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Microsoft and Others Mean Stiff Competition For Apple iPad Pro
MojoKid writes: When Microsoft first announced the Surface Pro back in 2012, many Apple fans snickered. Here was Microsoft, releasing a somewhat thick and heavy tablet that not only had a kickstand, but also an odd cover that doubled as a keyboard. And to top things off, the device made use of a stylus. Steve Jobs famously said in 2010, "If you see a stylus, they blew it." But Microsoft forged ahead with the Surface Pro 2, and later with the Surface Pro 3. Not only were customers becoming more aware of the Surface but competitors were also taking note. We've seen Lenovo introduce the ideapad MIIX 700, which incorporates its own kickstand and an Intel Skylake-based Core m7 processor. And most recently, we've seen Apple pull a literal 180 on this design and platform approach, announcing the iPad Pro — a device that features a fabric keyboard cover similar in concept to the Surface Pro and a stylus. Dell and ASUS have also brought compelling offerings to the table as well. However, the big head-to-head competition will no doubt be between the Surface Pro 4, which is set to be unveiled early next month and Apple's iPad Pro when it finally goes on sale.
It's the software and OS it runs that matters.
From what I've seen and read the iPad Pro stylus uses the classic capacitive touch sensor of the sort used on all the iPads, maybe with a higher-definition capability. That that means the user can't rest their hand on the screen while drawing. All the videos I've seen of users demoing the iPad stylus show them being very careful not to let their hand get anywhere near the screen, holding the stylus in a rather unnatural fashion.
The Surface Pro has a separate digitising screen for the stylus as well as the regular capacitive touch screen and it's possible to rest a hand on the Surface Pro's screen while writing and drawing as it can ignore the capacitive touch signal.
That's why they've asked IBM to help.
http://www.apple.com/business/...
And they've helped a lot.
http://www.ibm.com/mobilefirst...
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
In 2007, Jobs made the comment "If you see a stylus, they blew it", in regards to using a stylus on a phone. Back then (for those of us old enough to remember) phones like the Palm Treo had tiny touch targets and resistive screens that pretty much demanded the use of a stylus. Apple was the first manufacturer to ship a capacitive touchscreen with a large, touch-optimized UI that did not require a stylus for day to day use.
*THAT* is what Jobs was referring to back then. If you're going to toss around the man's quotes, at least get the context right.
The comparison is complete nonsense. The Surface Pro runs stock x86 Windows; the iPad Pro would have to be running OSX on an x86 chip for any sort of comparison to be meaningful. Even comparing the late, unlamented Surface RT to the iPad Pro is suspect, despite the fact that both are ARM based, since the former ran full blown Windows as well; it had the desktop version of Office bundled into the firmware.
A meaningful comparison would between the Surface Pro 3 vs. Macbook Air or the iPad Pro vs. the flagship Android tablets.
I dunno. I didn't see iPhones as a viable business phone but I was wrong. People wanted them because they were so easy to use. I didn't think the iPod was going to revolutionize portable music but then Apple went and made it so easy to buy music.
Apple has a way of making things that already exist simpler and more attractive. They've got Adobe products and Microsoft Office on the iPad. Assuming you can connect to network shares from the iPad, it's just a matter of convincing people it's better than sliced bread and Apple's good at that.
JUst because a skateboard and a car both have 4 wheels doesn't mean its the same product. Just because Surface LOOKS like an Ipad doesn't mean its the same kind of product. Surface is a COMPUTER. A Windows computer. People Buy Ipads and Amazon Fires to get AWAY from computers. I can see why Microsoft would LIKE to compete in the Ipad market.......but its stupid to do so. They LOOK alike......beyond that they are in completely different categories. Its actually a stupid comparison. They serve completely different purposes. The reasons for buying each is all different. People who buy tablets don't WANT to Maintain a computer. They don't WANT to deal with the malware etc computers have. People who want to SKATE buy Skateboards. People who want to DRIVE Buy a car.
Even the basic product photos AND the demo showed the hand resting on the screen.
If you weren't aware, you can rest your hand on an iPad today while drawing with your finger or stylus... Apple does input discrimination very well.
The Surface Pro has a separate digitising screen for the stylus
That is all very nice but the Apple Pencil looks to have much better latency which is what really matters.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We get better tablet devices and tablet software much quicker than we would otherwise!
The Surface competes far more against the Macbook than it does against the iPad Pro.
The iPad Pro is all about touch input (still), while the Surface treats that as an extra.
Also the Stylus comment was about requiring the stylus for input - which the iPad Pro does not, you only get the stylus if you need finer-grained input than a touch can give you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We've deployed a few Surfaces at work. First thing the users ask for is a regular USB keyboard and a mouse to plug in while they're on campus. Second thing they ask for is a regular USB keyboard and mouse they can take home with them when they've got the Surfaces there. Nobody is willing to use the awful cover.
#DeleteChrome
This is more about the commoditization of employees than the hardware/software/services.
If you can make everything an employee needs to do into an app on a tablet, you've turned the employee into a robot, which makes that employee less valuable (and more replaceable).
Don't misinterpret the fact that they are using iPads as the tool to get this to happen. That's only because of the penetration the iPad has in the tablet segment. It's trivial to port this paradigm to other tablets.
It's just so sad that making things simpler makes them more attractive. Kind of means people who look for complex features had better make it themselves.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
>" many Apple fans snickered. [...]Steve Jobs famously said in 2010, "If you see a stylus, they blew it." [...]And most recently, we've seen Apple pull a literal 180 on this design and platform approach,"
This is nothing new. Apple and/or Apple fans tends to ridicule anything they don't have (note I didn't say "design", because MANY things were first to market in other devices... most notably in high-end Android phones.) Remember smart watches in 2013-2014? Remember notifications? Remember Google Wallet? Remember NFC? Remember large sizes? Just a few things that quickly come to mind.
Apple tends to have some great designs and solid equipment. But they are rarely first anymore- they are more reactionary now.
I expect there are a few million people not in the right mind, at least by the end of the year.
But, thank you for your positive contribution to the conversation. It is always a pleasure reading intelligent well thought out comments like yours.
Hahahaha... ahahaha! How much did Microsoft pay for this? If anyone has ever spent any significant time with a Surface Pro, as well as an iPad, they would know that these devices aren't even in the same league. My organization has deployed some of the original Surface Pro's, and some 3 Pro's, and, combined with the stillbirth that is Windows 8, these devices are absolute dogs. I think my favorite part about them is that the official dock's video output only works intermittently. Well, that, and the fact that we've seen a failure rate of the Pro 3's of about 30%. I'm not Apple fanatic, not by a long shot, but the iPad just generally works, and it's easy/simple to use. The iPad is also not designed for the same thing the Surface Pro is. It's a pure consumption device.
when apple innovates a *large step* that everyone lusts after, which they've done well for awhile, apple rules
but when innovation is more iterative, *small steps*, what happens outside the walled garden is much more cutthroat and much more capable of producing something novel that people want
there's also the issue that what was once state of the art extremely rapidly becomes just another commodity, it's brutal. and apple sits at the cutting edge of this game, and has to carefully stay there
as long as it can surf that wave, apple will continue to do well. but the moment large innovative steps become out of reach due to technology coming up short on the bleeding edge, then apple stumbles, and their market passes outside of the walled garden into the realm of the commodities
what amazes me is apple played its game in the 1980s. then in the 1990s apple began dying because there were no great leaps to achieve. it kind of eked out an existence on the edge as a fetish item. when the 2000s and 2010s came along, apple picked up the same game it played in the 1980s with a number of technological and design breakthroughs. which is a rather impressive achievement, to seize that position twice
but the 2020s are coming, and if apple can't find that must have next leap, apple goes the way it did in the 1990s
no steve jobs this time around though to save it in the 2030s
unless their actual product in the 2030s is "steve jobs himself cloned for your desktop"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Their reliability is shit
I got my wife a surface last December. The first one was returned when it badly overheated and fried the screen. The second one is about to be returned as the touch screen works intermittently on left left inch of the screen. Add to that I just discovered the charger has broken.
