Microsoft Misses the Boat

[Chris Gohlke]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-could-miss-tablet-surge-just-like-it-missed-smartphones-2010-12' target='_blank'>http://www.businessinsider.com/micr...tphones-2010-12</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"A new poll suggests that one in five Americans plan to buy a tablet computer within the next three years. That's great news for Apple, RIM, HP Palm, and the hardware companies like Motorola who are building Android-based tablets. It's horrible news for Microsoft, which stands poised to miss the tablet surge just like it missed the first three years of the consumer smartphone explosion."</em></p><p><em><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/wpt/auto/1293484017.usr10.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></em></p><p>Quite the shame too. &nbsp;I've had two Windows based laptops that convert to tablet mode and found the software totally lacking. &nbsp;Had Microsoft put some effort into the software interface, they could have been first out the door via their laptop division and then followed on with other more modern tablet devices.</p><p><em></em></p>

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

I tried a HP TM2. The OS is fine; the apps are not. It's a bit like the HTC HD2. Sense UI is great and all until you use the older WM6.5 apps...

[Sven Johannsen]

If you have been paying attention, you expected me to comment. While I agree with what you are saying about apps, I don't really agree about the basic OS. I can do the same basic things I do on my iPad, pretty much as well on a Windows Tablet. I surf, using gestures, swipes, pinch and zoom. I have to type on a pop up keyboard to enter URLs, just like an iPad. I can play some games, solitaire, mahjong. I can manage and consume media via Zune, iTunes, Media Center, Netflix, all using my finger. I can do basic entry on many apps using the on-screen keyboard, and I get the option of using a stylus for HWR, a horrible experience on the iPad with every stylus I've tried.

Yea, a majority of the apps for Windows aren't finger friendly, but they were designed for an OS that had a mouse and keyboard. iPad and Android tablet apps were designed for phones, which never had anything but a touch interface. MS does need to do some to polish up the touch navigation on the OS interface, but certainly doesn't need to be scraped. The key is to ensure that developers consider a tablet and touch when they design an interface that could reasonably be expected to be run on a tablet. To do that you need to have viable tablets available. It's a chicken and egg issue. If MS makes the effort to tablet friendly the basic funtionality people expect, and with Windows 7, and the ribbon on the Office apps, we aren't far from it, I think the light will come on. I hope so anyway, because I'm tired of having to drag my iPad to entertain myself in the recliner, and a laptop to get any work done.