Metro is that there is not a lot of high-quality apps in the Store; even those from big names like Amazon are often incomplete and require a visit to the website to do anything serious. But it's getting there, and since it's possible to write a Metro app entirely in HTML5 and Javascript I guess the Store offering will grow over time. I disagree with the way Microsoft is handling the Store (it's very similar to Apple, very restrictive and flaky) but I guess they were afraid of all those VB people taking the Metro wave.
As for the Desktop mode, I agree that it is not well-suited for a tablet (unless is comes with a physical keyboard, but then it's a netbook not a tablet). The keyboard is not the same and won't activate automatically; using the touch interface for right-clicks is awkward and having to mess around with thin scrollbars is unpleasant. In my opinion it's a poor way to slowly migrate people towards Metro.
But the worse of it all is that Office is not available in Metro, only on Desktop. Same goes for all the big Microsoft applications (Visual Studio, etc). It feels like Microsoft is trying to have it both ways with Desktop and Metro but it's not working, it's confusing.
At the end of the day Windows 8 is not a bad OS and does not deserve all the misinformed bashing it gets. It is pretty stable, has a decent firewall and antivirus built-in, has very effective file versioning features and does a good job of storing settings (and files if desired) in the cloud. But the bashing is typical; every single release of Windows has endless floods of people who don't know what they talk about come out and complaint endlessly. These people are like those commies who keep predicting the fall of capitalism or Baghdad Bob claiming victory on tv with american tanks driving by in the background. It's almost cute.
lucm, indeed.
One thing I've noticed since switching to a Windows tablet is how lousy the onscreen keyboard is. [...snip...] The Windows onscreen keyboards have none of that. What's more, they seem wildly inaccurate ... the visual feedback seems to be telling me that I'm hitting the right keys, but when I look up at what I entered, half of the letters are keys right next to the ones I thought I was hitting (and although I can touch type on a physical keyboard, I do have to look at the keys on a tablet).
You may find it comforting that the keyboard on an iPad sucks too. Even with my short stubby fingers I have less problems typing on an iPhone than on an iPad. As soon as typing on the iPad reaches a certain speed, characters get dropped out (characters that, frustratingly, gave visual feedback on on the onscreen keyboard). And I *hate* having to dive 2 keyboards deep to reach the common math symbols.
If you have to chose one or the other, then yes that would be true. For many (many) people, you can have both.
Many (many) != all (all). A mom who just bought her kid an iPad isn't going to like it when the kid takes a programming class in high school and mom discovers that the kid won't be able to do programming homework on the iPad because it uses a language or library that neither Codea nor Python for iOS supports.
if the corner thing is even a part of fitts's law.
It sort of is. The way I would describe Fitt's law very informally is "bigger stuff (and closer stuff) is easier to hit." At that level it's pretty obvious, but it's nice to have a name for even obvious things. Corners and edges come into play because in some sense they are infinitely large: if you're at the corner of the screen with the mouse and keep moving, you'll still be at the corner of the screen. Infinitely large stuff are big, so are easier to hit.
I'll agree that you'll often see "because of Fitt's law" as an abbreviation to the above, however.
You mean, the things they used to do on a smartphone that they previously used to do on a Laptop?
No, because businesses didn't dump laptops in favor of smartphones.
Do you see how this is going?
how this is going? I don't know what you mean.
I'll match your citation with mine. According to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, iOS was the top-selling platform in Q4 2012, maintaining 51.2% of the market.
So either your data is wrong or mine is.
...no even at your Worldpanel ComTech this is from last week. "With nearly half (49.3%) of smartphone sales, Android remains the top selling operating system, but saw only slight growth compared to the same period last year, and is down versus the 3 months ending February 2013 (-1.9%). iOS remains in second place with 43.7% of smartphone sales, down throughout Q1 2013." http://www.kantarworldpanel.com/global/News/Windows-sees-steady-growth-in-Q1-2013
Look everyone agrees Apple is number 2
Windows 8 actually has that. Click the eyeball button.
Swype on Android is already faster than typing for most people, with 20-40wpm common,
"Most people" who do data processing for a living are going to comfortably sit at 60-90wpm. My right hand doesnt even have good form on a keyboard and i hit 70-80.
Gates erred when he said Ipad users cant prepare text.
My daughter and kids use the ipad and the cover becomes the keyboard. No, they do not write 30 page documents with it, but they do write emails, post to Facebook, etc.
The only time they open a computer with w7 is to play games.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
I would assume that Numbers would be available on the iPad and it would be as good as any other spreadsheet package on a touch UI.
I recently acquired on of the much lauded in this thread Logitech Ultra-thin cover/keyboards for my iPad - if you want your daughter to work with spreadsheets, this may be a good option because it gives you arrow keys, something missing form the on-screen keyboard, which makes navigating spreadsheets much easier.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Well, you can't switch arguments mid-way.
All those people that you claimed replaced their smartphones with tablets when they go to conferences, used to bring laptops before smartphones. Weren't you paying attention?
So it went from paper pads, to tablets, to smartphones, to tablets.
That means that at least some businesses did dump laptops in favor of smartphones for at least some functions.