1 star, - would not buy again and will actively recommend others do not.
(Not that I'll be running out to lock myself into the apple ecosystem either)
It's just so sad that making things simpler makes them more attractive
It's not sad at all, because done right it means more people get the benefit of complex features without having to be very technical.
Having as many people as possible making use of technology to improve their lives is an admirable goal.
Kind of means people who look for complex features had better make it themselves.
The great thing is they still can; nothing stops them from doing so. But there are ALSO the simpler choices. Before, all we had was complexity which benefitted comparatively few.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Samsung Galaxyu Note 10.1,
Befrore that Lenovo made one. THinkpad it was called IIRC.
I would rather have separate USB keyboard.
Oh and the case I got for my Notge can act either as a landscape stand or a portrat stand.
"it's just a matter of convincing people it's better than sliced bread and Apple's good at that."
Or, here is a thought, maybe it isn't that people need to be convinced. Maybe it just is.
...but my 2 year old phone came with one and I rarely use it.
An interface designed for precise input from a mouse isn't usually finger friendly. The also isn't a really a "right click". And even a slight dependency on the keyboard, like ESC to cancel an accidental menu can make things awkward.
The buttons usually need to be larger.
The philosophical argument ("seems like a mouse application should be touch friendly") sounds nice, but the Surface Pro has been around for 3 years now.
There's no need to rely on a philosophical line of thought, the device has been on the market for a long time. It's not even new.
It's probably that smiley that slowed you down just a nanosecond and prevented you from being first. And it doesn't even have a nose! How can you lose the frist over something that hasn't got a nose. Lame.
lucm, indeed.
However, the stylus lacks any buttons and no eraser functionality.
That isn't much of an issue when touch controls to adjust things can be anywhere on the screen.
Currently the suggested way to recharge the pen is to insert it into the charging port of the iPad Pro.
You left out the part where it takes just fifteen seconds to get 30 minutes of use from the Pencil, which doesn't seem like an impediment. Frankly it seems like the most convenient way to charge such a device other than some kind of charging dock on the tablet itself - but the quick charge means even if it runs out I'm only fifteen seconds away from continuing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple have invented it!
Apple creates their simplicity by removing complex features. Where is the option to add complex features into iOS?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I always found the Surface's catch phrase "a tablet that can replace laptop" a little odd. These devices have always been a laptop first and tablet second, but now with Windows 10 that has been changing somewhat. Touch needs to be improved, but at least with tablet mode you aren't ending up on the desktop, with multiple windows open, when using the thing without a mouse or touchpad attached. That little change has made a huge difference.
Learn to develop for iOS and you can make it as complex as you want. Rest assured, an overly complex app probably won't sell.
iPad Pro lets people do amazing things that are significantly harder on a tablet. The stylus and external keyboard are not required except for applications and tasks where the familiarity and/or precision of a stylus is required. It is large enough that the onscreen keyboard is useful and an external keyboard is a luxury.
One thing a lot of articles mulling over the acceptance of the iPad Pro miss, is how it has a very ready market already proven - that currently occupied by the Wacom Cintiq.
Have any of you ever used one? I ordered on a year or two ago, and after day of use I returned it - the display is just OK, and it requires a lot of wires to attach.
At least one article offers an even more informed opinion espousing this same view.
From that standpoint the iPad Pro is going to be successful, since theres a ready made market to absorb even without all of the other people angling to buy one.
The interesting thing is, you could imagine Waccom making iPad Pro software that basically turned the iPad Pro into a Cintiq, using all of the same technology they have today to mirror over a display and forward touch input from the tablet...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wow you've had a bad run..... A customer of mine bough a brand new surface pro 3... the keyboard port on the surface pro 3 did not work (wasn't a problem with the keyboard). I've had almost no issue with my Surface Pro 3. I have had some silliness with Windows update on it where I had to do a hard power cycle to get it to work again, but that is it. The docking station and ALL ports work with out issue. In the early days of my SP3, I did have a little trouble with WiFi when the system fell asleep, but that seems to have been corrected.
iPad sales are down 22% year over year. Soon enough people who own one will even be shy to bring it out in public, like teenage girls tearing down their One Direction posters.
You're amazingly misinformed for someone that arrogant.
lucm, indeed.
Oddly enough, when PC's stampeded into business this same argument was often touted - that the employees would be being downgraded to key-clickers.
MojoKid writes a free advertisement for MICROS~1 ..
Its called Xcode and write your own Apps.
The complexity is only limited by your own ability and imagination.
You can then make Apps that will interact with Arduino, Raspberry Pi, or if you want, design and build your own hardware fro scratch.
Thus far the only limitation is you.
So you are asking me to ignore the limitations of the platform and the sdk that prevent me from building true business productivity solutions? Instead of just one app I can now have2 completely siloed apps? Yeah for me. Oh wait, on a normal day I am clicking through 8 or more fully integrated applications. How again do I share my iPad pro screen in a virtual meeting allowing my coworkers to take control?
MIcrosoft is bleeding large amounts of money supporting Surface iterations. Apple, not so much, they deign to make a profit.
Not to say iPad Pro doesn't suck or is marvellous, or merely average, but it is hard to see how Surface is going to even survive, let alone thrive unless Microsoft tosses orders of magnitude more money at Surface than they did/are at XBox. So, stiff competition? Well, it seems like those at Microsoft need to drink a few more shots of hard liquor to steady their nerves while flashing shedloads of money until they get to a point of some form of success or pass out drunk and broke under the table.
The key to VR and stylii, is that they have to be not just good enough, they have to be extraordinary. And when they are, they will change the market. Until then, people will think no body wants Stylii, or VR, but that's probably not the case, they just can't put up with not quite good enough yet.
Oh, nice! So my app will be able to access the iPad's external USB storage, and display itself on my second monitor via the iPad's HDMI port?
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
GO MICROSOFT GO!
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/15/09/19/2150259/microsoft-and-others-mean-stiff-competition-for-apple-ipad-pro
OH DAMN, ANDROID MALWARE IS SCARY... HAVE SOME FUD
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/15/09/19/1944236/ask-slashdot-what-to-do-about-android-malware
GO MICROSOFT GO!
