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Enterprise Information Workers Favor Microsoft Tablets and Apple Phones
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What's next, cars without brakes YET?
So let me get this straight, you are defending Microsoft's actions of releasing products that are not complete? Would you buy a car and then let the manufacturer put the brakes on later? If I'm buying something, I better get my money's worth from day 1 - that's why I, and many others, stick with Apple.
So let me get this straight, you are defending Microsoft's actions of releasing products that are not complete? Would you buy a car and then let the manufacturer put the brakes on later? If I'm buying something, I better get my money's worth from day 1 - that's why I, and many others, stick with Apple.
The key word is "workers"
Much as I love my iPad for leisurely browsing, when it comes to "work," I want the benefit of a keyboard. If you add a keyboard to a tablet, you pretty much have a laptop, just in 2 pieces... so when it comes down to it, when work needs to get done, I don't want a Surface and I don't want an iPad, give me a laptop every time.
Much as I love my iPad for leisurely browsing, when it comes to "work," I want the benefit of a keyboard. If you add a keyboard to a tablet, you pretty much have a laptop, just in 2 pieces... so when it comes down to it, when work needs to get done, I don't want a Surface and I don't want an iPad, give me a laptop every time.
Exactly what I ended up concluding. Tried the iPad + bluetooth keyboard combo for a while, but then the MacBook Air came out, and I haven't looked back since. The iPad is my main leisure device, and the Air is my mobile workstation. Sometimes, I do some work on my iPad if I'm in the mood, but most of the time, I pull out my Air when I need to work on my documents and spreadsheets.
Yeah, IT staff, that's because they administer Windows servers. But the employees that actually do the grunt work want iPads, iPhones, and OS X laptops.
IF you look at various industries by sector, iPads are the only option for many people. Look at what software and hardware products are iOS only for things like creative arts professionals (music, video, graphics arts creation and production), those are basically iOS and OS X these days for the most part.
The Medical industry is going towards iOS devices.
Retail Stores and restaurants are more likely going to implement iPads, etc. than doing it manually, or using some expensive dedicated cash register. I see a lot of potential business from a lot of these industries over the next couple of years as these companies are surveying what is out on the market and the best practices for rolling out product. It wouldn't surprise me if more large retail stores start rolling out more iPads and iPad minis as cash registers. Heck, they can even use iPod Touches for that matter.
I bet you have never touched one; it's a great little device and this comes from someone that has not bought a MS desktop OS since 2006.
No, the 'passable' interface is the Win 8 'Metro' interface. It's not *bad* for touch, but it isn't as refined as the iOS touch interface. The lousy interface for a touch-based Win8 system comes from all of the non-'Metro' apps (such as Office), compatibility with which is supposedly one of the big reasons to buy a Surface.
The iPad supports keyboard input as well, losing nothing to the Surface for long spans of text input, and it's interface is *fully* designed around touch, eliminating the need for a mouse completely.
(I've got to remember stop trying to inform willfully obtuse people.)
Yes
Yes. They worked fine for me.
What didn't for you?
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How do you know that? While I'm not disagreeing, I'm curious as to your experience using a Surface.
Yes. They worked fine for me.
What didn't for you?
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How do you know that? While I'm not disagreeing, I'm curious as to your experience using a Surface.
See, MS has a chicken and egg problem ahead of them. As much as it's ultrabook/MBA style hardware, the form factor is a tablet from top to bottom. They know the Surface Pro would be better suited to a touchscreen interface. Problem is, there aren't really any high end productivity apps released to take advantage of the touchscreen. You want to do the much fabled "real work" with your new tablet, you're gonna have to use a desktop app to do it.
So what MS has to do here is release a product that's more or less a beta release to (hopefully) entice developers into writing higher end apps that target Win8's touchscreen UI and the Pro's beefier hardware. That means they have to take a interim step into the market, and provide a jack of all trades master of none solution to work with in the meantime.
If things go well for MS, we'll see more and more apps targeting their touchscreen UI, and a Windows 9 that's a more cohesive whole than Win8's desktop/tablet hybrid thing they've got going on with it. Thing is, they've gotta start somewhere, and where they've started is what you're looking at right now.
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So you're using a keyboard with a touchscreen interface? Isn't that, like, a major cause for gorilla arms? :O
You must be one of the lucky few. For me those releases were ridiculously slow, unstable and seriously lacking in features.
Unless you like beta testing, OS X was not usable until 10.2.
