Windows 8 will be the core for not just these tablets, but PCs, Windows Phone and XBOX 720. You can share apps between your devices like games, movies and e-mail at no extra cost. I already can watch the same movies from my XBOX 360 on my Windows Phone 7.
With storage in SkyDrive, you will have access to all your files on whatever device you want. E-mail attachments will be links to the SkyDrive, so people stop pushing massive files back and forth over multiple servers. It also is a big plus for collaboration on documents, projects, etc as the file resides in a central place.
Those that do not "get" Windows 8 are still thinking with a mouse and keyboard. It is touch and the UI is far, far superior to iOS and Android.
When you consider the Surface RT will come with MS Office, its expected $699 price is a great deal.
For those who think MS shot themselves in the foot by competing with hardware manufacturers, do any of you think Asus, Acer, Dell, etc, etc, etc are not competing by making Android Tablets?
This is Microsoft's way of saying we will set the bar and others can join the party if they want.
Lastly, MS just patented SMS to Excel so you can do things like send expenses by text message to your Excel file expense report right after dinner concludes.
I would not be surprised if you can send a pic of the receipt as well.
Microsoft is leaping right over iOS and Android and doing what people have been asking for ---- a Windows Tablet.
I expect Apple will merge iOS and OSX down the road and Google will abandon Android in favor of Chrome for everything.
Wow, sounds familiar, OS X being the core OS of Macs, the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Apple TV, and they can all share movies and many apps together.
With storage in SkyDrive, you will have access to all your files on whatever device you want.
Sounds familiar again, like Apple iDisk about ten years ago. The online storage looked like just another mounted volume. For the future with Mountain Lion, any application can use the iCloud APIs to integrate iCloud storage into the app, and iOS 6 is doing the same on the iDevice end. This is just presenting to developers what Apple has been doing with its own apps since last year.
Those that do not "get" Windows 8 are still thinking with a mouse and keyboard.
Funny, this is what we were telling Microsofties about the iDevices years ago. You didn't believe. It usually takes Microsoft a bit to grasp the concept and crank up the copiers.
I expect Apple will merge iOS and OSX down the road
First, iOS and OS X have shared the same core from the beginning, and even the iOS programming API (Cocoa Touch) is a touch- and phone-tweaked version of OS X's Cocoa API. They're already almost the same OS. Steve Jobs had an internal competition before the iPhone to determine the OS it would have, and the team that built iOS from OS X won.
But as far as the user experience and integration, this has been obvious to any industry observer for about a year and a half now, ever since Lion was previewed with iOS-like features. The Mountain Lion previews for the last months have shown a big leap further in that direction. However, I do hope they stop short of total integration. Desktop and mobile use cases are just too different to have the exact same thing on both. I refuse to hold my hand up to a monitor for hours on end, tapping and dragging on the screen. You'll be able to tell the hard-core computer users by their huge right-arm biceps.