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/15/09/19/1626228/microsoft-spending-75m-to-boost-k-12-cs-education-put-teals-in-4000-schools
HEHE NICE TRY LINUX, GAMES ARE STILL MICROSOFT...
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/09/19/1529247/thanks-to-valve-more-than-1500-games-are-now-on-linux
The 600lb gorilla in the room? Windows 10 is unprecedented-in-the-history-of-Earth global fucking spyware. From keystroke logger, to downloading without asking, to permissions to access all of your files if you accept Microsoft's extremely long "agreement" that very few actually fucking read. And if you are anything but maximum internet savvy... 7/8/8.1 get the backported spyware too.
https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-microsoft.html
http://www.computerworlduk.com/blogs/open-enterprise/how-can-any-company-ever-trust-microsoft-again-3569376/
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2956574/microsoft-subnet/windows-10-privacy-spyware-settings-user-agreement.html
http://www.technobuffalo.com/2013/08/22/nsa-windows-8-exploit/
http://www.technobuffalo.com/2013/07/11/microsoft-gave-the-nsa-direct-backdoor-access-to-outlook-skype/
http://winsupersite.com/windows-10/how-stop-windows-10-upgrade-downloading-your-system
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/195592-with-windows-10-microsoft-could-move-to-a-subscription-based-model
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/205320-microsoft-windows-10-will-be-the-last-version-of-windows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GU5uv28a3I
http://techrights.org/2015/07/31/vista-10-anticompetitive/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwRYyWn7BEo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gghj03J_ri0 [This link was found in Slashdot comments a week ago. It was a guy packet sniffing Windows phoning the mother-ship. Already gone a few days ago.]
http://localghost.org/posts/a-traffic-analysis-of-windows-10
http://www.ghacks.net/2015/08/28/microsoft-intensifies-data-collection-on-windows-7-and-8-systems/
THIS.
https://gitlab.com/windowslies/blockwindows
-1 this shit too. again.
Don't forget Bill Gates donates toilets to Africa too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesson_of_the_widow's_mite
distrowatch.com
In 2015 and still buying Microsoft shit, even when it's completely malware/spyware. Still 1993 filesystem, all that. Dunce shit.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-dominates-supercomputers-as-never-before/
Touch is obviously a great technology. However there are some shortcomings when it comes to precision.
For example; signatures. If you've rented a car recently it's likely you had to sign your name on a tablet of some sort with your finger, which basically turns out to be a total mess. Nothing at all like my actual signature, a stylus would resolve this no problem.
Also any type of art would benefit from a stylus. Wacom could be out of business in short order if tablets embraced different input types..
iPad Pro is a touch first and foremost device. The keyboard is more of an afterthought and used for data heavy input (i.e. document creation), but for most tasks the keyboard should not be an advantage.
The Surface comes at it the opposite way - it is primarily a computer that can be used in a tablet sort of way.... you would not generally buy it without the keyboard.
Apple focuses more on a device for a given task, while Microsoft is trying to make one device do everything (not necessarily the best). Apple focuses on hand-off between devices when you change which one you are using, Microsoft focuses on you are only going to have one device and it will somehow morph into whatever you want.
I prefer the Apple approach to the Microsoft approach, but there are others where Microsoft would be more suited. (Windows user til 2008; OS X user after 2008).
Still snickering
When Microsoft first announced the Surface Pro back in 2012, many Apple fans snickered.
Yes, and most people are still snickering. The total sales of the Surface and Surface Pro still have yet to surpass the sales of the original iPad, much less the newer models. That statement remains true whether you're discussing volume in $ or units. (The Surface Pro just recently had its very first 1 million+ unit quarter.)
Even if iPad sales go down *another* 22% year over year, it'll still sell an order of magnitude more units in that quarter than the entire Surface line will all year, and almost certainly more units than the Surface line has since its inception (I'm having trouble finding unit sales metrics for the Surface, but it has only recently had it's first $1million+ quarter).
You're amazingly arrogant for someone that misinformed.
Less complex doesn’t necessarily mean less powerful; it can sometimes mean better designed. And having less complex, better designed software can be a good thing. For example, this guy was more productive with the comparatively simple Garageband on iPad than with the complex pro software on Mac, and this guy has replaced his computer with an iPad for work.
The way I see it, Apple and Google are going at it the right way by gradually adapting their touch-based OS to more powerful devices. That way, developers can make their mobile apps more complex without losing sight that they are targeting a device with a touch screen and running on a battery. On the other hand, Microsoft is still trying to cram a full PC in a tablet form factor, despite 13 years of failing. Since Windows tablets are an insignificant part of the whole Windows ecosystem, developers have no incentive to adapt their software to the form factor of the Surface.
Apple products are for grandmas a teenagers.
Even the original IPad had an expansion port where a video adapter could be inserted allowing use of external monitors.
Your argument is more about what you perceive as a limitation in the hardware as being a limitation of iOS.
Not everyone shares your view and find the iPad and iPad Pro to be excellent for their intended role. If you need more capability, you can write apps that can pull data created and manipulated on the iPad and stored on iCloud or another cloud service. Many such apps have already been written that can leverage the "handoff" of data from one device to a comparable app running on another device in a seamless manner.
(I'm having trouble finding unit sales metrics for the Surface, but it has only recently had it's first $1million+ quarter).
You're amazingly arrogant for someone that misinformed.
Weird. I did not have trouble finding sales metrics for the Surface at all. But whatever is the reason for your lack of google skills, I'm sure you will be surprised to learn that Microsoft is making more than 1 million dollars per quarter with this product. They even make more than that per day. Isn't that amazing?
Are they outselling iPads? No, not yet. But the iPad, which used to dominate the market, now has at best a 20% share. So the real competition for Microsoft is not the iPad, it's that cluster of Asian Android manufacturers.
I would also like to point out that you're way less clever than you think in your comments. You sound petulant, not righteous.
lucm, indeed.
That is odd, because the opposite dynamic is at work:
PCs are far, far more capable than what came before (pens, paper, filing cabinets, typewriters, dictation machines, etc.). It's completely mind-boggling how much more capability PCs have than older methods of information manipulation, storage, and retrieval when you think about it.
Tablets, on the other hand, are less capable than PCs. They can do many of the same things, but more poorly because their input interfaces are much more limited. Their only advantages over PCs are mobility and size/weight. Otherwise, they're just less-capable replacements for laptops and desktops: smaller screens, no keyboards (or really crappy ones), no mice, less CPU power and memory and storage, no wired networking, etc. There's literally nothing you can do on a tablet that you can't do on a PC, usually better (unless it involves walking around while you do it). Tablets have obvious utility in things such walking around a warehouse and doing inventory or whatever, or being used for a customer-facing order-placing system (as many Panera Bread locations have done; instead of placing your order with a person, you go use a tablet that's bolted to a table and punch it in yourself; it's great because you'll find out about all kinds of selections (esp. order modifications) that there simply isn't any time for some cashier to read off to you). But it's really just convenience; these things could be done with PCs as well, tablets just have a more convenient form factor for it.
Its not about the hardware so much Apple as the OS that needs to run enterprise software. I have my doubts Apple will make a lot of progress with just a expensive iPad. So it has a pencil? Big deal, it has to have that. Really IOS is such a lame OS for enterprise.