Surface is fantastic, and the limitations of RT make me want to get a Pro one, so they have the sales plan pretty well worked out
.That said, the weight, battery life and lack of fan in Surface RT are really nice advantages, and one can do a lot with just the Office apps, which work really nicely with touch thanks; I just don't see what people mean about it not being suited to that interface ... on the contrary the main effect of using Windows like that is that I keep trying to touch every other damn machine I use.
I have never understood the use case of an iPad, and neither OS X since Lion; IMO it would have been better to have OS X on a tablet, surely Surface shows that pretty well, whereas instead Apple has itself a bit stuck with a non-productivity OS on the device line for the future, and I can't see them ever doing a Mac with a touchscreen - which if they did would likely be the Windows machine of choice .. so it really is a shame.
Yes
Yep. I do.
Classic was always available.
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I used a Surface RT right after it came out (with keyboard) and found it quite usable as a laptop replacement. While I'm likely never to own a PC, I can see plenty of Windows fans that travel or move around a lot liking the weight advantage over a laptop.
Then again, although I'm a lifelong Mac fan, I'm not enamored with the iPad. I had one for six months and sold it because my wife and I just couldn't figure out why we'd choose it over our laptops (13" MBP and 11" MBA).
Is the Surface an iPad killer? No.
Is the Surface a netbook or ultrabook killer? Quite possibly.
Is the Surface a suitable replacement for my MBA? No, but I wouldn't be lost if I had one.
Yep. I do.
Classic was always available.
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Surface is fantastic, and the limitations of RT make me want to get a Pro one, so they have the sales plan pretty well worked out
That said, the weight, battery life and lack of fan in Surface RT are really nice advantages, and one can do a lot with just the Office apps, which work really nicely with touch thanks; I just don't see what people mean about it not being suited to that interface ... on the contrary the main effect of using Windows like that is that I keep trying to touch every other damn machine I use.
I have never understood the use case of an iPad, and neither OS X since Lion; IMO it would have been better to have OS X on a tablet, surely Surface shows that pretty well, whereas instead Apple has itself a bit stuck with a non-productivity OS on the device line for the future, and I can't see them ever doing a Mac with a touchscreen - which if they did would likely be the Windows machine of choice .. so it really is a shame.
I used a Surface RT right after it came out (with keyboard) and found it quite usable as a laptop replacement. While I'm likely never to own a PC, I can see plenty of Windows fans that travel or move around a lot liking the weight advantage over a laptop.
Then again, although I'm a lifelong Mac fan, I'm not enamored with the iPad. I had one for six months and sold it because my wife and I just couldn't figure out why we'd choose it over our laptops (13" MBP and 11" MBA).
Is the Surface an iPad killer? No.
Is the Surface a netbook or ultrabook killer? Quite possibly.
Is the Surface a suitable replacement for my MBA? No, but I wouldn't be lost if I had one.
So most tablets have 4-4.5 hour batty life?
Bingo, you hit the nail on the head for the Surface Pro, IF Microsoft has somehow managed to get even 8hrs average battery life out of that thing it would have been a Killer device, Full days work on a device that runs ANY application i own for the desktop, full keyboard/trackpad support, and ability to add USB devices, but at the same time, metro UI (Sorry MODERN UI) for when im up and about and need quick access to touch screen apps would have been perfect, a killer device in fact, but 3hrs on average once the battery has aged and you start loading in proper apps and multitask, not good
I'm just going to take a guess that you don't use any sort of windows in a business environment. I am also going to guess that you have never actually used a surface or Windows 8 for any period of time beyond playing with one at a mall kiosk.
I use windows every weekday for approximately 8 hours on average. I use Windows 7 Enterprise running VS.NET (for development), MSSQL Management studio (for development) and Office for email (Outlook) and documents.
I have been a software developer on the windows platform for over 15 years. What about you?
Based on my experience with windows 8, I can say that Microsoft has made a huge error in judgement. I believe that windows 8/RT will be their worst failure to date. The UI is full of basic usability mistakes that will alienate but novices and professionals alike. The only people who "love" the metro UI are microsofties and fanboys. If I have not made myself clear yet, I HATE the metro UI. I also HATE ribbons found in Office and the new explorer in Windows 8. Nobody at Microsoft seems to have asked or cared what professionals wanted or needed and only listen to "yes" men from Windows fanboy sites.
Microsoft has some of the biggest "sheep" in the industry. Their fans never critique Microsoft. Contrast that with mac users on here who are some of the biggest complainers there are on the internet. Apple should feel privileged to have a userbase that is so hard to please.
