From my latest column on Techpinions:
By trying to combine what people do on their PC with what they want to do on a tablet, Microsoft feels it is offering the best of both worlds.The problem with that, as I’ve said before, is that people interact differently with a tablet than they do a computer. So, in reality, you don’t get the best of both worlds, but rather a mishmash of each.
“that people interact differently with a PC than they do a computer” should be “…differently with a tablet…”
I love how 80’s Bill and 90’s Ballmer think they have discovered something Apple hasn’t thought of. This idea of a “hybrid” was mulled and tossed 5 years ago by Apple. Can’t wait to see this unfold…maybe MS should buy RIM and build a Blackberry into this also..if I was a shareholder I’d be demanding a new CEO.
My dad’s number one problem with his iPad: no fully functional, 100% compatible version of Office. His number two problem: no easy way to do some simple crops on a bunch of pictures he took, zip them, attach them to a message along with the doc file of his article, and send everything to his paper’s editor.
He’d love a Surface: it’s a tablet, but when he has to do actual work, it’s also a fully functional PC.
I think Microsoft is on to something. I’m pretty sure my dad’s iPad will soon be replaced with a Windows 8 tablet.
“people interact differently with a tablet than they do a computer” should be “than they do a less-mobile computer”.
And really, you missed the awesome demonstration of Office on Surface? How smoothly they crunched those numbers in Excel? Marked up that Word Doc? It was—oh, right…
“Actual work” for his use case.
Snapseed does great on-the-fly image cropping and editing on iOS.