Actually, the fact that iOS and OS-X are based on different CPUs is what screws things up for Apple: else, they could have used the same code base and not worried about one market cannibalizing the other. Microsoft has Windows 10 that can work fluently on both a Surface Pro as well as a normal laptop. Apple has an Intel based OS-X for the Macbooks, and an A8 based iOS for iPads. That's what's complicating things for them.
Instead, since Apple has their A series of CPUs - A5 to A8 so far, they could have used it for both their Airbooks as well as their iPads, iPhones and even iPods (maybe spread out the generations to hit different price points). That way, like Microsoft, they'd have had a common OS that could have been used for either. Note that I know that a tablet OS is a lot different from a laptop OS in terms of UX, as Microsoft learnt the hard way w/ Windows 8, but that's not my point here. Rather, by reducing the number of variables that they're handling, they could have been as flexible as Microsoft and had a common hardware platform for their own App store. Also, while Microsoft is based on the Pentium and iCore lines, Apple could have based theirs on their A series, and they would have been mutually exclusive.
There is always a fandroid who wants to interpret statements out of context. Jobs is dead and unable to clarify his statements. But, the context mentioned has little to do with a fanboi worshipping a profit and more a matter integrity.
I dunno. I didn't see iPhones as a viable business phone but I was wrong. People wanted them because they were so easy to use. I didn't think the iPod was going to revolutionize portable music but then Apple went and made it so easy to buy music.
Apple has a way of making things that already exist simpler and more attractive. They've got Adobe products and Microsoft Office on the iPad. Assuming you can connect to network shares from the iPad, it's just a matter of convincing people it's better than sliced bread and Apple's good at that.
I quite agree w/ this. I didn't see iPhones as viable for business, but in my last job, that's the company phone I was given. Also, most apps seem to be targeted first at iPhones, then Android and finally, if they are lucky, Windows Phone. (Hopefully, w/ Windows 10 universal apps, Windows 10 Mobile phones will get more love - although I wonder how that'd work when the PCs and Surfaces are based on Intel, while the Lumias are based on ARM.)
Conversely, Windows Phone, which lacks a lot of games, had just a fantastic combination of apps, which, if used, works well together to give businesses what they need. I'm talking about not just Office, but also Calendar, Bing Maps, Mail (which supports Exchange), OneNote, OneDrive, and on top of that, some apps from the store, like unit converters, currency converters and so on. What's more, the typing experience on Windows Phones was just awesome - although in iOS 8, Apple improved a lot. This was just a perfect platform for business, but a lot of app developers just gloss over it, while developing for iOS and Android. Hopefully, w/ Windows 10, they'd support Mobile as well, instead of just doing Web apps.
.... except that combining all the sales for the Surface since it was released (all of them), you don't even get a number high enough to match the sales of one iPad mode during release week.
So how can something that is barely selling be considered "stiff competition" for something that is outselling everybody else combined?
I remember the days before the iPhone. Maybe you don't, but I sure do. Back then, there were two kinds of smartphones: Blackberries and WinMo phones. BBs were expensive and highly tied to BB infrastructure (which if you worked for some big company or the government, you'd have, but if you were just Joe Blow, you didn't), and really were meant for doing email on the run more than anything else. The other choice was Windows Mobile.... which just sucked. There's a reason that thing never went anywhere; no one wanted a crappy copy of Windows XP on their phone, which they needed to use a stylus to do the simplest things. The UI was all wrong for mobile usage.
Somehow Apple figured this out, that what people wanted was a big screen with icons large enough to just press them with fat fingers, not tiny desktop-esque icons that needed high-precision aiming with a stylus.
You'd think this should be blindingly obvious, but apparently not. I think part of the reason we never saw anyone else do it before was because of the market-distorting effect of having Microsoft dominating the software industry so much. With very little diversity in OSes and UIs (unlike the 80s where we had tons of microcomputer vendors like Acorn, Amiga, Commodore, Tandy, etc.), and really the only choices for desktop work being Windows (95+%) and Apple Mac (5%), there just wasn't any other company around with the financial and engineering resources to pull off making a smartphone that wasn't yet another WinMo device. And even then Apple was only able to do it because they had such wild (and rather unexpected) success with their iPods. It's not like it's much better now: BB is barely hanging on now, WinMo is still here with a different look and name (and still no one wants it), iPhone is still here, and the other big player is Android, which of course also had a humongous and wealthy company pushing it. This is a market that simply isn't one which some new startup can penetrate. Apple was really lucky (and also really skillful) in doing so well in it.
Now if you're wondering why MS couldn't do it if it's so "blindingly obvious" as I put it, that's easy: MS as an organization is completely incompetent when it comes to UIs. Whoever they had working there and managing the UI stuff back in the early/mid 90s when they invented Windows 95 obviously is long gone, because everything they've done since XP has either just been a re-skin or tweak of Win95, or a total disaster (the Metro/Modern UI). Why they couldn't realize this and put someone better in charge, I dunno, but it's not just them. Look at GM; what kind of incompetent automaker would produce the Pontiac Aztek? There's countless examples of big companies making products which the general public absolutely hated. Much of this can probably be blamed on the top executives, since they either approve this stuff themselves or have close, hand-picked subordinates who do. Steve Jobs obviously had a gift in understanding what consumers would want, whereas other executives just didn't/don't (like Steve Ballmer), and of course are too disconnected to realize this about themselves. It'll be interesting to see how Apple does without him; so far it seems like they're just riding on past successes.
So the Apple fan crowd is going to say Apple invented the big tablet with a stylus.
Sure, it is a game that you have to get. But it's not really a difficult game to understand. If anything, the talent was in the fact that they knew new technologies and they took advantage of them before anyone else did. I guess I'm just not that impressed.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Of course. Steve Jobs was all about integrity, not profit. That's why the iPhone is manufactured in China, why Apple takes a huge cut on App Store sales, and why they want musicians to subsidize the trial period on Apple music streaming. Integrity.
lucm, indeed.
The simple answer to these questions is "don't buy hardware that's not made for work". If you're in business, get a surface pro. Or that lenovo clone. Or any of the hundreds of other Windows tablets. They have the features and capabilities needed for real work.
At the end of the day, put the work device away and pull out the iPad for whatever entertainment you want.
I don't know why people treat this like it's a religious decision, where you can only ever use One True Tablet.
How do you share it so they have control? Um... Hand it to them?
He's referring to video conferences. Haven't you realized that no one wants to share a room with him.
And to top things off, the device made use of a stylus. Steve Jobs famously said in 2010, "If you see a stylus, they blew it."
Right... as if Jobs would ever have been against the idea of selling an overpriced accessory for the iPad.
Any of you that have ever used a Palm Pilot, PocketPC, or Tablet PC knows deep down what he was really talking about, it wasn't general hatred of styluses.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
In this age, why do you even need a USB storage for a tablet? Maybe you should just keep up with time
GP Ignore these guy. Friend of mine had to replace his hdd on his mac the other day. Horrible experience and I told him before he began this painful escapade he was better off to buy a new laptop.