You've got too much opinion going on being masqueraded as fact. I can't deny your experience, but I can deny your experience makes you completely objective on all things UI.
Like the ribbon. I've never understood the ire some people have for it. See, I hate nested menus. Think they're of the devil. It doesn't lend itself well to exploration and discovery, and makes it hard to find something unless you're specifically looking for it. To me, the ribbon fixed all of that. Everything has an icon, everything is somewhat self explanatory, and it's all organized nice and neatly across the top of a window. It's not vastly different in function from the menus of old. It's just much easier to follow and find things now.
Like invert selection. I've been using Windows for years and years now, and I never knew this feature existed until Windows 8 displayed it prominently on the explorer ribbon. Activating "show hidden files and folders"? All right there in front of you on the ribbon.
Now I can understand the hate when MS reorganized the UI in Office 2007, and people who had been using the suite for years suddenly found themselves having to relearn it. But it's hardly the UI nightmare some people make it out to be.
And Windows 8? It has some UI issues, yeah. It's got a nice flow to it once you find out where everything is, but nothing pops out at you when you first fire it up. Everything is so tucked out of the way and "minimalized" that it's not immediately intuitive. And don't even get me started on finding the power button that first time. Sure, I can hit it in 1.3 seconds now, but I had to rely on Google to show me where it was at that first time I tried finding it.
It presents to you an environment that looks similar to what you're used to, but is just different enough that it pisses you off when you find out the thing you're looking for has been moved to some mysterious elsewhere.
But that isn't to say Windows 8 is terrible. Once you get used to it, it's actually a little quicker and easier to use than even 7. I know a lot of people talk about how terrible Win8 is for desktops. How it's really a tablet OS forced to use a mouse and keyboard. That's complete BS. It's a desktop OS with some tablet trappings thrown in for good measure.
It's for this reason I think the Surface Pro is a nice beta product, rather than one that stands on its own merits. My opinion is that the Pro is a tablet using an OS that only gives a tiny nod to a touchscreen UI. Just about everything you do on it is going to be in the oldschool desktop environment, which obviously isn't the best fit for a tablet. The way things are now, you might as well buy a touchscreen equipped ultrabook. It's the best fit for Win8.
So is everything hunky dory? Hell no. There's still tons of work that needs to be done before Windows on a tablet becomes the fabled iPad Killer MS wants it to be. Things are pretty rough right now.
Is it all doom and gloom? Nope. Rough though it may be, there's tons of good ideas lurking around in Windows 8. They just need to be brought together, polished, and perfected. It's not there yet, but there's potential.
That's funny, because ribbons are the devil to me (as a developer) and the technical writer on our team precisely because they require exploration and discovery which makes it hard to find something unless if you remember where you last found it. In other words, a lot of time is wasted searching for a feature that is often categorized with unrelated items.
The thing I liked about the menus was that I could usually quickly find what I was looking for by looking under the logical grouping of the menu and submenu names. I also liked the fact that the keyboard shortcuts appeared by the menu items. That organization lends itself to muscle memory and a quick "binary" search by eliminating categories by the menu and submenu names when you are searching for a feature for the first time.
You see, I don't use Office or other windows programs to fart around as a "hobby". I actually use it to "get stuff done" as part of my "job".
I don't know how it works for you where you are but where I live, time equals money.
Before I started working on application server services, I used to be a web developer. One of the cardinal rules I had was that you should not change the UI of your product for the sake of change and try not to introduce unnecessary changes in workflow when updating a product especially if it was customer facing. The reason for this is that abrupt changes in the UI destroy muscle memory for the user and cause a need to relearn the workflow again. I also applied similar rules to changing windows form applications.
Maybe these are difficult concepts for you to understand if you have never worked on software where you are "paid" a lot of money and your business relied on happy customers and internal end users remaining a productive as possible.
BTW. What if I told you that the "ribbon" was just a "tab" in disguise? That is all it is. Does replacing menus with "tabs" containing "buttons" sound cool to you? It sound lame doesn't it? Stop being such a hipster wishing for "change" for the sake of change and start to consider the needs of serious users who want to get their work done as quickly as possible.
PS. In a nutshell, I have gone from desktop console (point of sale and expert systems) development to web (e-commerce) programming to forms based windows backend processing development to app server and SOA (software as a service) development. That basically means that I know my ****. Some of my former colleagues/teammates have gone on to work Google and Microsoft.
