iPad Launch Blindsided Windows Team, Reveals Former Microsoft Executive (twitter.com) 109
The launch of the iPad ten years ago was a big surprise to everyone in the industry -- including to Microsoft executives. Steven Sinofsky, the former President of the Windows Division at Microsoft, shares Microsoft's perspective as well as those of the other industry figures and press on the iPad: The announcement 10 years ago today of the "magical" iPad was clearly a milestone in computing. It was billed to be the "next" computer. For me, managing Windows, just weeks after the launch of Microsoft's "latest creation" Windows 7, it was a as much a challenge as magical. Given that Star Trek had tablets it was inevitable that the form factor would make it to computing (yes, the dynabook...). Microsoft had been working for more than 10 years starting with "WinPad" through Tablet PC. We were fixated on Win32, Pen, and more. The success of iPhone (140K apps & 3B downloads announced that day) blinded us at Microsoft as to where Apple was heading. Endless rumors of Apple's tablet *obviously* meant a pen computer based on Mac. Why not? The industry chased this for 20 years. That was our context. The press, however, was fixated on Apple lacking an "answer" (pundits seem to demand answers) to Netbooks -- those small, cheap, Windows laptops sweeping the world. Over 40 million sold. "What would Apple's response be?" We worried -- a cheap, pen-based, Mac. Sorry Harry!
Jobs said that a new computer needed to be better at some things, better than an iPhone/iPod and better than a laptop. Then he just went right at Netbooks answering what could be better at these things. "Some people have thought that that's a Netbook." (The audience joined in a round of laughter.) Then he said, "The problem is ... Netbooks aren't better at anything ... They're slow. They have low quality displays ... and they run clunky old PC software ... They're just cheap laptops." "Cheap laptops" ... from my perch that was a good thing. I mean inexpensive was a better word. But we knew that Netbooks (and ATOM) were really just a way to make use of the struggling efforts to make low-power, fanless, intel chips for phones. A brutal takedown of 40M units. Sitting in a Le Corbusier chair, he showed the "extraordinary" things his new device did, from browsing to email to photos and videos and more. The real kicker was that it achieved 10 hours of battery life -- unachievable in PCs struggling for 4 hours with their whirring fans.
There was no stylus..no pen. How could one input or be PRODUCTIVE? PC brains were so wedded to a keyboard, mouse, and pen alternative that the idea of being productive without those seemed fanciful. Also instant standby, no viruses, rotate-able, maintained quality over time... As if to emphasize the point, Schiller showed "rewritten" versions of Apple's iWork apps for the iPad. The iPad would have a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation graphics. Rounding out the demonstration, the iPad would also sync settings with iTune -- content too. This was still early in the travails of iCloud but really a game changer Windows completely lacked except in enterprise with crazy server infrastructure or "consumer" Live apps. iPad had a 3G modem BECAUSE it was built on the iPhone. If you could figure out the device drivers and software for a PC, you'd need a multi-hundred dollar USB modem and a $60/month fee at best. The iPad made this a $29.99 option on AT&T and a slight uptick in purchase price. Starting at $499, iPad was a shot right across the consumer laptop. Consumer laptops were selling over 100 million units a year! Pundits were shocked at the price. I ordered mine arriving in 60/90 days.
At CES weeks earlier, there were the earliest tablets -- made with no help from Google a few fringe Chinese ODMs were shopping hacky tablets called "Mobile Internet Devices" or "Media Tablets". Samsung's Galaxy was 9 months away. Android support (for 4:3 screens) aways. The first looks and reviews a bit later were just endless (and now tiresome) commentary on how the iPad was really for "consumption" and not productivity. There were no files. No keyboard. No mouse. No overlapping windows. Can't write code! In a literally classically defined case of disruption, iPad didn't do those things but what it did, it did so much better not only did people prefer it but they changed what they did in order to use it. Besides, email was the most used too and iPad was great for that. In first year 2010-2011 Apple sold 20 million iPads. That same year would turn out to be an historical high water mark for PCs (365M, ~180M laptops). Analysts had forecasted more than 500M PCs were now rapidly increasing tablet forecasts to 100s of million and dropping PC. The iPad and iPhone were soundly existential threats to Microsoft's core platform business.