Your argument is more about what you perceive as a limitation in the hardware as being a limitation of iOS.
No, I perceive it as a limitation of Apple, regardless of the subsystem in which the limitation is implemented.
If you need more capability, you can write apps that can pull data created and manipulated on the iPad and stored on iCloud or another cloud service.
That's fine, except when your constraints do not allow that. Those are the kinds of constraints that come up in the real world professional setting... hence my view that the iPad "Pro" is not actually "pro".
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Fair call on much of this, but citing the Pontiac Aztek as "incompetent" would be inaccurate; it was a niche product that had an insanely high customer satisfaction rate among those that bought it. ("The Aztek had among the highest CSI (Customer Satisfaction Index) scores in its class" and JD Power 2001 cites: "The Aztek scores highest or second highest in every APEAL component measure except exterior styling)."
Most people didn't like it, but the mark of incompetence would have been producing the Aztek as the main-line product. (Oh wait, they did: the Buick Rendezvous; just as ugly but without balls.) Producing weird shit that the corners of the market eat up -- Pontiak's Aztek, Nokia N900, Apple Newton, Saturn EV1, the first decades of online "remote" shopping and of television, and other things we love(d) to hate but keep talking about or ended up using -- they generally fall in two categories: they move the entire market/industry forward significantly despite losses, or their makers lanugh all the way to the bank. (Cadillac's styling for their entire current lineup owes more to the Aztek than any other ancestor. It just took GM a while to figure out who wanted Klingon cars.)
To the point: It may take a decade for a ballsy move like the Aztek to translate into a shitpile of cash, but it's better than standing still. Microsoft's failing is that they keep making a large number of unremarkable things, while competitors like Apple and Google make fewer things that are much more memorable, much better milestones. Do you remember what search was like before Google Search? Tablets before the iPad? Can you recall many jumps forward in Windows, Office, or Azure that feel the same? Google ships Chromebooks to schools and makes "lost homework" and quaint archaic idea, and Microsoft shuffles buttons in the ribbon, has us scrolling sideways in Metro, and ships a tablet with a flaccid keyboard. Utterly forgettable if not a step backwards. Repackaged Windows that brings back Win7 UI features? A kickstand idea they got from Archos? Active tiles from IOS? Win10 and Surface: New, yes; revolutionary or memorable beyond the next product announcement, no.
I think not...(*poof*)
When it does not have enough storage available, or when it is used in a professional setting that puts constraints on usage (such as no internet connectivity), or when I have a large existing drive that I want to use for backup instead of paying for a cloud service, or when I need a physical mechanism to transfer files (because the other device has USB storage but no other transfer mechanism like Ethernet/WiFi/Bluetooth), or when I would like to boot a USB drive into a different OS or even the same OS with a different configuration.
And that doesn't cover many other reasons you might want a tablet that is capable of USB host, such as adding a USB mouse and keyboard, connecting a USB printer, adding a USB joystick or game controller, ethernet adapter, and specialized devices... specifically if you already own these things, and don't want to have to pay for a new device just because it is compatible with an iPad.
(I'm still talking about Pro... so don't act like these things don't matter, because they do in a professional setting.)
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
You're completely wrong about iOS and OSX. iOS was originally a fork of OSX, and today they are codeveloped. The major difference between the two is UI. Pretty much everything under the hood is shared code. Bugs found in iOS are fixed in iOS and the code changes are forwarded to OS X, and vice versa. If you don't believe me, go look at the open source releases, particularly xnu.
Back then, there were two kinds of smartphones: Blackberries and WinMo phones.
You are forgetting Symbian. Smartphone does not mean "touchscreen phone", though Nokia did have few phones with touchscreen. No one really cared about them though, numpad/keyboard were good enough things back then.
Seems like someone has received an advertorial from Redmond to create some buzz online.
...then again - generally speaking the sports journalists / commenters are not the most tech savvy people overall
Anyone with more than half a brain knows Steve Jobs was referring to devices that were dependent on the inclusion of a stylus. Only a tiny proportion of Apple's customers will buy the iPad Pro and the Pencil because it targets a specialised market, essentially graphic artists. This is a great development for artistic purposes –it's not a new development (and nobody pitched it that way) but it's a very nice implementation. Comparisons to the stylus comment just brain-dead click-bait. What's happened to this site?
They are "professionals" and the only reason why they have goofed (more than once) is because of passive aggressive pushback at being told to use MS Surface products.
No really. Apple has handled 3 CPU architecture transitions fairly seamlessly in the past 2 decades. The big thing apple has going for them is a common development platform for all their devices. The model and controller for an app on phone/tablet or OS X can stay pretty identical and just be hooked up to different views. iOS already runs on intel, if apple decide they want to stick an Intel cpu into a phone or tablet. And you can bet OS X already runs on ARM too.
Trying to force a single UI everywhere like Microsoft has tried to since Windows Mobile in the 1990s is just never going to work. It didn't work in 2001 and it doesn't work now.
Their only advantages over PCs are mobility and size/weight.
and you'd have to deny the smartphone and tablet revolution to dismiss that, but i guess you did.
You can certainly buy one in a big PC store, but I have never known anyone who actually did so. iPad isn't loosing out to surface - it is loosing out to cheaper tablets, running Android, with good specs. I'm told that Surface devices have an astronomical return rate, which is kind of evidenced by the number of surface devices and related parts in the discount bin, all bubble wrapped without any original packaging. I think Microsoft made a mistake making these devices run a Windows, since nobody wants Windows on a tablet device, and there is very little software that is suited to it. I also think they made a mistake trying to make a single device that works as a laptop, and as a tablet. I don't want that, and I don't know anybody who does. Surface is misconceived, clunky, and polluted by the wrong software choices.
It absolutely is about the hardware (and what they've done at the OS level to support that). The resolution and extremely low latency of the stylus makes this a different class of experience - akin to the conceptual break between old touchscreens and modern 1:1 instantaneous response (iPhone, Android 4.1+, etc). It's a distinction lots of people overlooked at the time, but I'm willing to bet it will be as fundamental this time round as it was with touch. I've had all three Surface Pros, each time hoping the stylus input would be good enough for creative work, and it just isn't. It's still just the basic input method that Jobs dissed. If the iPad Pro does what it appears to from the videos, this is conceptually different from any other current device. Though I'm still hoping the Surface 4 has gone the same route...
Then don't buy one. Apple doesn't want shit-faces like you for a customer anyway.
It's completely mind-boggling how much more capability mainframes have than older methods of information manipulation, storage, and retrieval when you think about it. PCs, on the other hand, are less capable than mainframes. Their only advantages over mainframes are mobility and size/weight. Otherwise, they're just less-capable replacements for mainframes.
Back then, there were two kinds of smartphones: Blackberries and WinMo phones
Oh, and there was that other company that had 80% of the smartphone market...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I didn't see iPhones as a viable business phone but I was wrong.
As a matter of interest, why not? The only thing that was missing compared to a blackberry was an app or two to integrate with whatever enterprise suite you run, and an ability to lock it down. Both of those are pretty trivial from a software perspective. Otherwise the iPhone was every bit as good as making calls, monitoring a calendar and sending messages as any other corporate phone that preceded it.
