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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.
... 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.
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.
. . . 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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You're right, but you're missing the point. What really makes using a PC so much better than a tablet for creating documents (or other real work that people have to do) is not the software, its the hardware: a nice big monitor, a real keyboard and a real mouse.
Tablets will never have that and so will always remain inferior for certain things.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Netbooks didn't "die" on their own.
They were designed with crippling "birth defects" (weak CPU, limited RAM) so as not to eat notebook market share. It worked and after the initial surge, sales dropped off.
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.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
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.
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.
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?
Earlier this year I was involved in a collaborative writing project where all three authors were using iPads and the documents were hosted as goggle docs in a shared repository.
One author was using a 3rd party bluetooth keyboard, myself and the 3rd author were using the onscreen keyboard. For edits and proofing the workflow with the iPads and google docs worked really well.
I have subsequently purchased one of the Logictech keyboard for when I travel and want the capability to type longer documents. I frequently type shorter documents on the iPad onscreen keyboard directly.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
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.
Games on the iPad that require such controls usually use on-screen controls where your hands will naturally rest when holding the device. Effectively, parts of the sides and corners of the display become your control pad. Some emulate distinct buttons (such as in Prince of Persia), whereas others use a sort of virtual thumbstick.
The best games also provide a system whereby when plugged into a TV or connected wirelessly to an external display they display their gaming graphics on the external display, and the entire mobile device becomes nothing but status information and the control surface. Really quite slick. I think the only reason why we haven't seen Apple really pushing this mode hard is that it works best in an all 802.11n environment with low and steady latency -- even though a number of games already support such a mode, for all too many consumers with unknown random wireless network setups the overall experience may not be all that great. And playing with a wire hanging out of the side of the device is a bit of a PITA.
Yaz.
(Composed on an iPad, FWIW)
The number of touch typists are pretty slim. I don't know anyone at work, other than a couple secretaries that would have a desktop only, who can touch type. I've held a conversation with someone (looking at them) while typing, and he was amazed and called people over to proofread my touch typing while I was talking to him. And I can't type on 50% of laptops. So many have a non-standard key spacing these days. The non-touch typists would never know, and the few people left who touch type would have the same issues you complain about on tablets on many laptops, though I've found the problem less with more 15"+ widescreens, but the sub-14" all seem to be unusable for touch-typists.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
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?
Netbooks didn't "die" on their own.
They were designed with crippling "birth defects" (weak CPU, limited RAM) so as not to eat notebook market share. It worked and after the initial surge, sales dropped off.
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.
They didn't have birth defects, they were strangled in their infancy by Microsoft.
MS made it a requirement that netbooks had to have weak CPU's and RAM limited as not to eat the notebook market share because MS charged more per license for a $500 notebook than they did for a $300 netbook.
But this did not last as we now have 11" "ultrabooks" which are basically netbooks without the weak CPU and RAM limits (and price tag).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
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.
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.
the use case being "output only"
Do you see someone arguing that a laptop is hard to type on? (Those super mini ultrabooks sure are) If they did you would probably be the first one to post a similar rebuttal.
For short responses to emails, tweets, chats, and oter similarly short things, the onscreen keyboard is more than sufficient on an iPad. Hell, people use those miniscule on screen keyboards on their phones to do the same, and apparently they are not worthy of complaints.
If you're going to type a novel or something else "long", you might want a little more feedback, and one of those BT keyboards would be just the thing. They'll work for some of those phones, too.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
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.
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 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
If you write in a non alphabetic system the on screen keyboard is leaps an bounds better than a physical keyboard. In properly developed applications like Apple's Numbers the contextual keyboard is much better to data input than any physical counterpart. Only on plain text writing is a better choice an optional physical keyboard. Another benefit, from Apple's POV is that they only offer a single product for a worldwide audience, improving their margins and the management of inventory. There is more behind Apple's mountain of money than being "overpriced" or "fanboys".
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
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