Without a platform Microsoft controlled that developers sought out, the soul of the company was "missing." The PC had been overrun by browsers, a change 10 years in the making. PC OEMs were deeply concerned about a rise of Android and loved the Android model (no PC maker would ultimately be a major Android OEM, however). Even Windows Server was eclipsed by Linux and Open Source. The kicker for me, though, was that keyboard stand for the iPad. It was such a hack. Such an obvious "objection handler." But it was critically important because it was a clear reminder that the underlying operating system was "real" ...it was not a "phone OS". Knowing the iPhone and now iPad ran an robust OS under the hood, with a totally different "shell", interface model (touch), and app model (APIs and architecture) had massive implications for being the leading platform provider for computers. That was my Jan 27, 2010. Further reading: The iPad's original software designer and program lead look back on the device's first 10 years.
Jobs said that a new computer needed to be better at some things, better than an iPhone/iPod and better than a laptop. Then he just went right at Netbooks answering what could be better at these things. "Some people have thought that that's a Netbook." (The audience joined in a round of laughter.) Then he said, "The problem is ... Netbooks aren't better at anything ... They're slow. They have low quality displays ... and they run clunky old PC software ... They're just cheap laptops." "Cheap laptops" ... from my perch that was a good thing. I mean inexpensive was a better word. But we knew that Netbooks (and ATOM) were really just a way to make use of the struggling efforts to make low-power, fanless, intel chips for phones. A brutal takedown of 40M units. Sitting in a Le Corbusier chair, he showed the "extraordinary" things his new device did, from browsing to email to photos and videos and more. The real kicker was that it achieved 10 hours of battery life -- unachievable in PCs struggling for 4 hours with their whirring fans.
There was no stylus..no pen. How could one input or be PRODUCTIVE? PC brains were so wedded to a keyboard, mouse, and pen alternative that the idea of being productive without those seemed fanciful. Also instant standby, no viruses, rotate-able, maintained quality over time... As if to emphasize the point, Schiller showed "rewritten" versions of Apple's iWork apps for the iPad. The iPad would have a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation graphics. Rounding out the demonstration, the iPad would also sync settings with iTune -- content too. This was still early in the travails of iCloud but really a game changer Windows completely lacked except in enterprise with crazy server infrastructure or "consumer" Live apps. iPad had a 3G modem BECAUSE it was built on the iPhone. If you could figure out the device drivers and software for a PC, you'd need a multi-hundred dollar USB modem and a $60/month fee at best. The iPad made this a $29.99 option on AT&T and a slight uptick in purchase price. Starting at $499, iPad was a shot right across the consumer laptop. Consumer laptops were selling over 100 million units a year! Pundits were shocked at the price. I ordered mine arriving in 60/90 days.
At CES weeks earlier, there were the earliest tablets -- made with no help from Google a few fringe Chinese ODMs were shopping hacky tablets called "Mobile Internet Devices" or "Media Tablets". Samsung's Galaxy was 9 months away. Android support (for 4:3 screens) aways. The first looks and reviews a bit later were just endless (and now tiresome) commentary on how the iPad was really for "consumption" and not productivity. There were no files. No keyboard. No mouse. No overlapping windows. Can't write code! In a literally classically defined case of disruption, iPad didn't do those things but what it did, it did so much better not only did people prefer it but they changed what they did in order to use it. Besides, email was the most used too and iPad was great for that. In first year 2010-2011 Apple sold 20 million iPads. That same year would turn out to be an historical high water mark for PCs (365M, ~180M laptops). Analysts had forecasted more than 500M PCs were now rapidly increasing tablet forecasts to 100s of million and dropping PC. The iPad and iPhone were soundly existential threats to Microsoft's core platform business.
Without a platform Microsoft controlled that developers sought out, the soul of the company was "missing." The PC had been overrun by browsers, a change 10 years in the making. PC OEMs were deeply concerned about a rise of Android and loved the Android model (no PC maker would ultimately be a major Android OEM, however). Even Windows Server was eclipsed by Linux and Open Source. The kicker for me, though, was that keyboard stand for the iPad. It was such a hack. Such an obvious "objection handler." But it was critically important because it was a clear reminder that the underlying operating system was "real" ...it was not a "phone OS". Knowing the iPhone and now iPad ran an robust OS under the hood, with a totally different "shell", interface model (touch), and app model (APIs and architecture) had massive implications for being the leading platform provider for computers. That was my Jan 27, 2010. Further reading: The iPad's original software designer and program lead look back on the device's first 10 years.
Really? Blindsided? (Score:3)
Re:Really? Blindsided? (Score:4)
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The iPad and iPod Touch are just iPhones without the cell phone circuitry.
Indeed, and that's why the iPad screen sucked for so many years. They had to keep it to a multiple of the original iPhone resolution to avoid app scaling problems.