The two are not exclusive. Windows panders ever more to the idiot, yet the latest version includes Powershell installed by default. That's just an example but there is a lot to be said for simplifying things. Fundamentally that is what we, even as advanced tech heads have always done.
Do you manually run backups by invoking some unknown number of different rsync commands, or do you use a program or short script that does it for you? Does ls display the folder tree in colour on your system due to an alias or do you manually type in ls --color every single time?
The iPad Pro is designed as a competitor for the Surface. In case you missed the keynote, there was a large proportion of the time taken up by Microsoft and Adobe demonstrations showing how iPad Pro can be used in a business environment.
As a productivity device, iPad Pro will probably fail. I missed the announcement that it now works properly (i.e. supports screen/application sharing) with business tools like WebEx and Lync. I can't dock it and use a multiple monitor setup. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
If I was looking for a consumer device, the sure. I'd probably choose an iPad for consumption. But for business use, it is nowhere near being a serious competitor for the Surface Pro.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
As a designer / animator (2D & 3D) and illustrator... I've found the wacom cintiq essential.
I was one of the first in my country (Australia) to own the original 12 inch Cintiq (not HD), I can happily say I got more than 8 years or so out of the thing before it finally died... (replacing the breakout box however was more than the cost of a new [HD] one).
Upgraded to a HD 13" and I'm happy as Larry.
I also own a Wacom brand stylus with touch sensitivity (via bluetooth) that I can use on iPads.
If the iPad pro and Apple pen can match the Cintiq and allow me to draw as realistically (by connecting to my Mac machines) in software like Houdini, Mudbox, Zbrush, Artrage, Photoshop, Illustrator etc... Then Apple can have my next serious sale. Until then, it's Wacom all the way!
(parent - which wacom cintiq model are you referring to - there are many models. I've most of them - but there's a reason you won't go to any kind of high end creative studio without seeing a cintiq somewhere)
Oh and as for "a lot of wires"...
It's power (obviously). HDMI (so you can see what you're doing). And USB (like any other input device).
Hell.. you can even use it as a regular graphics tablet if you don't plug in HDMI, and just go for the USB. Also it offers one powered USB port so you can charge your phone etc...
My 3D monitor needs power and video input (HDMI). My mouse and keyboard both need USB...
What're these other "wires" that you speak of?
whar does manufacturing in China and maximizing profits have to do with the integrity of his statements about a stylus? FYI, any CEO (or officer) who isn't about fulfilling their fiduciary responsibility to the stock holders won't remain as such for long and may face criminal charges.
Jobs did what was expected of him - he did his duty to the stock holders, demanded products he deemed worthy of the Apple brand and he sold the F out of it.
Btw, take a look where your laptop, Surface, smartphone or other electronic device is manufactured. Most likely, it isn't in the US. That capability was sold out years ago due to the costs of labor and the availability of natural resources such as rare earth minerals used in the production of hitech electronics.
This is for a 13" tablet, there is no big competition, it's a puny market segment.
What we need is a very thin notebook. That's all. Different screen sizes will attend most people needs.
"It's completely mind-boggling how much more capability PCs have than older methods of information manipulation, storage, and retrieval when you think about it."
Mindboggling indeed.
In the EU they don't seem to know that. You need 20 minutes (sic) to enter a refugee's data into the EU-wide refugee database and that is when the refugee didn't lose his papers at sea and if he understands the language the civil servant is speaking.
"They can do many of the same things, but more poorly because their input interfaces are much more limited. Their only advantages over PCs are mobility and size/weight."
Exactly! That's why millions of hospital workers, storage employees, shipping etc will use them to fill checkboxes with the pen instead of using paper and hand them over to a second employee to enter them in those capable PCs.
"Apple creates their simplicity by removing complex features. Where is the option to add complex features into iOS?"
There's an app for that. :-)
"Oh, nice! So my app will be able to access the iPad's external USB storage, and display itself on my second monitor via the iPad's HDMI port?"
It's no longer the century of the cable. Nowadays those things work wireless.
They had better appreciate this shit-face, our house is using pretty much all Apple products (for non-professional use).
Care to engage on the merits of Apple's iPad Pro as a professional tool? Or does middle-school-level argumentation suffice for someone whose mom is so fat that when she sat on Wal-Mart, she lowered the prices?
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
But, where is the new or better idea from? HP and their medical records system of the 80's? IBM and their allowing a TV device to pass thru to be viewed on the monitor? Late 70's, or the ability to add communications to the system, DARPA? Or record from over the air, adobe, or was it Sony? And display it on your computer? On, yeah, packaging. I got it.
Maybe instead of being a snide jackass, you could actually read my whole comment. I addressed this exactly: it's entirely possible to do the same thing with a laptop computer, but it's clumsier so the tablet's smaller/lighter (and not-clamshell) form factor is a significant advantage here, and the task doesn't benefit from the improved input device capabilities of the laptop because it's simple and doesn't require high-precision pointing, so tablets are a natural fit here.
A laptop could also do everything a little Raspberry Pi can do too, but the RPi is much smaller and cheaper so it's used instead for many things.
According to Edmunds, the Aztek killed Pontiac. It's one thing to make a niche product, but to make it an important part of a large, mass-market company's product line is asking for trouble. There's lots of other products out there which are really niche product, but they're usually sold by small, niche companies--look at Lotus for example, or any other high-end automobile.
I guess you're missing the point entirely. Go back and re-read my post and try to understand.
Also, laptops technically can't do everything a smartphone can; they can't connect to cellular voice networks so that someone can dial your number and talk to you on one. Theoretically, it could be made to work somehow with custom hardware, or you could just ask people to do Skype instead. But even if you could, it's so clumsy that almost no one would want to bother.
This is very different from comparing PCs to pens and paper.
Not the ones I already own.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
That's a rather stupid comment. Because yes, mainframes generally could do everything PCs could do, only more reliably. The problem was cost. PCs brought those capabilities to where far more people and companies could afford them. And then they extended the capabilities, as PCs had big advantages with graphics (I've worked with graphical mainframe terminals; they were sssslllloooowwww).
Plucky Mickeysoft.
There was also the HP iPac
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
But once you have to go into the app layer for that, your're done. I've had this conversation ad-nauseum with others. Having an app that stores files and allows your certain protocol options to transfer them is NOT an equivalent for full access at a filesystem level.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I do develop for iOS. I couldn't even make a freaking app run in the background forever. No problem in Android. Apple removed this feature for some got forsaken reason. So now Apple people get a hacked together solution.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
"Then don't buy one. Apple doesn't want shit-faces like you for a customer anyway."
So you've admitted your wrong?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
When your storage is full and you cannot use iCloud for legal reasons.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The two don't *have* to be exclusive. In a great tech company they would not be. If Apple were to allow advanced users to switch file level support on in iOS I would be totally impressed. But they don't do that, so the two DO become mutually exclusive.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Apple would have impressed me if they did it without the walled garden, without gobs of advertising, and without chopping features that had already become standard by the time. Apple is an impressive force in marketing and locking people into the way they want them to work with their devices, but that just doesn't impress me.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Back then, there were two kinds of smartphones: Blackberries and WinMo phones
Oh, and there was that other company that had 80% of the smartphone market...
