Mr. Vieira
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Tennessee
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Interesting story.
I assume it would be a big deal to many (businesses and education/students). The story says there are no plans to do the same for Android. Microsoft opting to throw in with the side where the real action, money and growth is, I guess? Assuming it works well, this could spur many sales. In fact, the timing is interesting...I can see someone from Microsoft appearing onstage at the iPad 3 event to unveil/demo this. And a section of the iPad 3 part of Apple's site touting this. I would assume Microsoft built it at Retina Display settings, and that the crisp sharp text and PowerPoint and Excel elements would make for a nice demo to highlight the new iPad display. A welcome change from the usual "sword and dragons" and nausea-inducing race gaming demos. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: oaktown
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I wonder how functional MS would want to make an iPad Office, though?
It looks like pretty much the one and only selling point for Windows on ARM tablets is their ability to run Office. Everything else will be new Metro apps, with no backwards compatibility to older Windows desktop software. At one point there were high hopes for some kind of MS super tablet to rule them all-- able to seamlessly switch from finger to mouse mode while running full Windows "without compromise" across devices. We now know that won't be happening, but at least you're going to get Office, which, for a lot of users, pretty much is Windows. But if I can get a well functioning Office on the iPad, even before WOA become available, it seems like Microsoft is relinquishing their one big competitive advantage in the arguably critical tablet space. Interesting. Also interesting will be how they handle touch for Office. That's my big question for WOA Office as well-- apparently it won't be Metro per se, so I've been wondering if there will be this weird hybrid experience of fun and colorful Metro apps then suddenly you get dropped back into the bad old days of Windows tablets, where "touch enabled" doesn't mean much more than making targets a little bigger and swapping taps for mouse clicks. It's not easy, putting a lot of accumulated desktop functionality into an easy to use touch interface-- that's why Apple's iOS versions of iWork apps are less capable, so far. So if MS can make an Office with some reasonable percentage of desktop Office functionality and give it an iPad friendly interface, my hat's off to them. That which doesn't kill you weakens you slightly and makes you less able to cope until you're completely incapacitated |
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@kk@pennytucker.social
Join Date: Jan 2005
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I have been thinking about the iPad missing Office for a while. How could MS be so shortsighted in not doing this sooner?
Seems like an instant purchase for anyone who uses it for business. Gruber linked to this piece the other day about Microsoft's biggest miss. With Office missing from the iPad and iOS, people have realized that they can get work done without Office. No more Twitter. It's Mastodon now. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: oaktown
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That also leaves open the question of how non-Metro apps behave in a touch environment. We've seen what Microsoft's idea of an Intel tablet running Windows has been, and it wasn't pretty. Will an Intel tablet running Windows 8 be that plus Metro? Because that sounds kind of awful. That which doesn't kill you weakens you slightly and makes you less able to cope until you're completely incapacitated |
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(And I don't really find it big or heavy. It's 12.99mm and 860g, compared to 8.8mm/610g on the iPad 2, or 13mm/730g on the iPad 1. Yes, those obviously win, and I'm not going to make the case that it's an awesome all-around tablet, but it's not as terrible as one might think. I didn't find it annoyingly thick, clunky or heavy in testing. Now, the software, OTOH. The software really, really matters.) Quote:
Windows 8, summarized in a word: compromise. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: oaktown
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Does anyone have any idea what actual Metro apps look and act like?
I admit I'm not the target audience and maybe I haven't searched hard enough, but literally all I've ever seen of the big Metro revolution is big live widgets associated with feeds and media. Twitter, photos, music, weather, stocks, messaging, etc. You know, like this: So, is Metro explicitly about "consumption"? Because as I said when Microsoft first started showing this around, I'm having a hard time imagining how big panels translates into usable apps beyond things that involve lists or transport controls. MS isn't stupid, and I know there are recommended Metro practices, but I wonder why I've never seen an image of a productivity app. Is there such a thing? Or am I misunderstanding? Is Metro intended as a navigational language, with individual applications doing their own thing? That which doesn't kill you weakens you slightly and makes you less able to cope until you're completely incapacitated |
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Right Honourable Member
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I've spent some time playing with Windows Phone 7 and was rather impressed. I'd use it over android anyway, if I were to switch from iOS (which I won't). If Microsoft make Office for iOS anything like the interface in Windows Phone I might consider buying it. I guess it might also be used as a way to highlight the Metro interface to raise awareness of it as alternative to iOS and Android... Within one app of course - it wouldn't be the full OS experience.
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: oaktown
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Hmmm, and now MS is denying the story, according to the NYT. They say:
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That which doesn't kill you weakens you slightly and makes you less able to cope until you're completely incapacitated |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: oaktown
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That which doesn't kill you weakens you slightly and makes you less able to cope until you're completely incapacitated |
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iOS's UI, compared to OS X's, is far simpler as well, and yet many find, contrary to what one might expect, that they're actually far more productive on it. Quote:
Robo may have a thing or two to say about this. The WP7 Office apps look very, very limited, judging from screenshots. And, you're right, based on the sample apps shipping with Windows Developer Preview, Microsoft hasn't given much guidance on what a more featureful app is supposed to look like. They've made it abundantly clear at Build, however, that this is their vision of the future. No. It is indeed essentially WP7's UI, scaled up. If you have an hour or two to spare, consider playing with it. |
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(Remember the discussions in here about how an on-screen keyboard wouldn't work? About how multitasking would matter a lot more? Etc. None of these things appear to matter to the tens of millions gobbling those devices up.) It's not clear to me yet what trajectory they see for the traditional Desktop, but the bulk of the new APIs in Windows 8 is about Metro, with desktop stuff heavily deemphasized. The hybrid approach surely isn't something they want to retain in the long run. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: oaktown
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I guess what I'm thinking about is that if (and it does seem this way to me) touch is the future, someone is going to have to be very, very smart about how to do the kind of fine grained stuff we take for granted in a big range of desktop apps.