It's ironic Jobs would complain about netbooks having bad screens when they gimped the iPad one. The iPad 1 and 2 both had 720p screens.
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Indeed, and that's why the iPad screen sucked for so many years. They had to keep it to a multiple of the original iPhone resolution to avoid app scaling problems.
It's ironic Jobs would complain about netbooks having bad screens when they gimped the iPad one. The iPad 1 and 2 both had 720p screens.
But that simply isn't the case. The iPhone 3GS, which was shipping in Jan 2010 when the iPad launched, had a screen resolution of 320 x 480 pixels at 163 dpi. The iPad launched with a screen resolution of 768 x 1024 pixels at 132 dpi. This is not 720p, as it's not a 16:9 screen, but a more traditional XGA 4:3 ratio.
The iPad has always been able to "upscale" iPhone apps, but it's not pretty and it definitely does not completely fill the screen. You can either display the iPhone app at 2x resolution, taking u
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That's true, the older iPads were sub-720p when you account for having to scale video.
Even today the "retina" iPhones are not even full HD. It's weird because on the desktop they have decent 5k and 6k displays, but their mobile devices don't get them.
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I'm not sure why you think the iPhone isn't Full HD. The iPhone 8 (September 2017) had a (slightly more than) 720p display and the iPhone 8 Plus had a 1920 x 1080 Full HD display. The iPhone X (November 2017) had a 2436-by-1125-pixel resolution display, which is definitely more than Full HD. This resolution was kept for the iPhone XS the following year and then again for the iPhone 11 Pro in 2019. The iPhone 11 Pro Max (who thinks of these names!) 2688by1242-pixel resolution. Most notably, Apple aim for a p
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The iPhone 11 is 1792x828, which is below full HD. Full HD is 1920x1080. So actually the iPhone 11 is closer to 720p.
Re:Really? Blindsided? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't it obvious they weren't paying much attention?
Look at the products they were shipping right up until the failed Windows RT - it was all hacked together horseshit meant to shoehorn a big hot thirsty x86 PC architecture into something that people wanted to actually use on the move. Unfortunately, it was terrible and wasn't going to get any better any time soon. They had their heads so far up their ass the only thing they could see was what they were doing, and refused to believe that anything else could possibly work.
Right until it was announced, and kicked the shit out of them in the market. The whole "netbook" thing was dead in a year. Windows 8 was a knee-jerk reaction attempting to correct for suddenly being WAY behind in mobile computing and still not figuring out that x86 is shit for power efficiency, and >90% of the market doesn't need to compile binaries and run VMs on the go, so a low power ARM that sips at the battery and a slimmed-down software stack that only does what you need it to works just fine.
Yes there's still a place for desktop and full laptop computers, but that place is much smaller now than it was 11 years ago. Most people just don't need the weight and cost of all that, and Apple was the first to deliver a product that recognized that, and wasn't half-assed.
In fact, I'd contend that even today, 10 years later, the Android tablet experience is STILL half-assed.
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And why does the Android tablet experience suck? Chicken and Egg. IPad got there first - and so developers flocked to it. Supposedly, the Android environment 'ported' to large formats better than the iOS environment, but paradoxically, that meant that there was even less incentive for developers to tweak their apps in ways that made them more tablet-friendly.
But that says as much about why Microsoft couldn't get into mobile. IOS was first, and got ALL the developers. Android was second and got most of
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Oh. And I'd argue that another reason Android tablets never caught on is the awful Android upgrade record. In the U.S., at least, phone manufacturers could count on customers to buy a new device (whether an iPhone or an Android set) every 2 years or so. But people keep their iPads far longer than that. There's no 'free' upgrade path, and new features like LTE radios and fancy cameras don't apply to tablets - so an old tablet is essentially good until it breaks or the OS stops getting upgrades. That's w
Microsoft blindsided IBM et. al. (Score:2)
Build a small niche PC. Then let the software grow. Until we have a monster windows server et. al.
Software only ever gets bigger and bigger. If you want small, you need to start from scratch, before large teams can bloat it up.
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So your complaint is that the app developers of specific apps haven’t updated their apps in years and it doesn’t work with an outdated iOS version on a device that was released more than 7 years ago?
No, he's complaining that they HAVE updated their apps and they are not available for his outdated iOS any more.
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My app on my Android tablet is no longer compatible with the version of the OS I am running? No problem...I have the install for the older version that does. BipBamBoom, installed. Same with Windows or, for now, MacOS.
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how to install old apps compatible with older iOS (Score:2)
Here is how we solved that problem.