Nope. Around the time the original iPhone came out, Palm was more or less on its last legs and WinMo was the market leader.
whar does manufacturing in China and maximizing profits have to do with the integrity of his statements about a stylus? FYI, any CEO (or officer) who isn't about fulfilling their fiduciary responsibility to the stock holders won't remain as such for long and may face criminal charges.
A CEO has no "fiduciary responsibility" to the stock holders and would definitely never face criminal charges because he refuses to use Asian child labor to lower costs. Clearly you have no idea how the world works. That might explain why you hold Steve Jobs in such high regard.
lucm, indeed.
Instead, since Apple has their A series of CPUs - A5 to A9 so far,
FTFY
No really. Apple has handled 3 CPU architecture transitions fairly seamlessly in the past 2 decades.
Those would be what?
1. PowerPC to Intel (circa 2005)
2. Intel to ARM (internal testing only)
3. ???
Um, as Mr. Jobs said in the introduction of the iPhone, iOS is OS X. It is substantially built from the same source code. There are different optimizations and configurations. The UI Kit in Cocoa Touch is similar but different from AppKit in OS X, but the Foundation frameworks, Unix/POSIX APIS, Graphics Stack, etc. are the same and built from the same source code.
NeXTstep->Openstep->Rhapsody->OS X->iOS.
The source code of iOS originally ran on a 25 MHz Motorola 68030, then Intel, then PPC, then ARM. It is highly portable.
...And KBB consumer reviews of the Aztek are 8.2/10 over those product years, which just go to show that opinions are all over the map. It's a slow morning, so...
Just the numbers: 119,700 Azteks sold
estimated they needed to sell 30,000 per year to break even (150,000)
sold 23,940 per year on average = about 6060 cars short of hitting that mark (30,300 total)
avg mfr invoice minus holdback for those 5 years = about $17.5k
530m shortfall over 5 production years = 106m/year loss
GMA (just the cars, not the rest of GM) had a 2001-2004 net income/profit of about $1 billion/year over net revenue of $150 billion/year before badder things happened in the larger economy. ...so the Pontiac Aztek accounted for a 0.07% dent in revenue, and 10% reduction in total profit. Ow.
BUT, consider that the same assembly line made the Buick Rendezvous (the blander version of the Aztek) which substantially exceeded targets of 30k/year at about 57.9k/year. The two products off the same assembly line, same tooling, same costs totalled up, were a net positive (about 82k/year over a combined break-even point of 60k/year) -- meaning GM had a net profit from that production and assembly line, exceeding break-even production by 35%+. They didn't actually lose money.
One might argue that's a way of shuffling losses, but if you dig into GM's reports and strategy, they say (GM AR 2003, p 6): ....
>> GM brought brand differentiation to the world back in the
>> 1920s, when Alfred Sloan created the price ladder of GM
>> marques that offered “a car for every purse and purpose.”
>>
>> Those lessons are now being applied in North America to
>> our volume leader, Chevrolet, to our performance-oriented
>> brand, Pontiac, and to Buick, which is restoring its reputation
>> for refined, dignified elegance.
GM's Pontiac brand was *supposed* to be the edgy just-break-even part of the business (e.g. the subsequent GTO), the product and assembly lines were specifically structured that way, and GM's balance sheet was combined in a way to handle that. The whole notion of the Aztek/Rendezvous::loss/proft rests on the dumb assumption they were going to sell the edgy-version vs mass-market version of the same car at a 50/50 ratio. Want to see what killed Pontiac? Look at page 19 of that 2003 Annual Report, which shows in page-filling bold type the demise of Pontiac and Saturn were just speed bumps in GM's idle mismanagement:
>> Here’s what’s new
>> about GM’s strategy this year:
>> Nothing.
>> Our 2003 plan is the same as 2002.
>> We’re getting better, year by year.
Wow. Bankruptcy was about a year away.
Net net is that Edmonds can print hyperbole about a car they hate, and weirdos like me can spend a Sunday morning rattling on about what we like, but the long and short of it is that the Aztek was wasn't really significant in GM's 9-million-vehicles-per-year business, any more than the Newton MessagePad killed Apple. IMHO what is significant is the design influence, the things we talk about years later, and the encouragement to go do ballsy things despite the risk of failure.
Coffee, I need coffee.
-J
I think not...(*poof*)
How are executables shared if one is ARM based and the other x64 based?
1. 68040 to PowerPC
2.PowerPC to Intel
3. Intel to ??? (since Macs are still Intel based)
Note that I know that a tablet OS is a lot different from a laptop OS in terms of UX, as Microsoft learnt the hard way w/ Windows 8, but that's not my point here.
Exactly! That's why millions of hospital workers, storage employees, shipping etc will use them to fill checkboxes with the pen instead of using paper and hand them over to a second employee to enter them in those capable PCs.
I think we're long past the point where you actually needed to draw a tick in a checkbox to mark it. In the case you've specified the pen is completely unnecessary.
They've got Adobe products and Microsoft Office on the iPad. Assuming you can connect to network shares from the iPad, it's just a matter of convincing people it's better than sliced bread and Apple's good at that.
What they need is file sharing between applications on the device. Not being able to work on one file in multiple applications is a real hindrance for productivity on iOS.
Then don't buy one. Apple doesn't want shit-faces like you for a customer anyway.
LOL! I know this is hard for you to understand but Apple does not give a single fuck about what kind of person you are. Sorry if that bursts your bubble about being a special Apple customer.
How are executables shared if one is ARM based and the other x64 based?
Executables aren't shared precisely due to the architectural differences. GP wrote that "code" is shared but code is then compiled into architecture-specific exectuables. That code can be compiled into an executable for any hardware that supports its requirements and those of its dependencies.
Motorola 68K series -> PowerPC
PowerPC -> Intel x86
Intel x86 -> ARM
Whoever they had working there and managing the UI stuff back in the early/mid 90s when they invented Windows 95 obviously is long gone, because everything they've done since XP has either just been a re-skin or tweak of Win95, or a total disaster (the Metro/Modern UI)
That whoever is Kent Sullivan, and you can read the (very interesting) story of the Start menu here: http://www.sigchi.org/chi96/proceedings/desbrief/Sullivan/kds_txt.htm
He still works at Microsoft, but it's on the Cloud and Enterprise Division according to his LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kentsu
I do develop for iOS. I couldn't even make a freaking app run in the background forever. No problem in Android. Apple removed this feature for some got forsaken reason.
I would venture to guess that the reason is battery life. My Android tablet, which is always updating tons of apps in the background, has abysmal battery life; even if I don't do anything on it, it dies within a day and a half. My wife's iPad 2 (which is older) lasts a lot longer (days) when just sitting untouched. Sure, it's nice that my Android devices will upload my photos to dropbox without me having to open dropbox, but it seems to me that Apple has prioritized "stuff the user is doing" over "stuff an app developer wants to do", and when I pick up my tablet to find it dead, I can't say it's a totally wrong choice.