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Think of it from a slightly different perspective. You were used to the old nested menu setup. You knew where everything was, and it obviously worked for you. When you were first introduced to ribbons, you were coming to it brand new.
Obviously, you hated it. Everything was moved around. Nothing was where it should've been. Most people who were weened on the old setup tend to hate the ribbons, and continue to hate it from that point on.
But think about new users? Most people who came in at Office 2007+ usually like the ribbon. It's a more visually oriented interface, tends to be more friendly to newbies without sacrificing as much usability. Once someone gets used to it, they're likely to be just as fast as you were with the old standard.
I generally tend to agree, and changing things for the sake of change is something MS is guilty of more often than not.
Though I'm also not scared of change, provided the changes are being made for a good reason. To me, the switch from nested menus to the ribbon was a beneficial one. Not because it's cool, or neat looking, or whatever, but because it works better for me. It's tends to lead to less clicks, makes for an easier to follow interface, and, once again, allows for better discoverability for people new to the program.
That last bit is important, as it only needs to be done once. A more discoverable interface is a more intuitive one. Once someone finds out where something is, they don't have to discover it again. They've learned something new, and expanded their control over the piece of software.
So the question is, are nested menus actually better overall, or only better for you because you're used to them?
Also, notice how I cut out all the snarky bits from your conversation? Let me tell you why in the form of a nice little story.
A long, long time ago, I spent a couple of months in hell as an inbound sales rep for AT&T wireless. God, I hated that job. It was easily the most boring, tedious thing I've ever put myself through.
One day I get a call from this one guy. Seemed pretty normal at first. Everything was going well. He ended up buying an expensive package, a nice cellphone, and was willing to commit to the sale. That is, until we got to the thousand dollar deposit due to his bad credit. That was about the guy freaked out.
"DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM", he said, "I AM THE CEO OF A FORTUNE 500 COMPANY! I MAKE MILLIONS OF DOLLAR AND EAT PATHETIC PEONS LIKE YOU FOR BREAKFAST! YOU WILL STRIKE THAT DEPOSIT FROM YOUR RECORDS AND GIVE ME MY DAMN PHONE! NOW"!
Needless to say, all the pointless condescension and ego stroking didn't impress me much. I told the guy that if he made millions of dollars, surely he could afford a $1000 deposit. Obviously, that pissed the guy off even more, and I ended up having to terminate the call to save my eardrums.
So what does this story have to do with our conversation? Well, you see, your pointless condescension and ego stroking isn't impressing me much. I mean, I'm sure you've got skills to back up your claims. You know what you're doing, and you're obviously capable of having a intelligent discussion. But when you go off on one of your little tangents, you come across as a petulant child throwing a temper tantrum because I'm not agreeing with your obviously informed opinion 100%.
As a professional adult, I'm sure this is an attitude you don't want to project out to people. So tell you what. Next time you reply to me, try to keep the snark and pointless resume dropping down to a minimum. It serves no purpose other than making you look petty and small.
I also dislike the ribbon. It might be okay if I could customize it, like we used to be able to do with the Toolbar in older versions of Office. I created a custom Toolbar containing all the commands that *I* use frequently, and it has considerably sped up my workflow. But the last time I checked, the ribbon wasn't user customizable (do let me know if this has changed!).
What Microsoft did when they designed the ribbon, was they measured on average how often each feature was used, and made the most used features have bigger/more prominent icons, and made the less-used features smaller/less promient. But I ask you, how many of us are exactly average? If we are average in height, we may not be average in weight, if we are average in annual income, we may not be average in commuting distance... I really doubt that the arrangement of icons on the ribbon represent the ideal configuration for any particular user.
Again, if only the ribbon was user customizable, I might not mind it. But as it is now, it makes me stare at tons of wasted space on my screen littered with icons I never use.
What Microsoft did when they designed the ribbon, was they measured on average how often each feature was used, and made the most used features have bigger/more prominent icons, and made the less-used features smaller/less promient. But I ask you, how many of us are exactly average? If we are average in height, we may not be average in weight, if we are average in annual income, we may not be average in commuting distance... I really doubt that the arrangement of icons on the ribbon represent the ideal configuration for any particular user.
Again, if only the ribbon was user customizable, I might not mind it. But as it is now, it makes me stare at tons of wasted space on my screen littered with icons I never use.
You've been missing out for three years now! Since Office 2010 on, you've been able to edit the default tabs or make your own. You can even export them as XML files to use elsewhere.
The page I linked to above will show you how to do it.