We still use our iPad 2. Yes, it's an old iPad, and big and clunky compared to the newer more portable iPad minis. But its large size made it perfect for displaying piano music, which doesn't need any sophisticated features of the newer iOS's. Unfortunately, the built-in PDF reader requires horizontal scrolling, is unable to display the bottom half of the previous page with the top half of the next, and resets the zoom level every time you turn the page. We wanted to i
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Not only was Microsoft blindsided, their idiot boss went on TV and laughed at it.
Ballmer should have been met by a representative of the board of directors when he got back to the airport in Seattle after that interview. His employee badge should have been confiscated, and he should have had to take a taxi back to his soon-to-be-foreclosed house.
Re:Really? Blindsided? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Of course they responded to this by creating Windows 8, which shoehorn mobile metaphors on to the desktop and ended up failing at both.
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And then they tried the reverse with Windows 8: lets make everything tablet-looking even if it's running on a Desktop!
They seem completely unable to grasp the idea that UI's are situational and not a one-size-fits all proposition.
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Even better: Let's make your fucking server console look like a tablet too! Because why wouldn't you want your database server to be updating your XBox Live tiles?
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Yeah, they forgot what most of us on slashdot often forget - make a simple device for simpletons.
File system support sucks ? Doing any real work sucks ?
Oh, I can watch game of thrones and people give me status ? Let me pay all the money!
In my analysis of success of a product or technology, I always forget everyone is a moron.
Re:Really? Blindsided? (Score:4, Informative)
You're right. I remember a start button and walking menus on a company issued phone. I traded it in for a Blackberry (back when they dominated the market) at the first opportunity.
Daughter is an artist, and wanted a laptop with a touch screen back in the Windows 7 days. We got a fairly high end "convertible" laptop, and discovered that what Microsoft called a "touch interface" at the time was a rebranding of their accessibility tools. Seriously, someone at Microsoft thought, let's not spend the money to develop a touch GUI, we already have Accessibility Tools for Windows, let's rename that and add some funky handwriting recognition. It'll be great!
It wasn't.
When Windows 8 became available, we were early adopters.
When we realized what a dreadful mistake that was, we restored the laptop to Windows 7 and gave it away. The friend she gave the laptop to she warned, it has a pen, but we haven't found anything the pen is good for.
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Windows 8 was a rushed attempt to be both a finger-oriented and mouse-oriented OS. But it did neither well and pissed off both mouse users and finger users.
The executives were given the marching orders of "make Windows both mouse- and finger-oriented ASAP at all costs!" The "all costs" it turned out included being usable. PHB's At Work.
This is all true. And the reason for the rush was that they had been blindsided by the consumer shift to a touch interface, realized wayyyy too late that they were behind the curve, (as usual /snark) and made a frentic attempt to catch up. Which leads us back to points raised by TFA.
Whose idea was that? Steve Ballmer (Score:2)
Because he pushed:
1) Windows Everywhere
2) every group was micromanaged harshly to make their financial numbers every quarter
There was no opportunity to literally Think Different and invest even years after Jobs and Google showed how backwards they were.
Re:Really? Blindsided? (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems obvious in hindsight, but it really wasn't at the time. The biggest criticism when it was announced was that it was just a bigger iPhone. People were expecting something very different that cost significantly more. What they got was a bigger iPhone, for better and worse.
It's easy to look back and say, "Of course they were going to do that, it's obvious!", but nearly everyone at the time was predicting something else. Of course, the best ideas are usually those that seem obvious in hindsight. The iPad was a great idea that does seem obvious in hindsight, but I think most of us would agree that it's failed to deliver on its initial promise in the same way that the iPhone marked the beginning of the modern era of smartphones or the Mac helped usher in the modern era of GUI-driven PCs.
Re:Really? Blindsided? (Score:4, Insightful)
It kinda was just a bigger iphone, that couldn't make calls. The thing that disappointed me was that the ipad didn't do enough. It used the same gui as the iphone when it really needed to have a richer set of gestures more appropriate for content creation. Apple could have absolutely cornered the market in content creation, with a large enough head start that they could never be caught, but instead, they went for watching kitten videos and drawing ears on party photos.
A year after the ipad's release, the product I supported was ported to it, and we were all issued ipads so we could support the product. I brought mine home, gave it to my daughter (in training to be an artist at the time, doing Photoshop on a rather elderly G4) she played with it for awhile, gave it back. She said it had potential but it didn't do anything she needed doing.