I know you are trying to be all smarty-pants with your straw-man argument pointing out how tablets are not going to replace laptops completely, in every facet of business--but nobody is claiming that.
What some of us are saying is that, there are some functions for which laptops and desktop computers used to be regarded as the most appropriate tool, and now tablets are taking their place.
Not only that, but tablets are being put to some uses by businesses to which laptops or smartphones weren't even considered.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
As for the Desktop mode, I agree that it is not well-suited for a tablet (unless is comes with a physical keyboard, but then it's a netbook not a tablet). The keyboard is not the same and won't activate automatically; using the touch interface for right-clicks is awkward and having to mess around with thin scrollbars is unpleasant. In my opinion it's a poor way to slowly migrate people towards Metro.
But the worse of it all is that Office is not available in Metro, only on Desktop.
So basically you first call me a coward for stating my opinion on Slashdot (as if stating it somewhere else would make me more "brave") and then you agree with everything I said about the bad keyboard and poor tablet experience when trying to use Office on Windows. Have it your way then, guy.
At the end of the day Windows 8 is not a bad OS and does not deserve all the misinformed bashing it gets. It is pretty stable, has a decent firewall and antivirus built-in, has very effective file versioning features and does a good job of storing settings (and files if desired) in the cloud.
None of which has anything to do with the fact that it offers a pretty lousy experience on a tablet, which was the topic of discussion.
BTW, I use Windows 8 every day on laptops, desktops, and now tablets, so I believe I'm entitled to my opinion on it -- more so than many, in fact. What you call "bashing," I call informed criticism.
Breakfast served all day!
[yada yada yada]
Well we'll have to postpone this fascinating discussion as it seems Microsoft is planning to revert some of the design decisions in Windows 8, making the thread irrelevant.
Silver lining: If they bring back the Start button but still require Metro apps to be deployed from the Windows Store only we'll know the idiots have won.
lucm, indeed.
Well, you can't switch arguments mid-way.
I'm not, people didn't dump laptops in favor of smartphones, they use them both, just go to any conference and you'll see most people take laptops in addition to whatever smartphone or tablet they use.
All those people that you claimed replaced their smartphones with tablets when they go to conferences, used to bring laptops before smartphones. Weren't you paying attention?
I didn't claim anybody replaced their smartphones with tablets, maybe you need to actually read before you so hastily hit that reply button. Why would you replace a smartphone with a tablet? Who carries a tablet instead of a smartphone?
That means that at least some businesses did dump laptops in favor of smartphones for at least some functions.
They didn't dump laptops, they added smartphones for functions where that was more convenient.
I know you are trying to be all smarty-pants with your straw-man argument pointing out how tablets are not going to replace laptops completely, in every facet of business--but nobody is claiming that.
There is no strawman argument here, so obviously you're either not reading or you don't know what a strawman is. I didn't point out that tablets are not going to replace laptops completely (so i'm assuming that it's that you're not reading), in fact i doubt anybody would need to point that out.
What some of us are saying is that, there are some functions for which laptops and desktop computers used to be regarded as the most appropriate tool, and now tablets are taking their place.
Thanks captain obvious, you do really have a reading comprehension problem because i never refuted that, feel free to point out where you think I did though (hint, you won't find it because it isn't there).
Silver lining: If they bring back the Start button but still require Metro apps to be deployed from the Windows Store only we'll know the idiots have won.
Does anybody really care about the Start button? All of my keyboards have a great big Windows key on them, and all of the Windows 8 tablets I've seen have a Windows button at the bottom of the display. What I think people really want is the Start menu -- and I am absolutely not convinced that Microsoft is going to give us that back, button or no button.
Breakfast served all day!
Are you sure about that? The desire certainly still exists :
news://bit.listserv.ibm-main "This lead to a final design that could be built from materials all ready to hand: some old curtain rails, an old piece of shelving, tracing paper, a desk lamp, some masking tape, and Blu-Tack.""I had originally thought about making the whole reader from Lego, but then thought why torture myself?" Why indeed? youtube.com The wimps version : 6mm holes and paperclips. OTOH, no cheating by doing image processing. forums.xkcd.com The obligatory XKCD. Sort-of. http://cqhuifan.en.made-in-china.com/product/yqoxrjYDEXkl/China-Punch-Card-Reader-Time-Attendance-Machine-HF-S200-.html THe Chinese are making things that aren't entirely dissimilar, which could be a basis for going upscale, in a self-torturing sort of way.
I hesitate, but the thought is parent to the deed : Rule 34.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
I don't feel that way at all. When the nexus 7 came around I already had a 9" tablet, and I didn't like how unwieldy it was for reading on a casual basis. Sure, there were dedicated eBook readers, but it would be kind of lame to carry around both devices. So here comes the nexus 7, about the same size and weight as a paperback novel, and it runs all of my apps. That was a no brainer, even though I had already owned a tablet, so price wasn't the issue.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Re: I will note that the iPad's keyboard also lacks springiness and tactile feedback.
.
Touche`, and well said!
Hey, I need the compose key to properly type my password! (Not really, but I am using a Sun Type 6 at work these days).
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.