It is because of battery life. Yet even if I go through extremes as a developer to protect battery life, as I have done, Apple users will still be missing functionality from my app and there is nothing I can do. If I am using Android and I find an app is eating battery, then I can go to the developer to fix it or I can not use the app. But I can still have all that app's functionality.
This also goes to Apple's unwillingness or inability to add an advanced feature switch. If I own an iPhone and I want to allow apps to run in the background, why can't I enable a mode to do that and then accept responsibility for it?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
That article is pretty much bullshit. It's written by somoene that worked for Apple for starters and most of the conclusions it draws are wrong. I have a Cintiq Companion so let me provide some counter points:
My take away from this: Don't get rid of your Wacom just yet. iPad Pro is not a professional tool and doesn't stand up well to a similarly priced Surface Pro or the more expensive and industry leading Wacom line of products.
There's a reason these things objectively do less, but sell like wildfire.
Anyone who supports any amount of computer users for a living, when asked about this notion, will grab you buy the ears and scream "LESS IS MORE" in your face until their voice give out.
"More" is a double edged sword. Every added feature brings an exponential increase in complexity and cost. It also carries likewise exponential decrease in reliability and ease of use.. Every added feature reduces development time devoted to other features.
On the quest for "more" you end up neglecting core features and you end up with a product that does everything in a half-assed manner that is useful to no one.
The average person will take an ipad pro over a surface pro /because it can't run the full Microsoft office suite/. Not the other way around.
It's power (obviously)
That's already one too many, and one more than the iPad Pro has in use.
Three cables coming off something I was meant to hold in my lap, was way too much for me. With an iPad Pro none of those cables are needed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Very interesting. I wonder what Kent thinks of Metro. From his own paper, they're already doing things that he specifically determined were bad ideas:
Under "Separate UI for Beginners":
If just one function a user needed was not supported in the beginner shell, s/he would have to abandon it (at least temporarily).
I've found this with the control panel in Metro: it doesn't have much stuff in it, so you have to go hunt down the old Windows 7 control panel.
The beginner shell was not at all like the programs users would run (word processors, spreadsheets, etc.). As a result, users had to learn two ways of interacting with the computer, which was confusing.
This describes Metro to a tee; it's an entirely different way of interacting with the computer than the regular desktop.
Another key finding:
Beginning users and many intermediates relied almost exclusively on visible cues for finding commands. They relied on (and found intuitive) menu bars and tool bars, but did not use pop-up (or "context") menus, even after training.
Metro isn't discoverable, at all. In fact all the new UIs these days are like this: there's hidden functions when you move the mouse to a corner of the screen, etc. That's a bit unavoidable on a phone because there's just not much room there, but on a 23" monitor there's no reason for requiring swiping motions and the like.
Their only advantages over PCs are mobility and size/weight
And instant power-on, and finally doing away with the notion of saving and loading, and cheap software, and cheap price.
But apart from that, what have tablets ever done for us?
My laptop does instant power-on too (well, it's a couple of seconds out of sleep mode, but that's the same thing a tablet does).
Saving and loading? You have to do that on every computer of any kind. It's not like tablets keep everything in RAM all the time.
Cheap price? You can get laptops for $250 or less these days. Any decent tablet will cost at least that much.
Cheap software? I can get all kinds of free software online; I'm not stuck with purchasing ad-laden "apps" from an "app store" with a laptop.
Note that I know that a tablet OS is a lot different from a laptop OS in terms of UX, as Microsoft learnt the hard way w/ Windows 8,
I actually bought a Surface Pro 3 (with Windows 10 on it) a couple weeks ago, mostly for some on the road (but still actual PC) gaming, and it's... interesting. It's not a bad little computer, but the tablet mode... well frankly, it sucks. It's barely that usable, the keyboard popping up or not when needed is sketchy at best, and the pinch to zoom type features are complete shit. At least as an ipad user for browsing the web for some time now, it's horrible by comparison on the SP3 in tablet mode.
So they still haven't learned yet. Or at least not the right lesson.
- My favorite error message: xscreensaver, running on an old Sparc 5 w/ 8bit color: bsod: Couldn't allocate color Blue
akin to the conceptual break between old touchscreens and modern 1:1 instantaneous response
This can't be stressed enough to people that haven't experienced other touchscreens much.
I have a Harmony Ultimate One remote at home, and the last couple of days the touchscreen part has gotten very laggy, especially at scrolling the menu. It is super annoying after being used to things always responding on everything else I use. I found how to reboot the thing and am going to try that tonight to see if it helps.
- My favorite error message: xscreensaver, running on an old Sparc 5 w/ 8bit color: bsod: Couldn't allocate color Blue
Yeah, but the App stores contain executables. The code would be there w/ the software authors, not necessarily Apple. Unless they are stored in some intermediate code like Dalvik in Android, or ByteCode in Java
The third hasn't happened - to date. Apple still has OS X on Intel, and on ARM, they have iOS
I have a Winbook, where I've tried both. Some of the local apps, such as Movies & TV, or Groove - work fine w/ tablet mode. Some of the others, like anything that requires typing - it's better in laptop mode. One beef I have - Windows Explorer is very hidden in tablet mode - unless one pulls in a shortcut to the start menu.
Yeah, but the App stores contain executables.
Right but you said iOS and OS X could have "shared the same codebase" which, as the AC above pointed out, they indeed do. Because the "codebase" is code, not an executable and is not on any "App store".
While true I believe you have down-played an important factor: Casual use.
Your comment seems to be mostly business oriented. In personal use there was clearly a substantial market for a computer that was simpler than a PC. The tablet seems to have hit on that market big-time. Even in business, lots of people will have a full PC for daily use but a tablet for light use or on the road. Plenty of road-warrior use cases involve modest amounts of input, definitely read heavy and write lite. A tablet is a great fit for this.
And let's not forget that most tablets are instant on. This just adds to the convenience appeal.
I didn't mean to downplay it, because you're exactly right: tablets did hit on the casual-use market big-time. They're smaller, lighter, and simpler than a regular PC or laptop, so for simple tasks and casual use, they can be a better option. If you just want to watch a movie on an airplane, for instance, a tablet is definitely a better choice than a full-size laptop, because it's so much smaller and lighter.
My whole point was that I was comparing the pre-PC days to the days of PCs and laptops, and then comparing that to tablets. There's nothing you can do on a tablet that you can't do on a laptop PC, though it may require more arm muscles and might be awkward at times (trying to walk around and enter stuff on a form on a laptop would be a PITA, but it's possible, you'd just have to stop and set it on something for instance). However, there's a whole world of things you can do on a laptop which you simply couldn't do before the microcomputer revolution, or would be utterly impractical or would be so expensive that most people had no access to it.
As for instant-on, that's not true; a tablet is simply in a sleep mode, no different from a cellphone which "comes on" instantly when you hit a button, and that's no different from a laptop that's in sleep mode. There's no way a tablet cold-boots to the home screen in less than a second. Cellphones certainly don't; they usually take a minute or so to do a cold boot. People just think it's "instant on" because they keep them in sleep mode all the time and recharge them frequently, and don't restart them very much. I do the exact same with my laptop.
Even the basic product photos AND the demo showed the hand resting on the screen.
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