I tried to integrate the ipad into my daily routine, but I just couldn't see a use for it. It sat in my desk drawer and I took a *real* laptop to meetings. When another department took over support, I gave it back to IT.
Maybe things have changed -- I know that Apple has worked on integrating the ipad into the office environment -- but it is still primarily for content consumption, not content creation.
Mind you, from a marketing standpoint Apple was dead on. There are a *lot* more -- orders of magnitude, probably -- content consumers than there are content creators. If you want to make a heck of a lot of money, do exactly what they're doing. I'm just sayin', I had hoped for more.
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I'd say with the iPad Pro...it came into its own as a content creation platform.
Once you got some horsepower and storage under the hood, combined with higher Rez screen and the pencil that has amazing reaction times....you can really do some things with it.
I really find the Affinity Photo for iPad to be an amazingly powerf
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Ok thanks. That's good to know. I'll do some research.
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What you said right there is that Microsoft was kind of correct in its assessment: it's difficult (if not impossible) to be PRODUCTIVE without the pen.
I find it hard to disagree. The penless iPad is a toy, not a tool.
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I think you overstated your case. While a stylus certainly expands the number of potential use cases, it's far from being a necessity for anyone and everyone who wants to be productive.
Instead, different forms of input support different use cases to different degrees. The iPad began with just a touch screen, which is great as a general purpose input method, but which lacks the precision and haptic feedback necessary for users to engage in a huge number of use cases—particularly professional ones
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The penless iPad is a toy, not a tool.
Then I guess you would say the same about an eReader.
Or a browser. Or anything that isn't useful to you.
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> With the cheap tablet, all of that is seconds away.
With phones, all of that is seconds away. In any given crowd of people, there will be at least a half dozen smartphones. Often it's a duel of who can look up the reference first. There may have been a time when the ipad was convenient for basic web browsing, although I think I could argue against that -- it was introduced right on the cusp of where phones became actually useful as browsers, so if there was a window where the ipad was necessary, it w
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The iPhone Blindsided the phone industry too, and really put them in about 2 years behind, as they needed to revamp all the products from Start. I think the Microsoft Employees were drinking too much of the Microsoft Koolaid at the time. So they fell in with the internal marketing that the iPhone was just a toy device that it wouldn't catch on for anything serious.
To be fair to Microsoft there is a fine line between Fad and Disruptive. The iPad could had flopped because people only wanted touch for a small
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Plus 10 hours of battery rather than the 4 or so hours you would get from a shitty netbook gagging on the weight of all the bits of Windows 7 that you don't need on a netbook
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I recall hearing a year or two before the iPad rumors that Apple was working on a giant iPhone. That's basically an iPad. Wasn't that novel was kind of obvious imo.
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Remember that Microsoft's entries into the portable market tended to be... well let's say, not thought out. Their first offerings were essentially Windows on a smaller screen. (Anyone remember walking menus -- on a phone?) Windows 8 was an attempt to go the other direction -- a touch interface (again not really well thought out) meant for phones, on a PC. Microsoft was flailing. They really didn't understand the market. I'd opine that they still don't.
So under the circumstances, I'm not terribly surpr
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Yeah. They already had the iPod Touch out at that time. I remember before they even debuted it thinking "it would be really cool if they just made it a giant iPod Touch", which is basically what the iPad is.
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Everyone expected the iPad, but everyone expected it to be 1000$. The price it launched at came completely ouf of left field.
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Agree. I wonder why they did that. If they were so far out ahead, you'd think they would've charged a premium. Maybe Jobs thought it wasn't worth a premium price? At first, apps' UI's were just scaled up, right? That must've seemed kind of half-baked (to perfectionist Jobs, at least).
Also wonder whether it's just that much cheaper to build a device if you leave all the cellphone bits (and all the associated royalties) out.
People dumber than they thought (Score:3)
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MS already thought they were catering to the 'watch videos all day' market with Windows Mediaplayer plus the various HTPC options on Windows. What they didn't consider is people wanting to do it on a portable device or more likely couldn't consider because Windows and long battery life is still a contradiction.
MS are only just climbing out of the trap of thinking they dictate how people use computers, after failing to learn they don't in every sector of the market with competition right up and including to
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The thing is, Microsoft wrongly assumed that all users wanted to be computer users. But most of them were forced into it because there was no alternative for watching videos, browsing the web, accessing email and instant messaging, etc.
Tablets are the perfect type of device for these users, who should never have been computer users in the first place.
funny cat videos (Score:1)
stare at "cat videos" all day
and by "cat videos" they mean PORN .