Right now, the solution seems to be "limit functionality to the broader strokes", but that will have to change. It looks to me like Apple is going to have the edge here, because they are developing iOS as an environment in its own right, whereas MS is trying to have it both ways. If Metro coexists with Windows 8 desktop stuff, and the desktop stuff can do a good job of handling the heavy lifting, there's little incentive to figure out how to Metro-fy, say, Photoshop. Now of course you could say that Apple is doing the same thing, jut a little more bifurcated, since OS X soldiers on and anyone wanting to run Photoshop on an Apple device can certainly use a Mac. But because iOS is its own deal, the iPad is its own deal, and the more popular the iPad becomes the more incentive there is to make any and every app for the platform. An Intel tablet is always going to have old school fallback, and apparently an all Metro/ARM tablet will have Office in some form that doesn't actually make the big leap to full Metro-hood, so it looks like even MS is unwilling to do the hard work to figure out how make big apps finger friendly. That which doesn't kill you weakens you slightly and makes you less able to cope until you're completely incapacitated |
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The Mac originally had no proper multitasking (DAs aside), didn't have any command-line shell, didn't have networking, and so on. iOS is on a somewhat similar trajectory of slowly evolving more features. We have yet to see this happening in Metro, as Windows Phone 7 is very young, but presumably, there's more to come. Quote:
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: oaktown
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But the move to touch is a different kind of problem, I think, a problem of information density. It creates new opportunities for intimacy and fluidity in the user experience, but intimacy and fluidity don't engender a work flow that allows for rapid, fine adjustments to various parameters. Or tweaking things a pixel or a point. Touch is sort of clay to the mouse/menu's ruler and mechanical pencil. You can make great stuff with clay, but if you were planning on architecting a building you'll probably experience frustration. However, I think we agree that there are solutions we haven't seen yet. There may be some fundamental metaphor for zooming in for fine control that when we see it we'll slap our heads and say "Of course!" (and if Apple gets there first everyone will call it obvious and get pissed if they try and patent it ) Quote:
That which doesn't kill you weakens you slightly and makes you less able to cope until you're completely incapacitated |
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Mr. Vieira
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Tennessee
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Interesting take. Microsoft might get more from it than Apple, but Apple would still benefit huge. It's no skin off their teeth, and could only drive more iPad sales and adoption. Why wouldn't they? They have brought Microsoft people on state in the past (Roz Ho with Office stuff), so it's not unheard of. And both would benefit. Microsoft is smart to throw in with Apple and the iPad. Yeah, from the moment I read this the other day all I thought was "uh...March 7? Of course Microsoft is being coy and non-committal...they're not looking to blow the surprise." And with Phil Schiller telling Gruber and other journalists brought to New York two weeks ago to get a demo of Mountain Lion, Apple is "doing some things different now". This would fit under that, making Office a "killer app" and draw for their iPad. |
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Lovable Bastard
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Boston-ish
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So touch isn't good enough for Office on Windows tablets, so they have to include the legacy desktop interface...
But on iPad, it is good enough? At best, this is awkward hipocrisy, at worst, it's a tacit omission that iOS is more capable than Metro. I honestly don't understand how a company which refuses to port their flagship product to their own touch interface is apparently happy to do so for a competitor's touch interface. Then again, Office 1.0 made its debut on an Apple platform as well. Maybe MS knows that they won't have a real touch contender until Windows 9 or 10 (kinda like how everyone knew that Windows 1.0 was a turd) but they don't want to deprive the Office team of touch experience. Or maybe this is the first sign that MS now realizes their best shot at remaining relevant in the post-PC world isn't Windows everywhere, but Office everywhere. Still... It's pretty weird. Logic, logic, logic. Logic is the beginning of wisdom, Valeris, not the end. |
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Here's one thing I'm not getting anyway: people whine at the Samsung Galaxy Tab for being too much like an iPad, and then they whine at the Windows 8 tablet concept for being too little like an iPad. Take the Samsung Galaxy Note, for instance: yeah, so maybe it's too awkward as a phone, too small as a proper tablet, and neither here nor there. And maybe we should criticize them for lacking the insight on what it takes to make a great product without the "see what sticks" approach. And, certainly, their "LOL, Apple customers are losers who stand in line" approach to marketing is awful (though, was Apple's "Windows is for generic business suits" really that much better?). But at least they've actually delivered a product that can do things neither the iPhone nor the iPad is capable of. It has a real pressure-sensitive screen*, so it supports real digitizer pens, unlike the pretense pens available for the iPad. *) Though I haven't found out how many pressure points it can distinguish. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Jan 2005
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I don't think there would be any complaints about an ARM-based, purely-Metro Windows 8 tablet. Metro is definitely distinct from the iPhone/Android way of doing things, in a good way. The complaint is about even the ARM tablets maintaining the traditional Windows desktop (and about the existence of Windows on both ARM and on x86).
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Mr. Vieira
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Tennessee
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Another Daring Fireball post about it (and Microsoft appearing onstage at the iPad 3 event). Gruber links to an article by Jim Dalrymple, but I'll just include the DF post so you can read both parts from each writer.
I agree with Gruber's final paragraph, and have since I started this thread. |
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