Win Tabs Get the Last Laugh
I am now officially an objective observer in the upcoming war between Windows and iPad tablets, having shelled out $500 hard earned Barney dollars for an iPad.
Owning an iPad for more than a month and the fact that it's barely been used in a house with two adults, a 16-year-old Apple fan and a five-year-old girl tells you something. The bloom is off the iPad rose.
The five year old loves Bugs Bunny on TV and Angry Birds on her brother's iPhone. He loves his Xbox 360, Netflix, Macbook and Greek classics in actual print. No e-readers for him.
So I have the Apple tablet all to myself. Here's what I think: The iPad camera is awesome, but the onscreen keyboard is still just an onscreen keyboard. It isn't a computer, so my lap remains covered with a trusty (but imperfect) workhorse: a Dell Latitude E6500.
That may change when Microsoft actually ships one of the new Surface tablets it just announced. These have a few things going for them. The OS and hardware, like the Xbox, are completely controlled by one vendor. Our Xbox hasn't crashed yet, plus it's simple as pie to use and works great with third parties.
More important, these Surface machines are full PCs. They have full PC operating systems, run fill PC applications and, best of all, have real keyboards.
And the Win 8 machines, running on Intel, are managed just like Win XP, Vista and Win 7 machines today -- through Active Directory, PowerShell, System Center and all those great third-party management tools we all depend on.
The iPad, as great and revolutionary as it is, will probably never have this. And Apple will probably never turn the Mac into a tablet because it already has the iPad.
If your end game is the enterprise, this is a masterstroke on Microsoft's part, wouldn't you say?
At first I thought tablets was Apple's game to lose. The iPad was slicker and more stable than anything Microsoft could do and had the "wow" factor.
Then I remembered a year ago watching a Microsoft employee spend a full day pounding away on a Win 8 tablet without a hitch. If it was that stable then, how good would a Microsoft-made machine be almost two years later? Then imagine an iPad-like machine that works as a full computer. Nice.
If my theory turns out to be right, will the critics who blame Steve Ballmer for all of Microsoft's wrongs admit their errors? Probably not.
Am I on to something or did Microsoft send me a big box of Kool-Aid mix? You tell me at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 06/20/2012 at 1:19 PM