Without exception.
puts Mom's infatuation with funny internet cat videos in a new light, eh?
The future gave me the finger (Score:5, Interesting)
If you master the "mobile" keyboard and conventions, as the young whipper-snappers often do, then tablets are almost as useful as a PC for doing "real" tasks. To them, it's not the passive device you seem to be describing.
Sure, navigating giant spreadsheets, writing long documents, and CADD are generally more efficient with mouse and physical keyboards, in part due to the higher precision of mice over fingers, but things like home banking and writing blog entries are quite tablet-able for those who grew up "phone typing".
And finger-based UI techniques are gradually improving over time. You can do things you can't with mice, like multi-pointer interaction. For example, a second finger can fine-tune the pointer position approximated by the first finger (although "offset" point-cursors may be needed). The strengths of fingering may eventually overshadow its initial accuracy weakness compared to mice. You have five potential "pointers" to leverage instead of the single one of mice. (I'm assuming one hand is reserved for holding the tablet, per convention.) "Gesture" UI R&D is producing promising results.
I have to admit I still "think in mice" and cannot rule out the possibility that over time fingers will win out even for "productivity" applications. In poorer countries, PC's are too expensive for small businesses such that there is pressure to "productivize" tablets to replace PC's. MS probably knows this and is why they are trying to move their revenue source to the cloud, slowing their desktop R&D.
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Like make their own Linux distro or write "War and Peace II"? Even in the 70s, when regular people were not running domestic errands, interacting with their br...uh, kids, and doing chores; they mostly watched TV or gabbed on the phone. So why did you assume having a powerful computer would compel them to make their own Linux distro or write "War and Peace II"?
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Yeah, I thought they were dumb at the time, I think they're dumb now.
I wish my market analysis could just be of myself.
M$ was too obsessed (Score:1)
M$ was too obsessed fat hot Intel architecture and ignored RISC because - like clowns - they had too much code dependency in Intel.
Re:M$ was too obsessed (Score:4, Informative)
yeah, they should have made windows NT for MIPS, Alpha, PowerPC & Sparc as well, damnit.
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and Clipper & ARM, too. Itanium probably wouldn't have counted, right?
I was surprised by it (Score:1)
I had been wanting a tablet PC since the mid to late 1990's. The problem was that I wanted a full power computer in a tablet format. So when the iPad came out I didn't see much use for it. But I spent more time doing CPU/GPU intensive stuff back then and not nearly as much time surfing the web.
Currently I'm using my wife's old iPad 2 to read the local newspaper in the morning and will check some stuff on the web as well. So it is convenient for that. My wife uses her iPad for just about everything and my
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I had been wanting a tablet PC since the mid to late 1990's. The problem was that I wanted a full power computer in a tablet format. So when the iPad came out I didn't see much use for it. But I spent more time doing CPU/GPU intensive stuff back then and not nearly as much time surfing the web.
Currently I'm using my wife's old iPad 2 to read the local newspaper in the morning and will check some stuff on the web as well. So it is convenient for that. My wife uses her iPad for just about everything and my daughter has one with a pen that she uses to draw on. So they are pretty convenient for certain things.
We have a "Family" ipad we all share. It's rare we all need / want to use it at the same time.
summary (Score:5, Informative)
Here you go, a 20% summary (Score:1)
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Th
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Or, for a more constructive alternative:
The announcement 10 years ago today of the "magical" iPad was clearly a milestone in computing. It was billed to be the "next" computer. For me, managing Windows, just weeks after the launch of Microsoft's "latest creation" Windows 7, it was a as much a challenge as magical. Given that Star Trek had tablets it was inevitable that the form factor would make it to computing (yes, the dynabook...). Microsoft had been working for more than 10 years starting with "WinPad" through Tablet PC. We were fixated on Win32, Pen, and more. The success of iPhone (140K apps & 3B downloads announced that day) blinded us at Microsoft as to where Apple was heading.
Even less than 20%, and provides a constructive example of how a short snippet of a story captures enough of the information and tenor of the piece to let a prospective reader know enough to decide whether to read TFA.
Windows vs Being Connected (Score:1)
I think the main difference between MS and Apple was that MS was building software around Windows and Apple around being productive and being connected.
MS was already totally blindsided by the internet and even after gaining dominance with IE didnâ(TM)t understand the actual disruption of the internet and the possibilities that came with it.
The internet basically made Windows way less important and potentially obsolete. For Apple it meant a driver for their existing and new products.
