It's a deal-breaking factor, if your place of business relies on Office.
Infrared imager for iPhone:
http://www.flir.com/flirone/
” Though sales have improved, Windows tablets remain largely in the minority — IDC’s most recent data shows Microsoft’s operating system with just 3.4% of the global tablet market.”
One thing I’ve learned from these tech guys in the media is that they always shoot off their mouths about what is going to happen, and then act surprised when the opposite takes place.
MS is not trying to “win” in a year so they can get the cool kids to like them. They prod along with all of the predictions of doom from these guys until one day you wake up and find that they are about to overtake the people ahead of them. Happened with Windows Server, Xbox, Office, and even Windows Phone in many markets. Windows 8 long ago topped OSX and Linux and only compete with itself.
Motley Fool has been doing the bidding of the MSFT shorters for years.
Like the motorcar destroyed the demand for buggy whips?
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
Yeah, blah, blah, the pc is dead, blah, blah, the laptop is dead, blah, blah, man will never land on the moon, blah blah, Al Quaida is dead, blah blah, The [atomic] bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives, blah, blah, God is dead, blah, blah, blah, blah...ad infinitum. Go tweak your linux instance so it runs your virtual Windows machine a little more efficiently.
iPad Pro.
Is the business tablet market really a “larger tablet arena”?
Windows 8 is an abomination. I would advise anyone to stick with Windows 7 instead.
Quick preface: I come from a “blended” family. Wife uses a Galaxy phone, I use and iPhone. I have an iPad and MacBook Air that I like and use at home. They will never replace my PC’s at work or at my home office. My wife’s Windows 8 Lenovo Yoga cost about the same as the MacBook air and outperforms the Mac. Specs, performance, touchscreen, speed, flexibility, usability, etc. The reason for this long winded intro? Windows 8 software and products are going to continue to gain an increasing market share in homes and in businesses. And unlike the Motley Fool, I am bullish on MSFT (at a good entry price).
I still have the original Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, and it’s still great for what I use it for (mostly travel use.. email, web surfing, etc)
Windows 8 and RT are doomed to fail against Android and iOS. Windows, prior to Windows 8 is fundamentally an industrial product for industrial use, and it’s not really needed or wanted on consumer slabs or phones. Therefore Microsoft never be relevant in the mobile world if they persist with trying to foist Windows onto mobile devices for consumers.
On the other hand, trying to foist a cell-phone GUI like Metro UI onto industrial :PC users is the absolute height of insanity.
With Windows 8/Windows RT/Metro UI/Apps Store, Microsoft managed to produce the perfect lose-lose-lose situation. And it took a clueless bozo like Ballmer to pull off this hat trick. Ballmer managed to make the wrong decision 100% of the time. Heck, even flipping a penny would have produced better results than Ballmer, because it would have been right half the time. And a WHOLE bunch cheaper than Ballmer too!
Which is why Microsoft is failing and will continue to fail with its mobile “strategy”, namely their notion of “consumerization of IT”, i.e., we’ll jam Windows onto “mobile” devices and call it good. Such an approach would be equivalent to Peterbilt, who makes the tractors for 18 wheelers, deciding they needed to suddenly and desperately get into the consumer automobile market, and the only way they could think to do that was to make tiny, passenger-sized 18-wheelers.
The equivalent approach by Microsoft shows just how intellectually bankrupt they are when it comes to innovation. The fact of the matter is that the average consumer is desperately FLEEING from all the myriad of Windows problems that they’ve been forced to endure for decades, namely a balky, buggy, brittle, virus-prone OS that does little except get in their way.
On the other hand, IOS and Android devices are successful precisely because they ARE NOT WINDOWS: they JUST WORK and they are SIMPLE devices for SIMPLE use! Consumers don’t need and don’t want an 18-wheeler to dash to the grocery store with to pick up a few groceries.
Even worse, in addition to plastering the horrifically awful Metro UI GUI on top of Windows 8 so Microsoft could pretend an 18-wheeler is an automobile, Microsoft also made the completely insane decision to try to FORCE their entire installed enterprise and SMB base to embrace that same horrifically awful, productively killing, unintuitive, ergonomically destructive touch interface on ALL PCs! Continuing to use the 18-wheeler analogy, it would be like Peterbilt deciding to put automobile controls in their REAL 18-wheelers in addition to the mini 18-wheelers they were pretending were automobiles.
As a consequence of this total ineptitude, Microsoft doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hades of becoming anything more than a niche player in consumer mobile, while at the same time totally alienating their bread and butter enterprise and SMB customers with an OS that tries to make all PCs look like cell phones.
Right now, Microsoft is at the point with their disastrous Windows 8/Windows RT/Metro UI/Apps Store mobile strategy as Barnes and Noble is with their failed me-too NOOK strategy, and I predicted close to two years ago that, like CEO William Lynch, Ballmer would be forced to leave Microsoft within a year.
If Microsoft is lucky, they can then woo back their POed enterprise and SMB customers with Windows 9. If Microsoft persists with the insanity of trying to foist Metro UI and touch on industrial customers, Microsoft will be in real trouble.
I’ve used Apple, Android and Windows phones. They’re all very good, but I prefer the Windows interface. Unfortunately, there aren’t many apps.