Microsoft isn’t thinking things through, they have a core advantage at the Desktop, which is still by far the biggest market, they are willing to sacrifice that to pursue this pipedream of catching Apple in the Tablet market...not gonna work.
You still don't get it do ya?
Windows 8 on Intel is both a tablet and a desktop. They are sacrificing nothing. Watch this video of the Acer Iconia W510 Windows 8 tablet/Desktop :
http://www.viddler.com/v/d54c5646?secret=71163275
The days of the desktop bign the biggest market, are numbered, and MS isn’t stupid, they know it too.. Its not there yet, but its coming.
Adapt or Die... The tablet market is going to get a whole lot more interesting, when your tablet and your desktop are the same device, which is at the end of the day what MS is gunning for.
Take the tablet with you, pop into a dock when you aren’t traveling, and use your keyboard, mouse and monitor (if your tablet is small enough to warrant the need for a seperate monitor.
Use all the same programs, share all the same files, etc etc.
Provided the hardware manufacturers don’t blow it, the days of iPad being the only real tablet in town are coming to an end. And very likely the dominant player, within a few years.
HOWEVER this all comes down to execution of the software and hardware... if the software is great, but the hardware is overpriced or blows, nope.. If the hardware is great but the software/ui blows... nope.
We shall see.
A tablet is a tablet, and a PC is a PC. They may both have computers in them, but they do different things.
Every college in the country is ready to ditch printed textbooks in favor of issuing tablets to every student. School districts are leaning that way too, and for the first time I’m not sure I disagree with that strategy.
The e-texts that are coming out are incredible, and it doesn’t make sense to kill trees to produce textbooks any more. The price of a textbook can come WAY down, since the only production costs remaining would be the actual IP and the book layout. Manufacturing and distribution costs come down to zero.
Microsoft would be fiduciarily irresponsible if the DIDN’T go into that market.
Add to that the Ipad blows on so many different levels, not the least of which is the unbelievable cost of them. It’s funny to watch liberals attack Apple now that their god is dead. Jobs sole claim to fame was making middling technology available to the idiotic. He made the ordinary feel extraordinary, and I’m not taking anything away from that feat.
On the way to doing that, he abandoned children, treated employees like slaves, outsourced every job he could, ran his company like a quasi-criminal operation, and gave nothing back to anyone for any reason.
On the left, he’s the second coming of Christ.
I know more than a few business users who would like to have a windows tablet that works sealessly with MS Office which is what the vast majority of business people use.
Win 8 is suppposed to be cross platform. phone tablet desktop.
supposed to be.
It is a royal annoyance to have a ipad, android phone, and desktop computer. Anyone watching the bottom line has no desire to be trapped in an overpriced closed environment.
Yep. There is no integration of WinRT or Metro with the enterprise. Windows Phones and ARM tablets cannot join an Active Directory domain. They cannot be remotely managed through Group Policy. IT staff cannot install software remotely (including AV) or fix trouble tickets using Remote Administration.
A typical desktop today has a 1920x1024 monitor, if not two. A Metro app hogs the entire desktop. It is not possible to run two Metro apps side-by-side on the screen.
From what I can see it looks like Metro apps can only be downloaded and installed from the public Microsoft Store. Large enterprises usually pre-install a suite of known and vetted apps from a central private repository.
So basically a Windows phone/tablet has all the disadvantages of the iPhone/iPad/Android -- no integration with the enterprise, no remove management, no domain control -- with none of their advantages of Apple's and Android's large installed base.
Microsoft's greatest strength is in the enterprise. Microsoft's failure to leverage Windows Phone with their enterprise advantage is beyond stupid.