Tech article? (Score:2)
"ATOM"
And now the iPad is dead. (Score:2)
Tablet says are dwindling. The market is contracting. Smart phones have effectively killed off the tablet market.
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Tablet market is alive and well. Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Lenovo, and Huawei introduce enough models each each year to lose track of. Yes, the tablet market is smaller and tablet users tend to hang onto their devices for much longer than is the case for the phones.
What happened to the cheap android tablet? (Score:2)
Did the manufacturers decide there was no longer sufficient demand to make them? I kn
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Somewhat orthogonal to this, we used to be able to get cheap (under $50 or even under $30) Android tablets seemingly everywhere up until a year or two ago.
The problem with selling a product under cost to gain market share, is that if eventually you do not have market share all you are doing is losing money.
A thing that cannot go on forever, will not.
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There's this thing called "Amazon" gramps you should check it out.
There's a glut of $50 tablets on the market with the Fire 7 arguably being the best of class.
Re: What happened to the cheap android tablet? (Score:1)
I bought a cheap Android tablet for $18 on Black Friday this year. They are regularly priced at under $50. It is low end compared to a Galaxy Tab A, but Galaxy Tabs are pretty affordable, for a tablet from the Android sphere. The Samsung equivalent to an Ipad is considerably less. And they have an SD slot.
Re: What happened to the cheap android tablet? (Score:3)
Amazon Fire tablets cost something like 50-200 depending on how basic or fancy you want to get. Most Lenovo tablets are priced 100-200 dollars. Samsung's Tab A 2019 is well under 300 for the base model. Walmart had some kind of store brand devices that were priced very cheaply too.
Normal Microsoft (Score:3)
Microsoft has never been a cutting-edge technology company. They are a consumer/business-user-focused stack-en-high, sell in bulk company that spends a lot of money on glossy adverts and making sure (one way or another) that there was no alternative at a sensible price.
As far as I know, they've never introduced a product to market that was not a version of something else that was out there and proving popular or useful to their target market.
Apple are similar but are prepared to go with a much smaller target market at a higher price point and to do a lot more in the way of polishing an idea before releasing their version of it. The iPod wasn't a new idea, but the UI was a masterpiece. The Mac wasn't a new idea, but it was made more general purpose than the original Xerox work. The iPad wasn't really a new idea either, but it felt like a quantum leap compared to tablet PCs - it took the concept to what was basically its logical conclusion.
Re: Normal Microsoft (Score:2)
Microsoft was a high edge company when they sold the ROM basic interpreter in almost all personal computers on the market. They also sold high edge hardware in the form of a CP/M board that enabled Apple 2 owners to run real business software. And their mice and keyboards are one of the few brands you would want to use.
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Innovation has a thousand faces. Just because Microsoft wanted you to believe in a sexy face that wasn't true, doesn't mean they weren't innovating elsewhere (perhaps in some exceedingly unsexy places they would rather you didn't think about).
* Hugely innovative in depriving competitors of their air supply, and related business method
Galaxy Tab (Score:1)
The Galaxy Tab launched 10 years ago, too. It had a less anaemic and more open operating system than the Apple pad.
I have owned Galaxy Tabs for a long time. The Galaxy Tab A is a good affordable model. The Galaxy Tab S has an awesome OLED display.
They can be updated to free ( as in freedom) versions of their OS. Good luck with your fruit tab.
linux's role in netbooks, multitouch (Score:3)
Blackberry's response to the iPhone (Score:2)
Reminds me of another blunder by a dominant giant when competition came along, and they dismissed it.
The inventor of the Blackberry phones could not wrap his head around the iPhone when Apple launched it in 2007. Mike Lazaridis bought an iPhone and took it apart: he said it is too complex, battery does not last, and has no keyboard.
And the following Google did the same with Android. Both platforms made their SDK available for free, and had a centralized market where people can download apps. Blackberry char
Nothing about Courier? (Score:2)
Missed opportunity: Nintendo DS tablet (Score:2)
My first decent tablet was the Nintendo DS. Released 3 years before the iPhone, it had a web browser, calendar, organizer, wifi, and supported MicroSD. ...Oh wait, no it didn't! Those were community hacks. Nintendo maintained a closed dev environment and sued anyone who created development tools or SD card interfaces for it because they could be used to pirate games or make games that they didn't sell.
Nintendo could have owned the smartphone market. All those teens and college students who were chatting
The Story of Microsoft (Score:1)
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As someone who remembers well when MS was a seller of BASIC and not much else, and watched in grim fascination as the whole IBM PC and DOS thing unfolded, I agree. Since that lucky break, MS has been a step or two behind the 8-ball...
But they knew how to market to business, to speak their language. They provided the layers of control freakery that a corporation requires to, well, control their employees.
They were late to the Internet, late to the idea of security, and on and on. And yet, here they are, stil
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And yet - here they are - and a Trillion dollar company too.
What's new Apple? (Score:2)
It seemed like a terrible idea! (Score:2)
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Funny. 'Cuz I pretty often see PHBs and BOFH-wannabes, from the windows side, bragging and laughing about using AD and GPOs to torment and exert their a-thor-i-tah on users. The next statement from said PHBs and BOFH-wannabes is equally-often a complaint that Apple doesn't make it nearly so easy for them to lock down their users and make them suffer.
Re:Everything blindsided Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not the lock-in he was referring to.
Also, it's plain to see you have never attempted to maintain a larger network of PCs, single sign-on is a critical function since it allows you to centrally enable and disable users. Without that, everything is a nightmare when you on board new users, they leave the company or worse yet get fired.
Also, it's clear the people you talk to don't know what they are doing. If they did, they would know it's not a problem to at least connect Apple and Linux desktops to the domain controller. In fact, I wish Linux had a decent interface as an AD server, if they did, I would be able to dump two Windows server licenses from the network/
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+1 to this comment!
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AWS implemented their own bastardized version of Chef as "OpsWorks." It has limitations though - we are on AWS and we still run our own Chef server for our entire environment.
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Then when they get the nerve to go google anything about macOS management, they realize the same MDM system they use for iOS and Android can also do full device and user management on macOS because the framework is exactly the same, and you can even pre-enroll Mac hardware from the factory at Apple if you register with their free program for doing so. Not using an MDM solution? That's fine, you can just use a free app provided by Apple ("configurator") to create your management profiles and enroll your de
Re:Everything blindsided Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Everything blindsided Microsoft (Score:4, Informative)
The Zune was released five years after the iPod, and just a few months before the iPhone: they were so far behind that they were introducing a new dedicated MP3 player at the dawn of the consumer smartphone revolution, which ultimately made dedicated MP3 players obsolete.
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They probably didn't expect Apple to obsolete their new super profitable product line themselves, but to milk and try to entrench themselves. When you're an old company milking things just made sense. I'm not a Jobs fan but I can imagine him seeing the upcoming repeat of the Mac years, with MS quickly releasing an affordable me-too and using their strength to push it.
FWIW a lot of people seem to recall the Zune favorably. I don't think it was over going to have the iPod's "sex appeal" as a product though, c
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I still use my Zune and I have a extra battery so when the current on dies I can get it to live on for another 5-8 years.
It is black not brown.
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Yeah, Microsoft should have probably saved the R&D money that they wasted on the Zune and just used it to develop a decent Smartphone instead. Once Smartphones started getting a decent amount of storage space and streaming music became more popular, the iPod and all of it's clones got replaced.
Who knows... maybe Microsoft could have been a real contender against Android and iOS if they have put more R&D money into the Windows mobile project earlier on.
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The problem is, using that money to "develop a decent smartphone instead" would have been good money after bad at that time - they hadn't seen what a decent smartphone was, and they were clearly incapable of coming up with the formula themselves because they had plenty of time and resources to do it by then already. Throwing more money at it would have resulted in a slightly thinner device with a better display still using a shitty capacitive screen with a stylus and Windows Embedded / Windows Mobile that
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You have a point... I remember using one of the early Compaq iPaq PDA's, and they were rubbish. They had a bad habit of crashing and requiring a factory reset to bring them back to life, losing all of your data on the device.
Re: Everything blindsided Microsoft (Score:2)
The biggest reason Zune failed was that, at the time, lots of people had massive iTunes libraries...which, the Zune wasnâ(TM)t compatible with. Even if people were willing to rebuild their playlists, A whole lot of itunes songs were being purchased with DRM, so rebuilding required either re-buying, or the burn/rip shuffle. The Zune didnâ(TM)t offer anything compelling to justify that process - âoesquirtingâ definitely wasnâ(TM)t it.
Moreover, Microsoft was banking on being able to us
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First of all the iTunes library is an XML file. It’s not encrypted or locked down. You have to know how to read XML which is not a difficult task. Second the library is simply a catalog of the music on the computer. All it takes it to point your application to your HD and let it search for music.
Yes if people have DRM music, that can’t be read by Zune but that is the same problem as PlaysForSure. Speaking of PlaysForSure, the one the Zune used was incompatible with previous versions meaning the